Annual planning is an essential exercise that can help you position your law firm for long-term success. It also helps you adapt to external challenges like regulatory changes, evolving client expectations, and heightened competition. Annual planning provides:
Clear direction: A well-defined roadmap aligns your firm’s objectives with actionable steps.
Proactive strategy: You’ll ensure resilience by anticipating challenges and leveraging opportunities.
Enhanced decision-making: A structured, data-centric approach to allocating resources efficiently and setting achievable goals lessens the stress of making decisions.
It can be a daunting process, but in this article, we’ll offer a practical approach that focuses on profitability analysis.
Conducting annual planning through a lens of profitability ensures you go beyond the simple calculation of Revenue – Expenses = Profitability to incorporate multiple components that feed into profitability. These include operational efficiency, cost structures and billable rates, revenue optimization, cost management, attorney career paths, and strategic technology usage.
This constructive planning method, based on key insights from our Annual Planning Guide for Law Firms, offers insights to align your law firm’s objectives with actionable strategies that achieve increased efficiency and create a foundation for sustainable growth.
Understanding & Conducting Law Firm Profitability Analysis
Understanding profitability is a fundamental step in the annual planning process, serving as the foundation for strategic decisions and resource allocation. By identifying key metrics and operational inefficiencies, you can begin to develop a roadmap for enhanced growth and efficiency.
Profitability in law firms extends beyond simple revenue calculations. A deep dive into operational metrics reveals opportunities for optimization:
Lawyer Cost Structure and Billable Rates: Calculate the cost rate for each attorney by including salary, benefits, office space, and technology expenses. For example, an attorney with a $120,000 annual salary, 100 billable hours per month and $100 per hour in overhead costs must bill at least $200 per hour to break even.
Practice Area Profitability: Identify which practice areas generate the most profit by comparing revenue to associated costs. Look at attorney utilization rates within each area, too. Are higher-cost attorneys working on lower-value matters? Reassign that work to lower-cost attorneys to improve practice area profitability.
Client Profitability: Track the time spent and revenue generated per client. Focus on high-value clients and renegotiate terms, or shift focus away from resource-intensive, low-value relationships.
Revenue Optimization: Optimize revenue generation by following up on leads consistently, capturing all billable time, minimizing write-offs, and optimizing accounts receivable collections. Make sure you have processes, policies, and tools in place to enable these optimizations.
Aligning Equity and Compensation with Growth
As firms refine their profitability strategies, aligning equity and compensation becomes a logical next step to ensure that financial incentives drive behaviors consistent with the firm’s goals.
Compensation structures play a pivotal role in driving profitability. Consider these strategies:
Business Development Incentives: Reward attorneys who expand client relationships or bring in new business.
Value-Based Compensation: Align pay structures with firm values, including non-billable contributions like mentoring and leadership.
Transparent Career Pathways: Define clear criteria for partnership advancement, ensuring alignment with both financial goals and firm culture.
Leveraging Technology for Profitability
Technology is a critical enabler of efficiency and profitability in law firms and should be viewed as a revenue multiplier. During your annual planning process, evaluate your tech stack. Are your current tools being fully utilized? You should be leveraging technology to improve profitability through key capabilities, including:
Adopting Comprehensive Solutions: Use integrated platforms like Centerbase, which combine matter management, billing, timekeeping, and CRM in one system.
Streamlining Processes: Automate time capture, lead management, and billing workflows to reduce manual errors and save time.
Investing in Training: Provide ongoing education to ensure staff can fully leverage existing tools.
By aligning technology with firm objectives, you can enhance client experiences, reduce inefficiencies, and stay competitive.
Developing a Strategic Growth Plan
The topic of growth inevitably will be part of your annual planning discussions. Remember, growth doesn’t have to be just about increasing headcount. A strategic approach to growth focuses on increasing efficiency and profitability, and deepening client relationships.
Consider incorporating these components into your growth plan:
Optimizing Marketing: Use data-driven marketing strategies to attract the right clients to your firm. These clients are best aligned with your firm’s strengths and capabilities, ensuring your ability to deliver the results they need.
Optimizing Attorney Career Paths: Provide mentorship and define expectations at every career stage, from associate to equity partner, to enhance retention, productivity and ultimately profitability.
Strengthening Client Relationships: Cross-selling can be a multiplier for nearly every firm, so leverage these opportunities to maximize value from existing clients. Try to do everything you can for the clients already coming through your door.
Enhancing Efficiency: Streamline workflows to improve operational effectiveness without overburdening resources.
Implementing and Sustaining the Plan
Annual planning, driven by a focus on profitability, equips law firms with the tools to navigate industry challenges and achieve strategic goals. By aligning resources, leveraging technology, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, you can position your firm for lasting success.
Your key actions to implement and sustain a successful plan include:
Assign Roles: Define clear responsibilities to maintain momentum.
Foster a Culture of Improvement: Encourage regular reviews and training to adapt to evolving needs.
Monitor Progress: Use key metrics to track performance and adjust as needed.
For more insights and tools to streamline your law firm’s operations, explore Centerbase’s solutions.
Family law firms face unique challenges that require innovative strategies to ensure long-term success. In advance of the AAML Annual Meeting in Chicago, Affinity Consulting Group, Centerbase, and 12 AAML fellows discussed how family law practices can adapt to future demands.
The conversation centered around three critical areas: profitability, the transformative role of AI in family law, and cultivating a strong, people-centered firm culture. This summary captures the group’s insights and actionable recommendations, offering a roadmap for family law firms looking to thrive in a competitive and tech-driven future.
Focus on Profitability to Maximize Resources
Profitability is an important measure of success for any law firm because it helps determine how efficiently the firm utilizes resources and how much value it delivers to clients. Measuring law firm profitability requires analyzing the underlying factors that influence profitability’s core components — revenue and expenses — which helps you identify opportunities to maximize profits and make data-driven decisions.
