Practice Management
How To Get Clients as a Lawyer: 11 Steps to Success
Though it probably wasn’t covered on the LSAT, learning how to get clients as a lawyer is a skill you must develop. A productive way to start is by asking the question in reverse. Rather than thinking, “How do lawyers get clients,” instead, ask, “How do clients find their lawyers?”
Though referrals and word of mouth are two major sources for getting new clients, many people will conduct their own searches before (or instead of) asking someone else. While this may have once involved searching the yellow pages, today, this process is more likely to involve a search engine and visiting a law firm’s website.
Our 2023 Legal Benchmark Report: Lead Generation found that about one-third of leads came from referrals, while about two-thirds came from online discovery methods, such as Google, social media, and websites.
We’ll cover the key steps you can take to get more clients as a lawyer. Take note of the few steps you (and your team) can easily tackle now. Focusing on one step at a time can be more successful than spreading your team thin trying to achieve several steps at once.
Step 1: Define Your Ideal Client
The first step is to define your niche, core services, and ideal client. Establishing these elements first can help optimize your lead-generation efforts. For example, if you’re passionate about family law cases, you can post social media content related to aspects of family law or offer pro bono legal advice to local shelters.
In addition to your niche, consider whether you want to work with clients online, in person, or both. Offering flexible options can help clients access and share information when they can’t physically visit your office.
Once you know who you’d like to target, you can get started on the next steps.
Step 2: Create Your Website and Optimize for SEO
We live in an extremely digital world, and it’s getting more connected all the time. Your firm, therefore, needs an online presence that describes your services and qualifications.
Building a website isn’t the only way to do this, but it’s certainly one of the easiest and most effective. Ensure that your law firm’s website design is clean and professional. If you really want to increase the odds of getting clients for your law firm, consult with a search engine optimization (SEO) professional.
The goal of SEO for law firms is optimizing your website to rank high in search engines and is generally broken down into two categories:
- Technical SEO focuses on ensuring you code your website in a way that makes it easy for search engines to discover it. This is best left to a competent SEO firm that knows how to manage the details.
- Content SEO focuses on publishing content that builds authority around certain topics and boosts your rankings. This is something you can do by publishing useful articles on your website.
Claiming your free Google Business Profile is another major aspect of boosting your business’s and website’s search visibility. Google may have already created a listing for you based on publicly available data and user-submitted content. Claiming it allows you to manage and update information, customize it with photos and videos, and see how potential customers found your profile.
Although it’s fairly straightforward to build a website from scratch, it’s a better use of your time to automate tedious parts of website-building with software. MyCase’s website builder specializes in creating websites that are fast and responsive. People no longer have much patience for slow, buggy websites, so make sure yours prioritizes the customer experience.
It’s also important to have a website for potential clients to find you and learn more about you. But since the internet is a big place, you’ll need to employ a few law firm digital marketing techniques to funnel prospective clients to your websites. We’ll go over some of those tactics next.
Step 3: Get Listed on Legal Directories
Legal directories are large databases that allow potential customers to find lawyers. These work well for customers since they can typically tailor their search by legal issue, location, and more to find the right match.
Free legal directories typically allow lawyers and firms to list basic information in their directory. You can also access other simple features, like seeing reviews.
Below are a few popular free legal directories:
Some legal directories also offer premium upgrades for an additional cost. These are considered paid directories.
Paid legal directories go beyond basic profiles and can include perks like adding more details to your profile, publishing articles through the directory’s site, and improving positioning in the directory.
Below are a few popular paid legal directories:
After getting listed, schedule time to routinely check your profile, respond to reviews, and update information as needed. Review the fees for paid directories and decide whether it makes sense, given your budget and goals.
Step 4: Publish Helpful Content On Your Website
Once you’ve established your website and updated your listings, consider publishing helpful content on your site. This could be simple blog posts, FAQs where you tackle common sources of confusion, e-books, webinars, and more.
Tip: Create SEO-optimized online content to help potential customers find you through Google and other search engines. Optimization can involve keyword research, adding your target keyword in key places in the post, and adding relevant links to other important pages within your content.
Of course, not everyone who reads your website will become a client, but a fraction of them will. You will, however, build rapport with people who read your articles. Since they have a connection with you, they’re more likely to remember your name if they need legal services in the future.
You can also repurpose content from your website in other channels. For example, you can include key takeaways from an e-book in your newsletter. Videos, although potentially time-consuming, can serve as a source for multiple posts. You can grab clips to share on social media, repurpose the audio for a podcast, and re-share the video itself in relevant blog posts
Step 5: Create Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing can be time-consuming to set up, but it can help keep your firm top-of-mind with potential clients.
For example, you can create a campaign that sends your best content to new subscribers each week. If your firm focuses on personal injury claims, you can start your campaign by sending a blog post about common misconceptions about these claims. The last email in your campaign could be an offer for a free consultation.
