Savvy Trade Secrets on How to Become a Successful Lawyer

What are the Key Skills of a Lawyer?

The basic skills needed to practice law include:

  • The ability to handle and parse legal information
  • Time, people and office management skills
  • An awareness and understanding of the commercial aspects of a law practice
  • The ability to skillfully handle client issues
  • Knowing how to deal with the other side of a case
  • Great litigation skills
  • Good writing skills
  • The ability to use logic and arguments with a view to legal solutions

What Makes a Successful Lawyer?

Aside from having skills necessary to practice law, you must also have other skills to run your practice. You might develop these on the job, they may be something you already know or are capable of doing. Savvy attorneys today base their business success on having a great client engagement process, and this needs:

  • An ability to focus on your practice
  • Increased control over client selection
  • Enhanced revenue and more trackable ROI
  • Optimized client matching

Ability to Focus on Practice

To be able to create more opportunities to build up your law practice, you need to have an effective marketing system. When you have this in place, it can lead to less competition for leads with other law firms that are strong on traditional marketing.

Lawyer marketing is the bottleneck you face when starting a law practice. For the first couple of years, most starting attorneys can actually become lost on the tricky landscape of legal marketing. Many think their marketing is lacking, but most experts tend to agree that you only need excellent client engagement for good marketing. This is a part of your practice that can make or break it.

When your client engagement is good, marketing success will follow. Good marketing doesn’t have to be that complex, costly or take up too much time. These days, lawyer marketing is always focused on online engagement. For smaller firms, there are many alternatives, but only a few of these will truly help.

Solo practitioners use centralized marketing platforms like LegalMatch to tap into a client pool that matches their area of expertise. LegalMatch is a robust, on-demand attorney-client matching, or ACM, platform that allows lawyers to tailor their accounts exclusively to specific areas of law, while broadening their selection of clients.

When your marketing bottleneck is resolved, then your ability to focus on your practice will be greatly enhanced. This is basically what LegalMatch does for your practice.

I retained my first client within the first couple of months using the service. I credit LegalMatch with my success and consider the service a cornerstone of my practice. I retain about 70% of the clients that I consult with. LegalMatch allowed me to grow my client base rapidly by matching me with clients seeking legal assistance in my geographical area and legal specialty. I was right – LegalMatch was the most cost -effective and highest revenue-generating service for my investment. Gregory A., Rockville, MD, Criminal Law

When I joined LegalMatch (and it’s the only marketing platform I’m using) I cut my marketing overhead by eighty percent and I doubled my business. It’s been radically impactful for me and my firm. It’s been so amazing. Clarke W., Irving, TX, Wills, Trusts and Estates

What I like about LegalMatch is that it provides me with clients, so I don’t have to do much spending on things like advertising or a lawyer referral service. As a solo, I’m more than busy with the clients that have been with me or that are coming in. Vasu V., Laguna Beach, CA, Real Estate, Housing & Property Law

Increased Control Over Client Selection

How do you choose clients? Many attorneys consider a 20% client engagement rate good and do not think they have better control over client selection. But streamlining client engagement, especially for smaller firms, is the most needed thing in the current legal industry landscape. The key to this is your increased control over client selection.

Control over client selection means choosing the most effective platforms for marketing to eliminate non-viable clients and the need for costly overhead spent on more traditional office visits and inquiries. An attorney-client matching service allows lawyers to gain more control over client selection. For instance, access to more detailed inquiries allows them to be more selective in choosing clients in any specific practice area.

The good investment in 21st century legal marketing is on those platforms that perform well in terms of client selection. For Maxwell L. of Brookfield, using LegalMatch has brought in more qualified leads that helped grow his firm. Since more information on a particular case is received through LegalMatch, lawyers can greatly enhance their chances of converting an inquiry as they narrow down the list of potential clients on the platform.

Maxwell L. is typical of many satisfied LegalMatch attorney members who have had their client selection process greatly improved with attorney-client matching.

LegalMatch made our law firm more successful and increased our bottom line. It brought us a lot of good clients. It is a good, legitimate source of new legal cases. LegalMatch will assist you in finding new potential clients to help grow your business. Maxwell L., Brookfield, WI, Employment and Labor Law

The LegalMatch ACM process considers client selection to be key. The platform is focused on helping attorney members achieve the optimum level of client selection through lead generation.

Enhanced Revenue and More Trackable ROI

The success of a legal firm has ROI at its bottom line. With modern marketing resources, there are literally tens of millions of people in the US who have legal issues. This stratospheric number of potential qualified leads for lawyers however, cannot truly be engaged with more conventional methods of legal advertising.

Digital marketing, lead generation and ACM are easily the best ways to access this large pool of potential leads. Through LegalMatch, lawyers can increase revenue by accessing this larger client pool that they might not be able to tap into with other marketing methods. For Lauren C. of Chicago, the LegalMatch membership enabled her to get a great return on her investment, which grew her law firm at a much quicker pace.