Actions to Take
Enhance Collection Processes: Create or strengthen a collections team to handle outstanding payments, minimizing the need for attorneys to follow up with clients. Use tools to automate alerts for retainer replenishments and overdue accounts.
Implement Clear Payment Policies: Develop a standardized approach that informs clients upfront about retainer requirements and account replenishments.
Introduce KPIs: What gets measured gets done, so establish collection goals (e.g., 90%+ collection rate) to improve financial predictability and accountability.
Leverage Technology: Consider software that offers automated time capture and billing to reduce lost hours. Tools such as Laurel AI or Centerbase’s Automatic Time Capture can help track all billable activities.
Use AI for Good in Family Law Practice
The usage of AI is changing the way attorneys and law firms operate for good. But rather than fearing AI, the mindful adoption of AI offers tremendous promise to enhance the way legal professionals work, reducing tedium in the practice of law while freeing up valuable time for thinking strategically, identifying creative solutions, and engaging thoughtfully with clients. Embracing AI thoughtfully is an act of helping your firm operate in a modern legal landscape.
Actions to Take
Explore Recruiting AI: Use AI-driven tools to scrape platforms like LinkedIn, identifying and compiling lists of qualified candidates without relying on costly recruiting agencies.
Automate Document Review: Use AI tools like Paxton.ai and Co-Counsel to handle initial drafts of discovery summaries, deposition reviews, and document comparisons.
Improve Written Communication: Grammarly and WordRake are tools that can improve clarity and professionalism in client communications.
Make AI Your Thought Partner: Utilize ChatGPT for brainstorming, drafting, and researching by posing prompts such as, “Suggest 5 innovative growth strategies for a family law firm.”
Integrate Time Capture AI: Investigate AI solutions to improve billing accuracy by capturing all activity data throughout the day. This helps avoid revenue loss from unbilled hours.
Foster a Culture that Values Your Firm’s People
Your people are your number one asset. Prioritize onboarding and retention strategies that help you take care of your team and build a strong culture centered on the firm’s values. Implementing these strategies proactively will help safeguard against costly employee turnover and set your firm up for greater success.
Actions to Take
Clarify and Communicate Core Values: Define core values and communicate them regularly across the team.
Onboarding and Training Programs: Build structured onboarding programs for associates, setting clear expectations, goals, and values from day one. Consider implementing a “University” program, where experienced attorneys mentor newcomers and provide training in core legal and business skills.
Host Regular Team Check-Ins: Hold weekly meetings to discuss progress, address challenges, reinforce cultural values, and provide feedback for associates’ development.
Create a Knowledge Library: Develop a knowledge-sharing system with standardized documents and training videos so team members can access firm-specific procedures and templates.
Encourage Peer Learning and Mentorship: Foster an environment where senior attorneys regularly provide feedback and mentorship, enhancing skills and strengthening relationships within the firm.
Embrace Progress to Build Your Firm’s Future
Family law firms have an opportunity to set new standards in how they serve clients, support their teams, and use technology to streamline their operations. Embracing this future requires a commitment to rethinking traditional approaches to profitability, talent management, and the role of AI. Now is the time to assess your firm’s strengths and identify where these strategies can make a meaningful impact.
Written by Robin Neill
More and more law firms are recognizing how important it is to manage themselves like a business to survive in today’s competitive market. Businesses operate with efficiency, strategic planning, and a keen eye on the bottom line — principles that law firms can adopt to enhance their operational effectiveness. By embracing business management practices such as budgeting, law firms can optimize their resources, streamline processes, and invest in technology to improve their service.
A budget provides a structured roadmap for financial stability, strategic decision-making, and sustainable growth. Creating a law firm budget requires careful planning, collaboration, and attention to detail. Here are seven steps that can help your law firm create an effective budget.
1. Start the budget planning process early
Budgeting shouldn’t be a last-minute task. Law firms should initiate the budgeting process well in advance, ideally in the third quarter. Starting early ensures firms have ample time to assess their current financial standing, analyze past spending patterns, and anticipate future costs.
2. Analyze past performance to project future expenses
A fundamental step in budgeting is examining the firm’s profit and loss (P&L) statement from previous years. By comparing actual expenditures with previous years’ data, law firms can identify trends and patterns.
Areas to focus on include salaries and rent, which tend to be the largest expenses in a law firm budget. Don’t forget to consider inflation.
3. Set clear goals
Setting clear, measurable, and realistic goals is fundamental to the budgeting process — and those goals must align with the firm’s overall strategic objectives. Whether the aim is to sustain current levels of success or to expand to new locations or practices, having a well-defined vision guides the budgeting process effectively.
For instance, a law firm planning to increase its partner count from 10 to 20 in the next year needs to account for higher advertising costs, additional attorney salaries, and potential increases in professional dues and liability insurance.
4. Involve the right stakeholders
Successful budgeting necessitates collaboration between key stakeholders. This includes financial experts, managing partners, human resources professionals, and accountants. Each participant brings a unique perspective to the table, ensuring that the budget addresses all aspects of the firm’s operations.
Regular consultations and brainstorming sessions with these stakeholders can provide invaluable insights and foster a culture of financial transparency within the firm.
5. Consider unforeseen expenses
While analyzing the P&L statement, law firms often overlook certain unexpected costs. Items such as professional liability insurance, litigation expenses, or regulatory compliance costs can fluctuate, impacting the budget unexpectedly. By accounting for these variables and having a contingency fund, firms can avoid financial strain when unforeseen expenses arise.
6. Focus on employee well-being and benefits
Recognizing that employees are a firm’s most valuable asset, law firms should offer a competitive salary and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, and professional development opportunities. A comprehensive benefits package can attract top talent and ensure staff retention and satisfaction. Additionally, employee well-being initiatives such as mental health support programs or flexible work arrangements can enhance productivity and foster a positive work environment.
