Time is money. Unless it’s not.

January 8, 2016 by
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If you bill by the hour, time literally is money. You get paid based on how many hours you work. If you offer flat fees, contingency fees, or anything other than hourly billing, however, time isn’t money. It’s just time.

When you bill by the hour, there are only four ways you can increase your income. You can raise your hourly fee. You can work more hours. You can lower your overhead. Or you can hire people to do some of the work and pay them less per hour than you bill your client.

Unless you use one or more of these methods, you can’t increase your income. Bringing in more clients won’t do it because there are only so many hours you can bill in a day.

If you want to earn more, instead of selling your time, you should be selling your advice or your problem-solving solutions. Not only will you earn more per client, the more clients you bring in, the more you will earn.

If you charge $400 per hour and bill out $2000 per day, you’re earning $10,000 per week, which is nothing to sneeze at. But you’ll never earn $30,000 per week.

I know it’s “hard” to come up with an alternative to hourly billing that protects you when you estimate too low or when contingencies occur, but it’s not impossible.

First, you need to stop thinking like a lawyer and start thinking like an entrepreneur. Instead of trying to eliminate risk, you will intelligently manage risk and use the law of averages to your advantage

If you take on twenty hourly-billed clients who each pay you $5000 to $20,000, or an average of $10,000, you take in $200,000 in gross fees. If you charge flat fees, however, and twenty clients each pay you $15,000, you gross $300,000. Now, if one or two of those twenty clients or cases wind up costing you more than you expected, even double what you expected, you’re still way ahead of the game.

I know I’ve said this many times before but I thought it was time for a reminder. Because time isn’t money. Unless it is.

How to earn more per client: here 

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Filed Under: Fees and Billing, Increase your income, success

What you focus on grows

December 2, 2015 by
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What are you focused on right now? If you said, “doing client work,” or something similar, I understand. You have bills to pay so you draft documents, negotiate settlements, or attend hearings because, well, that’s what you do.

If you want more work like that, great. Keep thinking about that, because what you focus on grows.

But what if you want more? What if you want better clients or bigger cases? What if you want to dramatically grow your practice and income?

If you do, you have to stop focusing on your work and maintaining the status quo and start focusing on the future you’d like to create.

Because what you focus on grows.

Think about the kinds of clients and cases you want. Think about the bigger fees you’d like to charge. Think about getting referrals every day, and about what your practice will look like when it is running smoothly and efficiently and helping you create the lifestyle of your dreams.

When you change your focus from your current reality to the way you’d like things to be, your subconscious mind goes to work and helps you create that future. It causes you to notice things you have previously ignored. It helps you meet the right people and say just the right things, organize your thoughts and priorities, and re-distribute your energy.

Your thoughts create your reality.

So think about the reality you’d like to create. Pretend you have a magic wand and can make it come true with a simple flourish. What would your new reality look like? Write that down.

Then, think about it often. Read your description several times a day. Imagine your better future in all it’s glory. If those thoughts feel good when you think them, you’re on the right track. You will be guided towards the activities you need to start or modify or eliminate, and you will start moving towards your better future.

If you have doubts, if a “yes but” inserts itself into your thoughts, acknowledge it and then let it float away. Those are old tapes playing old messages and you should just let them go.

Think about what you want, not why you can’t have it, and you will attract what you want. Because what you focus on grows.

You need a marketing plan. You can get one here

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Inspiration, Personal development, success Tagged With:

You need to talk to your clients

November 18, 2015 by
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You frequently hear me tell you to “think clients, not cases,” meaning you must consider the lifetime value of your clients and not just the fee from a single case or engagement. That $1500 fee for a first-time client could lead to $15,000 or $50,000 in fees over the lifetime of the client.

Even if a client never hires you again, cultivating a relationship with them can bring referrals, traffic to your website, sign-ups for your list, attendees at your seminars, and followers on social media, all of which will lead to new business.

Get it? Got it. Good.

So. . . stay in touch with your clients and former clients (an oxymoron).

How? Letters are great, but can get expensive. Email is great but may be overlooked. Send letters and emails but don’t ignore your number one tool for building and sustaining relationships: the phone.

You need to talk to your clients, bro. They need to hear your voice.

Yes, people still answer their phone. If they are away, leave a message. They’ll hear your voice and get an injection of your essence. Virtual you is almost as good as the real you.

Here’s my challenge to you: invest six minutes a day calling people. In six minutes, you could talk to one or two clients, or leave five or six messages.

Why 6 minutes? One hourly billing unit. If you bill $300/hr., you’re investing $50/day or $1100 per month (22 work days) to grow your practice. If that brings you one new client per month, will it be worth it? What if it brings two?