You can also manage a periodic email newsletter to keep prospective and current clients informed about changes in your firm.
The good news is that you don’t need to start email campaigns from scratch. Many email newsletter programs offer templates to save you time.
Step 6: Run Paid Online Ads
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising consists of running paid advertisements on Google, Facebook, or other social media sites like X (formerly Twitter). With a PPC campaign, you are charged every time a person clicks on your ad—hence the name “pay per click.”
PPC is a remarkably effective way of marketing to potential clients. Whereas you can target a newspaper ad at people who still buy a newspaper, you can specifically target a Facebook ad at small business owners who live near Omaha and enjoy boating. Paid ads can be a low-effort, higher-cost strategy for getting clients if you don’t have the time to pursue more affordable methods.
Step 7: Post on Social Media
There are many ways of organically using sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, or X to your advantage without running a PPC campaign. Simply using them by routinely posting commentary, sharing articles you write, and interacting with followers or other professionals could be enough to help you get clients for your law firm.
Below are some examples of how you can leverage social media:
- Share interesting tips or debunk common misconceptions related to your practice area.
- Post answers to common questions clients typically ask.
- Share or comment on insightful content from other professionals in your network.
- Post client stories and testimonials.
- Do live Q&As with your audience.
- Recognize your team’s awards and recent achievements.
Step 8: Manage Online Reviews
Regardless of your line of work, your reputation is an extremely important asset you must carefully manage. Given how important referrals are, you need to do everything in your power to make sure you’re constantly improving your law firm’s client relationships. The happier your clients are, the more likely they’ll recommend you to their friends, family, and professional network.
But that’s not the only thing you can do. Reviews on sites like Google and Yelp are often one of several places prospective clients look.
When you wrap up a case with a client, ask them to leave you an online review. As these reviews grow, they’ll contribute to your overall reputation and help set future client expectations in a way that works to your advantage.
Prepare for your first bad review. Sooner or later, someone will be unhappy with your services, and they’ll likely go online to express their displeasure.
When this happens, keep tight control of your emotions. You might feel tempted to rise to your own defense (especially if you know full well that the client is being unreasonable), but this is a mistake. The correct response is to apologize to the client when an apology is warranted and make amends as best you can.
Managing client relationships is an extremely important part of running a firm, so it’s a skill you’ll want to focus on cultivating.
Take our continuing legal education (CLE) course on creating strong and effective relationships to learn more.
Step 9: Create a Referral Program
Given the importance of referrals, they need to be a core part of any strategy to get more clients for your law firm. Besides simply offering remarkable service, don’t be afraid to gently remind clients of how far referrals go in keeping the lights on.
If you want to succeed in business, you can’t be afraid to market yourself—and most people won’t mind a little promotion if you’re not overbearing about it.
For this reason, it’s very important to nurture the attorney-client relationship. When someone seeks legal representation, it’s a safe bet that a serious problem has emerged in their lives. If you help them through it with compassion and competence, they’ll remember that and tell other people.
This isn’t to say people ignore other factors, like online reviews—in fact, a recent survey found that 80% of respondents indicated they look at reviews when considering an attorney. But no matter how many 5-star ratings a business has online, nothing beats an endorsement from someone they know and trust.
Download our eBook, "4 Strategies to Create a Referral-Worthy Client Experience" to learn how to develop more business and improve your clients’ experiences.
Step 10: Say “Yes” to Networking Opportunities
Networking can lead to referrals and new clients. Opportunities include professional mixers, joining professional organizations, and even volunteering for local groups.
To find the most valuable opportunities, prioritize options relating closely to your niche. If your firm specializes in commercial real estate law, you can attend local chamber of commerce mixers to meet business owners and potential clients. Even if you don’t meet someone who needs your services, they may know someone who does.
Step 11: Provide Excellent Client Service
Making potential clients aware of your existence through social media, a website, or a PPC campaign isn’t enough. What happens afterward—their experience with you throughout the legal process—is arguably even more important.
Keep in mind that “the client experience” refers to the whole of your interaction, from the first email to the last.
It’s not just how confident you are in court—it’s how warm and comforting you are during lawyer-client interviews. It’s also not whether you won them a big settlement (though that’s never going to hurt). It’s whether you make settling the bill easy by having a variety of ways to accept payments.
Step 11: Going Above and Beyond to Get More Clients
Identifying your niche and key clients, optimizing your online channels, and nurturing your relationships are the main ways to get clients as a lawyer.
Although it may take time to establish some of these strategies, you can always improve your client’s experience now. Remember—high client satisfaction is crucial for finding more clients.
You can stand out and improve their experience by streamlining stressful processes. Payments, for example, can be a notoriously difficult exchange between clients and firms. If your law firm only accepts paper checks, you may have difficulty getting paid on time. Your customers may also feel frustrated with the lack of options and flexibility.
Check out our guide to upgrading the client experience with online payments to learn how improving this aspect helped five law firms grow their business.