7 Ways Law Firms Can Increase Client Lifetime Value (Full Transcript)

[00:00:08] Speaker 1: All right, welcome everyone to our webinar today.

[00:00:12] Speaker 2: As you're coming in here, we'll ask that you put in your name, where you're from, and what the number one thing holding you back that you think your law firm's growth is holding you back for growth. We'll get started here in just a few minutes. We'll let some others join in. We'll get started probably about two or three past the hour. So once again, if you could put in the chat, make sure that you have the two to everyone. And we would love to know your name, where you're from, and the number one thing you think is holding your law firm back from growth.

[00:00:47] Speaker 1: They're disorganization. That's a big one.

[00:01:00] Speaker 2: That's tough when you're spending a lot of the time trying to get things organized and not getting things actually done. Welcome everyone as you're joining in. Thanks for joining us for the webinar today. As we're waiting for others to join, once again, we'll start about two or three past the hour. We'd love to know your name, where you're from, and what the number one thing you believe is holding your firm's growth back. Brent, how's the weather in Denver today? Is it better or worse than Chicago?

[00:01:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful day here in sunny Colorado. I think we get, what is it, 300 days of sunshine a year. So beautiful bluebird day out here, and yeah, nice and comfy. Nice, nice.

[00:02:01] Speaker 2: Workflow optimization, Martin, thank you. Once again, welcome everyone to the webinar. We're going to get started here in just a couple minutes. We would love in the chat, make sure that you have it set to everyone. We'd love to know your name, where you're from, and once again, what the number one thing holding your law firm's growth back.

[00:02:28] Speaker 1: Let's see. British Columbia, nice. Awesome. Let's do many administrative tasks. Yep. Totally get that. That's a big one. Got Miami and Florida in general representing today, and Canada, love it.

[00:03:17] Speaker 2: All right. Welcome everyone. A few more people are jumping in. We'll get started here in just about one minute. Just want to ask everyone to join us in the chat. We love activity, so we'd love to know your first name, what city you're from, and the number one thing you believe is holding your law firm back. Once again, we'll get started here in just a minute. All right, well, I think we'll go ahead and get started. Thank you everybody for joining. Just want to make sure that everyone knows some housekeeping stuff. In the chat box, please feel free to ask your questions or put it in the chat or in the questions tab. We are trying to be as active as possible. We have a lot of content to go through with you guys today, but we're excited to interact with y'all. If we do not get to your chat or your question during the session, we will have a Q&A portion at the end, but we'll also make sure to record those and get these answers to you. But yeah, without further ado, just want to introduce Brent. Brent Harkins is the Chief Marketing Officer at U.S. Legal Marketing Group. They're a great partner of ours. We've worked together for a long time, and we're excited to have him here to talk about these seven surefire ways to increase the lifetime value of your clients. My name is Blake Roberts. I'm the Director of Business Development here at Lawmatics, and I've been here for a little over two years. And so, I like to bring in experts like Brent to come talk, and I'll just add some commentary and things like that, but we're excited to go through this. And like I said, we have a lot of content to go through, so we're going to get started here and go through. So, I'm going to hand it over to Brent. We're going to go over the agenda, and then let him go through it.