Law firms must factor in the costs of these employee benefits while budgeting. Firms should also take into account salary increases, such as cost-of-living adjustments, to stay competitive in the market.
7. Leverage legal software and other analytical tools
Law firms should invest in advanced legal software with accounting features to track expenditures efficiently. These legal technology tools provide detailed reports on profitability based on various parameters, such as attorney performance, case type, and office location. Implementing artificial intelligence-driven tools can deliver insights into future financial trends and assist firms in making proactive budgeting decisions.
Budget now and your law firm will reap the rewards later
Transforming a law firm into a business entity demands a proactive approach to budgeting. Law firms can use budgets to position themselves for sustainable growth, client satisfaction, and long-term success.
Centerbase has a robust suite of tools designed to optimize law firm financial performance. Get in touch for a free demo of our tools and learn how our software can improve your law firm’s profitability.
Executive directors and legal administrators play a crucial role in the smooth operations of a law firm. They wear many hats, ensuring organization, facilitating communication, balancing accounts, and scheduling dockets, among many other things. They’re the drivers behind the business of law making sure that nothing slips through the cracks.
But all of these responsibilities require a specific kind of person and can add up to a highly stressful job. Fortunately, legal technology makes it easier than ever to support legal administrative staff so they are able to focus on higher-level work and do so with and less unneeded stress.
In this article, we’ll discuss how to attract and retain law firm administrative staff, including how technology can help you deliver the support that administrative personnel need.
Why is it hard to recruit new talent to administrative roles in law firms?
A 2022 Report on the State of the Legal Market from the Thomson Reuters Institute and the Georgetown Law Center noted “serious retention challenges with respect to professional staff other than lawyers.” In a tight talent market, “many [administrators] feel empowered to shop around to improve their compensation and working conditions. Law firms may have to confront something they haven’t seen in the legal industry in quite a while: leverage owned by those who are not attorneys.”
In today’s environment, legal administrative professionals know they have earned better work conditions. They want to feel valued in terms of compensation and recognition and want to have a better work/life balance. It’s clear that law firms need to act now to ensure that they can both hire and retain top administrative talent.
What can I do to attract and keep new top administrative talent?
To attract and keep legal administrative talent, your law firm needs to take a strategic approach. Here are a few ways that your firm can get started.
Offer competitive compensation and benefits
Money talks: it’s an obvious reason that people choose a job and stick with it. People want to be paid what they are worth and receive compensation consistent with the value that they bring. By offering compensation and benefits packages that align with what’s being offered in the legal market, you’ll show new talent that your firm values their role and prevent them from looking to jump ship to your competitors.
However, it takes more than just compensation to make a staff job at a law firm fulfilling.
Build a law firm culture that appreciates the value of administrative staff
Over the years, some law firms have maintained a de facto caste system that separates lawyers from nonlawyer staff. The very word “nonlawyer” is part of the problem, minimizing the importance of the work that law firm staff do. This type of firm culture sometimes also leads to heavy investment in tools, technology, and benefits to support lawyers but less investment for staff. This approach hurts the efficiency of the entire firm.
To ensure you build a culture that supports legal staff, emphasize the strategic importance of administrative work and highlight the varied responsibilities that administrative personnel have and how they help your law firm function and grow. We also recommend outlining clear career progression paths for administrative professionals in your organization. For example, a firm can offer opportunities for continuous learning and development, such as training programs, workshops, and certifications. Also consider how you can implement technology designed to support them working more efficiently, such as tech platforms that enable them to streamline calendaring, simplify document management, improve billing practices, and handle other strategic tasks.
Find ways to improve work/life balance
Work/life balance is important across the board and it plays a crucial role in attracting and retaining top talent, including legal administrative staff. Administrative staff typically face demanding workloads, tight deadlines, and high-pressure situations along with attorneys and both sides appreciate benefits such as paid time off and flexible work arrangements.
Hybrid work arrangements are an important perk for today’s admins, and enabling staff to work from home requires the right legal technology. Cloud-based legal software allows administrative personnel to work from anywhere. The right matter management platform will put all of the essential information about a matter or client at your staff’s fingertips, keeping all related records such as texts, bills, and documents corralled in one place. A cloud-based client portal avoids back-and-forth, time-consuming emails and reduces the repetitive work on your admins’ plate by giving clients direct access to the answers they need. Leading cloud-based document management platforms preserve client confidentiality and protect sensitive matter details, eliminating the risks of sending confidential documents in unencrypted emails.
Simplify tedious work
But improving the work life for your team goes beyond access. A critical part of making work more fulfilling requires firms to give staff the tools that simplify their work.
Automating tedious, repetitive, manual work like pre-billing and client intake not only makes admins’ work more efficient, but it also means that your team can devote their time to higher-value work that requires a higher skill level. Allowing administrative professionals to focus on more strategic tasks creates a more satisfying work environment. You can also improve their workday with tools that foster communication and streamline project management. This technology reduces administrative bottlenecks, enhances efficiency, and fosters collaboration, all of which can help attract and retain legal staff.
Enhance your law firm’s brand
There are lots of reasons to invest in branding, one of which is that legal administrative professionals in the market will Google your law firm’s website and assess its online presence, including not just its job listings but also its culture. A well-designed, informative website enhances your firm’s credibility and professionalism, which can attract high-quality administrative staff seeking career opportunities with reputable, forward-thinking organizations.
We recommend a professional yet friendly website that includes staff and administrator bios. This will emphasize to candidates that administrative professionals are a valued part of your firm’s legal team. You can also share testimonials from staff and offer a glimpse into what it’s like to work for your law firm, so candidates can determine whether they’re a good fit.
Use legal technology to attract legal administrative professionals now
In today’s competitive job market, your law firm needs to do more than offer a competitive salary and standard benefits. You also need to invest the overall importance of your administrative staff, including in legal technology, showing them that you value them and their work enough to help them do it more efficiently and with fewer headaches.
