admin Business development for law firms means pursuing strategic opportunities for your law firm. This includes building new relationships and identifying new revenue streams and sales opportunities. Examples are cross-selling to existing clients and adding new practice areas to the firm.
The Building of Strong Client Relationships
The 2020 Legal Trends Report reveals that a client looking for a lawyer will trust recommendations from friends and family first as well as online reviews on Google, social media, legal directories, or from past clients. The best way to get a new client is through existing clients.
To ensure that past clients lead to referrals for new clients, law firms need to become client-centered and develop strong client relationships, both during and after the case. There are many ways to do this, but it largely boils down to making the client experience exceptional.
Other findings from the 2019 Legal Trends Report shows that communicating consistently and clearly, answering client inquiries, and being transparent with billing are all ways to make sure your clients feel they are getting the best possible experience and feel important.
To build strong relationships, focus on the five key aspects of running a client-centered law firm.
See things from your client’s perspective, Care for your clients and consider their needs, be client-centric in your thinking, communicate clearly and often, ask for feedback to continually improve the client experience.
Stacking Networks
Marketing and business development for law firms go hand-in-hand. While networking can take years to pay off in dividends, marketing can “turn the faucet on” now, so to speak. The best approach is to do both for maximum effectiveness.
law firm networking should be done in order to grow connections which will prove to be helpful in the future. Talking to people without having a motive or professional objective such as marketing in mind will help build network around the work force and to be yourself and form relationships.
Through referrals one can bring more than three times their salary in billable hours. Being active in the local bar and constantly present enables lawyers to stay top-of-mind. This type of networking can bring in double revenue every other year.
Collecting referrals
Many attorneys are afraid to ask for anything, even when it means free marketing. A simple client reviews? No way, that’s beneath them. Referrals? They aren’t begging for work.
Attorney referral agreements and services are an interesting concept that must be treated with caution. For example, when most divorce attorneys had a QDRO attorney, for every divorce case, once the settlement or trial had a judgment in hand, they would refer all of their cases to the same QDRO attorney to process the retirement account division. such a referral practice is allowed so long as the QDRO attorney does not pay for the referrals. If the referrals are reciprocal, it cannot be exclusive, and the client needs to be kept in the loop.
Business Ideas that will help Development
- Attend Events of Networking
Commit to two events per month, if done so, go there without an agenda in mind and ask others about themselves. Have some fun and build some relationships.
- Speak to Demonstrate Authority Within Practice Area
Prove you’re an expert by committing to writing a few articles this year or committing to speak at a bar conference or other legal conferences, such as the Clio Cloud Conference. Lawyers can even see if there are any conferences outside of the legal industry that are relevant and might lead to more business referrals from non-lawyers.
- Collect Higher Caseload and Hire Additional Associates
When a lawyer wants to grow their business, tracking the cases which were turned down in the past, and if it comes close to the salary of an associate, consider expanding the workforce with an additional hire.
- Expand the Geographic Market of the Firm
A survey by iLawyerMarketing found that 75% of consumers won’t travel more than 30 miles to an attorney. With a statistic like that, it’s worthwhile considering adding a satellite office in a nearby town. In many large cities, such as New York City, it’s not surprising if many consumers were not willing to travel outside of their own borough. The geographic distance may need to be shorter if the lawyer is based in a high traffic area or large commute time.
Tools that will help with business development
- Email and calendar
Announcements for local bar conferences or calls for articles are often sent via bar newsletters or listservs. Many local bars or community organizations will also maintain an online calendar of upcoming events, which is a lot handier.
- An Excellent CRM
A legal CRM is a contact relationship manager. Email and workflow automation allow you to automatically stay in touch with contacts. The ability to track where the leads and referrals originate will reinforce the value of business development in generating new clients.
- Case Status
Case Status is an app that might be worth looking into for acquiring client reviews. It automates status updates on a client’s case and asks them for a review when the case concludes. Each change in stage results in a push notification being sent to the user. A tool like this goes a long way in addressing the top complaint clients have about lawyers, i.e., poor communication. It also takes some of the pain out of asking for reviews.
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