[00:05:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate that, Blake. So, Brent Harkins, CMO of U.S. Legal Marketing Group. We actually have our own law firms, U.S. legal groups. We predominantly specialize in divorce and family law, but we also do criminal defense, estate planning, and some business law. So, we are actually Lawmatics users for our own law firms, and we've been using Lawmatics for five years. So, big fan and advocate of the platform, and I've been doing legal marketing since 2018, and just really excited to share my insights, because I'm literally sitting in our own law office right now. So, I sit and work not only in the business, but on the business specifically, helping our own law firms and our clients grow. And so, I'm really excited to share this information today. So, like Blake said, I have a lot to go through. So, I'm going to move pretty quickly. Please engage in the chat. Let us know if you have any questions. We'll try to address them real time. If not, we'll try to reserve time for the Q&A at the end. So, jumping right into it, I want to talk about improving intake and consultation process, but I'd be remiss to not talk about marketing first. Now, we're not going to be talking about marketing in this webinar, but when we're talking about surefire ways to increase your lifetime value, one way to do that is to lower your cost of acquisition for clients. So, you should always be looking at that. You know, the less you spend to get a client, the more valuable they are at the end. So, I did just want to kind of kick it off there. So, where I want to take this is turning those leads that I was just alluding to generally acquired through marketing channels, maybe referrals, and how to create a first impression that's going to shape long-term value. Because what we see is that the first impression most likely is going to start with marketing. So, your firm's external messaging needs to be aligned with your internal messaging. So, once you get people onto your website, into your CRM, and your intake staff, or whomever you're using to kind of help process those individuals, need to make sure they understand where the person's coming from and that your messaging is aligned accordingly. You should be thinking of your intake really like a concierge service. You want to be making it easy for the prospect. You want to be reassuring that person who's most likely never hired an attorney in their life that, you know, you are the right people to be helping them. And you want to make it seamless. You want to be confident. You want to let these people know that you are a subject matter expert in the field and that you want to help them. So, making sure that you create a, you know, really good experience from that first engagement is critical because that's going to, you know, bring in more consultations, more clients. So, really focusing on that intake is a powerful thing. And you want to have those individuals receiving a consistent experience as well. So, whether that's using scripts, internal forms, making sure that these people are going through your CRM workflows, that's going to drive the consistent results. So, intake, you hear it all the time. You should probably know it's an emphasis within your business. And these are some of the things that you should be thinking about from the start. So, from there, we're going to move into once you actually, you know, go through intake, you go into the consultation process. Now, a lot of law firms do it differently. So, for our own law firms, for family law specifically, we charge an hourly fee for an hour-long consultation with an attorney. A lot of law firms do free consultations that might only be 15 minutes, 30 minutes. So, you know, I will say every consultation is done differently. But I'm coming from the place of our experience within our law firms. And so, as I talked about on the past slide about having consistency, you want to make sure that you're preparing the prospects for that experience. So, each individual comes in with kind of the expectation of what's going to occur or not occur during that initial meeting. So, setting expectations is really important. This is where, you know, the client isn't going into the consultation just to review their case. They're going in to decide whether or not they trust you as an attorney, as a law firm, as a business. So, you need to set the tone early and make sure that the prospect knows, you know, what is going to be happening before, during, and after that meeting. So, framing that up and then presenting, you know, the value of your time as an attorney, providing what actionable outcomes can take place after the consultation and giving them a timeline on those next steps is super important. So, I want to talk about one thing that I see so many attorneys overlook. And this is so simple. So, if you're going to take one thing away from this webinar, this might be it. So, towards the end of the consult, two things need to happen. If, you know, assuming that this is a qualified individual that is a potential client for your practice. One, let them know that you want to represent them. It sounds so basic, but, you know, so many attorneys just end the consultation saying, do you have any questions? Nope. Okay. See you later. And obviously that's not going to help you convert the consultation into a client. So, you need to let them know that you want to work with them and you will do your absolute best to achieve their desired outcomes that you learned during that consultation. The second thing is asking them if they would like to review a fee agreement that shifts the conversation towards commitment. So, being able to offer them a fee agreement in, you know, almost real time, they can review a template, but you can let them know, okay, based on the conversation, here's what the initial retainer fee might be and all those different things. And we automate all of that for our own law firms using Logmatics. So, like I said, letting the individual know that you want to represent them into offering them that fee agreement to move it into the commitment phase is super important. So, as I said, we use in our law firms, Logmatics to go ahead and help track and automate all of these different tasks. So, technology should be doing all the heavy lifting with minimal, like human data management, processing, things like that. If you're not using tools to standardize and automate your process throughout every step of the client journey, you're wasting manpower. You're probably opening yourself up for human error. So, really leveraging the wide variety of tools that you can use. So, like, for example, you should have embedded forms on your website and you can, you know, use a plugin like Gravity Forms. You can use Logmatics to directly embed, or you can be using landing page tools like Unbounce or ClickFunnels for paid search. And all of that needs to then be connected to your CRM. Your CRM, you know, is your source of truth. So, that's where you're going to be able to aggregate and integrate all the necessary information to manage and track that potential new client or actual client appropriately. I like to challenge attorneys to think about this as like an e-commerce business almost, you know. You think about all of these brands that you engage with. You go to, you know, a website, you put something in your shopping cart, but then you leave. You're going to get an email saying, hey, did you forget about this? Like, you need to be thinking about it. How do you remind and continue to engage prospects with your business? So, even though you're selling a service, I would challenge you to think about it, you know, in a more transactional way like that. And then lastly, for measurement, super key to know what the KPIs are that you're looking at so that you can actually set benchmarks. And then that's going to alert you to whether you have a firm-wide underperformance or maybe you have an individual attorney who just doesn't convert at kind of your acceptable consult-to-client conversion rate. So, it really helps you isolate the, you know, outliers and detractors from your firm's business performance to focus on for improvement.

[00:14:48] Speaker 2: And I just want to, I want to touch on two things here, just because first I want to reiterate how important this slide is. Because, you know, looking at the question that we asked in the chat, a lot of you came back with time, too many administrative tasks, disorganization, things falling through the cracks, workflow optimization. Tools like this, whether it's automatics or another tool, like having tools in place is going to help alleviate a lot of those problems so that you can focus on other items and you can still offer this great intake. Additionally, with the measurement and things like that, to Brent's shopping cart example and the e-commerce, not only being able to track your KPIs and goals of conversion rates, but being able to identify, okay, where is it getting left off? Why are they leaving that cart? And fixing that problem so that you're not only seeing what's winning and what you're winning and losing, but you're also seeing how to make things more efficient so that it doesn't even get to that point for that client where they drop off. So, just important things to understand.