Attracting and retaining top legal talent is critical in today’s competitive market. A team of top attorneys gives your firm a competitive edge and ensures your firm will continue to impress clients with quality legal work.
In this article, we’ll cover four ways to attract (and retain) top legal talent, with an emphasis on how legal technology can help you do both.
What are the expectations of today's top talent?
With recent layoffs at large law firms and the incoming classes of law school graduates, there are great opportunities for smaller and midsize firms — if they can compete effectively in the job market.
Today’s top legal talent has high expectations: competitive pay, opportunities for professional development, a meaningful work/life balance, and leveraging advanced legal technology. While meeting these expectations may seem challenging, it’s essential for law firms that want to attract and retain the best lawyers and staff.
Let’s get into some specifics.
1. Competitive pay and benefits
Top legal talent expects to be paid what they are worth. Offering a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package is crucial to attracting new lawyers and staff. A higher starting salary and market benefits (e.g., health, dental, and vision) will translate directly into more applications for open positions and higher retention rates.
Of course, if you get into a salary tug-of-war with your competition, you’ll eventually run out of cash. Increases are only sustainable to a point. That’s why your firm should focus on the totality of what it has to offer, including training, work/life balance, and technology that makes the job easier.
2. Professional development opportunities
Top legal talent typically wants opportunities for professional growth and development so they can stay ahead of the curve. As a law firm, it’s important to offer these opportunities at all levels of practice.
For both lawyers and staff, constructive feedback and positive encouragement are important. By providing personalized feedback and having one-on-one meetings and not just waiting for end-of-year performance reviews, your attorneys and staff members will feel supported in their learning and will believe that there’s a path forward for them in the firm.
More formal learning opportunities are also essential for attracting and retaining skilled attorneys. Incorporate opportunities for continuing legal education (CLE) sessions and conferences in your learning and development budget. Investing more in learning and offering growth opportunities means your lawyers will be prepared to deliver better work to your clients — and more satisfied clients mean more income for your firm.
3. Work/life balance and flexible work arrangements
By offering flexible work arrangements — like remote or hybrid work or adjusted work hours — you’ll provide lawyers with the tools to manage their personal responsibilities. This includes flexible arrangements for new parents or employees who might need to work remotely to care for an aging family member. By providing flexibility, your firm will emphasize its commitment to supporting its attorneys and staff, and in doing so will attract the best of the best.
Legal technology can be employed to make it easier for attorneys to get their work done anytime, anywhere. Cloud-based legal software that enables secure remote access of case files, documents, and other client materials means lawyers can work from home or on the road more easily. Leading legal software platforms can enable lawyers to communicate and collaborate seamlessly with team members and clients through document sharing, messaging, and videoconferencing.
4. Advanced legal software
Advanced legal technology isn’t only important for offering flexible work arrangements — it’s also an expectation for incoming top talent. Good legal tech makes life easier for attorneys by streamlining work processes and increasing efficiency. It allows lawyers to work smarter by calendaring deadlines, prioritizing billable tasks, and ridding themselves of mundane or repetitive tasks through automation. Time capture tools make it easier than ever to keep valuable billable minutes from falling through the cracks.
The bottom line on legal recruitment and retention: Money talks, but so does legal technology
While lawyers may be wooed by an attractive compensation package, they won’t stay if they don’t like working for your firm. An important part of your firm’s culture rests on how well you enable your lawyers and staff to work. That requires an investment in the latest legal technology.
This means tools to help with everything from case management to removing the tedium of timekeeping and billing (maybe the most frustrating of all law firm tasks).
And tech that enables internal collaboration, helping teams build a collective knowledge base that everyone can access and improving work quality, avoiding duplicative efforts, and accelerating results. For instance, a fully integrated matter management system will help keep everyone on a team up to date on matter status and highlight roadblocks where someone may be able to offer their expertise. Teams can also collaborate in real-time and track matter status, allowing for greater flexibility while also building a sense of community.
Everything is connected this way: better tech leads to less tedium, allowing lawyers to get their billable work done more quickly, which gives them more time to focus on their personal lives and find their own preferred work/life balance.
Of course, one of the best ways to convey to talent that you are the right choice for them to excel in their legal careers is to have an up to date and professional website. today’s talent expects a robust digital presence, and the first place they go to research employers is online.
Your firm’s webpage should highlight your firm’s culture and include statements or videos on your website with partners, associates, and staff explaining the benefits of working for your firm.
Junior and senior lawyers alike expect access to advanced tools that make work easier, enabling them to deliver exceptional client service and improving their work/life balance in the process. Law firms that invest in legal technology platforms can attract better talent and position themselves as industry leaders.
For many law firms, the “client experience” is simply about results: if lawyers win a case or close a deal, they consider that a positive experience. Resolving a problem is offering good client service. There’s more to creating a great experience.
Meeting basic client expectations for good service won’t be enough to stand out to new clients among your competitors. Instead, law firms need to find new ways to deliver a holistic client experience — spanning from first contact through the final bill — that will help you be distinctive from other firms, keep existing clients, and help your law firm weather a market downturn.
What does an exceptional client experience look like that will help you reach new prospective clients during an economic slowdown? Let’s take a look.
Make a great first impression on clients with a fast, efficient client intake process
The client intake process is likely your firm’s first substantive communication with a new client. And it’s a reputation-altering opportunity.
Your client intake process should be quick and painless. An automated process can collect all the information you need and populate it into other forms and systems so there’s less lag time while your staff manually enters client information. It can also schedule appointments and route people to the right contact so there is less friction for prospective clients. Advanced intake technology can also sift through leads to determine which are worthy of pursuit so you can prioritize them before they look elsewhere for help.
