As a 25 year practicing lawyer who has profited immeasurably from advertising strategies that dominate my legal competitors, I have found it most rewarding to provide my direct marketing services to lawyers nationwide.

For those determined to uncover why direct marketing works spectacularly for the few privileged lawyers who know how to harness its power effectively, I assist lawyers in demonstrating the costs of ignoring a direct mail campaign.

Please know that I only offer my direct marketing services for lawyers in the independent practice of law. Unfortunately, my own direct marketing materials will not be made available to advertising agencies or marketing firms.

Step One: Understanding The Need For Direct Marketing

As I have stated elsewhere, the question for the lawyer looking to accumulate a client base is not whether to market their abilities, but how to market themselves in the most cost effective manner possible. Now just because marketing in my opinion may very well be the single most important factor in regard to the viability of a legal practice does not mean that such efforts should be conducted in a haphazard manner.

Throwing money at marketing efforts and putting your head in the sand does not build an effective legal practice. Too many lawyers have adopted the stock market philosophy of investing in the assurances of a so called advertising expert and leaving the results to chance.

Such lawyers willingly suspend disbelief as to why their client acquisition efforts are not working. They choose to believe that they’re marketing efforts, sometimes provided by nationally known legal publishing companies, mean that they are in good hands as they seek to perform the task of their day-to-day legal activities.

Some of these former legal names (who I will not name) who have now joined the ranks of marketing experts have formerly published the law books lawyers use, or are associated with the legal research tools they rely upon. However, in truth these established legal industry names have been losing money to the internet and have ineffectively jumped into the lawyer marketing arena as a means to use their former respected names to remain relevant.

Many lawyers I have consulted with devoted far less time to a well thought out marketing plan than the attention given to their respective legal cases. While such devotion to the best interests of client legal matters is noble and worthy of praise, depriving the public at large the ability to become meaningfully aware of your services is worthy of scorn.

Time after time I find myself repeating this notion that without the ability to effectively accumulate good clients, your legal abilities will be underutilized and your practice will ultimately dissolve like far too many other aspiring lawyers nationwide.

Young or idealistic lawyers begin their practices with the best of intentions. Many believe that somehow through osmosis word of their good legal work will somehow catch fire among the masses and elevate their efforts far above all other competing lawyers in their respective jurisdictions. Such notions in today’s world are as immature as their are foolhardy. In fact, I would suggest that an attorney who still believes in such principals as a means for real world legal success is simply not fit to endeavor to run their own legal practice.

There is an outlet for lawyers who believe in nothing more than an academic preoccupation with scholarly pursuits, that outlet is employment within a law firm or government agency where such an individual’s efforts can be dictated by others. However, as you have found this information presumably as a result of an active search for legal independence, I will assume that a law career dictated by others is perhaps not what you have in mind.

Once we have crossed the threshold to allocate needed financial expenditures toward the meaningful acquisition of clients, the inevitable decisions as to where and how to most effectively market your legal practice must be determined. It is at this stage in a lawyer’s career that the decisions made will either power his or her legal efforts for years to come or have those marketing expenditures serve to bring down a legal practice.

While my foremost priority is to convey to lawyers the severe financial repercussions that come to those unwilling to invest in direct mail campaign strategies, some generalizations may be put forth in regard to some existing minefields lawyers may need to be extricated from prior to pivoting to more cost effective and impactful advertising efforts. In short, financially crippling and outdated forms of marketing that is compelling the dissolution of law practices throughout America.

To be sure I profit from top internet rankings as well as direct mail. However, unlike most lawyers I have number one organic (free) rankings for my desired search terms. Basically this insulates me from my competitors frenzy to pay increasing amounts of advertising revenue each month in the “pay to play” world of today’s internet advertising; advertising that is little more than an ineffective artificial attempt to boost rankings with the big boys like me.

Direct Marketing Services For Lawyers Victimized By Ineffective Internet Marketing

Unlike internet marketing, direct mailings without doubt have far more bang for the legal marketing buck than any other advertising mechanism that I know of including the internet. In addition, direct mailings allow your legal practice to both control and target your desired client in a way no other marketing venture can accomplish. In so doing, such a marketing concentration serves to prevent wasted expenditures draining your ability to earn a needed profit in the continuation of your practice.

The general public usually knows enough about the internet today to know that pay per click rankings are for the pretenders in any business industry. Thus, even where such websites may invariably be clicked, no meaningful intent to correspond with such a business is likely to occur.

Joining the masses of your legal competitors each bidding up the prices for pay per click internet advertising does nothing but benefit the seo companies. The internet “clicker” will do no more than go from one website to the next leaving in his or her path wasted dollars accumulated daily on your credit card without any realized return.

Further, such activities make one susceptible to growing click fraud problems afflicting many lawyers doing their best to keep their legal practices in the black. Although widely publicized, the seo companies have done little to convincingly communicate how or if they even have any genuine interest in stopping such activities that have continued to benefit their bottom lines. Nonetheless participation in pay per click advertising keeps increasing at the expense of the desperate business internet advertiser; an advertiser still willing to risk the prospect of fraudulent click activity fearing no other way to market themselves or their business.

That fear also allows deceptive “first page ranking” guarantees from internet marketers to be jumped at by too many lawyers. More often than not these first page guarantees are merely pay per click results where you will now have the good fortune to be paying both the seo companies as well as your new marketing company. This “marketing expert” you have placed your faith in is most likely charging you for the wasted pay per click advertising that you could have just as easily failed participating in by yourself.

For the sake of argument, even if internet first page rankings could theoretically be achieved by your marketing rep, in my opinion unless a business is within the top 2 maybe 3 of the search engine organic (free) rankings, the monies paid merely to be on the first page of an internet search will not be cost justified.