What do you say when you call? Did yo mama teach you nothing? Say hello. Ask them how they’re doing. Tell them you were going through your contact list, saw their name, and thought you’d give them a quick call.

Another? Okay, tell them you just posted a new article or blog post or video on your website and thought they might like to see it. Tell them where to find it and tell them to have a nice day.

Easy stuff. Even for a lawyer.

You want it even easier? You’re lazy? Okay, have someone who works for you make the call. Tell the client, “Mr. Jones [that’s you] asked me to give you a quick call to say hello and see how you’re doing.” It’s not your voice the client hears, but you by proxy will do.

Anyway, I can hear what you’re thinking. Yep. You’re thinking this won’t work. It’s ridiculous. Nobody will hire you again or send you referrals just because you called and said hello.

Fair enough. Try it for a week or two. It may not work for you. On the other hand, what if it does?

Marketing online for attorneys is a real thing

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Filed Under: Client relations, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Referrals

How to get more clients with “The Puppy Dog Close”

November 9, 2015 by
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The Puppy Dog Close is a well-known concept in marketing and sales. Here’s the skinny:

You go into a pet store, just to look. The salesman sees you playing with the puppies in the window. You’re almost there, but the salesman can tell you’re not sure. So he says, “Why don’t you take one of these little fellas home for the weekend. No charge. If it doesn’t work out, bring him back on Monday.”

You bring the puppy home, give him a name and fall in love. There’s no way you’re bringing him back.

The salesman didn’t have to close you, you closed yourself.

You may recognize this approach when you go looking at new cars. The test drive is a form of The Puppy Dog Close.

Okay, so you don’t sell puppies or cars. How can you use this approach in your practice?

The odds are, you already do.

Think about it. Aren’t you giving people a “free sample” of your wisdom when you do a seminar or other presentation? When you write articles or blog posts or give away reports or videos, aren’t you showing people how you think and giving them a sense of what it might be like to work with you?

You also do it when you network. As people get to know you, they begin to like and trust you, and that leads to hiring you or sending you referrals.

If you offer free consultations, prospective clients get a chance to try you out and fall in love with you, or at least the benefits you offer. You help them gain clarity about their problems and the available solutions. You help them see a way out and a way forward and they like you for it. It’s hard for them to walk away from that.

You might want to take this up a notch. In addition to offering free consultations, you might offer a free entry-level service. Prepare a free simple Will, for example, as a gateway to doing a trust or other estate planning services. Give prospective divorce clients the first hour free, so they can see how much value you deliver.

Once a prospective client tries you for an hour, they’re probably not going to take you back to the lawyer store.

Crazy talk? I don’t know. How about giving this idea a try before you say it’s not for you. You might fall in love with this puppy.

To learn more about promoting trial, get The Formula

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Filed Under: Closing the sale, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Salesmanship

Are you getting stale?

October 23, 2015 by
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You’ve been a lawyer for more than a few years and you’re good at what you do. So good, you could do most of your job in your sleep.

You know the forms to use and the words to say. You know the best places to park at the courthouse. You know the judges and other lawyers, and they know you.

Your job has become routine. Easy. Life is good.

Don’t get too comfortable. Before you know it, some rookie lawyer will come along and eat your lunch.

They may not know what you know or be able to do what you can do, but they’re fresh and hungry. Everything is new and exciting. They’ve got energy and drive and something to prove.

And let’s not forget that they have been using computers since pre-school.

If you’re not careful, as their practice grows, you may see yours diminish.

But you can stay ahead of them by re-inventing yourself and your practice. Become a new lawyer again. Look at everything with fresh eyes.

Imagine that you have just opened your doors and you don’t have any clients. Get hustling and bring some in before the end of the month.

Take classes in your practice area and also in practice areas you know nothing about. Take classes in business, marketing, sales, writing, and speaking.

Take some cases you’ve never handled before. Find another lawyer to associate with you or mentor you.

Start over, from scratch, and build your practice again.

In the military, for a day or for a week, a unit will periodically stand down and review all of their operations. You should do the same thing. Examine all of your office management procedures and forms, look for holes that need to be patched, find expenses that can be reduced or eliminated, and processes that can be improved.

Do the same thing with your marketing. Find ways to make it better. Eliminate things that aren’t working, do more of  the things that are, and find new ways to bring in business you’ve never tried before.

Examine every piece of paper in your office and every electron in your computer. Resolve to get organized, eliminate clutter, and streamline your workflow.

And from this day forward, do something new every week. New ideas, new projects, new people, will keep you fresh and alert and sharp and open new doors for you.