The right system will also allow your team to complete a thorough conflicts check quickly. It should also capture your clients’ concerns so you can understand their goals and tailor your services to meet their needs. Whatever system you use, collect information about how clients find out about your services so you can focus your marketing dollars on those channels.
A smooth intake process is the first way that you can showcase to clients that you’re able to meet their expectations. The longer and more painful your intake process, the more likely clients are to choose a different law firm.
Engage in regular client communication
Communication is the foundation of a positive client experience. No one likes to be left in the dark, wondering about the status of their case. And no matter how busy you are, clients don’t like to hear that their call or email went unanswered because you were working on a different client’s matter.
Clients expect regular communication, and they expect that communication to be thoughtful. (This means that your lawyers and staff should communicate with clients in plain language instead of legal jargon and offer clear explanations of what your clients can expect.) Whenever there’s a development in your client’s case, you should let them know about it in a timely fashion. And if your client emails or calls with a question, you should quickly acknowledge their concern, even if you don’t have an immediate answer. Responsiveness can avoid conflicts and misunderstandings and strengthen the client relationship. You should also touch base regularly with your clients even if you don’t have any significant news to report, so they know that their case is still on your radar.
But all of this communication can become tedious in a lawyer’s busy day. Back-and-forth status emails and calls take a lot of time away from pressing legal work. Fortunately, there’s an easier way to keep clients apprised of their case status.
A secure, cloud-based client portal makes it easier than ever to stay in touch with clients. An online portal allows clients to access the information they need at their convenience, whether it’s a deadline, a document, or a bill. For example, an online portal allows clients to log in to view their current billing status and share and view documents. Some portals also offer a chat function that delivers automatic text notifications when new messages or other updates arrive, improving lawyers’ responsiveness and raising client satisfaction because they won’t have to play phone tag or go back and forth over email.
Ensure your billing processes are predictable and transparent
Transparency builds trust and strengthens the client relationship, which is essential when creating a client-centered practice. To deliver a good client experience with regard to billing, you need to explain your firm’s rates up front. You should also set a budget that includes all anticipated fees so your client fully understands their potential financial outlay.
Many clients also prefer to understand their billing status before they receive a surprise in the mail. An online billing portal keeps clients updated so there aren’t any unexpected expenses that can damage your relationship with clients.
You can also improve the client experience by offering a variety of payment options. Many clients enjoy the flexibility of making online payments through credit cards, eChecks, and digital transfer services like ACH. An online portal makes it easy to take these payments while expediting the firm’s receipt of funds — you won’t have to wait months for a check or hound clients for overdue payments.
Embrace legal technology now to improve your firm’s performance in a recession
Your law firm should set a perpetual goal of improving your clients’ experience — regardless of how the market is performing. And one of the easiest ways to increase your clients’ satisfaction is by adding client-centric legal technology.
When the market is tight, law firms may initially question the expense of adding new tools. However, tech tools should be delivering savings in the short and long term. They can reduce manual work, improving employee satisfaction and reducing turnover. They can streamline the intake process so prospects don’t have to wait as long for an initial lawyer contact. And they can ensure clients are always kept up to date about the status of their matters and bills.
Legal technology tools make it easy for clients to work with your law firm — and to share their positive client experience with others.
Paid online advertising can be an important part of a law firm’s digital marketing strategy, and it yields results in both the short and long run. If you want to optimize your online reach in 2023, your law firm should be looking at its online presence through both organic and paid search results.
Throughout the year as a part of our larger blog series, we’ll be covering digital marketing and how your law firm can build its 2023 digital marketing strategy. In this article, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of paid online advertising like PPC and PPL and how your law firm can benefit from incorporating these digital marketing tactics into your strategic plan.
What are the main types of paid digital advertising used by law firms?
The three major types of paid digital advertising that law firms use are pay per click (PPC), pay per lead (PPL), and Google Local Services ads. We’ll cover all three in this article, with an emphasis on PPC and PPL.
What is PPC?
With pay per click (PPC) advertising, your law firm pays for the number of “clicks” it receives from online users. For example, your law firm’s ad is featured on a given platform (e.g., websites, social media, or search engines), an online user clicks on the ad, and your law firm is billed for that click. Google Ads is the most popular system for placing PPC ads, as it enables your business to create ads that appear directly on Google based on a user’s search.
This seems like a straightforward process, but optimization (and getting the biggest ROI) requires strategic thinking and regular re-evaluation. As with all other digital marketing campaigns, you’ll want to begin by getting a feel for your target audience. Think about who they are, how old they are, where they live, and why they might be seeking legal advice. Focusing on your target market is important for creating the keywords that will be used in connection with your PPC ad.
What is PPL?
With pay per lead (PPL) advertising, the amount that your law firm will pay depends on the number of leads generated by a third party. As a reminder, a lead is a person or business that has shown interest in using the legal services that your law firm offers. Typically, your law firm will be able to define what constitutes a lead and thus only pay when those requirements are met. An example of a PPL arrangement is one where a firm pays by the number of leads who provide their contact information or who apply for a free consultation.
Google’s Local Services Ads
With Google Local Services ads, your law firm can connect directly with people who search on Google for services in their area that your firm offers. It works like this: your firm’s advertisement will show up for customers in your geographic area who search for legal services related to your firm. Similar to standard PPL, your law firm will only pay if the lead calls or messages directly through the advertisement.
When it comes to PPC and PPL, which one is better?
The right answer depends on your law firm’s goals. Both PPC and PPL advertising offer your law firm the chance to increase visibility and build a strong reputation.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to choose between the two; you can opt to implement both PPC and PPL if your law firm’s budget allows. In making your decision, check out this chart, which highlights some key differences between these paid forms of online advertising.
PPC
PPL
Time and effort
With PPC, you have more control over branding, over which type of clients are acquired, and over what messages your law firm sends. However, this process is time-consuming and requires learned skills, as you’ll need to monitor your performance and tweak your strategy to optimize your results.