If not a top organic listing on an internet search page for a given query, you are unfortunately considered nowhere. Internet marketing companies already know this adage. Too many lawyers being taken advantage of do not.

With effective direct mail marketing your message will be front and center with your targeted potential client. Whether you can capitalize on this opportunity to capture the potential client’s attention is up to you, or with your good fortune, me.

Successful Lawyers Sell To Potential Clients Not Other Attorneys

Far too many advertising and sales representatives do not practice law, but they sure as heck know how to sell to lawyers. No matter whether they sell products to lawyers, are friends with lawyers or claim to understand online advertising for lawyers, they do not know how to sell to potential clients needing legal services.

Understand this straight away;  an effective legal sales marketing representative is trained and often attends seminars on how to manipulate lawyers into buying their advertising. It is entirely possible, in fact, probable, that your trusted salesperson or “account representative” has never spoken to an actual potential client in need of a lawyer in his or her life.

As a result, your sales rep has no clue as to the emotions the vulnerable individual calling you is going through. What such a person is looking for. The social demographics and cultural makeup of people within a lawyer’s targeted community. The objectives of what a potential client  needs from the lawyer as related to a specific field of law.

Wait you say. My marketing or online sales rep is a lawyer. Such and such knows my profession and carries a mobile app that can spit out all of the many other lawyers in my community that are using his or her company’s services. Does my lawyer rep not know how to help me market my legal services?

No. Your lawyer advertising rep cannot help you market your legal practice. Your lawyer marketing rep cannot help you market your legal practice because your marketing rep could not market themselves effectively enough to sustain their own legal practice! This attorney salesperson of yours is either an attorney who would not, or could not succeed as a practicing lawyer.

If your marketing salesperson lawyer knew how to make money in the private practice of law, he or she would be me.

I am number one in Google for my statewide search terms other attorneys would beg borrow and steal to acquire. Despite this reality, I actually have salespeople for online search portals or worthless lawyer directories ranking below me try to sell me on their services. Such salespeople see little need in doing the most basic of research prior to cold calling me as a prospective legal advertising client.

Sound ridiculous that a lawyer like myself would pay thousands of dollars each month or year to online legal corporations whose websites rank below mine within Google search rankings?

In the eyes of attorney online salespeople it does not sound ridiculous in the least. Lawyers without proper business acumen, no matter how intellectually smart they may be abandon common sense when it comes to falling prey to these online marketing schemes every day.

Armed with a mobile app list of attorneys in your community all paying for their supposed legal marketing expertise, these advertising reps convince far too many foolhardy attorneys that paying them the money required will prove to be their salvation. The more foolish attorneys they sign up, the more credible they appear.

Take but a moment to ponder what I just communicated to you my fellow lawyer. If your online salesperson is pitching all of the lawyers in your community, does that not include your competitors? Even assuming that these online schemes had any viability, just whose best interest does your online salesperson have in mind?  Your law practice? Of course not. Your online marketing rep has your practice’s best interests in mind for the hour of time he or she is conversing with you.

More concretely you will inevitably be paying for useless marketing efforts online to tout your practice on the same page as all of your communities other equally unsuccessful legal competitors.

When financial stress begins to overtake the rational thought process of an attorney, otherwise illogical decisions are made that will hasten the demise of a legal practice as opposed to furthering it.

Return on a business investment (ROI) comes when the most credible and clear headed reasoning is applied toward the financial marketing geared toward capturing your targeted potential paying customer.

Yes I said customer, not client. Despite the big fancy words and legal speak that focuses upon the narcissism of attorneys, you are running a business when marketing yourself and/or your legal practice.

Your marketing goals should not be paying thousands of dollars merely to appear on other online pages with other attorneys in your communities who you respect (often attorneys who appear on these pages at no cost to establish credibility), or to be included among local bar association membership announcements that neither produce the lawyer referrals you long for nor the respect you desire.

Respect more often than not comes from the experience and longevity gained from sustaining a viable legal practice capable of generating new clients and satisfying existing ones.

A legal practice not capably positioned to uniquely capitalize on marketing efforts that have nothing but (ROI) as the number one priority will potentially result in you becoming yet another failed lawyer attempting to sell worthless advertising to successful lawyers like myself in the not too distant future.

If your legal talents and abilities are focused upon fields of law best able to capitalize on the power of direct mail marketing I may be able to help you. Unlike a potential lawyer salesperson my marketing credentials can be easily verified through a robust legal practice that for years has dominated the entirety of my targeted state.

Quite simply, a legal practice premised upon dui/criminal defense success is the ideal foundation upon which to build direct mail success. Established legal precedent has determined that in such a field of legal endeavor, direct mailings can have a positive and valuable impact upon educating the public as to their legal rights in a timely manner.

As such, mailed informational resources have specifically been endorsed so long as produced in a manner that is not misleading and otherwise is in compliance with state ethical rules.

The fact that national legal organizations and courts have recognized and specifically sanctioned the value of direct informational mailings is not a small issue. For far too many years established law firms and/or those well connected within a community did their best to impede direct advertising from taking hold within their given communities.

Through their own whisper campaigns founded upon ethics or by manipulating legal associations within their jurisdictions, the old legal guard did their level best to prevent meaningful public understanding of the average person’s rights and legal options by eliminating competition such mailed resources represented.

The question in today’s legal marketing environment is no longer whether mailed legal resources can serve a valuable role in helping our communities, but merely whether proper and correct information is being disseminated.

To be sure, there have been untold numbers of direct informational content sent to arrested individuals and those who have been injured that have not only been of little value but deceptive.

Advertising manipulation whether in the form of television commercials, print media claims or misleading website content has and will continue to exist within all professions and business industries. However, unlike those traditional forms of advertising, it has only been a relatively recent development for direct informational mailings to have joined the ranks of public communication that can either bolster the standing of the legal profession or lower it.