[00:15:54] Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. So, the intake process is going to make you be more efficient. That's going to help you bring more clients into your firm, and that's going to ultimately give you the opportunity to generate more income as a business. So, once you have those individuals, you know, sign their fee agreement, and they're working with your practice, you want to be providing exceptional client experience. And, you know, everyone should probably, I think that's a pretty safe assumption that we all want to provide exceptional client experience, but here's the secret. You know, clients are going to remember how they felt during your service even more than what you actually did for them. So, you want to think about this emotional experience. They're going to remember how you treated them, how you communicated with them. So, when they feel that they're taken care of, they're much more likely to come back to you and then to also refer others to you. So, you need to be providing that white glove service to every individual. Now, like we work in family law, I know that there can be difficult clients, like let's not sugarcoat it, but you need to do your absolute best to treat every single one of them, you know, to the best of your ability. So, one thing that I like to talk about, and this was kind of what Blake was just alluding to with using technology. You also need the systems in place. Without the systems, the tech won't work effectively. So, standardizing, you know, all of the different things that you're doing to make sure that you are providing timely updates, because that's one of the number one complaints that attorneys hear from clients is that, you know, there's just a lack of communication. So, making sure that you do that. And then just kind of creating an ethos within your business about the experience that you provide is super important. Next, moving into what this exceptional experience actually looks like. So, when I think about exceptional experience, it's really making sure that each and every potential question that a client might have is addressed before they even have to ask them. And so, you can do that by, you know, providing them timely updates, but then just having standardized guides. For example, here's what our billing process looks like. For example, we instruct all of our clients to batch questions instead of just sending, you know, anytime a thought comes to mind, they're just ripping off emails. Like, that's going to end up costing them more money. So, explaining how to best work with you as a practice. Your goal is to remove the uncertainty that they have throughout their legal journey. So, the ability to anticipate and proactively address concerns is also going to cement your expertise and let them know that you have the vision and foresight that's going to best represent them in their case. So, from there, that's going to then create raving fans. And so, as we can probably guess, you know, you want to create a referral network through past clients, right? And that's by creating raving fans. So, what you need to be considering is that throughout every touch point, it's a moment that you're either going to build or lose that trust of the person. So, your entire team, whether you're a solo practitioner or you're in, you know, a big law firm, your entire team needs to be empowered, not just with their legal knowledge and expertise, but, you know, tactical and emotional training to have emotional intelligence, EQ on how to handle, you know, clients during what might be stressful times. Like, one thing that our law firms did back in 2024, I think it was, we had our entire organization, and we're 110-person law firm, go through the Franklin Covey trainings, if you've ever heard of that. It's been around for a long time. We did the seven habits of highly effective people. So, investing into, you know, emotional intelligence training, that's going to help you just provide that white glove service I've been talking about. So, you know, to kind of wrap that up, really just focusing on that experience at every single touch point that the client has. Blake, anything you want to kind of add into that?

[00:20:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, I just wanted to add in, I mean, we say this on a lot of our webinars and a lot of our podcasts and things like this, but, you know, especially depending on the practice area, but family law, you know, criminal defense, things like that, you know, you have these clients and I know things get bogged down with your day-to-day, but you think about it, they may be one of a hundred clients, a thousand clients, depending on the size of your firm. But you think about it, you are the most important thing going on in their life, most likely. And so, being able to offer effective communication, even if you feel it's over communication, being able to keep them up to date and provide that excellent client experience is an incredibly powerful tool to use to create a great experience. And regardless of the outcome, they'll feel taken care of. They'll feel, you know, heard and communicated with, which is going to be extremely powerful in getting that lifetime value to increase.