With PPL, your law firm can rely on the skills of a third-party provider without having to implement strategies or conduct the keyword research yourself. If your law firm or marketing team is smaller, this can take a significant amount of workload off your plate.
Cost
The costs of PPC strategies are less predictable than PPL. Law-related keywords have some of the highest costs per click out there: some have even reached $500+ per click. It might be difficult to find keywords that match your budget and your ambitions.
Because your law firm pays a specific amount for each lead acquired, you’ll be able to calculate your costs upfront, so you’ll be better able to predict your budget.
Quality
PPC is known for its quick results via increased web traffic. By routing visitors who click on your ad to your law firm’s website, you’re creating increased visibility. This is great for your law firm, but it doesn’t guarantee that the click will turn into a lead or paying client right away. However, with PPC, you can retarget these people by showing them your ad again and encouraging them to get in touch when they need your services and are ready to move forward.
PPL can lead to higher-quality leads. The leads acquired from PPL have already expressed interest in legal services. That means your firm should have an easier time converting them into paying clients. However, some PPL providers send the same leads to multiple firms, leaving your firm to duke it out and nurture the attorney-client relationship.
In sum, the major difference is that with PPL, a third-party platform captures leads that are far along the journey of buying legal services. PPL services are doing their own marketing to attract those leads. PPC directly links to your law firm’s website through keywords in a search engine. A PPL arrangement is a great option for small law firms or solo practitioners who want their law practice to grow but don’t yet have the capacity for dozens of new clients.
If your firm has the time and capacity to focus on lead generation, starting with PPC is likely the right route. If your firm just wants to follow up on leads and see how they play out, then PPL is probably more your speed.
How does paid online advertising help my law firm?
Paid online advertising takes some of the guessing out of the new-client pipeline. By advertising online through any of the methods mentioned in this article, your law firm will get its name out there and start building a reputation in the community.
If your law firm is looking for results, paid search campaigns are an important digital marketing tool to consider. They offer tried-and-true ROI in the short and long term. Both PPC and PPL are useful tactics to obtain new clients while simultaneously growing your digital presence and brand.
As a law firm, building authority and a positive online reputation in the community are essential to strengthening your overall brand. Your digital marketing efforts should support just that — the overall position of your firm and its reputation.
Plus, it’s all related. By emphasizing thought leadership and trust through digital marketing, your firm builds a reputation, and clients seek you out based on that reputation.
Understanding growth marketing vs. demand generation is important as you think through your strategy. Growth marketing focuses on the entire customer journey from awareness to acquisition and from retention to commongrowth marketing tactics include search engine optimization efforts and email marketing campaigns.
Demand generation zeroes in on building awareness and interest in what your law firm has to offer in order to drive leads. Common demand generation marketing tactics focus on one element of your client’s journey, such as increasing online traffic or using call-to-action buttons to convert a web visitor to a lead.
The best law firmdigital marketing plan uses a combination of growth marketing and demand generation strategies. The key is knowing which channel will work best for your law firm by looking at your firm’s key performance metrics and measuring changes in your online position over time.
Below, we’ll get into the details on four of the digital marketing channels from search engine optimization and social media marketing campaigns to email marketing and paid ads.that can help your law firm make the biggest online impact— for the best return on your investment.
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO drives traffic to your law firm’s website by increasing its visibility in search engine non-paid results. Here’s how it works: Google search engine results rank the responses to a user’s search based on multiple factors, including the content of webpages. The more relevant your content is to the search terms entered by the online searcher, the more likely that your content and your firm’s website will appear at the top of a results page.
SEO is also measured by the quality of your law firm’s webpage. That means navigation and readability matter.
Lastly, local SEO can be another important aspect of your legal website’s overall SEO. Your law firm can optimize its geographic reach through local SEO, helping to establish your firm as the go-to in your community.
As with your overall digital content strategy, your law firm’s social media posts should be helpful, legally sound, visually appealing, and link directly to your firm’s website to capture any leads. We recommend getting started with Facebook, a Google Business Profile, and LinkedIn.
3.Content and Email marketing
Engage current and prospective clients with thoughtful and helpful content and information. You can offer a free weekly or monthly newsletter, or access to your law firm’s blog. You can collect email addresses and stay in contact with current clients (and keep them updated on how helpful your law firm is).
Entice website visitors with lead magnets such as free guidebooks, white papers, or webinars that visitors can download directly from your law firm’s website once they’ve provided their contact information .
Once your law firm has a solid email list, you can plan effective email marketing. The emails sent out through this list should be targeted and positive, showcasing your firm’s expertise and how your attorneys make life easier for their clients.
4.Paid marketing campaigns
If you are looking for the fastest, most direct results, paid search campaigns are another digital marketing tool to consider. The three main types of digital ads are pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, and Google’s Local Services ads.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
With PPC advertising, your law firm only pays for the number of “clicks” it receives from online users. For example, your firm’s ad is featured on a given platform (a website, social media, or a search engine), an online user clicks on the ad, and then your law firm pays for that click. It seems like a simple process, but optimization requires strategic thinking and regular re-evaluation.
As with SEO, research is important here. Your law firm will need to conduct research on keywords, organize those keywords into logical groupings, and then link to the correct landing page of your website to hook the lead as quickly as possible. PPC is a great tool to boost your law firm’s online performance at a relatively low cost.
Pay-per-lead (PPL) advertising
With PPL advertising, the amount that your law firm will pay for an advertisement depends on the number of leads acquired. Typically, your law firm will be able to define what constitutes a lead and pay only when those requirements are met.
An example of a PPL arrangement is one where a firm pays by the number of leads who provide their contact information. A PPL campaign is a great option for small law firms or solo practitioners who want their law practice to grow but don’t yet have the capacity for dozens of new clients.