Specifically as related to a dui/criminal defense practice, legal rulings have established the necessity of public awareness of legal rights within a timely manner. As there exist deadlines for criminal defendants to assert legal rights in all fifty states, time constraints that can otherwise toll when such mailings can be distributed have been disallowed when focused upon arrested individuals.

Despite attempts to thwart the effectiveness of direct mailings to criminal defendants by delaying when they can be distributed, direct marketing power comes from the legally endorsed ability to target and capitalize on the imminent need for legal services among those who have been arrested among the general public.

To meet the need of such individuals, mechanisms with which to notify those lawyers capable of providing assistance are permitted to be in place and utilized. Further, no longer will legal prohibitions among state ethical commissions be permitted to be put in place that can impede the ability to reach an individual in need of criminal defense services in a timely manner.

Although still quite effective, direct mailings for injury attorneys have increasingly been subject to “cooling off” periods in which mailed solicitations cannot be directed to injured individuals with potential legal claims until a certain period of time has elapsed.

Such arbitrarily created time constraints are not ideal to the most qualified attorneys ability to inform injured individuals of their rights prior to self interested insurance company communication.

In many circumstances, state legal bar associations have tilted the competitive playing field in favor of insurance companies ability to gain free unencumbered access to injured individuals in attempts to secure settlements far below what they could have otherwise been entitled.

Since delineated legal rights that can be effected by time and/or delay are constitutionally protected, such cooling off periods have not been permitted in preventing the distribution of mailings to those who have been arrested. Consequently, individuals in need of legal defense services are able to receive your lawyer correspondence as soon as one can deliver it.

Unfortunately it is a daunting if not impossible task for those lawyers practicing in such fields of law as divorce or bankruptcy to be in the same position to capitalize on the profit potential of direct mail advertising.

Unlike a legal process initiated by a state actor without profit motive in the area of dui/criminal defense, meaningful notification of divorce and/or bankruptcy proceedings can only come once lawyers have already been retained to have initiated legal filings on a respective party’s behalf.

Unless a lawyer is willing to preemptively saturate the potential demographic market for future retention as traditional direct mailings in other businesses have done, the hands down winner for prospective direct mail success rests in the hands of defense attorneys and to a lesser extent injury counsel who may both spring to action upon the filing of arrest and/or accident reports.

I am neither an expert nor advocate of the preemptive saturation method of direct mail advertising. In other words one or more informational mailings sent to a targeted social demographic who may or may not been in need of a particular legal service some time in their futures.

While online materials continue to tout the effectiveness of such strategies, I am a big fan of ultra targeted marketing to a person who is in immediate need of my services now.

Such is the extreme power of direct informational marketing for lawyers in the fields of dui/criminal defense and personal injury law.

The inconvenient truth I share with young lawyers is that undue delay in discovering the need to capitalize on becoming a master at direct mail marketing may serve to needlessly derail an otherwise promising legal practice.

For those lawyers that do not know how to market themselves or their practice, don’t worry, I am here to show you a better way.

In the competitive legal environment of today, time simply is not on your side.  If you determine that direct marketing is right for you, you cannot afford to procrastinate in allowing your practice the best opportunity to succeed when a direct informational piece I use myself is available to you right now.

Unfortunately, more often than not the lawyers who immediately “get it” are those veteran lawyers who recall the old days of attorney advertising. A time when the yellow page directories were the be all and end all for most attorney client acquisition efforts. Such veteran  lawyers already come to me with the knowledge that to make money one must invest the resources necessary in marketing one’s practice. The only question is not whether to invest but uncovering the right marketing strategy that will derive the greatest monetary return on that investment.

Novice lawyers just starting out too frequently make the mistake of potentially sabotaging their practices by failing to properly invest monetarily in their marketing efforts. In a social media world of free access to the public, such “millennials” are too often taught sobering lessons as to what it really takes to acquire the number of quality clients it will take to sustain a thriving long term legal practice.

With that said perhaps some context as to how I have settled upon direct mail as the bedrock of my successful client acquisition efforts is in order.

In days gone by prior to the internet and direct marketing services, if a lawyer did not have prime yellow page real estate, his or her chances for marketing their respective practices were considerably diminished.

Just a few years after starting my own practice I was fortunate enough to strategically position my marketing campaign to phone books within my central city as well as surrounding counties.

My success soon prompted hordes of other aspiring lawyers to yellow page advertising. Thereafter, in short order, those lawyers without foresight to patronize the phone book to reserve advertising placement were ultimately left out in the cold. Each year without yellow page advertising quickly left more aspiring legal practices fifty pages and more back under their desired attorney listings.

Circumstances grew so dire for attorneys newly admitted or young attorneys trying to market their practices that double full page ads became created so as to capitalize on the frenzy of lawyers determined to beat out their competitors. Those lawyers refusing to participate in phone book marketing soon enough could lose twenty pages of advertising placement in the phone book each new advertising year.

Other more established attorneys or those young lawyers betting their futures on phone book advertising began staking claim to the back cover of phone books, then inside covers, then tabs sticking out from the voluminous phone book pages that sought to catch a glimpse of the prospective clients eyes.

In this environment yellow page salespeople and their corporate partners had all the leverage in the world to extract untold amounts of monthly revenue from attorney advertisers.

Speaking from a personal perspective it was not uncommon for me to pay nearly nine thousand dollars per month for phone book advertising. While such an amount seemed obscene to the average layman, lawyers without the stomach to endure writing such checks each month would have to be content in other lines of employment.

From my perspective, I was content to pay such high marketing costs each month. In a cost benefit analysis, the marketing costs justified the clients I was consistently acquiring. Further, I recognized that the although these costs may have appeared to be staggering to layman and most of my competition, such costs appeared to insulate me from meaningful competition.

