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By Jared Correia, IndyBar Law Practice Management Consultant, Red Cave Legal Consulting
There is likely a mentor in your past who told you to make sure that you don’t give away the farm when talking to potential clients. The idea is to leave them wanting more. That’s bad advice. If you leave legal consumers wanting more in 2021, they will go find another attorney.
The fact is, even without the emergence of the coronavirus, the convenience economy was coming in hot anyway. In the convenience economy, a lack of information is just one more reason to find another service provider.
In the context of legal consumers, if a potential client is willing to have a conversation with you, that means that the lead wants to hire you; you just have to give them a reason to do so. But withholding will not help. Legal consumers have very little idea about what lawyers actually do. So talking with potential clients about the legal process and helping them to understand what the next steps would be in a representation are essential to converting clients. In fact, it’s one of the most important things you can do with respect to your intake process. And it’s one of the reasons why lawyers focus so heavily on content marketing. The notion that a lead will be dissuaded from using your services if you tell them too much doesn’t hold water. What are they going to do – get a law degree and prosecute their own case? In point of fact, the more you tell your potential clients, the harder it sounds to do what you do — the more trust you’ll generate between you and your lead and the more that potential client will buy into you being the right choice for providing legal services.
There are a bunch of so-called “truths” about law practice management that just aren’t viable for a modern law practice – if they ever were.•
If you’re struggling to convert clients in the convenience economy, we can help.
The IndyBar offers free law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. To request a consult, visit indybar.org/lpm and start running your law firm like a business.
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