I’ve been hired on cases from LegalMatch ranging from simple three-digit fee cases to bigger cases where I had six-digit fees. It’s good to have a service satisfying the goal of having a good marketing game with the short, middle and long-term aspects.
When LegalMatch called and offered my firm a membership, I looked at it. LegalMatch is a good lead generation service and it has been a good lead generation service.
Any small firm or sole practice looks for better marketing opportunities. Before LegalMatch, there were these lags of time where you would get no new calls. The LegalMatch service is one thing that makes you feel better because there’s always a lot of activity when you come in on a Monday morning. Typically, I’d have six legal matches to respond to with the service over the weekend, whereas, I might be in one of those little slack periods.
For me, it’s comforting to have people to call back and a lot of those turn into clients, which is the best part of it.
The other thing good about LegalMatch is you get to know the prospects’ problems. The site also tells you their income level, and for my firm, because I have 28 years of experience, plus my associate who’s a young attorney, we can focus on which attorney might give the prospects a call back based upon their income level, their ability to pay and who they might be looking for. There’s a question in the LegalMatch inquiry fields about what level experience a prospect wants in an attorney and that’s very helpful.
A wise older attorney told me when I started out that I needed to have access to many cases. They might bring cash flow instantly or you needed to work on them a little bit since they might bring in a nicer fee. Then there are your long-range cases where you see the potential for a big fee. LegalMatch has brought my firm all of these.
LegalMatch is not my only way to attract clients. There are also word of mouth referrals, websites and other lead directories. But LegalMatch membership is a nice complement to those marketing activities because it keeps the leads coming in, which is always a good thing.
When you’re talking to people who may be potential clients, you’re doing those things to get business. I’ve been hired on cases from LegalMatch ranging from simple three-digit fee cases to bigger cases where I had six-digit fees. It’s good to have a service satisfying the goal of having a good marketing game with the short, middle and long-term aspects.
LegalMatch creates more contacts with potential clients. At any time, it’s up to the attorney to sell himself and to actually land the client. The more times you talk to people about your services, the better you will be at getting more clients. That’s why I would recommend LegalMatch to others: it will increase the business activity, call volume and email volume for their firms. It generates leads that do what they say they will do.
I find I’m most effective when I immediately respond and then follow up with a phone call to the lead. If you let the leads sit, they grow stale. You’ve got to be Johnny-on-the-spot, call back or respond to that lead and try to cultivate the client immediately because most people on LegalMatch sending an inquiry have an immediate need.
I have, for each of my practice areas, a template response. Not everything fits within a cookie cutter so I need to discuss the case with the potential client but the templates are a good start. If someone inquires about custody, one template email goes out. If they have a divorce, I have another template. If it’s a suspect of a crime, there’s a template for that, and if somebody is charged with a crime, there’s another template for that, too. For those with a civil case, they usually get the general template saying I want to talk to them and that the first visit is free.
You cover your bases and you can respond from your phone. Generally, I get my leads on the phone app. It’s fast. I click on the link and respond, all from my smartphone, which is cool. We have smartphones now so we can instantly respond to a LegalMatch inquiry. With the templates, that’s handy.
Write your own template so it’s coming personally from you. You can incorporate things from your website. I’ve done that, incorporated things like my bio section on these templates. Not a whole long response email or anything, but just a good description. For example, on my divorce template, I incorporate a line from my website that talks about the trauma from divorce and how nobody gets married to get divorced. That line alone is something that makes them go look at my website and read more in depth.
I put just enough in the response email to make them want to learn more about me. If you can get them to your website and they read more about you, you have a better chance of landing clients.
In my experience, if I can talk to a potential client and counsel them initially, I usually land him as a long-term client. The introduction that LegalMatch does gets me to the clients. If you do a good job for people you got off a LegalMatch inquiry, then they might become word-of-mouth referrals later. The process exponentially feeds upon itself.
I will tell you right up front, it’s not immediate gratification. Some of it is when you get a client off of LegalMatch, but often you have to talk to these folks, cultivate relationships so they have the confidence to hire you as a lawyer. One dose of kindness may pay dividends. It may be immediate, but often you have to wait for them to come back to you. They’re interviewing lawyers all over the Internet. You have to be patient and it will pay off.
I’ve had a few other lead generating systems and LegalMatch does better than these, I think it does a good job. I’ve stayed with LegalMatch, I’ve renewed my contract twice, so it tells you something good about a LegalMatch membership.
The thing I like best about the membership is the knowledge it gives you before you call that client. You can weed out the things you know you will not be interested in, and you can examine the client’s self-reported income.
Somebody who makes under $25,000 a year with a big custody case is not likely to afford a $3,500 retainer and a $325 an hour lawyer. He might be able to afford a $1,500 retainer and $165 an hour for an associate. It gives you the ability to parse in the firm who calls the lead back. You also can look up the lead’s cases online before you call clients.
If somebody does a LegalMatch inquiry and he’s charged with a crime, I can go on our court network and look the case up and have information about the case before I talk to the client. That’s a routine thing. To the client, he thinks you’re brilliant. That’s kind of a huge thing, and in that regard LegalMatch is a very helpful tool.
Out of the clients that actually come in from LegalMatch, I usually sign up about 50%. I can tell you anecdotally I’ve been hired on well-paying cases from LegalMatch. I’ve had several well-paying criminal cases and big custody cases that yielded five figure fees.
Without consulting my accountant, I can’t tell you how much income LegalMatch generates, but I can tell you it more than pays for itself and it produces a significant amount of leads.