Within this context, phone book corporate strategy was unrestrained in its ability to raise monthly costs indiscriminately every year. Failure to produce the increased revenue demanded by the phone book companies would result in banishment to the back of the considerable line of lawyer advertisers eager to usurp the placements of those lawyers deciding to sit out phone book advertising for a year. (My colleagues who remember these days I see collectively nodding their heads right now).

Needless to say, the stress of maintaining a legal practice under such financial pressures was often daunting. However, with return on investment still strong in an advertising environment dominated by phone book listings, myself and most other lawyers plodded onward in willingly submitting to the phone book companies increasing monetary demands each new year.

For veteran lawyer marketers like myself, marketing stress began to reach unmanageable proportions when competition began to emerge to threaten the impact of phone book advertising. While still substantial for five or more years following the introduction of the internet to the consciousness of the general public, yearly revenue from yellow page advertising began to diminish. No longer was phone book advertising cost justified. In fact, at this point the monthly costs being paid to phone book companies without justified return went from cost justified to obscene.

Hastening the phone books demise further was a nationwide acceptance for the direct marketing of legal services to those who had been arrested. Sanctioned by the supreme court, lawyers nationwide were now given the green light to market directly to prospective clients without delay in certain fields of law. For example, criminal attorneys were not constrained by a waiting period with which to send mailed information to arrested individuals due to the time deadlines existing to assert certain legal rights.

No longer were phone books the go to resource to find a lawyer. Targeted informational mailings in combination with more understanding of internet marketing among the general public has usurped the former phone book dominance of attorney marketing efforts.

Best of all, for attorneys formerly shut out of effective phone book advertising placement, mailed solicitation and/or the internet gave such attorneys a new lease on their professional lives in terms of capitalizing on these new avenues with which to market a legal practice.

However, in time, the same obstacles that formerly shut out attorneys from effective phone book advertising have now emerged toward the internet marketing efforts of attorneys.

Google has become the new yellow pages. The same leverage exerted by the phone books to dole out premier placement to attorneys has now infected the monies it will take for attorneys to even deign to reach the first page of Google, much less the top few spots.  As stated elsewhere, Google pushes the prospect of pay per click advertising as the salvation to bypass meaningful organic listings. Not unlike the yellow pages, only Google benefits in touting these generally ineffective advertising forums within competitive industries that increase its own revenues at the expense of the lawyer advertiser.

This leaves direct lawyer marketing as the most cost effective and targeted means today with which to grow a legal practice in relevant fields of law. Unencumbered by outside corporate entities pulling the strings, those very few lawyers who know how to direct meaningful correspondence to the general public are profiting like never before.

Further, veteran lawyers consulting with me laugh at the one time cost of my shared informational material compared to the herculean efforts to formerly pay their phone book advertising expenses each and every month in perpetuity.

Quite simply, in my humble opinion, newly minted lawyers wishing to succeed in acquiring criminal defense clients will fail without a successful direct mail campaign.

I was fortunate in taking advantage of being in the forefront of both yellow page advertising and years later the emergence of internet advertising. This reality is reflected in my top ranked internet positioning; top placement in large measure attributable to the years of trusted participation I have been rewarded with as the recognized legal authority in my field of practice.

Once again, my credibility among other lawyers seeking my services stems from the fact that despite my top ranked internet listings I am one of the few attorneys capable of credibly communicating that it is direct mail advertising, not the internet, that  is by far the most cost effective means of acquiring the best clients today.

Please don’t allow a potential thriving practice to be submerged in wasted expenditures and deficient net income in the weeks, months and (hopefully not), years to come.

Once attorneys consult with me they will learn some valuable lessons in regard to the prioritization of expenses within a successful legal practice. By allocating proper expenditures toward the economic engine of generating income, a lawyer can soon learn that proper financial investment will become the kindling to the proverbial wealth generating fire.

I know that such cliches can often seem disingenuous to those unwilling to play the fool to those hucksters seeking to manipulate lawyers from all sides. However, failure to become motivated to understand the proper prioritization of expenses within a legal practice will doom an attorney for failure. No matter the method for you to become moved to learn sound marketing strategy and just as importantly, how to diminish expenditures not geared in some tangential way toward making you money, you must become motivated now. It is incumbent upon those lawyers seeking to grow their practices to focus first upon economics, and the practice of law later.

This reality sounds to the ears of a lawyer as counterintuitive. Should I not make my foremost priority doing good legal work on behalf of my clients? Should I not focus upon my passion for law and allow the success of my practice to take care of itself? The answer: an emphatic no and no.

Here is a line that young and/or attorneys inexperienced with financial success fail to grasp; without the economic viability of a legal practice there will be no law to practice later.

Understand that an attorney’s zeal to become the most well respected and learned advocate within his or her field is a most admirable pursuit. To be sure, far too many lawyers are either unwilling or unable to dedicate the proper devotion to their field of practice irrespective of economic viability.

However, once again; first things first. A self sufficient attorney in private practice who fails to establish proper marketing procedures to serve prospective clients who could be best served by such quality lawyers is a bad lawyer. Why? Because such a lawyer is not putting themselves in the position to educate consumers who need their capable assistance. As a result, sub par lawyers more focused and in tune with sound marketing principals of a law practice are empowered to serve members of the general public at your expense.

Is it not best to be that special lawyer who can have the best of both worlds? To be the kind of lawyer both able to market themselves in a dignified way while taking equal pride in properly and capably representing individuals in need of great legal care? Of course.

To best serve others you as a lawyer must first learn how to best serve yourself. I am available to help you do that.

