Does the following scenario sound familiar? The end of the week is approaching, and the office hasn’t had a phone call in hours. Your administrative and support staff have wrapped up projects and are running out of tasks that are time-intensive, if not entirely finished with all work.  While this scenario may seem blissful when busy or behind schedule, sooner or later you may find yourself ahead of the work week.

On one hand, you may consider sending hourly workers home, to save from paying them to grasp at straws for things to do (and that’s if they’re entirely diligent and not tempted by the millions of distractions possible at a workstation). On the other hand, prior experience may nag at you that the moment they step out of the door, a crisis requiring all hands on deck will inevitably arise. Therefore, the best solution would be to find productive assignments for them that will be worth them staying.

Well, have you claimed your Google place listing yet? Are you listed (correctly) in the yellow pages and other directories? Does your firm have a Facebook business page? When was the last time your website had some new content or an article posted, even if from a third party? This is hardly the end of the list of questions you can ask yourself and your staff, but these alone could easily fill up a slow afternoon.  You may wonder if these tasks are truly worth the time and labor hours, especially if your support staff are highly trained and educated in their fields.

The truth is, these assignments, and others involving your firm’s online presence, are extremely valuable to have completed. While some of them are important enough to address even when it’s not a slow business day, they are especially viable tasks when all of your more pressing matters of the week have been attended to. Many of them would only take an hour or less, making them even more ideal for the waning hours of a slow day.

Below are some examples of possible assignments, and why they’re so useful to have done between more obvious tasks:

1.  Google Places Listing: This is perhaps one of the most important assignments, and is also one of the easiest. When prospective clients want to investigate their choice of firms online, more than 95% of them use Google. If your business is not claimed on Google places, you will be at an immense disadvantage at being found amongst competitors who have been proactively managing their online presence. Because many searchers include geographic keywords with their query (“injury attorneys in Chicago”), having your business claimed with the correct address ensures that you appear on the map of business listings. Appearing on Google’s map (which is located near the very top of the search results) is a great way to get your company’s name in front of searcher’s eyes, especially if it would otherwise have been at the bottom of the page…or worse, on page 2.

Another reason it is so important to claim your Google place is so that your information can be updated. Having incorrect information on Google places (this can occur when Google automatically gleans the listing from other sources, such as YellowPages.com) is almost worse than having no listing at all. Whether the name was auto-filled wrong, or your contact information is outdated, that will be the last time a potential client considers you. In the mind of an unbiased searcher, you’ve wasted their time by having them call a disconnected number, and you’ll have become worse than unknown.

Consider this: If it means that even one client finds you that wouldn’t have before, won’t it have been worth the twenty minutes needed to set it up? Get started at http://www.google.com/places/

2.  Bing, Yahoo, MapQuest Listings: While these search engines certainly aren’t the priority that Google is, they are the next logical step as far as search engine listings go. Google isn’t the only search engine that gleans information from other sites, and YellowPages.com is not Google’s only target, either. That is why it is important to ensure your listing is also updated and visible on search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and map directories like MapQuest.com. This way, no matter which search engine is copying the other’s index, your information will be up to date, and all the more likely to appear to a searcher.

3.  Online Directories: While search engines are definitely the most important place to ensure that your contact information is correctly listed, the sheer quantity of online directories makes them worthy of mention.  Directories like Yellowpages, Local, and Supermedia are just three of the hundred or so directory sites, or at least the ones that matter. They all have (nominal) weight in making your firm turn up in a search before the other guy. Make sure the information is consistent, though (I’d recommend copying the information from your Google Place, exactly as it appears); so that the indexing search engines immediately recognize all of your listings as one (proactive) entity.

4.  Website Content: Now that you have a better understanding of just how important it is to have Google and the other search engines on your side, here’s a tip on how to make them like your site more: Don’t be static. A website that adds new content (even quasi-regularly) will be much more appreciated by search engines. By adding new content, you are assuring that the search engines think that your site is relevant, up-to-date, dynamic, and more interesting to searchers than a site that was last updated in the nineties. If you don’t have a whole lot of updates to add about your own firm, add an ‘articles’ section to your website, and have it filled with relevant news stories, editorials, industry journals, or even comics! Even if you don’t want your support staff writing the content, set them to work finding these valuable content pieces, so your website can appear more active.

