What Is The Current State Of Marketing For Attorneys?

Interviewer: What is your opinion of the current state of marketing for attorneys, separate from what you do?

Richard: In general, I have been dealing with attorneys for three years, and I know them pretty well. I didn’t know them in the beginning. I assumed attorneys have a lot of money; just like everyone else thinks. There are a lot of people out there who prey upon attorneys because they think attorneys have all this money.

Just like any other profession, attorneys go to school to become attorneys. However, they don’t know much about marketing at all; maybe nothing. They just want to be attorneys. They don’t want to be marketers. They don’t want to have to do all this stuff. They just want to do their job and be good lawyers. That is the whole reason they went into law.

Again, they don’t want to do this stuff, but they have to do this stuff. The way the world is now, old things like the Yellow Pages don’t work. Old methods of marketing aren’t working as well, and things are fragmenting. People are going online.

People are going to all these different places to find information. If you don’t know how to do that, and you don’t know where people are or where they are searching, then you are in trouble. That is what I see.

A lot of attorneys have been around for a couple of years. They are trying to get started. Some have been around for 20 years. I talk to a lot of 20-year guys and they are bewildered because the old stuff does not work. Now they’re having a problem. They’re scrambling. They don’t know what to do.

Interviewer: With type of marketing do you consider “the old stuff?”

Richard: I’m not saying old stuff is all bad stuff. I’m just saying old stuff. Old stuff is radio, television, the Yellow Pages especially, and fad ending numbers like 1-800-CALL DUI. I mean the big media; the old stuff everyone has been taught all these years to market with.

Interviewer: Are older attorneys using “the old stuff” because they are not up to date on technology?

Richard: It is that, too. They have also been going along happily for 20 years. Now all of a sudden, it is one of the last things they expected. Their phones aren’t ringing nearly enough. Their marketing is not working. Some attorneys are spending $4,000 a month for Yellow Pages, which worked for 20 years. However, it is not working anymore.

It slowly eats away at them. They wake up and wonder, “Wow, I’m back making the amount of money I made when I was a newbie. This is not good. What am I going to do?” Now they have to pay attention to marketing, whereas before they were busy and happy in their career for so long.

Interviewer: You mentioned some attorneys don’t want to work on marketing. Do they feel they are above it, or do they not know what to do?

Richard: Again, a lot of them just want to be attorneys. A new person just out of school just spent the past three years learning all about the law. You don’t learn anything about marketing in law school; nothing.

What you do learn is to be afraid of marketing; and to be afraid of your own shadow. They beat ethics into you. They must put the attorneys in the basement and whip them with ethics until they scream. So they are afraid to do anything.

The state bar has rules regarding how you advertise and what you say. This is because they are concerned with professionalism. They are concerned what other lawyers will think. They are concerned with losing the license they worked so hard to get. That is usually on all these guys’ minds.

You have two groups. You have the new people who are more open to marketing because they are younger. However, they don’t know what to do; and they don’t even really want to work at it. Then you have the older guys. Some have been lawyers for 20 years and marketing was something they just paid for. It was marginalized. It sat in the corner and did its job for you.

Why would they care about it? Now all of a sudden, they are expected to care about it and become marketers. Well, it’s not easy to get someone who has been doing something one way for 20 years to change.