Serving oneself first is not a dishonorable pursuit; it is a necessity. By understanding where to invest precious and often scarce financial resources when growing a law practice you as a lawyer can become emboldened to grow your reputation. Your newly discovered  economic strength through prioritized marketing expenditures will no longer be a viewed as a paralyzing albatross, but a valued resource in your continued success.

Not all economic expenses of a law practice can be in some way marketing related. Malpractice insurance, rent, office expenses and the like are all necessary evils capable of leading you away from the path of sound economic footing for your practice. Instead of dreading such payments the successful lawyer cleverly manages ways to diminish them instead of exalting in the superficial self gratification that meaningless expenditures often represent.

Trying to impress prospective clients with a wonderfully impressive office environment may make you feel good, but will increase the prospect of you sitting alone in that wonderful environment you have created for yourself; an office devoid of clients who do not know that you or your beautiful practice even exist.

Once the general public has been educated that you are available  to ably help them tend to their legal needs more ably than other lawyers, you can perhaps devote more expenditure toward marketing yourself and your office furnishings.

Common sense mistakes such as these just begin to scratch the surface as to fundamental good faith errors lawyers continue to make when attempting to seek  independent legal success. While you may scoff at the suggestion that you can learn from such common sense understandings I can guarantee that there is much left for you to learn.

A need to grow your legal client base is what I suspect lead you to me and the information contained within these pages. Understanding the need for help is the first step toward future financial knowledge. You will no doubt already know over fifty percent of what an expert like me can teach you. However, don’t allow for that recognition to prohibit you from learning it all.

Entrepreneurs of all kinds in my humble opinion are the engines that drive the economic fortunes of this country. Through risk, guts and the confidence of their respective ideas, successful business visionaries are the backbone of capitalism within America. Part and parcel of the success of such individuals is the recognition that in order to financially succeed, sufficient capital outlay must be apportioned to allow for their business models to achieve the success they envision. How this initial investment is prioritized toward their respective independent ventures can be the key in determining whether the business will be grown toward long term financial success or unrealized potential due to misplaced investment priorities.

Unfortunately it is rare to find a marriage between lawyer and entrepreneur sufficient to realize long term financial success. Understandably those seeking the holy grail of  a law school degree and bar membership often leave in their wake untold financial impediments in the form of unpaid student loans that can otherwise mute enthusiasm to further invest financial resources toward uncertain monetary gains in the future.

I understand this reality. Originally from Queens New York I was the first of any generation within my family to have secured a professional degree in any form. However, unlike those with a family pedigree of professional achievement I benefited from a family of business entrepreneurs and salesman. This background influenced my understanding of what it takes to earn a buck in the competitive world of business, and not law.

Once  reaching adulthood and out of the bosom of educational institutions, success is validated through monetary success and no longer the marks of approval of a given professor. No matter prior academic achievement, once entering the working world all law graduates are no longer your competitors for academic achievement but the economic competitors for self sufficiency. It is within this competition that the lawyer with the requisite business acumen and not mere academic prowess will have the upper hand.

Not all individuals are cut out to pursue individual financial success through an independent law practice. Many, in fact most lawyers, prefer to be lead within structured frameworks whereby their passion for their respective field of legal endeavor can be unencumbered by the stress of how to earn a paycheck.  For such individuals applying their talents within a large law firm environment is an ideal situation within which to apply their trade. Unfortunately, more and more lawyers are discovering each year that while such a model has worked for lawyers throughout a couple of generations, unreasonable expected hours of labor with diminishing available positions has reduced the prospect for such employment even if desired.

For countless numbers of lawyers now facing the prospect of considering the need to support themselves and/or a family depending upon them, resorting to thoughtful consideration as to how to best begin their own legal practice has become a necessity. However,  Just what is thoughtful consideration? How one goes about answering this question and pre planning the potential success of an independent law practice goes a long way in determining whether the next few years will be a wasted pursuit of time and more accumulated financial debt.

An independent business venture whether in law or other business pursuit must be born out of passion. A recognition that you are not cut out to be lead by another individual. A need for your fate and future financial success to be based upon your visions, your efforts and your achievement.

Law is a business. As such, marketing your business and yourself must be accepted and embraced as a daily labor of love that must be fine tuned and improved throughout varying economic climates. Before throwing money aimlessly toward marketing your law firm, much less recognize the critical need to promote your skills, it is essential to take stock in yourself. Recognize through a self assessment whether your passion and need is to drive the financial success of your own legal business or whether you are launching your own “shingle” because you can’t find legal employment suitable elsewhere.

The conventional slogan for a lawyer to, “hang a shingle,” is one that I loathe. To me the proliferation of this slogan portends that the lawyer using it is destined for failure. It indicates a perennially failed thought process among lawyers that somehow arrogantly and naively believes that this all powerful “shingle” will serve as an effective marketing plan.

While you may think that such a statement is mere hyperbole on my part, and that no lawyer could possibly perceive a comprehensive marketing plan as merely hanging a piece of wood shingle, you would be incorrect. All states are littered with such failing practices and discontented lawyers who simply do not know a better way with which to achieve the self sufficiency they desired upon beginning their independent practice.

Marketing your law practice needs to be your number one daily goal. If you harbor any illusions about this reality I encourage you to turn back from the diving board before it is too late. If unwilling or unable to invest the time and/or resources to market your practice and believe that hanging a shingle is a successful growth strategy you will not succeed.

Being unwilling to invest in yourself from a monetary standpoint is most understandable. However, a lawyer must recognize that to make money as an independent lawyer, you must spend money. If you will not, your competing lawyers will be happy to fill the marketing needs of the community for you. It is the cost effective use of targeted marketing resources that will serve as your primary weapon against your competitors.

Once an office has been acquired, and monetary resources have been spent on office supplies, staff, copy machines, insurance, internet/phone service, etc. the endless list of expenditures can become daunting for the aspiring independent lawyer. It is at this point in the career arc that far too many lawyers become allergic with the notion of spending further money.