Get excited about the future you are about to create and then go eat someone else’s lunch.

Get your marketing plan here

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Goal Setting, Increase your income, Inspiration, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Personal development, Productivity, success

The one thing you need to do to build a successful law practice

October 7, 2015 by
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Do you remember the Billy Crystal movie, “City Slickers”? There is a scene where Jack Palance’s character, Curly, is about to tell Mitch (Crystal) the secret to life? “There’s just ONE thing,” Curly says, holding up one finger. All eyes are fixed on Palance. What will he say? What is the “one thing”?

Curly never does answer. When I saw the scene, I thought he would say, “That’s what you have to figure out”. That’s your quest. Figure out the one thing and everything else will take care of itself.

I don’t know if that’s what he meant, but it makes me wonder, is there “one thing” for building a successful law practice? One thing that can take a lawyer from where they are to where they want to be?

Yes there is. For most lawyers in private practice, the one thing that would make all the difference is getting more clients.

Getting better clients is important, of course, and should be on every lawyer’s to-do list. But for both short term and long term success, getting more clients is the one thing that changes everything.

More clients means more money. More money allows you to improve your lifestyle. More money means you are able to help more people and leave the world a better place.

Yes or yes?

Okay, so more clients is the main ingredient. With a side dish of better clients. The next question, of course, is what’s the one thing about getting more clients?

You know the answer to that, amigo. It’s marketing. That’s how we get clients, after all.

But marketing is big and scary. There are too many variables. I don’t know what to do. Tell me, is there “one thing” about marketing?

Hold on, now, you want me to sort through everything there is to know about marketing professional services and tell you the “one thing”?

Okay, I will.

It’s referrals. Get referrals right and you may not have to do much of anything else.

Referrals have always been the number one way clients find attorneys and it still is today. The Internet is important, vital even for many types of practice, but it’s number two on the list.

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. To build a successful law practice, referrals are king. But. . . but. . . what’s the “one thing” about getting referrals?

You ask a lot of questions, Chachi. No worries. That’s what I’m here for.

Anyway, whether it’s referrals from clients, other professionals, or anyone else, the one thing, the Holy Grail about getting referrals is. . . delivering value.

Not just doing good work and treating people with respect. That’s expected. That’s the standard of care. Every lawyer should do that, and most lawyers do. No, if you want to get more referrals and stand out from the crowd, you have to do what most lawyers don’t do.

You have to do more than do your job.

The lawyers who get the most referrals are the lawyers who do things for their clients and contacts that transcend their work and their professional relationships. They help them, unselfishly, without being asked and without expecting anything in return.

Yes, the golden rule.

There, I said it. Call me a sentimental fool, but there you go. Help others, give to others, treat others the way you would like to be treated.

What’s the “one thing” when it comes to the golden rule?

That’s what you have to figure out.

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Filed Under: Client relations, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Referrals, success

A simple way to increase your income you’re probably not doing

September 16, 2015 by
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Your ad is bringing in clients. Your website is making your phone ring. Your seminar results in client appointments every time you run it.

Your marketing is working, and that’s good, but what if it could work better?

What if a different web page would bring you 20% more traffic? What if a different ad would bring in 50% more clients? What if a different offer at the end of your seminar resulted in 18% more appointments?

They might.

A different ad, a different headline, a different offer, and other variables, can result in dramatic differences in results. A few simple changes might bring in double or triple the number of clients, without any added expense.

It’s called testing and it is the essence of direct response marketing.

Author Tim Ferris invested $200 on pay-per-click ads testing different titles for his book. “The 4-Hour Workweek” got more clicks than any other title by a huge margin.

Keep running the ad that’s working and also run a different one. Don’t change anything on your webpage but send some traffic to a different page and see if you get better results.

You’ve probably heard about the value of testing. If you’re like most people, however, you’re probably not doing it, at least as much as you could. When things are working, it’s natural to want to leave them alone and focus on other things.

But test you must.

Talk to your marketing or web people about running some test ads, pages or offers. When you find something that works better than what you’re doing now, make that your “control”. Then, test additional changes against it, because no matter how well things are working, you never know if something else could work better.

Get more clients and increase your income with your web site, here

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Filed Under: Advertising, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing Tagged With:

How to create passive income in your law practice

September 15, 2015 by
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I love passive income. You hear me talk about it all the time. Passive income allowed me to retire from the practice of law. Passive income allows me to do what I want with my time because the income comes in whether I work or not.

I enjoy consulting but don’t do much anymore because there’s nothing passive about it. Instead of spending hours each week speaking with lawyers and getting paid once, I’d rather invest my time in creating more passive income.

