Many lawyers seeking my assistance have initially expressed reluctance to embark on their direct marketing campaigns due to not knowing where to start.

There are two components to the successful direct mail campaign;

1.) prompt acquisition and dissemination of mail pieces to identified targets, and

2.) presentation of your practice to potential clients in a manner able to be noticed, and more importantly to be contacted.

While understanding that these two components are vitally important for the aspiring direct marketing firm, flip flopping the priorities between the two is a consistent error I have seen befall far too many outstanding legal practitioners.

One must understand that the universal failure that has stymied the vast majority of lawyers seeking direct mail success has not been an inability to locate arrest list providers within your jurisdiction.

Rather, it is too frequently the inability to garner the requisite attention and interest among potential arrested legal clients to generate a phone call to your firm.

While it is in fact the case that some state legal jurisdictions may preclude the ability to acquire arrest lists, the majority of counties throughout America do not.

Further, especially within smaller counties, the lack of arrest list availability is simply the bi product of lawyers never requesting such listings from a local law enforcement agency.

Most law enforcement agencies have been pleased to provide such arrest lists in return for financial compensation for their respective departments. In many such circumstances it is simply the initiative of law firms requesting the ability to purchase such listings that have enabled them to open up access to these new streams of revenue for police agencies never capitalized on before.

As a result, if you practice in a community that either does not have a private arrest list provider nor a local police agency that at present distributes such listings to lawyers, a simple expression of interest to your local law enforcement agency backed up with your willingness to compensate for their services can often open access to your desired information.

For many lawyers the potential lucrative undertaking of direct marketing is worth the brief time to open this line of communication with your local police authorities on the issue.

Fortunately, throughout the U.S. most lawyers do not have such an initial impediment to beginning their direct marketing campaigns.

Private companies, whether located within your state or not, have been more than pleased to service the needs of lawyers intelligent enough to secure their individual arrest list services. In fact, my arrest list provider is located within a state two states over from my own.

What is critical, no matter whether your arrest list provider is your local sheriff’s department across the street or a private provider hundreds of miles away, is when and how the provider transmits the information to you.

In my own legal practice, a private provider simply sends me a targeted list of individuals meeting my selected criteria via email each day. Weekend arrest lists come Monday.

From there I simply print out the pre formatted lists of potential clients with one click to labels within my printer. From there I’m good to go with my potent legal mail pieces ready to be sent to my future clients in under five minutes.

Some lawyers prefer not to pay a private list provider and secure the list personally from their local law enforcement agency without paying a middleman.

In such circumstances lawyers will pay their local police agencies whatever the pre arranged list charge will be. The lawyer lists will then customarily be available for pick up, or will be faxed and/or emailed to the respective law firm.

In my own personal circumstance, I have found that individually targeting my potential client demographic based upon residential zip code, etc. through a private provider, in conjunction with the speed with which my provider delivers the list emails, has been a worthwhile investment cost.

With that discussion behind us, far too many lawyers believe that all they will need is access to a list of potential arrested clients to achieve direct mail success.

I cannot tell you the amount of times lawyers nationwide have contacted me not for my direct mail material, but for the mistaken thought that I was a direct mail arrest list provider.

Short sighted lawyers believing that they will be able to go it alone in regard to their marketing efforts remind me of myself. Simply get me the lists they say, and I will be able to profit handsomely from whatever materials I send the way of a potential client’s mailbox.

Do yourself one fundamental favor. Before deciding that direct marketing is the right way to go, be candid with yourself and your marketing abilities.

Always keep in mind that you will not be marketing your legal services to your peers but to every day people who have been arrested.

Do you really know how to speak their language in a way likely to land that all important phone consultation?

I thought I was that man who could. Thousands of dollars of wasted financial resources and years of unrealized income told me that I was not the marketing maven that I had initially believed myself to be.

As a lawyer please take careful consideration to investigate the two above referenced components prior to embarking on your direct marketing efforts.

Potential direct mail success is worth this initial strategic investment of your time.