With past repayment of student loans or other prior expenditures to consider, the prospect of further financial burdens in the form of  marketing a law practice sufficiently is not undertaken. Fateful economic decisions to initially prioritize purchasing fancy stationary paper and office furniture as opposed to cost effective targeted marketing too often serves as the initial fateful miscalculations of a failed legal law practice.

Law firm partners make more money than associates because in theory, they attract clients. Once you have crossed the threshold of deciding that an independent practice is your calling, the marketing of your practice in the most targeted financially effective way possible must become your first and foremost priority.

One of the most difficult issues to convey to a lawyer is the reality that the highfalutin talk so valued among legal colleagues is often frowned upon when digested by the general public. This understanding is critical, not only for interpersonal dealings with clients, but in the dialogue that will determine whether people calling you will ever become a client to begin with.

Among our legal peers we grow accustomed to dialogue that relates with one another. Whether in negotiations between lawyers, or conversations within practice groups, etc. whether subconsciously or not we as lawyers are aiming to impress other lawyers. We want respect among our colleagues and aim to convey the power and authority that comes with a knowledge base of legal understanding that may intimidate those we seek to dominate.

Toward this end, lawyers who are able to confound their opponents with legal insight that their opponent may not possess will often win the day. As a result, lawyers are too frequently encouraged to perpetuate a dialogue of legalese that may serve their purposes within pre trial negotiation among lawyers, but develops horrible habits in regard to interpersonal communication between lawyer and layman.

One must always remember that no sustained lawyer success, and most importantly, income, will be generated without the verbal skills necessary to convince a person untrained in the legal profession to hire you. Potential criminal, personal injury, bankruptcy clients, etc., will all ultimately come to you from all walks of life. Frequently the average person has little interest within your initial discussions as to how many words you can spout that he or she cannot understand. In fact, such talk will inevitably turn off your potential client revenue stream. These people want to know that you can relate to them. That you speak their language and understand their plight. However, this alone is not enough.

It amazes me how often attorneys are bewildered at their inability to close the deal with clients within an initial client meeting. Why? Because insulated from the working world of the common man for so long, many lawyers lose the talents needed to meet the target objective of the non lawyer client sitting before you.

When becoming a legal entrepreneur you are initially not seeking to satisfy a law partner, colleague or judge. Where the rubber meets the road for you as an enterprising legal professional is your ability to satisfy and meet the objectives of a potential paying client who is deciding whether to retain you as their lawyer. Ensconced within law firms or perpetual legal seminars, lawyers must always prioritize the continuing legal education that counts; how to persuasively communicate and relate to other human beings who are not lawyers. Without such skills your continued devotion to cle training and seminar participation will be rendered financially irrelevant.

Clients coming to you will have one of two objectives depending upon legal practice; either they want you to make them money/save them money or they need you to preserve their liberty in one form or another. By understanding this reality you can begin to learn to speak the language of success to the common man who is feeling you out as to whether you are the right lawyer to get the job done for them.

Everything you do and everything you say must be geared toward meeting that objective for a potential client. It matters less whether you have a modest law office, or a degree from a law school other lawyers would scoff at. If a lawyer either has the reputation of making people money or saving them money, or the reputation to preserve their essential freedoms, all that is left will be the ability to sell that reality to your consumer public in order to build up your necessary stable of clients to allow a legal practice to survive.

Marketing and advertising must understand these client objectives. A Harvard educated lawyer who appears unwilling or unable to communicate in a manner that understands these client objectives will inevitably lose out to other lawyers who do. In short, people are not most impressed with where you went to law school, they without fail are more impressed with whether you can you make them money or preserve their freedom. Your ability as a lawyer to communicate this to a potential client will be the barometer as to whether your advertising marketing strategy will get the phone to ring. From there it is your verbal proficiency that will determine whether you get them walking through your door for the ultimate goal of closing the deal with a retained client you will later aim to satisfy.

The ideal circumstances for a practicing attorney are those that do not require a thought as to marketing a practice in order to secure clients. For the rare few who can enjoy such a wonderful opportunity, the ability to devote oneself strictly to the practice of law geared toward whatever focus desired is one that all lawyers, including myself can only envy.

The reality I must say is that even the most accomplished and recognized attorneys must put the marketing of themselves and their practice at the forefront of their daily activities. The days of the “famous” lawyer able to get fat off the adoration of the public clamoring for the privilege of being a client of such a lawyer are over. (if they ever existed at all).

Each day on one television news channel to the next we observe legal pundits espousing their views on any subject of the day. One would think that these lawyer media analysts must be financially secure. After all are they not highly sought after and financially successful such that national media outlets parade such individuals to speak on legal issues before the general public?

Would it surprise you to learn that on many instances these media savvy lawyers are affiliated with marketing firms who are paid to arrange such media appearances?

Many such legal pundits devote their time not to the practice of law but to offering media outlets free commentary, whether credible or not, so as to market themself and their legal practice.

Don’t get me wrong, for the few attorneys in California, New York or Atlanta (home of CNN) who have brokered the ability to market their legal opinions on television, more power to them. The fact is that these appearances fool both the general public as well as legal colleagues that the lawyer appearing on television has reached the pinnacle of the legal profession. As a result, if parlayed correctly, the benefit derived from such lawyer’s “pro bono” selfless acts of non stop media commentary is the free advertising gained from this positive exposure.

If fortunate enough to get such televised recognition, go for it. The simple point is this. Even those lawyers who truly are worthy of being featured to educate the public on a legal issue impacting public discourse on television need to market themselves. In this age of social media yesterday’s accomplishment has already been forgotten. As for the trial you won a month ago that was plastered across all of your local media outlets, that’s ancient news. The famous lawyer of today is just another mouthpiece tomorrow.