5.  Press Release: Press releases are valuable because they make (copious) mention of your firm and/or site on third party platforms. When you have any kind of relevant or interesting story to publish about your firm, compose an article about yourself and send it out to anyone who will take it. Even if The Wall Street Journal turns you down, there are free journal and article sites that you can send it to, or even allow you to post it yourself! Make sure to include many links to different parts of your website (though it’s best to avoid arbitrary over-use, some search engines can recognize this!) and of course mentions of your firm and/or its applicable employees. When the search engine sees your firm on resources other than your own site, it will assume you are much more relevant and worth showing up on a search.

6.  Facebook: Ever heard of it? It’s kind of popular. Facebook is the Google of social media, and as such, you need to have some sort of presence on it.  Even if your firm won’t gain as much from it as other industries do, there is a value to having your firm listed on this Internet powerhouse. You’ll want to make a business account and then make a business page. Assign a support staff member to regularly update the “wall” with company news, relevant industry articles, and anything else that will show viewers that you are active and socially-conscious. Encourage clients and partners to “friend” or “like” your page or profile, and do the same for their Facebook pages. It’s a quick and painless way to network, and can sometimes lead to a large return on (time) investment. To read more about the importance of social media in the context of your law firm, see our earlier article: Social Media Marketing for Lawyers

7.  Linked-In Business Profile: Creating a Linked-In business profile is also an important social media task, though for slightly different reasons as Facebook.  A Linked-In profile is an easy way to create a networking hub for your firm, where you can find and be found by likely cohorts and interested searchers. It also provides a social media outlet to send to those business partners who shy away from Facebook like it’s a plague designed by the current generation to make them feel technologically inadequate. Having a Linked-in profile is becoming more expected for business professionals, as well as companies. If you think of Facebook as a power-tie (standardized flair), then Linked-In is the suit jacket (practically mandatory in its professionalism).

8.  Start a Mailing List: Keep your employees, partners and affiliates informed! Create a mailing list (email would be the economic choice, but sending out a paper newsletter is almost less likely to be “trashed” before reading these days) to keep anyone who might take interest in the current events of the firm.

9.  E-mail Marketing: Have a new office? New employee? Different practice areas? Tell your clients! As long as it doesn’t go against your privacy policy (which it shouldn’t, since you are directly contacting them and not disclosing their email to anyone else), send everyone who’s ever been in business with you an update on your firm’s march to the top of the legal ladder. While it may be ignored by 99% of readers, if even one person is reminded of your services and calls or responds, won’t it be worth it? Be careful with this one, though: the last thing you want is to appear that you’ll be spamming their inboxes every other day. Make the emails respectful, professional, and only send with a legitimate update or offer.

10. Create a YouTube Video: If you perform a Google search for something general, you’ll notice that links to websites are not the only returned result. Near the top of the page, you will be given links to YouTube videos, where you can view videos instantly without needing to download neither files nor software. As it turns out, Google puts a huge emphasis on these videos (especially now that they own YouTube!), and they can be an enormous advantage in your favor over your competitors. Even if you were to only make a concise, moderately professional video, and upload it to YouTube with all the appropriate keywords and links to your website, you could easily overtake a competitor who was above you on Google’s search results (if they don’t have a video).

Searchers are much more likely to view a quick and effortless video about a firm, whether it’s a third-party review or company-made, before investigating the actual website further. If you make a snazzy company introduction or a virtual tour, you could also embed it into your company website, or send it to potential clients

A good video is pure marketing gold. A below-average video or worse will just make a viewer laugh and consider your firm unprofessional. Make sure you show the final product to an unbiased acquaintance that won’t be afraid to tell you it’s not ready to represent your firm. You could consider a professional video company for a truly effective video, though that may defeat the purpose of keeping your staff busy. With a few interviews, shots of the office or building, and a few edits from free software (to add names and titles below speakers, along with a few inter-scene effects), you should have at least a satisfactory video, with minimal investment.

11. Craigslist Classifieds: Anybody looking for anything will very likely give Craigslist a try…eventually. While you may not think legal services are as synonymous with Craigslist as say, selling a lawn mower, there is actually a section dedicated to it. By posting specific classifieds such as “Affordable New York Divorce / Family Law Attorney”, you can try and capture searchers who have a specific concern or legal matter. You can then create multiple different listings for different law areas, and maximize your reach. Thousands of other legal firms are posting classifieds on Craigslist to try and capture this niche of searchers, why aren’t you?