I built a business years ago that provides me with passive income. It still pays me, month after month, year after year. I also get passive income from my books and courses.

Why earn $500 from consulting when I could spend that time creating a new book or course that pays me $500 per month, every month?

Do it once, get paid over and over again.

Set it and forget it.

Okay, so hurray for me. What about you?

Well, you could create passive income by building a side business like I did (contact me if you want me to show you how), and you could create books and courses or other products that sell over and over again. Or you could invest in income-producing assets.

But maybe none of that is right for you.

Can you use your law practice to build assets that provide you with passive income?

In a way, yes.

Instead of creating intellectual property, you can create relationships.

Find clients who have lots of legal work you can do, instead of one time clients. Find referral sources who can send you new business every month.

You have to spend time nurturing those relationships, and you still have to do the legal work (or supervise the people who do), but once you have a new referral source or client with ongoing work, the work will come to you without you having to do much more.

Not quite true passive income, but close. The next best thing.

Each relationship is an asset that provides cash flow. Each relationship gives you access to everyone in that person’s network.

Robert Kiyosaki said, “The richest people in the world look for and build networks; everyone else looks for work.”

This week, how will you build your network?

How to get more referrals from lawyers

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Leverage, Referral sources, Referrals Tagged With:

Building a successful law practice without marketing

September 8, 2015 by
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Is it possible to build a successful law practice without doing any marketing?

The answer is no. It’s not possible, because there’s no such thing as practicing law without marketing.

Everything you do in your practice is marketing. Everything.

You’re either doing a good job of it or you aren’t.

The way you treat your clients is marketing. Treat them well (good marketing) and they will come back to you and send referrals. Treat them poorly and they won’t.

Building a successful law practice takes more than just winning the case or delivering the work product. Not when clients can choose one of your many competitors instead of you. Building a successful law practice means getting a lot of little things right, to make your clients feel appreciated and see the value you deliver, and you either do a good job of that or you don’t.

When someone asks, “What do you do?” the way you answer that question is marketing. Your response either tells them how you can help them or someone they know, and makes them want to know more, or it doesn’t.

Good marketing or bad marketing, but marketing nonetheless.

Do you have a website, social media accounts, or a listing in a legal directory? Do other lawyers ever send you referrals? Have you ever handed out your business card to anyone?

You’re marketing.

You might hate marketing, and refuse to admit that you’re doing it, but doing it you are.

Even if you have a job that doesn’t require you to bring in clients, you’re marketing. Every day you go to work and “sell” your employer on continuing to employ you. Do a great job of marketing and they might give you a raise. Do a bad job of marketing and they might let you go.

Everything you do is marketing.

The question is, how well are you doing it?

No matter how well you are doing it, or how poorly, you can improve your marketing and get better results.

You can also do MORE marketing. There are other ways to attract clients than whatever it is that you’re doing now.

Speaking, networking, writing, advertising–they all work. You can do some of them, or all of them, or you can decide to stick with what you’re doing now and do more of THAT.

So we agree, then, you are marketing. You can improve your marketing and you can do more of it, but you cannot avoid marketing, and you can’t build a successful law practice without it.

Need a marketing plan? Here you go 

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan

The best way to increase your income

August 31, 2015 by
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My wife is a good shopper. On major purchases especially, she does her homework and makes sure that we always get a good price. She saves money by shopping online as much as possible. She buys fruits and vegetables at one grocery store, and paper goods at another. And she’s pretty good at finding sales when she buys clothes.

But although she is a good shopper, she’s not a great shopper. She doesn’t count pennies, she doesn’t clip coupons, and she doesn’t drive miles out of her way to save a dollar or two.

And that’s good because her time is valuable.

Now, how about you? Are you a good shopper or a great shopper?

I know attorneys who are good at keeping their overhead to a minimum. That’s good, but some attorneys go too far. If you want better clients, you have to have a decent office and clothing. It’s part of the deal.

I also know attorneys at the other extreme. They spend money needlessly. Ten dollars here, fifty dollars there, and before you know it, they’re wasting hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.

Every attorney should periodically audit their expenses. Do this for your practice and your home. Look for ways to cut expenses and lower your overhead. It’s the easiest way to increase your income.

Focus mostly on big expenses and recurring expenses. If you buy a new piece of software, it’s okay if you don’t get the best deal in town. But if you’re buying insurance or renting a new office, it obviously makes sense to invest extra time to find or negotiate the lowest cost.

But don’t spend too much time. I don’t want you to save 0 a month when you could use that time and energy to find ways to earn an additional ,000 a month.

Be a good shopper, not a great one.

Earn more without working more. Here’s The Formula.

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management
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