Advertising and marketing For Legislation Firms By way of Attorney-Client Matching Solutions Component I
In portion one of this article we’ll appear in depth at a somewhat new wrinkle in advertising for law companies generally known as “attorney-client matching services”. Part one focuses on the facts about these firms. Element two gives you my conclusions and recommendations consequently of my study. First slightly qualifications is so as. The lawful solutions market place section is expected to attain $82.5 billion in 2008 according to Euromonitor Worldwide a marketplace intelligence company. In current background shoppers have been locating attorneys by means of word-of mouth or by way of the telephone book. Often the word-of mouth suggestions doesn’t supply people towards the ideal attainable answer for his or her particular requirements along with the telephone book is surely not a fantastic location to select an attorney I’m positive you’d concur. Furthermore, in accordance with the Pew Web & American Life over four million consumers and small businesses currently search for legal services through the Online every month with these numbers expected to rise to over seven million by 2007. I think you can see this is a huge market obtaining larger. It is imperative that lawyers understand this market if for no other reason your potential clients and clients are moving to the Web and yellow page promoting is a dying advertising for law firms vehicle. Understanding attorney-client matching services is one new way to tap into this Online marketplace.
What I will not be talking about here is attorney-listing services. Please don’t get confused between attorney-listing services and attorney-client matching solutions. The two majors in the attorney-listing solutions arena are Lawyers dot com or FindLaw dot com that are used by many in promoting for legislation companies. With lawyer promoting one might want to get a minimal listing on one or both of these two major sites. Both do drive a large amount of traffic to their sites for sure (in the millions of visitors per year). If you do get a listing then track your results carefully and see if being in the middle of a pack of listed attorneys actually does produce clients for you. Please don’t spend more on them than the basic listing that will run about $150 or so per month, at least until you can document results together with the basic listing. Also, don’t buy your website via either of them, even if after testing you find good results, for many reasons that can be found under the World-wide-web marketing and advertising tab on my website. One last note here, you probably don’t want to test most of the lesser attorney-listing competitors like LawInfo dot com, LawCore dot com or AttorneyFind dot com is my take, however if you do be sure to track your results. The rest of this short article is about attorney-client matching solutions.
Attorney Promoting By way of Five Attorney-Client Matching Players
In the attorney-client matching field there are five competitors for the attorney promoting dollar offering online attorney-client matching solutions. The 1st and originator is LegalMatch dot com and its newer competitor being CasePost dot com as well as a third competitor LegalFish dot com. The two big players that offer almost everything in lawyer marketing, Lawyers dot com and FindLaw dot com; have also recently begun to offer a version of attorney-client matching services. Lets begin with LegalMatch that was established in 1999 and is based in San Francisco. LegalMatch uses a double blind matching system. By double blind they mean the consumer doesn’t see identifying information about who the lawyers are plus the lawyer will not see identifying information about who the consumers are although all the cards are put to the table for both to see before any contact is made between them. Via an allocation model LegalMatch makes the decision about which lawyers get the consumer’s information. Buyers can opt into “priority service” for a fee to talk with a LegalMatch staff attorney about their case and work with that attorney in selecting the attorney for their case. LegalMatch does have partnerships using the Utah State Bar Association, ATLA and NACDL. Membership fees for this marketing and advertising for regulation firms vehicle run from $2,500 to $25,000 per year (they will finance the membership fee if desired) depending on practice area and geographic place of the attorney. For example, a PI lawyer in Los Angeles would likely be charged more than a family law lawyer in Los Angeles, while the family lawyer in Peoria is likely to pay less than the family legislation attorney in Los Angeles. Their guarantee consists of extending your membership at no fee until your revenues have exceeded the fee you paid them. The particulars of the guarantee are available on their website.
Are There Authorized Advertising and marketing Ethics Issues with Attorney-Client Matching?
A relevant digression here, since this model is not an attorney referral program, a pre-paid legal service plan, a joint or cooperative advertising or a directory listing service it is not subject to ethics rules around much of marketing for law companies it has been asserted. Recently the Professional Ethics Committee of the Texas State Bar was looking into these practices and that committee received a seven-page letter (May 26, 2006) from the FTC that was agreed to by an unanimous vote of the FTC commission members that this attorney marketing practice is indeed ethical.
Already the states of North Carolina and South Carolina found the practice ethical. The Rhode Island Supreme Court specifically named in an ethics opinion that on line matching solutions are ethical. Finally, the Utah State Bar (a mandatory bar) has retained LegalMatch as their lawyer referral service clearly indicating their thinking about LegalMatch’s ethical nature it seems to me. Naturally you do need to check with your state bar to be sure this is an ethical practice in your state. Now back for the options in the market.