At one time Johnnie Cochran, the lawyer for O.J. Simpson, was one of the most famous people, much less lawyers, in the world. Today, the next generation of your potential clients have no idea who the great Johnnie Cochran is, much less that he was O.J Simpson’s defense lawyer. In fact, I have conversed with lawyers recently at a lawyers round table who were even unaware that Cochran had passed away years ago.

Although we as lawyers may know and respect lawyers of national renown, the public usually neither knows such individuals or cares, unless the time comes when their help is needed. It is then that marketing, and not recognized legal standing most often kicks in within the potential client’s consciousness.

Unless a lawyer saturates a community with non stop media and billboard exposure to, in effect, brainwash the general public as to the lawyer’s specialty, the immediate need for a lawyer will not usually reflect to the 60 mile per hour drive by of a lawyer billboard.

These media lawyers know this. Which is why they aggressively compete for these televised opportunities before the general public each time another news event becomes breaking news.

In today’s world there is no such thing as a non marketing lawyer. Lawyers love to tell their neighbors that their client base comes from “referrals” as though such attorneys would never suffer the indignity of conveying the fact that they must take action to gain new clients just like lawyers of all competence levels and renown.

The fact is, lawyers, even successful ones, do not customarily make as much money as the general public believes. Further, lawyers love to cultivate the impression that they do not need to market themselves to bolster their social standing. This despite the reality that no matter the accomplishment level within a given community, all lawyers market themselves, and no lawyer that I know of can truly survive on a diet strictly of client referrals.

In sum, the first step toward greater financial health and ultimately wealth is the recognition that all lawyers market themselves in one form or another no matter their experience and/or accomplishment level. Failure to recognize this may make you as a professional feel better about yourself, but will eventually most often lead to your inability to practice your legal field of endeavor.

No man is an island. Unless you find yourself as a middle aged lawyer bachelor willing and able to refuse the needed opportunity to market your legal practice in one form or another, I wish you good luck.

Each and every day a new breed of lawyer has recognized that law is not only a profession but a business endeavor. As such, just as great a concentration must be focused upon cultivating a targeted legal client base as applying the skills necessary to perform at your optimum legal abilities.

You as a single independent lawyer still refuse to get the message? At the very least you will not be crippling the potential financial security of dependents who otherwise will depend upon you for their financial sustenance.

If not anointed as a media mouthpiece of the day able to broadcast your legal abilities at little cost to television viewers, the choice should be not whether to market your legal practice, but the most cost effective means by which to do so. It is hoped that the other information I have attempted to convey throughout this website will be the means by which to determine that direct mail advertising is worthy of your consideration.

Uneducated Attorneys Are Advertising Reps Best Customers

Do yourself a favor. Take the time to click through ten pages of google listings in regard to any subject related to lawyer advertising, marketing, etc. If you have the time, review ten pages more. What will you find that is helpful to you as a lawyer in regard to tangible information that will make you money? Nothing. How can that be? Isn’t the internet the new avenue of free information that has been so beneficial that is has crippled businesses nationwide by empowering the consumer. Yes and no.

Think about it. Lawyer dot this, attorney dot that, find me a lawyer.net, etc. These companies manipulate through one word. FEAR. The notion that they as advertising or marketing sales “experts” (many times comprised of lawyers who who could not succeed within private legal practice) know better than a successful practicing lawyer as to how to acquire legal clients. These sales companies “success” is not the bi product of making lawyers money. Rather, their continued existence is the result of far too many lawyers inability to understand fundamental business principals.

Each year lawyers find themselves leaving the practice of law after having given these marketing companies more money than they have generated. Despite this reality there is always a new flock of disillusioned attorneys to replace the attorneys who have already failed to generate any meaningful success within these worthless directory schemes or consultation services.

Advertising and marketing services of all kinds love attorneys. Why? Because they will both spend unreasonable amounts of money on worthless marketing schemes and are too afraid to admit they have no clue as to how to make money. Too many lawyers measure their self worth in their academic prowess and not the necessary business acumen that will allow their practice to thrive. Most lawyers are paralyzed of the unknown, if I don’t spend money on these websites or other worthless attorney directories, how will I ever get clients? If all other lawyers in my community are advertising on these webpages, it must be working. Right?

Marketing firms, advertising agencies and other consultation services prey on this ambiguity. All such industries I myself have formerly consulted with invariably offer the same shell game script in different forms. Basically the standard line relays, “You’re practice is still not making the money you desire, but can you imagine how much less revenue you’d be generating without our help?”

Not unlike the tactics of  yellow page advertising sales people who at their peak would threaten advertisers with losing “placement” within their respective phone books if they did not continue to join the droves of other failing lawyers within their pages, there are few resources available with which to measure true credibility of a “lawyer marketing firm” or actual lawyer in practice who claims to offer real marketing assistance to lawyers in need.

Marketing reps have no relative objective means by which to assess their credibility as to whether their services are truly the most cost effective means by which to market a given attorney.

I submit that there is a distinct difference between shopping for goods versus services. When shopping for goods we are generally dealing with tangible objects of quantifiable value that can now be shopped in an objective manner. In years gone by prior to free online information available via the internet, the american consumer was not able to access undisclosed information that could otherwise allow for them to understand whether their available retailer was offering a tangible product at a price worthy of its relative value.

Significantly, whether in years past or to the present day, where the rubber meets the road in a business sales transaction is the interaction between the seller of a given product and the consumer wishing to purchase the product. Whether the price negotiated for a given sales item is determined to be worthy of a sale or not, at the very least it is the salesman of the product who possesses the best and most complete knowledge of the good offered. Further, the consumer most often knows prior to the sales transaction that he or she already wants the product available in the marketplace. For such a consumer, the only question is whether the product desired can be purchased for a reasonable price without having to much difficulty in obtaining the product.