Not only did LegalMatch get me clients directly, but the clients I obtained through LegalMatch referred me to their friends and family as well, which brought in even more business… Lauren C., Chicago, IL, Family Law

Attorney-client matching has allowed many lawyers to grow their practice at their own pace, without straining their resources or capabilities. More than that, inquiries received through the system are traceable and easier to manage, too. LegalMatch has an unsurpassed system of revenue enhancement and tracking, and continuously studies new developments and technologies in attorney marketing to incorporate in the system.

Optimized Client Matching

An effective ACM platform should have an optimized system of client matching. Suchan optimized matching system enables LegalMatch attorney members to save time by reviewing cases that interest them without spending too much time on lead generation and qualification.

For Christine C. of Houston, LegalMatch has enabled her to have consistent case volume and choose cases to handle based on her specialization and existing docket load. Also, attorneys can respond to potential clients immediately through things like up-to-date mobile notifications generated by the system.

Overall, LegalMatch is an excellent value! I was overjoyed by the consistent case volume — and by the fact that the cases are interesting. LegalMatch provided a WONDERFUL onboarding process. I’m happy with the quality of the clients that I receive from LegalMatch. Since I joined (approximately 4 months), I have closed approximately $60,000 worth of cases. For me, that’s a win. Christine , Houston, TX, Criminal Law

Everything adds up with the entire set of advantages provided by ACM. This includes:

  • Increased freedom from mundane marketing tasks and more time to focus on your practice
  • Increased control over client selection
  • Increased revenue
  • More trackable ROI and optimized client matching

ACM has already gained much ground as a process based on results. It is not a new thing and attorneys across America can attest to its effectiveness.

The Rise of the Attorney-Client Matching (ACM) Service

Back in the day, achieving success in the legal field entailed spending long hours developing a client base through traditional methods. Lawyers dealt with case loads and had minimal access to marketing services or even advertising platforms.

It will surprise many that lawyer advertising only became legal in the US after the landmark 1972 case of Bates v. Arizona. Before that, it was unethical to advertise attorney services. In this sense, ethics will always remain a crucial factor in any kind of attorney advertising.

Today, becoming a successful lawyer relies on the attorney’s ability to combine the best aspects of more conventional methods with innovative business practices. As the legal field becomes more specialized, services like attorney-client matching can help modern lawyers achieve success. But if pre-1972 was prehistoric for attorney marketing and advertising, then its pre-internet age was medieval. This means that the internet and all its technologies have propelled lawyer advertising into its golden age.

This age ushered in website and content marketing, digital marketing and pay-per-lead (PPL) generation services, and more. ACM is often classified under the PPL field, but it actually is not a PPL process. It has similarities to PPL, but the ACM process itself is unique and is becoming the byword for even better efficiency and effectiveness.

Today, more and more attorneys are recognizing the advantages of using LegalMatch’s attorney-client matching service. That’s why the vast majority of LegalMatch lawyer members are confident that they are riding the wave of the future for the legal industry with LegalMatch’s high quality, ethically aware, ACM services.

Best Client Engagement Practices

Our most successful Member Attorneys use all available tools to maximize their membership and increase revenue and clientele base. These tips are modeled off our most successful accounts across the US.

  1. Quick response times

    Respond to all cases within 10 minutes of the case posting, followed by an immediate phone call to the client. After that, your odds of a successful phone call drop to 5-10%.  Clients are seeking convenience, the first attorney to respond with the best customer service will be retained.

  1. Follow the respond, consult, retain process

    Send a response followed by an immediate courtesy appointment scheduling call. Meet with the client (or consult over the phone) for the consultation and offer the retainer agreement within the consultation conversation. Be as caring as possible for the client and address all his legal issues concisely with effective, actionable solutions.

  1. Follow up at least three times

    Follow up to non-responsive potential clients with the appropriate template response every 24 hours. After the third time and still no response from the potential client, you can archive the case and move on to more potential leads.

  1. Best profile content

    A profile should be short, sweet and direct.  Only state the pertinent facts of who you are professionally and what credentials and experience you have.  It should convey the unique characteristics that you offer. What do you do that’s different from all of the other attorneys out there? This is your first impression to your clients.

  1. Customize your the response templates

    Personalizing each response will only slow down your response time. The first attorney to respond usually gets the case. Customize the response with a few “one-liners” and a few open-ended questions.

  1. Respond to all cases

    Do not analyze the case information until you have spoken with the client. Responding to all cases also opens the door for referrals even though you may not be able to help the client who originally posted the case. Networking is the number one way to gain clients. It is one of the least expensive and effective forms of marketing you can do.

  1. Be flexible with your fees

    Understand the economic situation of the client. You will attract more clients if you are willing to work with them on fees. Offer online payments, payment plans, and flexible retainers.

  1. Use the LegalMatch Attorney Mobile App

    You will get notified every time a new case is posted in your practice area. Attorneys using the Mobile App are able to respond to cases 3x faster than attorneys who don’t. That speed tends to result in double the engagements.

  1. Offer a free consultations

    Offering a free consultation allows both you and the client to meet, discuss the case, and determine if it will be a good fit.

    Doing these tips combined with a positive and helpful attitude and tone helps lawyers achieve optimal success in legal marketing.