Google’s Local Services ads
With Google Local Services ads, your law firm can connect with people who search on Google for services that your firm offers. It works like this: your firm’s advertisement will show up for customers in your geographic area who search for legal services related to your firm. Similar to standard PPL, your law firm will only pay if the lead calls or messages directly through the advertisement. These Google ads are relatively new and require multistep verification.
Start building your law firm’sonline presence now to reap the rewards throughout the year
The key to meeting your law firm’s business development goals this year is to build your firm’s digital presence so you can start reaching a broader audience of prospective clients. By investing in these four foundational digital marketing channels, you’ll open up new avenues to reach new prospects, build your reputation, attract more traffic to your law firm’s website, and begin building a more robust client pipeline.
Digital marketing isn’t just the future — it’s the now. To compete in the legal space your firm should be thinking about a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. With competition growing more each year, digital marketing isn’t something you should put off to the future — it’s what you need to be doing now.
Plus, the start of the new year is a perfect time to begin elevating your firm’s brand and position in your market. A good digital marketing plan helps your firm continue to sustain itself and also drive growth for the future. Your law firm’s bottom line will thank you.
In this article and throughout the year as a part of our larger blog series, we’ll cover how to measure and understand why digital marketing is worth the investment and share best practices for building your law firm’s digital marketing plan.
What is digital marketing ROI?
When your law firm puts money into an investment (like a digital marketing plan), measuring its ROI (Return On Investment) as a performance metric helps your firm understand it’s the value you are getting from that investment. It’s the way of knowing whether your firm is making money by spending money.
A “good” digital marketing ROI will depend on your firm’s goals and current circumstances. If you’re just getting started with a digital marketing plan, you can expect modest returns that should continue to improve the longer your plan is in place. As a rule of thumb, we recommend aiming for an average ROI of 5:1, meaning that your law firm makes five dollars for every dollar it spends on its digital marketing strategy. A ratio higher than 5:1 is excellent. A ratio below 2:1 means that your firm is getting returns that make sense for you to continue to invest and it’s time to rethink your strategy.
Monitoring your law firm’s digital marketing ROI is like using a flashlight. Without it, you’re fumbling around in the dark. But with it, you know what’s working and what needs tweaking. You want to ensure that you allocate your law firm’s marketing budget effectively, efficiently, and wisely.
How can I measure my digital marketing ROI?
To measure your law firm’s digital marketing ROI, you’ll need to know how much money your firm spends on a marketing campaign and how much revenue or value has been gained from it. A popular tool used in connection with calculating marketing ROI is Google Analytics.
It’s important to look at your results both individually and collectively to clearly see what’s working and what isn’t. So, evaluate individual campaigns such as a one-time marketing blast on social media, along with your entire social media marketing budget to ensure that you’re optimizing every opportunity.
A basic marketing ROI formula looks like this:
Digital marketing ROI = (Marketing revenue – Marketing costs) / Marketing cost
Let’s make this a bit more concrete! Say your law firm spent $1,000 on a social media campaign in August and you tracked $5,000 in revenue from that campaign in the same month. Using the above formula, your firm’s ROI would be 4:1. Given what you know from above, this is a good return, but it’s likely that your campaign could be improved.
You should also remember that only attributing direct sales growth from a campaign can be deceiving since clients may have been influenced by the campaign, but ended up coming to your firm through a different avenue. With regular monitoring, the data becomes even more powerful.
What metrics should I use to measure digital marketing ROI?
Monitoring your law firm’s digital marketing ROI is more complex and nuanced than only looking at how much money is brought in from each campaign and comparing that figure to your cost. It’s essential to monitor analytics and performance data. If you don’t, your law firm won’t be able to determine the totality of your marketing efforts successes and opportunities.
To get started, we recommend tracking and measuring the following marketing performance indicators. (Better yet, make them part of your law firm’s regular reporting process.)
Conversion rate
A conversion rate is one of the best indicators of whether your digital strategies are effective. Your conversion rate is the ratio of people who click on an ad (or visit your firm’s website) to people who convert into a lead.
When reviewing your law firm’s campaign conversion rates, remember to look at conversions by channel. This metric will help your firm evaluate which channels are worth investing in and which can be deprioritized, resulting in an improved ROI.
Tracking conversion rates on your law firm’s website is also key. With the right reporting tools, you can track how long a visitor stays on the firm’s website, which pages they view the most, which pages have the highest bounce rates (visitors leaving the site), which visits result from organic searches, and how many visitors turn into leads. This powerful data can help you figure out where your customers are looking, what they are interested in and where they are leaving.
Source of clients
Your law firm should also track data about how newly acquired clients learned about the firm (e.g., from your firm’s website, social media, word of mouth, or referral). Start by simply asking clients how they heard of you or including it in your client questionnaire at the start of the engagement. We recommend reviewing this data bimonthly and adjusting your digital marketing plan as needed. For the highest ROI, focus on those sources that feed your firm’s bottom line.
Cost per lead and lead close rate
Getting leads is important for the longevity of your firm. For optimization, it’s also important to figure out just how much your law firm is paying for each new lead. To calculate this metric, divide the total campaign spend by the total number of leads attributed to that campaign.
Also make sure you are looking at your lead close rate, which is how many leads generated are converting into new clients. If you find that you’re generating many leads, but those leads aren’t turning into clients and revenue, it’s time to make a change. Also keep an eye on your lead close rate, which is how many leads generated are converting into new clients.
Cost per acquisition
Your law firm’s cost per acquisition will tell you how much it costs, on average, to acquire a new client. To calculate this metric, divide total marketing spend by the number of sales generated.
This figure is key to understanding your digital marketing ROI because it gives your law firm the big picture of your law firm’s spending. As with the other metrics discussed in this article, if your firm is spending more to acquire a client than the client brings to the firm, it’s time to adjust.
If your goal for your law firm’s website is to increase traffic and attract new clients, you’ll want it to rank highly in search engine results. However, getting it to do so is often easier said than done. One of the best ways to improve your law firm website’s SEO performance is by publishing high-quality and informative blog content.