Within objective sales transactions for goods, the consumer already knows that he or she desires a product that has already proven its worthiness. In cases where the consumer is interested in the product but is reliant upon the sales representative for needed information about the product, how much the individual representative of the good offered for sale is willing to share with the consumer by way of price comparison, reliability of the product, etc. is most often determined by the persistence of the customer, and the assessment of the sales provider that failure to disclose such information could risk a sale in question.

Most significantly, in most, if not all sales transactions of a good offered, the sales representative knows the relative value of the product they are offering for sale.

Wake up lawyers. You who are paying monthly payments sometimes approaching a mortgage payment are paying these online companies for what? The “privilege” of competing with the other hordes of lawyers all on the same page and all equally unsuccessful. In discussions with these marketing company executives I can convey that they are equally amazed at the good run of revenue they continue to accumulate from lemming lawyers without the courage to differentiate their marketing efforts from the pack.

Still not getting it? Let me come at it from a different perspective. Google is an online search portal. Google organic listings are cost free. Whether anything less than organic online top placement listings are valuable is another question. (I know the answer because I am the first listing for my desired terms). Lawyers are supposed to be among the most intelligent among us. Yet, where is the common sense? Why are lawyers paying outrageous and wasteful dollars to these online portals each month that do no more than actually have the nerve to take your money to compete with your legal competitors?

My target market are lawyers who have seen the light. Lawyers who don’t need a sales job to see what I am saying. Rather, they can simply look online and see for themselves.

When I say direct mail has value, most rational lawyers tend to believe it. Why? Because you’ll be able to see my top top rankings online. You’ll be able to verify my years of practice and multiple office locations. You’ll be able to confirm that I am who I say I am.

Most importantly, my direct mail piece has been made, created, written and developed over many years of trial and error by me. Yes, an actual practicing lawyer. Yes, an actual lawyer who makes money. Yes, an actual lawyer who through trial and error has developed a direct mail piece he himself actually uses to dare I say… make actual money!

Here’s the kicker. An actual lawyer with nearly 25 years of success who can actually provide you with the direct mail piece he himself actually uses!  Unlike advertising or other marketing schemes with no credibility, my words have objective value.

My direct mail piece sells itself because my credibility as one of the most successful marketing lawyers in my state cannot be questioned.

It is often (or always) the career objective of those in any professional endeavor to make the most money with the least financial exposure possible. However, the inherent flaw among too many of those engaged in any independent business venture is the lack of foresight in comprehending that short term financial outlay is the only means by which to secure long term financial gains.

Law schools nationwide train lawyers too think like “lawyers.” While this may indeed be a positive when engaged in legal related facets of life, this law school culture of professionalism too often fails in preparing lawyers to meet real world financial objectives.

Too many law graduates and academic professors overlook the reality that a trained professional’s ability to practice their trade is more and more reliant upon their own abilities to secure clients willing to compensate them for their perceived value.

“Perceived Value.” It is a phrase that too many of those lawyers seeking my advice must learn. While in years past mere academic success could lead to lifetime law firm security, in today’s social media age, the public’s ability to acquire information formerly accessible only to professionals has mandated that “legal professionals” think like entrepreneurs in order to survive.

Your perceived value as a legal professional may in fact measure up to your actual value. However, if not marketed to the public properly your financial value as an american attorney will never equal your actual abilities.

Whether in defense law, personal injury law, etc.. how often have we as lawyers looked with chagrin at “hack” lawyers on television commercials and billboards sullying the reputation of our profession. I am not immune to these feelings that I believe have, in fact, lowered the public perception of lawyers as individuals more concerned with chasing the almighty dollar than using professional skills to aid in the betterment of people’s lives.

Whether we choose to ignore this reality or not, the marketing of the legal profession is not going away. Those lawyers who obstinately choose to remain on the sidelines out of principal, or failure to understand business and prudent financial business strategy will inevitably suffer significant financial losses, or an inability to practice their trained profession entirely.

On to many occasions I have witnessed good and decent lawyers both well trained and highly competent be driven from the legal profession. Of course the reasons for such individuals leaving the practice of law are varied, yet the inescapable reality for many is that student loans, household financial obligations and time spent away from family are all contributing factors toward disenchantment with the practice of law.

Many leaving the legal profession simply do not have a choice. How absurd is the present state of the american legal system that those who have taken pains to mortgage their futures through student loans ultimately find no financial value for their legal training. Does it have to be this way? No. Unfortunately, for far too many unsuccessful lawyers there has been no way out of their respective financial quagmires.

Whether the solutions I have to offer prove relevant to your individual talents and/or training is a question that no one but yourself can answer.

For many lawyers trained and dedicated to fields of law for which direct mail strategies can be of little assistance I offer my understanding of your circumstances but can provide little actionable help. For such individuals a determination will need to be made as to whether law is a continued pursuit worthy of your efforts, or whether you must refocus your targeted legal practice. While such a statement may sound dire, a real world recognition of the continued viability of a legal practice must be undertaken sooner rather than later.

Those lawyers complaining as to the financial state of their legal practice are doing little more than commiserating with other unsuccessful individuals most of whom are probably on the same road to financial ruin. Don’t allow yourself to become another attorney throwing more and more money into scatter shot wastes of financial resources (high rise office space, hotshot associate attorneys who do not bring in new revenue, legal networking associations, yellow page or internet advertising, etc.) in a misguided attempt to save a law practice.

When we engage our collective efforts together it cannot be said that you did not have an actionable understanding as to how to make the practice of law work for you. Whether you choose to act on this information and/or refocus an existing practice on fields of law more susceptible to direct mail success will be up to you.