The waning days of the work week don’t seem nearly as quiet now, do they? There are online presences to be managed, content to be written, and clients to gain!

Admittedly, any or all of these steps might not be the specialty of your support staff. Otherwise, you may desperately want to take these steps, but are blessedly busy with other matters. For these and many other solutions for your law firm, contact LegalPPC to manage your Internet marketing, so you can get back to your practice!

Having the right website in place is a critical preliminary consideration before embarking on and type of online advertising.

It cannot be emphasized enough that your law firm website must be good before you spend any money in advertising. With the wrong website, you can buy a lot of really good traffic from Google and make Google rich, but have nothing to show for it if everyone backs out of your site to see what else is out there.

Elements of a Successful Law Firm Website

• Good Content

Often a website will have information about statutes of limitations or filing requirements and fees. Other times you’ll see a website that is so stuffed with keywords and links that it is easy to see that the website was written for search engines, not for people who visit it.

In both cases, these websites may be driving away more visitors than they’re bringing into your law practice. Good, engaging content that reaches out to the website visitor will help move more of your website visitors to want to make contact with you.

Shift your message away from descriptions about the law towards something more akin to “We know what you’re going through and we can help.” Get the point across to your website visitor that you care about them and they will be more likely to call or email your office.

• Practice Area Pages

If your practice areas are described in a single page with a list of bullet points, it is suggested that you take the time to build out your practice area content and develop separate pages for each type of case you handle. This includes sub-areas of law. For example, if you’re a general civil law firm, you can have a family law page and a real estate page, and if you’re a family lawyer, you should consider having a divorce page, custody page, support page, and so on.

Having more specific content on your site will help convince the visitor to that page that you’re the expert they’ve been looking for.

• Emotive Photography

Royalty-free stock photography can be an inexpensive way to reach visitors to a web page on an emotional level. Find pictures that pertain to the specific practice area that will resonate for your prospective client. For example, if you’re a family lawyer, a photo of a small child on your custody page can make a big difference in the feel projected to the website visitor.

• Updated Look and Feel

A lot of websites that were designed 10 years ago appear very narrow on wider modern monitors. Just widening a website from 600 pixels to 900 pixels can sometimes freshen up and modernize the look of a site.

Typography and font size is another issue that a lot of designers overlook. Most modern computers come bundled with a wide variety of fonts giving you a lot more choices than just Arial or Times Roman. In particular, the 9-point Arial font found on hundreds of websites produced by a few of the major directories make law firm websites look like cheap templates are a difficult to read by many because the font size is too small.

• Conspicuous Calls to Action

Don’t leave visitors stranded on a page not knowing what to do next. Adding a conspicuous call to action like “Contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation” linking to your contact page can help people decide to make contact with you.

• Easy to Find Contact Forms

Make it easy for people to contact you. Have your phone number in your header graphic and the link to your “contact us” page clearly visible above the scroll bar. Better yet, a contact form on every page in exactly the same place will make it quick and easy for anyone, regardless of what page they navigate to, to write to you.

• Testimonials

Testimonials from former satisfied clients do a lot to warm up a website and if you have any, consider putting up a testimonials page, linking it from your main navigation so people can find it.

• Simplify

Too much movement on a site, over-doing the graphics, burying important website elements under distracting buttons or icons can overwhelm some visitors and drive them out of a site.

• Get Others’ Opinions

Have an informal focus group - ask people who’ve never seen your site before to view it and tell you there impressions. Ask them pointed questions. Could they find what they were looking for? What was their overall impression of the firm? Would they hire you? Are there specific things about the website they liked or disliked?

• Ask an Expert

If you’re unsure whether your website is ready for Primetime, the author of this article invites you to make contact with him for a free, candid website evaluation. Contact information below.

Author: Ken Matejka, Attorney at Law
Email: Ken@LegalPPC.com
Search Engine Marketing for Lawyers

You’ve all heard that on the Internet, content is king. For most people, text is the first thing that comes to mind when they think of content. But it also includes images — specifically, the kind of images that are more than just decorative elements.

Thoughtfully chosen images can communicate at a glance the content of a particular page and work in tandem with the text. High quality images can enhance the overall level of professionalism apparent on your site. They provide visual interest that draws visitors in, as well as resting places for the eye. They can even invoke emotions that prompt the visitor to action (such as making contact with your law firm).

