“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) industrialist and founder of Carnegie Steel.
Some attorneys are about to fall into the same trap as a man called Al Hafed. I don’t want you to be one of them.
Hafed lost everything and was being swept away by the sea to his death. He was dressed in rags and hadn’t eaten in weeks.
A few short years before, he had a farm, a family, and was content with his life. He lived on the banks of the River Indus, the largest river in Asia. The river provided him with everything he needed, or so he thought.
Everything changed when an old priest visited him. The priest described how the world was made, including the riches the earth has to offer.
“Precious metals and stones lay scattered around the globe. People often use them to enrich themselves. If you have just a few diamonds, you can have many farms, not just one.”
Hafed, not so content with his life anymore, sold all his land to a younger man. He searched for diamonds across Persia, Palestine, and Europe.
As the years went by, what money he had, was all gone.
He was wandering around cities in rags and became a beggar.
One day, the current of the sea took him, and he didn’t even fight it. He simply let it happen.
Meanwhile, the young man who bought Hafed’s farm was watering his animals in a stream that ran through the property. Something suddenly caught his eye.
There was a shiny object in the sands of the stream. It was a diamond. This diamond ended up being one of the richest finds in history. As it turns out, the mines of Golconda would yield not just one, or two, but acres of diamonds.
Attorneys up and down the country are falling into this same trap.
Think about where you are right now.
Look around the room and notice where you are and what you are doing.
You have acres of diamonds in your possession, all you need to do is cash them in.
Your law office is your farm on the banks of the river. Right now, you may be getting enough from your farm to get by.
However, right underneath all of the carrots and the potatoes, are diamonds.
Don’t be like Hafed and go looking far and wide for riches and success. Everything you need is right underneath you. Either you take it, or another attorney will.
This article on this website has given you the mining equipment you need in order to get to those diamonds.
Now it is up to you to use them. It is your responsibility.
But, where do you begin?
There is a lot of information on this website and if you feel overwhelmed, then don’t worry. It is totally natural.
In this short article I am going to tell you exactly where to start.
You’ll know with absolute certainty what your next step should be if you follow my instructions. So, whatever you do, keep reading.
Remember, the waves of change are coming. You simply cannot avoid them.
Like the 200,000 handlooms in England who got swept away, so will attorneys be swept away.
There are too many attorneys and too few jobs. The employment rate for lawyers in America has fallen by 5%, while the rest of the economy has grown.
A wave of hundreds of thousands of younger lawyers will be leaving their corporate jobs to open local law offices. They will do anything and everything to steal your clients.
More and more work will be automated and given over to supercomputers.
You cannot escape it, but you can embrace the new strategies and technology available to you.
You can join the super attorneys, who are going to benefit a great deal from these changes, where you snap up all the clients while working less.
“Ok, I get it David, let’s get started.”
STEP 1
The very first step is to set up financing for your clients.
Do this at EasyRetainer.legal
People cannot afford to pay out of pocket for attorney fees. If your competition gets hold of this before you do, then you might as well kiss your law firm goodbye.
If someone has the option to fork it thousands upfront, or a few hundred dollars, they will pick the latter every single time.
The attorneys who don’t do this will face a smaller and shrinking pool of clients.
By the time they realize that they should implement financing, they would have been outgrown by their local competitor. It would be too late.
Car companies that didn’t offer financing when it became available went out of business quickly.
Up until recently attorneys couldn’t offer it because of bar rules. Now they can so jump on board quickly.
STEP 2
Get a review system up and running. Ten years ago, it was the youth who relied on reviews. Now it is the older generation as well.
88% of people trust an online review as much as a personal recommendation.
Right now, having reviews win clients. That’s a well-known fact. However, little known to most is that reviews will become a requirement in the next few years.
Google is working on a system that will send a push notification to your phone with information about the firm you are visiting.
In other words, if you have no reviews, or just a few, the client sitting in your office will know. Google will notify them of it.
STEP 3
Use automation to follow up with potential clients.
This will save you time and grow your law firm. People forget to call back all the time, even if they mean to.
In a lot of cases they will simply contact another attorney because they forgot who you were.