[00:21:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I mean, even like a great example that you just shared, Blake, is, you know, both criminal and defense, criminal defense and family law, there's a lot of crossover between that, you know, whether it's between like domestic violence and potentially a divorce or someone's got in a DUI, which, you know, leads to divorce. So, thinking about how you are treating people in that moment is important because it's going to dictate whether they decide to come back to you for an additional service. And we're going to talk about that in an upcoming slide. So, while we're still in the zone of kind of like managing an active case, I want to talk about optimizing billing and accounts receivables. Now, this can be kind of a hot topic within a lot of law firms. Like, what's your minimal billing amount? Is it, do you do 0.1s? Is it only 0.2s? Do you batch work? All those different things. And there's a lot of different ways to do that. So, I'm going to leave that a little bit open-ended. But what I do want to kind of talk about is fee agreements. Now, something that I think every attorney should be aware of, because I feel like there's always trepidation when it comes time to provide that fee agreement. Like, you know, am I over-quoting this? Are they going to be scared away by a $5,000 initial retainer fee or $10,000, whatever it is? I would argue that people are not afraid to pay. What they're actually afraid of is surprise. So, setting that expectation, like I talked about, of, you know, based on the complexity of the case, this is what I'm estimating as an initial fee agreement. You know, we're going to put that in trust. I'm going to work off of an hourly rate. Being transparent is super important. You also want to be flexible with that. You know, different cases have different requirements. And based on that, you need to be able to say, like, okay, is this going to be a flat fee? Is it a limited scope of work? Is it hourly? All those different things. And then making sure that you're able to offer, you know, modern payment options, whether it's credit card or if someone, you know, does want to come into the office with a bag full of cash, you can figure out how to handle that. So, with billing, one thing that our law firms does that we find to be very successful is we do a biweekly as opposed to monthly invoicing. And we also do replenishing retainer agreements. So, because of that, at U.S. Legal Groups, we have a 93% or better depending on our offices. We have eight different offices. We have a 93% or higher realization rate at every single one of our offices. And it's because clients are not caught off guard by their trust status. They know what's going on with their case. Because like I shared earlier, we're providing them timely updates. And on top of that, we have real-time capture of billables. So, you need to make sure as an attorney, you're not just doing work saying, oh, yeah, I'll take a note of that and log that later. You need to be using, you know, tools, whether that's Lawmatics, whether it's, you know, Clio or any of these other platforms that allow you to track that time that you are charging for in real time is super important. Because if not, you're going to miss out on work that you're doing. Some other things I want to talk about is with the retainers. You need to keep them high enough so that you're always able to do the work, right? Because if you are doing trial prep, for example, and you blow through that entire retainer, and then the client is caught off guard when it comes time for trial. And it's like, well, hey, you know, your retainer is emptied. I can't represent you in court until you, you know, replenish that. That creates a negative experience. So, you need to be cognizant of how you're setting up that billing structure so that it is always realizable. And the one last bullet on here that I think is important, because this is also commonly overlooked, is a lot of times you'll do something just, you know, because it's easy or because you want to add value to the client or whatever it might be. But you do legal work for free. And you need to show that in your invoicing. Show that discounted work because that's presenting value from you to them. And that's going to keep them, you know, engaged with you and stay mindful of you in the future and feel comfortable. So, those are some of the billing structure components that I feel are super important for attorneys to be aware of so that they can maximize, you know, their receivables from their legal work. The second slide in this section that we have is your ability to work on the case. And like I just said, you know, you need to make sure that you have a replenishing trust. You need to make sure that the managed account receivables are in a position that the attorneys or yourself, if you are the attorney, are always getting paid for the work that you're doing. And so, there's a couple points on here that I feel are important to cover. One thing is with managed account receivables. And so, that's when you can ensure that your payment for your services can be collected even if the client cannot pay on an ongoing basis. So, like an example of that would be, you know, the upcoming sale of a house. If you're going through a divorce, you can forecast, you know, what the appraised value is of that house. And you can say, okay, you know, based off of that, you know, I'm confident that you can take from the sale of that home to get me paid. Or that there might be other money that they're entitled to in different ways. And so, you can get kind of creative with that. Now, it's not something that we standardly do, but there's definitely unique situations like business owners, for example, right? There's the value of a business that can be realized. So, those are some creative ways to be open to managed account receivables. The other, you know, way of looking at that would be a third-party payer. So, all the time we see it, there's a young adult that might be going through a custody case and their parents are actually the ones that are, you know, paying the legal fees. So, being able to create a third-party payer within your fee agreements where, you know, that individual has a responsibility of payment without creating the client, attorney-client relationship. Then, lastly, is with the collection strategy. So, once again, like we were talking about, having the tech to do this is kind of just the first step. You then need to have a systematized strategy in place. And so, whether that's through the automations of the technology, that's great. But then you should also have individuals on your team that are directly responsible because if everyone is responsible, no one is. So, if you're leaving this up to, you know, each individual attorney on your team, potentially, you're going to have people that just don't execute. So, you need to have someone that is actively always looking at this. And one thing that you can do is potentially even incentivize it. Say, okay, if there's, you know, an outstanding balance after 90 days, whatever you're able to collect on, you know, we'll give you a percentage or something. Like, there's ways that you can realize more accounts receivables than what may be perceived to be out there. So, yeah.

[00:29:50] Speaker 2: And that person needs to get the most training on the empathy and emotional intelligence because this is all part of the client experience as well, right? Like, the billing, the collections, it's part of it. But it all comes down to, like, if you have a good process, you have a good experience, the clients are going to have less issues and it's still going to be part of it. And then Brent, we had a question that kind of goes along with this. It says, how do you balance high retainers up front with having clients turn off or refuse to hire us because they can't come up with a large amount up front?