On the other hand, poorly chosen images are space wasters that clutter the screen without adding any value to your visitors. They can confuse or irritate by being unrelated to the content of the page. They can bore them by being too obvious, lazy or generic. They can be hard to see because they’re too small, the contrast is too low, or the image is too complicated. And of course, they can just plain be ugly or unappealing.

So, what works? What should you (or your designer) look for and what should you avoid when selecting stock photos for your law firm website?

Well, if there’s one piece of advice that we can give you, it’s to avoid law firm cliches as much as possible — images of gavels, scales of justice, law books, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, courtrooms, the Statue of Liberty, eagles, etc. Unfortunately, these are exactly the kinds of images that show up when you search for “lawyer” or “attorney” on all of the stock photo sites (often the starting point for naive web designers looking for pictures for a law firm website).

By avoiding cliched images, you will be on the right path to selecting compelling images that actually support the text on your website. Look for high quality photos that are sharp, are reasonably high contrast, and where the subject matter is distinct and easy to understand.

If your law practice is commercial litigation or management side employment law or some other type of law where your ideal client is another business, then you already know that your best referral source is other attorneys.

This is because most people would rather get a personal referral to an attorney from a friend, relative or colleague, rather than search blindly for representation online. When the person who needs an attorney is a business owner, chances are that he or she is already connected in some way to the legal community and has someone to ask for a personal referral.

Consequently, networking with opinion leaders and other lawyers in your community will always be critically important for the B2B law practitioner.

However, there are affordable online marketing opportunities that can be effective in getting your message in front of prospective clients.

LinkedIn

The business networking site, LinkedIn recently started allowing people to advertise to other LinkedIn members on a pay-per-click model. Like Google advertising, you write ads that you would like to be displayed on LinkedIn pages and you pay LinkedIn a small amount of money when someone clicks on one of your ads.

Your ads are linked to specific pages on your website that can be, and should be, custom tailored to the type of person you are targeting on LinkedIn.

Unlike Google advertising, your ads are not associated to search phrases, triggered when someone types something into a search box. Instead, you place your ads according to certain criteria about the person you want to reach, for example, geographic, industry type and job title. Click here to read more about LinkedIn advertising.

Managed Placements in Google

Google’s “Content Network” refers to the thousands of websites Worldwide that Google partners with to deliver ads that pertain to the content of the websites’ pages. For example, if you scroll to the bottom of the homepage of the New York Times, you will see a gray box with the words “Ads by Google.” Google places the ads there with the permission of the website owner and shares the click revenue with the website owner.

Normally, Google decides where an advertiser’s ads will display based on the content of the pages across the Content Network, but a variation of the Content Network, known as “Managed Placements” allows you to pick the sites where your ads are displayed.

This can be very useful for the B2B law practitioner who wants to reach a specific demographic. Placing ads on websites like the NY Times or financial or business news websites frequented by business owners is a chance to raise awareness in the local business community about your firm’s services.

Microsoft AdCenter Content Advertising

Microsoft AdCenter offers a product similar to Google’s Content Network known as “Content Advertising” which can get your ads inexpensively on business news websites like the Wall Street Journal and financial news websites like Barron’s.

Over the last several months, Twitter has become the most talked about and fastest growing social media site in the United States. A free, web-based service, Twitter allows anyone to join and start “Tweeting” micro-blogs posts of 140 characters or less.

Many of our clients have asked us recently if Twitter is a good idea for attorneys, and if so, how they might go about participating.

Our answer is always, it depends.

There is no inherent harm in and of itself in participating on Twitter. It can be a great place to network with colleagues (and therefore generate referrals back and forth) or to be seen as a thought leader in your legal niche.

As a direct source of clients? Maybe. But there are several caveats to keep in mind.

First, if you are responding to a direct question, there is always a danger that your answer could be perceived as legal advice. Since your feed can be seen by all of your followers, it is possible that you could expose yourself to a malpractice claim if someone relies on your Tweets to their detriment.

It has been suggested by others that it would be worthwhile to periodically post to your feed a disclaimer that you are only providing legal information, not giving advice, and that a lawyer should be consulted if someone has a legal issue.

Second, when inviting followers to make contact with your law office, you want to be sure that you don’t run afoul of ethics guidelines pertaining to solicitation of legal business. Since every communication with prospects in your feed will be written, public and discoverable, the State Bar may have transcripts to use against you should they decide that you’ve crossed a line.

