Starting a Law Firm | Marketing a Law Firm, Part 1

One of the things that you will notice when starting a law firm is that it’s stressful not knowing where your next client will come from. As you can imagine, this will last for several years because you won’t have gathered enough of a referral network to create an expectation of receiving a certain amount of clients every month through your network.

Because of this stress, one thing I am working very hard on is marketing my law firm. I’ll borrow from the How to Start a Law Firm blog, which is an excellent blog and I suggest you read it, when I say that my law firm marketing campaign is three-pronged: land, sea, and air.

The land and air portions of my marketing efforts are similar to what you will read in the other blog, but clearly the specifics will differ. Basically, the air part involves internet marketing – trying to drive my website up the search engine rankings. Since Google is increasingly the search engine of choice for many people, I concentrate on what I think Google wants to see. I’ve researched this, probably too much, but the experts call it search engine optimization, or SEO for short. I’ll go into more detail in a later post, but SEO can generally be divided into two categories: on-site and off-site. On-site is what you actually put on your website, while off-site is the behind the scenes stuff including getting quality links to your website.

The land portion of my law firm marketing efforts involves meeting people face-to-face, emailing everyone I know, and generally letting everyone I come into contact with what I am doing and that I am looking for business. I think I value this portion a little more highly than some internet marketing purists, but to each his own.

The sea portion is a little different. It’s a long term project and it involves creating the perfect client experience. From the materials I offer on my website to the initial phone call to the closing letter and beyond, I want to create an experience for my clients that surpasses their expectations. Through the perfect client experience, I hope to generate client referrals. This is a long term project and I’m still working out the kinks.

Remember, I had to learn how to start a small law firm very quickly and wasn’t able to do all the planning I ideally would have had that not been the case. So I’ve had to do the original planning while trying to get clients and grow my business. Things are looking pretty good right now but no matter what, in business and in life, you can’t get complacent. I’m always looking for ways to continue modifying my plans so that they are constantly improving.

Next up, Marketing Part 2, where I will show you the details of marketing a law firm.

Starting a Law Firm - Where to Start?

So I’ve decided to start a law firm. Congratulations! Now what? That is where I was not too long ago. Actually, just after I decided to start a law firm, I ended up putting my plans on hold for about a month. But my desire to take control of my life outweighed any other motivators, and I got back on the wagon. Now I am a little over a month into starting a law firm, and I still feel like I have so much to do.

But where did I start? Honestly, the first thing I did was buy a new phone – an HTC Droid Incredible. I knew that if I made some investment, albeit a relatively small one after the rebates, there was no turning back. For the first time in a long time, I was excited about my work, even if it was false optimism.

So where should I have started? Right here. Well not right here, but definitely on the internet researching how to start a law firm. So that is what I did, immediately after making my first purchase. There is a lot of information out there for attorneys out there to find. I knew that starting a law firm was going to take a lot of planning. So I started with Foonberg’s How to Start & Build a Law Practice, continued researching online through the ABA and my local bar associations, read as many blogs as possible. All the while, I made a running to do list based on all the information I took in. Included on my to do list was creating a business plan and creating a marketing plan. Those two items, as well as my current to do list, are complete topics for future posts. For now, just know that the to do list is long, but starts with the idea and research.

What about my new phone? My thinking in purchasing probably the best phone in Verizon’s arsenal was that I wanted to project success from the outset. Well, it hasn’t even arrived yet. My understanding is that Verizon, through HTC, through Samsung, is having trouble keeping up with demand because the screen used on the Incredible is in short supply. I guess it serves me right for doing things backwards.

Starting a Law Firm - Why Should I Start a Law Firm?

If you are thinking about starting a law firm and, more specifically, how to start a law firm, you probably have at least some semblance of a plan on how to achieve that goal. This means you've wanted to start a law firm for some time.

I started thinking about it before I even went to law school. When I was in undergrad, I clerked for a small litigation firm in my hometown. The owner of the firm was my friend's father (since retired), and he showed me everything. I went with him to court, worked on client files, helped with discovery, etc. On some days, when there wasn't much to do, I walked across the street to the courthouse to just watch what was going on. One time, on a Friday, we took off early and went to a baseball game. He was in complete control. From that point on, I wanted to own a firm. I wanted control of my career and my life.

As I moved on to law school, my classmates seemed to be very concerned with clerking for large law firms and getting jobs with those firms after graduation. However, I had my eye on the prize - starting my own small law firm. You see, partnership in a big law firm is very different than partnership in a small law firm. I've been in practice for approximately five years, starting out as a Virginia trial attorney. I've only worked in smaller shops and I can tell you with confidence that I have far more substantive and hands on experience than nearly all of my lawyer friends who are associates at larger firms. While they may eventually make partner, it will be an entirely different experience than mine. Not better or worse, just different. But that is a post for another day.

Starting a law firm requires a lot of hard work. That's worth repeating. It requires a lot of hard work. But it also provides everything that I want for my family and for me - flexibility, wealth, and balance. Finally, I am a go-getter personality who loves to take big challenges and meet them head on. So I am challenging myself to earn more as an owner than I was earning at my last job within eighteen months. More importantly, I want to make more time for my family (not an easy task when starting a law firm). I'm excited for this chapter of my career.