[00:30:23] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. And that's a challenge that is constantly being juggled right now. I would say a lot of that's going to depend on the maturity of your law firm, meaning, like, how well established are you? How well known is your brand? Obviously, there's going to be big name players, regardless of your practice area and regardless of your market. And those people are able to afford a premium, right? It's a supply and demand idea. If you're lesser known, though, or if you're a smaller firm, I think it is likely in your best interest to have a smaller initial retainer fee, but is still high enough that you will be able to do enough work without blowing through that trust. And after two weeks saying, hey, you need to replenish this again. So it is really a balancing act. And I would say there is somewhat of a case by case basis. And like we were sharing with looking at creative ways to manage accounts receivables, you have to be creative in how you evaluate it. So I think the last point that I would answer with that, though, because I do love this question, and it's one that we grapple with all the time, is do not discount yourself. You know, you don't want to have a race to the bottom. You don't want to be the lowest cost legal service provider in your market. I see a lot of people try to do that. I'm sure a lot of people see those online platforms where it's like, oh, you can get a uncontested divorce for $499. Okay. Like, I don't know if the reality of that is going to ever meet the expectations. So as you've kind of seen as a consistent theme with this, you want to be cognizant of the individual, their situation. You want to be sympathetic to it. But at the end of the day, you're running a business. And so you shouldn't have to discount yourself just because the individual is in a difficult position. And that's where I think you can come up with some creative financing or always ask them, you know, are they able to, you know, reach out to a family member or a friend? Do they have access to credit? You know, what are those different ways that they can do this? Because in the end, we always see legal services are an investment. And if you take the cheap route, you're probably going to end up paying more because someone else is going to have to go back and fix it. Right? And so being able to communicate that to the individual is super important. I mean, it's like a sales pitch, honestly. So I love that question. And I think it is a case-by-case basis. But I hope that answers it.

[00:33:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think flexible payment options, right, is a big thing right now. There's so many different ways to offer payments, especially in the legal industry. And with trust accounting too, there's been new functionality added where you can do it legally or ethically, whether it's financing or credit cards. You know, we had one, I knew an attorney way back in the day, real quick, that he was a family law, specializes in divorces. And he would literally have, he had a list of the best points cards for people so that he would say, go apply for this, pay everything on this. And then when the divorce is done, you can take a vacation with the points, which is a great way to handle that issue. Not in all cases, because credit availability, things like that, but and offer a great client experience.

[00:34:07] Speaker 3: I love that. Someone that just used points to fly to Europe two weeks ago, like huge points guy. I love that. Great. So next, we're going to move into cross-selling and upselling. And what cross-selling means is that you are going to be able to provide them additional services within your firm. So if that's like a great example for us is we added estate planning, because if you get a divorce and if you don't have an estate plan, you likely need one. If you had an estate plan, it likely needs to be updated, right? So that's offering a cross-sell of a different service. Upselling is when you are kind of moving them up. So maybe someone who came in as an uncontested divorce, for example, really needs a mediated divorce or things start getting hotly contested between the two parties and it needs to move into litigation, things like that. So you need to be educating your clients on your full range of services to help them understand, because they simply don't know what they don't know. You'd be amazed. I think everyone can relate that the attention span in 2025 is just at an all-time low, right? So making sure that you're constantly communicating and educating your clients on what you can do for them. But on top of that, helping them know early in the process. So many firms, I just feel like are leaving money on the table by not educating their clients on their full range of services. We talked about some overlap previously with domestic violence, DUI, things like that. So if you are a multi-practice area firm, that's a huge opportunity for you and you need to be communicating that. If you do specialize in just a singular area, think about that. If you're in estate planning, for example, and you do a simple will and trust, think about, do I add on a power of attorney? What are the additional things that you can be doing for that client? And the last thing I would say on this, be presenting real-life scenarios to show how these services are connecting. So obviously, without providing any specifics, but letting them know that you've helped individuals in similar positions and provide those examples so that they can really see and realize themselves in that situation. So I just touched on a bunch of these. I think we don't need to really spend too much time on this, but what I would want you to take away from this slide and just put this into your line of thinking is that this is all about long-term care. So many cases are looked at as single transactions. Once you withdraw from the case, all right, see you never. That should not be the mentality that you have here. You're creating long-lasting relationships, and legal needs rarely end when the case is actually done, right? So even when everything is all completed, don't be withdrawing from that relationship, right? So that's something that is just, once again, kind of part of that mentality and ethos that needs to be built into the entire practice that you work in. So as I was saying that this needs to be kind of a firm-wide mentality, this is where you need, you know, everyone bought in, and you can't be relying on just individual memory or chance. You need systems. So you need the team trained on this. You need marketing materials to support this. You know, for example, like at U.S. Legal Groups, we send out a monthly newsletter to all of our potential active, potential new clients, current clients, and past clients. And it's a mix of some legal news updates, some local events, team member highlights, recent reviews, things like that. And on average, we send it to about 2,400 people per month, but we have an average open rate of 31%. So you can do the math on that, and that's getting in front of quite a few eyeballs to keep them engaged. It's also where we're able to communicate, hey, we added this new service offering. Are you aware of that? We'll also have individual emails, like marketing blasts, based on that. And then when you have those communications, you need to make sure that your team is prepared and ready to handle those inquiries, right? So the intake team needs to be educated and trained on those offerings. They also need to be trained on referrals and how to handle those. One thing that I haven't talked about yet, but I think is important to discuss, is when I was talking about the cross-selling. So something that we do that I would encourage people to consider is providing discounted legal services for returning customers. Because a great example is you do a divorce, you then can offer a 20% discount, let's say on an estate plan, if you offer both of those services. Because then there's no cost of acquisition to get that client. It's also, once again, just like showcasing your value to the individual, that because they've already worked with you, you want to provide them a rate not available to the general public. So those are some things that you can do that really are going to make the client feel valued and appreciated. And at the end of the day, you're providing them a valuable service. So while I said, don't discount your legal work, that's for the majority of the time. But know when there is the time and place to do that. So that is getting through the cross-selling and upselling section of the webinar. Blake, anything you would want to add or thoughts to share?