Finally, although Twitter is at heart a very casual way of communicating with large groups of people, you want to ensure that the tone and subject matter of your Tweets won’t cause any harm to how potential clients or colleagues might perceive you. Tweets that are spammy-sounding, unprofessional or boring are all big turn offs. You should also be willing to participate in the give and take of the Twittersphere by following others and commenting on their Tweets. With all that said, if Twitter sounds like something you would enjoy doing and might benefit from without taking away from other activities that are more effective in generating new business, then yes, it might be a good idea for you.

On the other hand, don’t feel obliged to jumped on the Twitter bandwagon — a tremendous number of people don’t participate on Twitter and have no intention of ever doing so.

If you have a Web site for your law firm, it is very important that you have analytics software installed and that you pay attention to what it is telling you. With the right reports, you can make informed changes to your site, ensuring the best user experience for visitors to your site, and maximizing the chance that someone who needs your help will opt to make contact with you. Here are a few items that you should pay attention to when going through your Web site reports.

Time Per Page

How much time are people spending on your pages? Are there some pages where people linger for minutes and other pages where they spend an average of just a few seconds before they click away? Learn from the pages people are taking the time to read and see if there is anything about your less popular pages that you can change to make them like your “stickier” pages.

Top Exit Pages

The “exit page” is the last page someone views on your Web site before clicking out of it. If you have a page on your Web site that is a top exit page, what is it about the page that causes people to leave your site? If it’s the “thank you” page following your contact form, great. If your homepage is your top exit page, you may have problems.

Link Usage

Links people use on your site, and the links they don’t use, may be telling you something about the usefulness, popularity and visibility of certain content on your site. If there is a link on your homepage that has not been clicked on in a year, think about removing it. If the content is important, then consider moving the link to some other place on the page where people will see it and use it.

404 Not Founds

A “404 Not Found” is an error that people get when they attempt to view a page on your Web site that doesn’t exist. This can be from a typing error by the visitor or a broken link on somebody else’s Web site. If you’re getting a lot of 404 errors, you should have a special 404 page on your Web site to help people get to your homepage, and get other Web sites to fix those broken links into your site if you can.

Bounce Rate

“Bounce Rate” refers to how many visitors immediately exit your site without viewing more than one page. There is no definite measure about what is a reasonable bounce rate, but if your data shows a 100% bounce rate, that is very bad. Pay close attention to the percentage of people who leave your site immediately and, over time, you’ll get good data about whether changes you make to your site have had a positive or negative impact.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is free analytics software available to anyone with a Web site. If you do not have analytics software installed on your Web site, it is recommended that you consider this full-featured Google utility.

The year 2008 has been a year of frequent and significant changes in Google advertising. Not every change introduced this year was a success and we saw Google phase out a few things that we liked, but several innovations directly and positively effect attorneys who are advertising in Google. Everyone currently advertising in Google, and in particular, Google’s Content Network (the network of thousands of Web sites with which Google partners to display ads), can take advantage of these new offerings. Here are the highlights:

Demographic Targeting

In a study by the Columbus Bar Association it was found that while lawyers were often hired by men, the initial decision to hire a lawyer was most often made by women. Consequently, when the Columbus Bar advertises its lawyer referral program on television, it runs its ads on channels known to draw a large female audience. Likewise, in Google’s Content Network, you can now target your online advertising to certain demographic groups and exclude your ads from being viewed by others. For now the targeting is just by age and gender, but this presents the advertiser with interesting opportunities.

For example, attorneys can now keep their ads off trendy Web sites frequented by young people who are unlikely or unable to hire attorneys. Or if you practice estate planning or elder law, you can specifically target older demographic groups, as well as the middle-aged offspring who may need your help for an aging parent.

Advanced Placement Options

Google now allows advertisers to specifically state which Web sites in the Content Network, or which pages on these Web sites, can display the advertiser’s ads. When you select this option, Ad Groups without placements won’t run on the content network until you add Web sites or pages. Conversely, using Google’s Site and Category Exclusion tool, you can tell Google where you do not want your ads to appear.

Keyword Tool

Introduced this summer, you can now research traffic patterns and click prices for any of your search phrases, and get ideas for more search phrases. The data shows search traffic by Google users for the previous calendar month and is a great tool for attorneys with under-developed campaigns. By taking advantage of these new Google features, you can fine tune that account and improve your return on investment.