CasePost, based in Southern California, was established in 2002 is a second player in this area of advertising and marketing for legislation firms. They operate in a similar fashion as LegalMatch in matching clients with lawyers; however, the directory of lawyers is shown towards the consumer immediately. The consumer can decide whether they want to remain anonymous or give their contact information to the attorneys. The consumer is limited to four attorney responses. Thus the consumer determines what attorneys will get their information. In May of 2006 CasePost has made a major expansion as a result of their partnership with HandelOnTheLaw dot com that is powered by a successful nationally syndicated radio show on over 120 stations with attorney Bill Handel. This show has been running since 1985. They also have a strategic relationship with LegalZoom dot com that began in 2006 that has increased their attain. Like LegalMatch the membership fees for this lawyer marketing and advertising vehicle are from $2,500 to $25,000 per year (financing is available if desired) depending on practice area and place. Their guarantee to a member is based upon a minimum amount of referrals over the year.
LegalFish is a third player in this arena. It entered the market in 2003 and is based mostly in Chicago. It is a little different than the other two in a few ways. Like the other players the consumer can input their information and post their cases for the site as well give their identifying information or not. In a number of cases LegalFish will contact the posting consumer themselves by telephone or email to delve deeper into the wants of the consumer so they are not totally automated. There is an allocation model used by LegalFish in referring the cases to their members. Another difference is LegalFish charges a monthly fee for this marketing for law firms vehicle ranging from $180 to $750 to members that are non-contingency primarily based practices. For contingency based practices the fee ranges from $1600 to $5000+ monthly only if the consumer retains the attorney. If LegalFish doesn’t supply a referral to a member that retains that lawyer they don’t charge a fee to that lawyer for the month (a form of a guarantee). Creating something of a “shared risk” system. Naturally, with this type of shared risk system, long-term success for both parties is according to LegalFish’s ability to generate new consumer opportunities and create demand for lawful solutions, and their member attorneys’ ability to convert those referrals to paying clients. Both parties have to “pull their weight”. Finally, LegalFish reports they are particularly committed to serving the solo and small firm market place with ten employees or less.
The next player in this marketing and advertising for regulation firms arena is Lawyers dot com (mentioned earlier in this short article about their directory listing or attorney-listing service) with their new Lawyer Match Service. If you go to their homepage what stands out on that homepage is their “Find A Lawyer Quick Search”. This is their free for the consumer attorney-listing service (this is why you might want to test a listing with them and track results). To get towards the Attorney Match Service you have to know to click on “Contact Lawyers” navigation tab or notice it up there at the really top of the home page. Clicking on that takes you to a page where you input your zip code and also the practice area you are seeking, however, it also tells you how many lawyers there are listed that “are interested in receiving your request”. You are required to fill in the identifying information with other case information. Once you do that you see the attorneys listed and pick the ones you want to send your request to and wait for their replies. The fee for the lawyer member is $495 per year, however, you must have a biographical level listing around the site to be around the Attorney Match Service and that is $150 and up per month depending within the size of your firm. There is no guarantee for this service.
The final player in this advertising and marketing for law companies arena is Thompson’s Findlaw (mentioned earlier as an attorney-listing service) with their new attorney-matching website LegalConnection. The FindLaw system is similar towards the Lawyers dot com system with three steps of #1 Choose your legal need; #2 Tell us about your case; and #3 Opt for the lawyer that’s right for you. It is different from Lawyers dot com’s system since they have broken it out of their attorney-listing services completely with its own dedicated website. Their fees normally run from $500 to $1000 per month depending on your practice area and geographic area. They do not have a guarantee. They do report that they do set targets for each geographic area also as practice combination and then will manage their marketing and advertising to get positive results for lawyers.
Effectively, now we have all the players in this distinct niche of marketing for legislation firms with a lot of information. I think it would be imperative for me to mention one more item. Both Authorized Match and CasePost have negative information on the Web and it desires to be considered. If you go to Google and search just the term LegalMatch and then do the same with CasePost you will be able to find specifics concerning the negative information. One area that covers the negative information on LegalMatch with relevant links is at Wikipedia dot org (go towards the site and look up LegalMatch) although that is disputed as not being sufficiently neutral in tone, which is one of Wikipedia’s needs. If you want to see a string of negative information on CasePost go to: counsel.net/chatboards/marketing/topic111/6.23.04.11.34.29.html . I’m not sure one requires to be overly concerned about this information since it is mostly in the past and you need to consider it.
See Component II of this short article for my conclusions and suggestions as a result of my research. I can tell you now that this approach does have some merit but there are definite cautions also so do read Component II.
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