[00:40:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the only thing I would add is the trend today, I looked at my Instagram feed this morning, right? And there's so many attorneys that are on there just providing education, just quick tidbits, things like that. So that's another idea too, is if you have five minutes to just record something about an interesting fact, like that's keeping people, it doesn't necessarily have to be a direct sell, but you're maybe like reintroducing the idea of needing an estate plan post-divorce, things that you don't think of. And then I think also just one thing to be careful about, and I've seen this a lot too, is a lot of firms, as they're taking care of the current issue, they're trying to upsell and they don't have a lot of cooth about it. And so it actually turns off the current client. So I think a big thing is focus on the existing issue, the reason they hired you in the first place. And if there is a chance to figure out ways that relate with upsells, cross-selling, things like that, but don't just add stuff on. Because I think a lot of people will get kind of when you go in for an oil change and you end up paying for an air filter and brakes and all that stuff, you don't want to have that kind of mentality. So I think it's really important to find the ways in to the conversation, listen for the pain points, and maybe save it for a later date. Don't necessarily bring it up right away.

[00:42:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, timing is everything. You want to make sure that individual is in the appropriate mindset or headspace to be welcoming to that message, right? And I think with that too, while you want this in your process and you want it to be executed at the highest rate and as consistently as possible, you need to make sure that it makes sense for that individual. I'm not trying to encourage anyone to do this for the sake of doing it. I'm not trying to just like squeeze dollars out of every single person. I'm trying to help you add value to your clients, right? And by you adding that value in return, you get the compensation for it.

[00:42:57] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:42:57] Speaker 2: Quick question. With your firms, what percentage of clients would you say add on services? Yeah, that's like, oh boy.

[00:43:08] Speaker 3: I mean, so we do, let's see. So like in Nebraska, or actually let me use New Mexico, for example. So we have offices in Albuquerque and Las Cruces, and we're doing about 20 estate plans a month when we are picking up about 60 family law cases a month. So I would say about a third of them would be an average.

[00:43:42] Speaker 2: That's what I expected. And I think that's another good point is this is not going to be every single one of your clients, right? This is a select amount. I think a third, 30% is probably accurate. And so something to keep in mind that you're not necessarily going to get an upsell or cross-sell or additional services, or even referrals from every single one of your clients. So don't get discouraged if you're not seeing success with this right away.

[00:44:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. Because I want to take a minute on that, because like you talked about being on Instagram, and I kind of live in this echo chamber of like the legal space on Instagram, just based on what I engage with. And I see so many people saying, you know, 10x, you know, eight figures, all these different things. Like in my experience, just staying true to yourself, being committed to providing excellent service. This isn't like the hockey stick is not a sustainable growth model. What you want to be doing is adding in these smart, executionable items consistently that help you reach these points. I mean, we're going to do $23 million in 2025. Like we're a pretty big size family law firm, but we didn't get there just overnight. This is consistent effort in uncovering these opportunities and like micro conversions is almost what I call them. Like, don't be too hard on yourself. All these stats get cherry picked. And I think it's actually really misleading to what like is, you know, actually tactfully executionable.

[00:45:31] Speaker 1: Right.

