Seasoned Elder Law Attorneys Offer Tips on Attracting Clients and Working Smart: Part 1

Seasoned Elder Law Attorneys Offer Tips on Attracting Clients and Working Smart: Part 1

Lawyers must constantly be attracting new clients. Three experienced and successful ElderLawAnswers member attorneys shared their marketing wisdom at a session titled "Attracting Clients and Working Smart," presented as part of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys' recent 2010 Elder and Special Needs Law Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida.

Here are the suggestions of one presenter, Michigan ElderLawAnswers member attorney Jim Schuster (right). The contributions of the other two presenters, Florida ElderLawAnswers member Leonard Mondschein and Wisconsin ElderLawAnswers member Tim Crawford, will be covered in subsequent newsletters.

Schuster offered his listeners the following 10 tips for building a powerhouse elder law practice:

  1. Develop a specialty practice. While elder law is a specialty, you can get even more specific. For example, you could be the Alzheimer's attorney. To become a specialist in an area, interview experts and write articles on the topic.
  2. Brand it. Develop a set of services that provide a unique combination of benefits and give it a name like "family protection plan" or "legacy protection plan." It is something that clients can't get anywhere else.
  3. Build relationships. Keep in contact with clients. Offer small services and then build these into larger services that will reinforce client loyalty.
  4. Have systems and delegate. Systems allow you to operate efficiently. Once you have a system in place you can delegate many duties to staff.
  5. Create a Web site. Your site needs to provide information, so put articles on it. If visitors want to download the articles, capture their e-mail addresses. Include interesting information about yourself and your staff on a bio page. In addition, identify the geographical communities you serve so that search engines can find you.
  6. Write and publish articles.
  7. Don't bother with undesirable clients.
  8. Value bill instead of billing by the hour. If you charge $250 an hour and can bill 1,600 hours in a year, you will make $400,000. But if you see two clients a week for legacy estate plans or asset protection trusts and you charge each client $5,000, you make $500,000 in a 50-week year.
  9. Communications. Your communications should have three components: the speaker, the message, and the recipient. Your message should be tailored for your audience. For example, if you are talking to veterans, bring out your patriotism; if you are talking to parents of children with special needs, talk about your love of children.
  10. Be nice to yourself and your staff.

To order the streaming video of this and other sessions from the Orlando meeting, as well as accompanying session materials, visit NAELA's Web site, www.naela.org, and click on the Online Education Library tab under Events.