In our last post, we presented reasons one through five of why search engine advertising is a great, cost-effective way to get more clients.

Now it’s time for part two: Reasons six through ten.

1. You pay only when someone clicks on your ad. It doesn’t matter how many “impressions” there are (that is, how many times your ad is viewed). The search engines only charge you for actual clicks - which means you’re paying to reach visitors who are actually interested in your services.
2. Highly targeted. Bid only on keywords that are relevant to your practice. You can have 10 or 10,000 keywords - as noted above, you pay only when someone clicks your ad!
3. You can test different messages in your ads. Research what messages are most effective in driving visitors to your Web site to make contact with you, and use that information in your future marketing materials.
4. Highly flexible medium. Depending on your practice needs and goals, you can advertise only in the search engines and only when someone searches for your keywords, or you can extend your reach to appear on mobile phones, Google Maps, online and print newspapers, television, and anywhere else that the search engines allow you to advertise.
5. Yellow Pages are dying. Search engine advertising is rapidly replacing Yellow Pages directories as a significant source of new clients. In conclusion, there’s no time like now to divert some of your marketing dollars from other channels to search engine advertising in an effort to reach the rapidly growing pool of prospects looking for legal services on the Internet.

Five tips on the benefits of search engine advertising

Are you thinking about marketing your law practice in a search engine like Google, but aren’t sure you should take the plunge?

Here’s part one of a two-part series about why search engine advertising is a great way to get more clients:

1. React immediately to events in the news, changes in the law, or even your own personal whims. Unlike more traditional forms of marketing like the Yellow Pages, you don’t have to worry about planning your ad copy months in advance.
2. Reach people outside of your geographic area - people in other cities, the entire state of California , or even other countries. This is especially helpful if you practice an esoteric area of law, or you are looking for plaintiffs for a class action lawsuit. If you’re a personal injury lawyer, you may find that injured tourists often return home before beginning their search for a San Francisco attorney.
3. Pay as much or as little as you want (and start & stop advertising at any time). No matter what your budget is, you have an unlimited amount of flexibility. Having cash flow issues or going on vacation? Pause your advertising until you’re ready to resume. Not enough work? Spend more this week to get a few extra inquiries.
4. Get real feedback about how well your Web site converts visitors into clients. Google allows you to track conversions and other important data about your Web site visitors. If your data is telling you that a page on your site is a top exit page (i.e., they often leave your site from that page), you can experiment with different looks for that page, creating more conspicuous calls to action, or trying different copy.
5. Easiest and most effective way to ensure that your web site is visible in the search engines. Even if your site ranks well for certain phrases, you cannot rank well for the thousands of words and phrases that are relevant to your practice areas. Also, for new or poorly optimized sites, search engine marketing may be the only way to ensure that people can find you on the internet.

Next post: Reasons 6 through 10 of why search engine advertising is a great, cost-effective way to get more clients.

Turning a consultation into a client

There’s a lot of discussion in legal blogs and forums about “tire kickers” - a term used to connote prospective clients who go to a consultation with an attorney but fail to hire the attorney for any legal services. It’s frustrating to meet with prospective clients, not get paid for your time, and then have them never come back after the initial meeting.

It must be remembered that even tire kickers will eventually buy a car

In the Information Age, there are more opportunities for people to compare and shop around, so it is to your benefit, as a service provider in a crowded market, to stand above the rest through your qualifications and your superior customer service.

Customer Service Counts

Good customer service from the very first contact is vital. Listen to what the prospect wants, and respond quickly and thoughtfully. A good response from you will make it easier for them to decide to consult with you.

If you cannot help them, refer them to your local Lawyer Referral and Information Service (LRIS) and they will remember your considerate manner should they or a loved one need legal help in the future.

Get them into your office and close the deal

Through great customer service, you can get them into your office. Now it’s up to you to close the deal. Emphasize your unique selling points. Why are you a better value than the next lawyer? Even though prospects may appear cost-conscious, they will hire you if you can persuade them that you will handle their matter in an effective and efficient manner.

Even if you can’t close the deal and they don’t hire you right away, they may remember how you treated them, and when they finally make the decision to hire an attorney, or to refer a friend or family member to an attorney, they’ll remember your name.