[00:45:33] Speaker 3: So moving over into the strengthening client retention and repeat business. So, I mean, it's funny, like I try to be really sensitive to this, especially in the family law space, because once someone gets a divorce, they don't really ever want to see you again, hopefully. So like, you know, I'm very cognizant of, you know, what repeat business might mean for an individual. So we are very careful with like what we're communicating to them. But what we are communicating is, you know, that this is going to be a lasting relationship. So building both a professional and personal relationship. And I want to share one thing that is also like regularly overlooked by attorneys, because like you're working kind of in the X's and O's, right? You're working within the legal parameters of the case, and it's easy to get, you know, just focused on that and losing a little bit of that human component. So like for us in family law, making sure that we don't, you know, refer to just like the children, we call them by their name. Just creating that human connection and knowing that you value them as an individual, their family as, you know, whatever that collective unit looks like is just so important because that's creating the personal connection right there. So I find that to be really important because then that means when something comes up that might even be outside of like your specific legal expertise, the individual is probably going to come to you because it's like, hey, this wasn't just my divorce attorney. This was the person that was looking out for my family's best interests. And so, you know, let's say a kid gets into an accident with a semi truck, you know, 16 year old driver, and it's a personal injury case, but you don't do that. They're going to come and ask you and like, that's going to help you potentially build a referral network, which we're going to touch on here shortly. So building that personal connection, super important. That's going to create additional lifetime value. And then the last thing I want to say on that is also being comfortable enough to have those direct and honest conversations, even the difficult ones, but having them rooted in honesty. Once again, that's just building that personal relationship that I feel is so important to the client experience. So like we said, even when the case is completed, you don't want to then just, you know, poof and disappear from their life. You want to stay top of mind. So we always recommend having automated follow-up sequences. And so just checking in and that can be 3, 6, 12 months. It can be as long as it makes sense for you. So that's kind of a case by case basis. And then, you know, like Blake shared, making sure that you're continuing to share insights and client stories and firm news. You can do that on social media. You can do that via email. You can do that through blog posts on your website, making sure that you're continuing to put out that messaging that they can engage with. It's just going to keep you top of mind for the future. And then with that messaging that you're putting out, you should be tracking, you know, okay, what's the engagement rate? You know, how many views did this video get? What's the click-through rate? Things like that. So, you know, you'd be surprised like how quickly someone can forget who their attorney was in their case. You know, even though you were such a critical component that, you know, people kind of black it out. It's like when you become a parent, you kind of black out that newborn phase and you can't even remember what the first six months were like. A lot of people tend to do that when it comes to legal cases as well. So, yeah, something I want to share about staying top of mind as well. All right. So as we talked about, and I shared that example about, you know, staying top of mind. So even when it's an issue that you can't help them with, they're coming to you so that you can help build a referral marketing network. So turning your clients into advocates, that's where, like we said, sharing success stories is a huge one. We work with an immigration law firm down in Dallas and Houston, obviously, super trying time for them right now in the current administration. Making sure that we are able to share stories of hope and letting people know that, you know, there's still a path to legal immigration in the United States has been super successful for us. And so that's taking a client and using their story, but you have to get approval from them to be able to share that and putting it out there to other individuals facing the same problem. So turning a client story into kind of a testimonial is super great. And on the topic of testimonials, making sure that you are actively asking for reviews and referrals at the right time, kind of like what Blake was saying earlier. You know, you don't want to be asking for someone, you don't want to have an automation set up, for example, that when you conclude a case, an automatic review request is sent out if you just lost in court, for example. So you need to have some safeguards, you need to just have, you know, some basic safeguards in place to protect you from that. But all these different types of opportunities can really help your law firm because you want them to know that you can help others. So building that referral engine, you know, that can come from a lot of different people. It can come from clients, active informer, like we just talked about. It can come from other attorneys. We had one attorney in one of our offices who did exclusively divorce and family law, and she worked only off of referrals because she built a relationship with the personal injury network of attorneys, and she kind of became their go-to. So thinking about attorneys and other practice areas that you can be aligned with and you can have a mutually beneficial relationship. For family law, you know, you regularly see fruitful relationships with real estate agents, accountants, therapists are a great one. So finding those strategic relationships where they make sense are going to have multiple sources of referrals for you because what you want to then do is build what I call a farm league system, and it's how you bring people up. So a lot of times for referrals, and the reason that I'm talking about this is for a few different points. One, cost per acquisition is like zero. So right there, the lifetime value of the client is starting at a much higher rate than if you're having to spend, you know, hundreds of dollars on that cost per acquisition. Secondly, because every person that you bring in, your spider web is just expanding, and that creates more ability to bring in additional casework. And so what I do see, though, when it comes to referral marketing and networking is the majority of your referrals are going to come from like 20% of your referral network. So you want to create that farm system of, okay, how do I focus and emphasize on, you know, those key relationships? But then how do I kind of move people up into that key relationship? How, you know, like one thing that we like to do is, you know, if we read an interesting book or something like that, for example, we shoot them a copy, be like, hey, I just read this interesting book, thought, you know, it might be relevant to you. Hope you're doing well, whatever. Just letting them know that you are thinking of them, even when they're not thinking of you, super important. So, you know, start small and be consistent, because those efforts compound. And that's where, you know, you can really get into an area of excellence when it comes to referrals. And so the last thing I'll say quickly on this, because we already kind of touched on reviews on the earlier slide and asking for them, is your reputation is your currency, right? My director of search engine marketing always likes to say that your website is your best employee. Well, I would say like your online reputation is your silent salesperson. So thinking about that, how do you make sure that you are getting others to kind of vouch for you? Because that's going to be a lot more believable to prospective clients than whatever messaging you're putting out yourself. So when it comes to your online reputation management, don't leave it to chance. You have to be proactive with it. You have to make requests. You have to have it systematized and you should have it personalized. So that is going to cover this final section about referral marketing and reputation management. So as we wrap up here, I'm going to talk about maximizing the value with data and CRM automation. Data driven growth is really what I do. That's how I got brought into the legal industry. I spent a decade in travel tourism and I'm just a data driven content and technology marketer. And so you need to know what is getting measured. Your gut instinct can get you started. There's certain times it makes sense to shoot from the hip, but data is what is going to scale your law firm. You need to know where clients are coming from, what channels are converting best. You need to look at which individuals are performing, like we talked about, so that you can isolate outliers. And then you need to be able to report on all this. So we use Lawmatics as our source of truth so that we can track all of these different items. And that's going to help you understand what the lifetime value is of each and every individual case. And then you can also create averages so that you can better kind of plan and budget for the future and you can make smarter marketing decisions. Next, with CRM and automation for scalable retention, you know, CRMs aren't just for sales. They're really your client relationship engine. So setting up these automated journeys that guide every lead and client through your ideal process with your personalized communications is super important. Lawmatics for us makes it super easy to build these and not only build them, but make them feel personal even when it's automated. So the thing I love the most is when we send out like an automated email and we get a response from someone that's, you know, saying like, oh, thanks, David, our CEO, you know, because to them this looks like it is truly a message meant just for them from a specific individual. So that's one of the things I really love about CRM and automation. Putting your data to work like we kind of talked about, you need to know your KPIs. You need to know where to find your data. You need to make sure your data is accurate. A lot of times we see dirty data and we have to kind of like comb through the weeds manually. So making sure that you're set up so that you can do everything effectively. You know, the last thing I would say with this is like, don't get so caught up in the data that you lose sight of the personal relationships that you're building. You know, you shouldn't be treating every single client exactly the same. You need to talk to them based on where they're at, what their specific situations are. And you can easily do that. And one of the things that helps you do that is creating, you know, dashboards or reporting that gives you instant visibility into, you know, the different segments of your audience, the health of your law firm and its performance and its growth opportunities as well. So you got to be looking at your data, but also doing it through the lens, you know, with a human touch. So I know we went through a lot really quickly today. I appreciate everyone kind of getting through this with us. We'll open it up for a Q&A session here. So, you know, focus really on building trust and improving conversion with a fast and consistent intake experience, using the CRM to automate and standardize all of the different tasks, making sure that you as an attorney are handling billing and receivables effectively, making sure that you're educating clients on those cross-selling upselling opportunities. And then finally, always looking back into your business to understand where you can continue to make improvements. So with that, why don't we go ahead and open it up for Q&A. Blake, I'll hand it over to you.