Simple automated emails and texts go a long way. I have given you some basic starting templates. Use them yourself or outsource them.
STEP 4
Use high ROI advertising to fill your pipeline with fresh new clients who are ready to pay.
Use the ‘Problem First’ approach to advertising to outwit and outsmart your competition.
Use the Passive Return Agents to get back prospects by positioning yourself as the authority.
STEP 5
Use cheat sheets and checklists to systemize everything you do at your firm.
Your staff will know exactly what to do when specific situations arise. Let your law firm run like a well-oiled machine when you are not around, rather than something that needs your close attention at all times.
STEP 6 (optional)
Dominate one practice area at a time and grow into one of the largest law firms in your state.
The reason I put this step as ‘optional’, is because you don’t need to take it that far. You can simply be a highly profitable small firm if you like. There is nothing wrong with that.
Or you can simply have 2 to 3 offices that can run without you. Selling these practices to other attorneys will be very easy when you are ready to retire. Especially if they run without you needing to be present.
THE LAZY WAY… and my damning admission
There you have it. All the steps, oversimplified, for your pleasure.
However, most super attorneys don’t do those steps. Some of them don’t even know about them.
Yet, they are still going to thrive during the coming waves of change.
How?
Well, the answer to that question is the secret weapon most attorneys hate hearing.
They outsource it and listen to the experts.
Attorneys don’t go to business school, or marketing school. They go to Law School.
Attorneys don’t spend all day testing out different strategies for button colors, headline text, intake procedures, or advertising innovations.
And nor should they.
You wouldn’t expect a doctor to do their own legal work.
Even though that doctor is very good at what they do, they cannot possibly know everything there is to know about the legal system.
The same is true for you.
Even if you learned every single thing you could about the topics covered in the articles on this website, you probably don’t have the time to implement everything.
That’s why I am giving you my…
“Lazy-Attorney’s Guide To Growing Your Law Firm Without Spending A Penny”
Here’s what I suggest.
Set up financing and start using it properly. This will free up a lot of cash.
Then, use that cash to outsource the rest of the steps outlined in this article.
So, the Lazy-Attorney’s Guide can be broken down into two simple benefits.
1. You don’t lose any money.
2. You make a hell of a lot more money.
There you have it.
Now, if you are still a little confused as to where you should start I am going to throw in a bonus, that’ll make the next step an absolute no-brainer.
You can have a free 1-1 ‘no-pitch’ consultation with my company.
In other words, we will help you, without pitching you on our services, for free.
Pick a time slot that works with your schedule, and book yourself in.
Now, why on this green earth would I offer you a free, no-pitch, consultation?
What’s the benefit to me?
The simple answer is that I do benefit. A lot.
The consultation uncovers everything we need to so that we can tell you what to do.
A number of attorneys then come back to us and become clients.
Essentially, we prove to you that we can help you by actually helping you. This is the problem-first approach in action.
We will help you to solve your problem without expecting anything in return, and that is how I run my business. It serves me very well, and it serves you even better.
So, book an appointment with my team before all of the slots are taken up by other attorneys. You have nothing to lose, yet everything to gain.
I’ll leave you with the closing statement from Ken Hardison when our interview concluded.
“You’ve got to have a plan and you’ve got to execute and you’ve got to have a vision and you’ve got to have a purpose. Get people around you that have purpose, leverage your strengths, and delegate your weaknesses because you can’t be great at everything.
I think that’s the big deal with lawyers. I’d say the biggest stumbling block I see is ego. They’re scared to hire anybody smarter than they are because they want to be the kingpin. They also think they already know it all and none of us know it all.
John Woods said something like, “It’s when you know it all, that’s when it gets fun.” I think I know as much as anybody in the country and I still learn stuff every day, every week. I mean, it never ceases to amaze me that there’s always something new around the corner and, you know, you cannot rest on your laurels and start believing your own press. I’ve seen some very prominent lawyers go bankrupt because they read their own press. And I’ll finish up with this, never fall in love with your law firm, only with your clients.”
(QUICK TIP: Before hiring any firm for attorney SEO services, check out their reviews online. This is what you’ll find when you Google ours)
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