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Article Title: Marketing For Law Firms Via Attorney-Client
Matching Services - Part I
Author: Henry Harlow
Word Count: 2063
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=67688&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
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What are these new attorney-client matching services? Who are
the players? What do they cost? What is the risk to me? What is
the return for me? What is the buzz on them? Are they ethical as
marketing for law firms? Will they save me money and are they
for me? Will they get me clients I would not have otherwise?
In part one of this article we will look in depth at a
relatively new wrinkle in marketing for law firms known as
�attorney-client matching services�. Part one focuses on the
facts about these firms. Part two gives you my conclusions and
recommendations as a result of my research. First a little
background is in order. The legal services market segment is
expected to reach $82.5 billion in 2008 according to
Euromonitor International a market intelligence firm. In recent
history consumers have been finding attorneys through word-of
mouth or through the yellow pages. Often the word-of mouth
advice does not deliver people to the best possible solution
for their particular needs and the yellow pages is certainly
not a great place to select a lawyer I am sure you would agree.
Additionally, according to the Pew Internet & American Life over
four million consumers and small businesses currently search for
legal services via the Internet every month with these numbers
expected to rise to over seven million by 2007. I think you can
see this is a huge market getting larger. It is imperative that
attorneys understand this marketplace if for no other reason
your potential clients and clients are moving to the Internet
and yellow page advertising is a dying marketing for law firms
vehicle. Understanding attorney-client matching services is one
new way to tap into this Internet 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 services. The two majors
in the attorney-listing services arena are Lawyers dot com or
FindLaw dot com that are used by many in marketing for law
firms. With attorney marketing 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 with the basic listing. Also, don�t buy
your website through either of them, even if after testing you
find good results, for many reasons that can be found under the
Internet 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 sure to
track your results. The rest of this article is about
attorney-client matching services.
Attorney Marketing Via Five Attorney-Client Matching Players
In the attorney-client matching field there are five
competitors for the attorney marketing dollar offering online
attorney-client matching services. The first 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 attorney 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 does not see identifying
information about who the lawyers are and the lawyer does not
see identifying information about who the consumers are
although all the cards are put on the table for both to see
before any contact is made between them. Through an allocation
model LegalMatch makes the decision about which lawyers get the
consumer�s information. Consumers 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 with
the Utah State Bar Association, ATLA and NACDL. Membership fees
for this marketing for law 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 location of
the attorney. For example, a PI attorney in Los Angeles would
likely be charged more than a family law attorney in Los
Angeles, while the family lawyer in Peoria is likely to pay
less than the family law 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 details
of the guarantee are available on their website.
Are There Legal Marketing Ethics Issues with Attorney-Client
Matching?
A relevant digression here, since this model is not a lawyer
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
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 a 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 online matching
services 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 to the options in the marketplace.
CasePost, based in Southern California, was established in 2002
is a second player in this area of marketing for law firms. They
operate in a similar fashion as LegalMatch in matching clients
with lawyers; however, the directory of attorneys is shown to
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 reach. Like LegalMatch the membership fees for
this attorney marketing 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 based on a
minimum amount of referrals over the year.
LegalFish is a third player in this arena. It entered the
marketplace in 2003 and is based in Chicago. It is a bit
different than the other two in a few ways. Like the other
players the consumer can input their information and post their
cases to 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 needs 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 based
practices. For contingency based practices the fee ranges from
$1600 to $5000+ monthly only if the client retains the
attorney. If LegalFish does not deliver a referral to a member
that retains that attorney they don�t charge a fee to that
attorney 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
based 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 firm market with ten employees or less.
The next player in this marketing for law firms 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 A Lawyer Quick Search�. This
is their free to the consumer attorney-listing service (this is
why you might want to test a listing with them and track
results). To get to the Attorney Match Service you have to know
to click on �Contact Lawyers� navigation tab or notice it up
there at the very top of the home page. Clicking on that takes
you to a page where you input your zip code and 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
attorney member is $495 per year, however, you must have a
biographical level listing on the site to be on the Attorney
Match Service and that is $150 and up per month depending on
the size of your firm. There is no guarantee for this service.
The final player in this marketing for law firms arena is
Thompson�s Findlaw (mentioned earlier as an attorney-listing
service) with their new attorney-matching website
http://www.LegalConnection.com. The FindLaw system is similar
to the Lawyers dot com system with three steps of #1 Select
your legal need; #2 Tell us about your case; and #3 Choose 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 services 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 as well as practice
combination and then will manage their marketing to get
positive results for attorneys.
Well, now we have all the players in this particular niche of
marketing for law firms with a lot of information. I think it
would be imperative for me to mention one more item. Both Legal
Match and CasePost have negative information on the Internet and
it needs 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 details about 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
look up LegalMatch) although that is disputed as not being
sufficiently neutral in tone, which is one of Wikipedia�s
requirements. If you want to see a string of negative
information on CasePost go to:
http://counsel.net/chatboards/marketing/topic111/6.23.04.11.34.29.html
. I am not sure one needs to be overly concerned about this
information since it is mostly in the past and you need to
consider it.
See Part II of this article for my conclusions and
recommendations as a result of my research. I can tell you now
that this approach does have some merit but there are definite
cautions as well so do read Part II.
About The Author: Henry has individually coached well over 500
attorneys. You can get free, in depth, and objective
information on increasing your revenue while reducing your work
hours with free e-courses on client development and time
management/productivity available now at
http://www.Law-Firm-Marketing-Coach.com
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