In this article, we’ll explain why content is crucial to SEO, go over best practices for writing legal blog content, and give examples of law firms whose blog posts earned huge increases in page views.
Why is Content So Important to SEO?
Search engines like Google want to provide search results that are valuable and relevant to the user. Therefore, when you regularly publish content that is helpful to your audience, your rankings will likely increase, and more people can find your website in their search results.
The phrase “content is king” exists for a reason. In terms of SEO, high-quality content is the number one factor Google uses when ranking search results. It’s important to note that while high-quality content can improve your site’s SEO performance, poor-quality content can do the opposite.
What does it mean for content to be “high quality”?
Producing high-quality content is about creating pages that increase user time on a page, lower bounce rate, and provide valuable content to the user. When determining the quality of search results, Google uses a principle known as “E-A-T,” which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Expertise refers to the author’s qualifications and credentials. If you are an attorney writing about an area in which you practice, your blog post will likely be deemed more credible by Google’s search quality raters.
Authoritativeness refers to the overall industry reputation of the author and their website. When assessing your authority, Google search quality raters may look for reviews, references, recommendations by other attorneys, news articles, and other credible information you’ve published.
Trustworthiness refers to the legitimacy, transparency, and accuracy of the website and its content. You can strive to prove trustworthiness in your blog posts by citing credible sources and providing factual information to your readers.
The more you incorporate E-A-T into your law firm’s marketing strategy, the better your website’s SEO performance will become.
Tips for Creating SEO-Friendly Blog Content
You could publish a new blog post every day and still not see an improvement in your site’s search engine results page (SERP) ranking, because while consistency is important, search engines like Google value quality of content over quantity. Below are a few pointers on how to create blog content search engines will love.
Use keywords to answer people’s legal questions more effectively.
Your blog posts should cater to your audience’s needs, and that means providing them with the answers they’re searching for in a direct and succinct manner. In contrast to practice area overview pages, blog posts allow you to answer specific legal questions people commonly ask. For example, if your firm focuses on divorce and family law, you could write a blog post that outlines what a person should do if their ex-spouse is failing to make child support payments.
How do you know which questions to answer? A great way to start is by performing a Google search of your targeted practice area's keywords (ex: “drug laws in Tennessee”) and seeing what autocomplete terms show up. Another place to look is the “People also ask” box found on the results page. Once you have an idea of what questions people are asking, you can start writing blog posts that answer them.
Be careful, however, not to oversaturate your post with keywords. This practice, known as “keyword stuffing,” makes content awkward to read and doesn’t provide a good user experience. Search engines know how to look for keyword stuffing and will likely penalize you for it by lowering your search results ranking.
Add alt text to your images.
Alt text is the written copy that appears in place of an image on a webpage if the image fails to load on a user's screen. Not only does alt text allow search engine crawlers to better index and rank your website, but it also makes your content accessible to more users, as it helps screen-reading tools describe images aloud to users who are visually impaired. Alt text should be a short, but descriptive sentence that includes the keywords you’re targeting. For example, “Man and woman seated at desk signing divorce papers.”
Write compelling meta descriptions.
Meta descriptions are found beneath the page titles on a SERP. These one- to two-sentence summaries give users and search engines an idea of what the page’s content is about. Meta descriptions show up in rich snippets, so including them can provide an accurate description of your website to search users.
Link to other pages on your website.
Incorporating internal links in your blog posts encourages users to explore your website in a way that feels natural to them. This tactic tends to keep people on your website longer and reduces bounce rates, which tells search engines like Google that your site is providing users with valuable information. When adding internal links, be sure to choose anchor text that is relevant to the linked page instead of an obvious callout. For example, if you want to include a link to your bankruptcy practice area page on one of your blog posts, link text that says something like, “experienced bankruptcy attorney,” rather than “click here.” That way, both the user and search engines will know what kind of page will open once they click on the linked text.
Regularly update your blog.
If you're looking to boost your law firm’s SEO performance, it’s not enough to publish a handful of blog posts and call it a day. You need to consistently update old posts and add new ones in order to increase your chances of earning a higher SERP ranking. This is because the more frequently you update your website, the more frequently search engines’ site crawlers will index it and re-arrange your site’s ranking.
Examples of Blog Posts That Led to Major SEO Improvements
We’ve discussed how the best legal blog posts establish credibility, improve site visibility, and generate high-quality leads. However, we also understand if, as an attorney, maintaining your law firm’s blog is not necessarily your top priority. Consider delegating the responsibility of your blog to a professional content-generation service so you can focus on running your firm and assisting your clients. Below are two examples of law firms whose outsourced blog posts resulted in serious improvements to their SEO performances.
MC Criminal Law
MC Criminal Law’s blog post titled “What to Expect at a Title IX Hearing” is the top result for a Google search of the term “title ix hearing.” They rank first nationwide, not even in just the firm’s city of Dallas, Texas. There are many reasons why this post performs so well, one being that it gives the reader the exact information they are looking for. The blog post breaks down what happens before, during, and after a Title IX hearing and mentions how an attorney can help. It also weaves industry-related and geographical keywords into the content in a seamless way and does a great job of breaking up content with section headings.
The Heritage Law Group
The Heritage Law Group, a real estate law firm in San Jose, California, had a blog post on easement disputes perform so well, the firm had it taken down because it was generating too many leads for them to keep up with. The firm’s website also contains valuable real estate law information that likely contributed to its blog post’s successful SEO performance.
Start Using Your Law Firm’s Blog as a Powerful SEO Tool
Don’t make the mistake of overlooking your blog’s potential. Use it to create SEO-friendly content that improves your website’s SERP ranking, stands out among your competitors, and earns you more leads. The sooner you start publishing high-quality blog posts, the sooner your firm can be discovered by more potential clients.
