Marketing For Law Companies Via Attorney-Client Matching Services Element I
In part one of this short article we are going to look in depth in a comparatively new wrinkle in advertising and marketing for regulation firms referred to as “attorney-client matching services”. Portion one focuses about the details about these companies. Component two provides you my conclusions and recommendations as a result of my investigation. Very first just a little background is in order. The legal services marketplace segment is anticipated to reach $82.5 billion in 2008 based on Euromonitor Global a market place intelligence firm. In recent history consumers happen to be getting lawyers via word-of mouth or through the yellow pages. Typically the word-of mouth advice does not provide men and women to the greatest possible resolution for their certain desires and also the phone book is definitely not an awesome place to choose a lawyer I am sure you’d agree. Also, according to the Pew World-wide-web & American Life over four million shoppers and small businesses currently search for authorized solutions via the World wide web every month with these numbers anticipated to rise to over seven million by 2007. I think you can see this is a huge industry receiving larger. It is imperative that attorneys understand this marketplace if for no other reason your potential clients and clients are moving towards the World-wide-web and yellow page advertising is a dying advertising and marketing for regulation companies vehicle. Understanding attorney-client matching solutions is one new way to tap into this World wide web market.
What I won’t be talking about here is attorney-listing solutions. Please don’t get confused between attorney-listing solutions and attorney-client matching services. The two majors in the attorney-listing services arena are Lawyers dot com or FindLaw dot com that are used by many in advertising for regulation firms. With attorney marketing and advertising 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 positive (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 lawyers 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 using the basic listing. Also, don’t buy your website by means of either of them, even if after testing you find good results, for many reasons that can be found under the Web marketing 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 confident to track your results. The rest of this article is about attorney-client matching services.
Lawyer Advertising Through Five Attorney-Client Matching Players
In the attorney-client matching field there are five competitors to the lawyer advertising dollar offering on the web attorney-client matching services. The first and originator is LegalMatch dot com and its newer competitor being CasePost dot com too as being a third competitor LegalFish dot com. The two big players that offer almost everything in attorney marketing and advertising, Lawyers dot com and FindLaw dot com; have also recently begun to offer a version of attorney-client matching solutions. Lets begin with LegalMatch that was established in 1999 and is primarily based in San Francisco. LegalMatch uses a double blind matching system. By double blind they mean the consumer does not see identifying information about who the lawyers are and also the attorney doesn’t see identifying information about who the shoppers are although all the cards are put within the table for both to see before any contact is made between them. By means of an allocation model LegalMatch makes the decision about which lawyers get the consumer’s information. Customers can opt into “priority service” for a fee to talk with a LegalMatch staff lawyer about their case and work with that lawyer in selecting the lawyer for his or her case. LegalMatch does have partnerships together with the Utah State Bar Association, ATLA and NACDL. Membership fees for this marketing for legislation companies vehicle run from $2,500 to $25,000 per year (they will finance the membership fee if desired) depending on practice area and geographic area of the lawyer. For example, a PI attorney in Los Angeles would likely be charged more than a family legislation attorney in Los Angeles, while the family attorney in Peoria is likely to pay less than the family law lawyer in Los Angeles. Their guarantee consists of extending your membership at no fee until your revenues have exceeded the fee you paid them. The facts of the guarantee are available on their website.
Are There Legal Advertising Ethics Issues with Attorney-Client Matching?
A relevant digression here, since this model is not a lawyer referral program, a pre-paid lawful service plan, a joint or cooperative marketing or a directory listing service it is not subject to ethics rules all around much of marketing and advertising for regulation firms 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 lawyer advertising and marketing practice is indeed ethical.
Currently 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 the internet matching services are ethical. Finally, the Utah State Bar (a mandatory bar) has retained LegalMatch as their attorney 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 become positive this is an ethical practice in your state. Now back towards the options in the market place.
CasePost, primarily based in Southern California, was established in 2002 is a second player in this area of marketing for law companies. They operate in a similar fashion as LegalMatch in matching clients with lawyers; however, the directory of lawyers is shown for the consumer immediately. The consumer can decide whether they want to remain anonymous or give their contact information for the lawyers. The consumer is limited to four lawyer responses. Thus the consumer determines what attorneys will get their information. In May of 2006 CasePost has made a major expansion consequently of their partnership with HandelOnTheLaw dot com that is powered by a successful nationally syndicated radio show on over 120 stations with lawyer 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 reach. Like LegalMatch the membership fees for this attorney promoting vehicle are from $2,500 to $25,000 per year (financing is available if desired) depending on practice area and location. Their guarantee to a member is depending on a minimum amount of referrals over the year.
LegalFish is a third player in this arena. It entered the market place in 2003 and is based in Chicago. It is somewhat different than the other two in a few ways. Like the other players the consumer can input their information and post their cases towards the site too 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 requires 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 advertising and marketing for legislation companies vehicle ranging from $180 to $750 to members that are non-contingency based mostly practices. For contingency based mostly practices the fee ranges from $1600 to $5000+ monthly only if the client retains the lawyer. If LegalFish does not deliver a referral to a member that retains that attorney they don’t charge a fee to that attorney for that 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 dependant on LegalFish’s ability to generate new client opportunities and create demand for legal services, 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 company marketplace with ten employees or less.
The next player in this marketing for law companies arena is Lawyers dot com (mentioned earlier in this article about their directory listing or attorney-listing service) with their new Attorney Match Service. If you go to their homepage what stands out on that homepage is their “Find An Attorney Quick Search”. This is their free towards the consumer attorney-listing service (this is why you might want to test a listing with them and track results). To get to the Lawyer Match Service you have to know to click on “Contact Lawyers” navigation tab or notice it up there at the pretty top of the home page. Clicking on that takes you to a page where you input your zip code plus 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 lawyers listed and select the ones you want to send your request to and wait for his or her replies. The fee for that attorney member is $495 per year, however, you must have a biographical level listing to the site to become to the Lawyer Match Service and that is $150 and up per month depending to the size of your company. There is no guarantee for this service.
The final player in this advertising for regulation firms arena is Thompson’s Findlaw (mentioned earlier as an attorney-listing service) with their new attorney-matching website LegalConnection. The FindLaw system is similar to the Lawyers dot com system with three steps of #1 Select your lawful need; #2 Tell us about your case; and #3 Select the attorney that’s right for you. It is different from Lawyers dot com’s system since they have broken it out of their attorney-listing solutions completely with its own dedicated website. Their fees generally run from $500 to $1000 per month depending on your practice area and geographic location. They do not have a guarantee. They do report that they do set targets for each geographic area at the same time as practice combination and then will manage their promoting to get constructive results for attorneys.
Very well, now we have all the players in this specific niche of advertising and marketing for regulation companies with a lot of information. I think it would be imperative for me to mention one more item. Both Lawful Match and CasePost have negative information about the World-wide-web and it requirements to become 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 information with regards to the negative information. One location that covers the negative information on LegalMatch with relevant links is at Wikipedia dot org (go to the site and appear up LegalMatch) although that is disputed as not being sufficiently neutral in tone, which is one of Wikipedia’s demands. 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 am not positive one wants to become overly concerned about this information since it is mostly in the past and you need to consider it.
See Element II of this article for my conclusions and recommendations consequently of my analysis. I can tell you now that this approach does have some merit but there are definite cautions at the same time so do read Element II.
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