[00:59:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was awesome. Thank you so much, Brent. I mean, that was a lot of content, but we did it. We got through it. If you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat or the Q&A. We'll hang around for a few more minutes. And if we don't get to the question, we will still respond, you know, post webinar. Had someone put in there, how can we learn more about both groups? If you have any questions, we're going to send out a survey after the webinar is over. And you can click if you want to learn more information about Lawmatics and have someone reach out. We can help you talk about how we can help your firm. And then additionally for U.S. Legal Marketing Group. So if you want Brent and his team to reach out to you and learn more about what we covered today or see how they can help you kind of put some of this in, we'd love to be in touch. You know, one thing I want to add on to just with the CRM. It seems like a lot. A lot of this seems like a huge amount of things that you're going to have to add to your already busy day to day. But it's an investment, right? Just as the client is investing in you, you're investing in this, whether it's time, whether it's resources. If you go the cheap route or if you go the I'm just going to do this myself route and you're not actually taking any of this into account, you're not going to be efficient in the marketing side and in the relationship side. So having someone, if you don't know what reports you need, you know, it's not it's not a big deal, right? You went to school to practice law. So find experts to help figure out what should you be looking at? Help establish KPIs, help establish the data reporting and things like that, that you need to focus on because in the long run, it's going to save you way more time and money than it would if you try to just figure it out on your own.

[01:01:19] Speaker 3: So, yeah, Blake, I want to share one analogy that I love to use when we're talking about like new website projects, but I think it applies to CRMs perfectly as well. So I like to look at it as like a vehicle. OK, you can buy a Ferrari, but if you don't, you know, keep it in good shape, have regular maintenance, it's not going to run like a supercar. You know, it's going to break down. They can be finicky, right? And CRM is exactly the same. And so I would also encourage people to not just set it and forget it. There has to be ongoing maintenance. And especially as your firm grows, evolves, adapts, like changes have to be made. So being consistent within that as well is super important, in my opinion. For sure.

[01:02:05] Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, we didn't have any questions, so I think you covered everything perfectly. Feel free to reach out. Thank you again for joining us, everybody. Until next time, we would love to invite all of you to join us for our webinar on May 29th, where we're going to be covering nurturing leads in the legal industry. So we're really excited about that. And thank you again, Brent, for joining us. This was fantastic and really a lot of great content. Once again, as you leave, you'll get a survey. We'd love to talk to you if you have any questions. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thank you, everyone. All right. Bye.