Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 200: Want to Recession-Proof Your Law Practice? Start Here.

Transcript

200: Want to Recession-Proof Your Law Practice? Start Here. · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

0:00
Davina: Where there's a huge need, there's a huge opportunity. What opportunities are you missing to grow your law firm business because you're too focused on the noise around you instead of focusing on filling a need in the community and in the marketplace? What percentage of the population in your community needs you as their lawyer, need your education, your gifts, your talents to help them overcome their legal issues? It's gonna be way more than you're probably even considering right now.
0:29
Intro: Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers? Ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more. Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love.
1:00
Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from six to seven figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams. Now here's Devina.
1:20
Davina: Hi. This is Devina. And before we jump into today's show, I'd like first to introduce you to some of our sponsors. Over the last four years, Noble Marketing has tracked more than two fifty law firms and discovered 60 to 80% of new client calls were generated through Google my business and Google ads. Basically, you need to be on Google, noble marketing can help.
1:45
I recommend them because they have an incredible guarantee. Your campaign will be profitable in three months or less, or they'll work for free up to an additional three months. If they fail after a total of six months, they'll refund your entire investment, including ad spend. If you could use more qualified leads, I encourage you to reach out to ronnie dievernoblemarketing dot co. Mention you heard about them here on the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast and Noble Marketing will waive your setup fee instantly saving you $2,500 or more.
2:19
When prospective clients are looking for an attorney, they usually turn to Google first. Optimize My Firm helps law firms grow their practices and attract more right fit clients through on page and back end search engine optimization. Optimize My Firm can help your firm rank higher on Google so that clients can find you before they find your competition. They serve personal injury, family law, workers' comp, immigration, and other types of law firms. Optimize My Firm does seo the right way, delivering meaningful results with geographic exclusivity and no contracts.
2:56
Contact them today at optimizemyfirm.com or click the link in the show notes.
3:02
Davina: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Devina Frederick, and this is our two hundredth episode of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. So we are celebrating, and I wanna thank all of you, my loyal listeners and subscribers, because without your support over the last four years, we would not have been able to reach as many women law firm owners as we have and help all of you grow your law firm businesses. So to date, we have about 70,000 total downloads with a growing average of about 4,000 downloads a week, which is much more than we ever dreamt when we started this out. So on behalf of me and my team, I thank you.
3:39
Also, I'm recording this at the May, and we're publishing it on June 8. So if you're listening to this, it's either June 8 or after. But during this time that I'm recording this, everyone in The US has been watching politicians debate over whether to raise the debt ceiling. People have been really afraid that their Social Security checks won't come on time or at all. Federal employees are wondering if they'll get a paycheck.
4:06
Anyone who's invested their retirement in the stock market is freaking out about a possible market crash and congress misses this deadline. Also, for the past year or so, the Fed has been raising interest rates, and everyone is wondering if we're headed for a recession. Some people believe we are already there. Economists are predicting a recession of six to eight months. Home prices have skyrocketed, and residential real estate inventory is tight.
4:32
So people are kind of staying put where they are. And if they're buying homes, they're bidding for them because of the low inventory. No one can afford to buy a car, but at least gas prices are low. So at lower this time than they were last year. So we have that going for us.
4:47
These are just a few of the economic highlights at the time of this recording, which is why I thought it'd an apt topic for today to discuss recession proofing your law practice. Because I don't know about you, but regardless of the economic circumstances, I still have planes to catch and bills to pay as Jimmy Buffett would say. I assume you do too. So let's dive into today's topic. First, your mindset really, really matters and not in an abstract way.
5:15
I know a lot of people think that's kind of woo woo to talk about mindset, but truly what we focus on, we create, we bring into being, we give more energy to. So let's start this conversation with a shift in perspective. I want you to know that there are 1,300,000 lawyers in The US. That's about one lawyer for every 300 people. But if you take government lawyers out and lawyers who work for big corporations, you'll realize that number is probably way off.
5:46
It's probably more like one small practice lawyer for every thousand people, let's say. But here's where it gets really interesting. This is a recent survey from the ABA. Only 38% of all lawyers, including those who work for government and big law, mind you, are women, only 38. Only 5.8% of all lawyers are Hispanic.
6:08
Only 4.5% of all lawyers are black. Only 5.5% of all lawyers are Asian. And only point 5% of all lawyers are indigenous people. My point is there is a huge need in The US for you, for your small law firm and the services your law firm provides. People want and need representation by people who look and sound like them, people who can relate to their lived experience.
6:33
That's you. There are also people who need representation to broaden their horizons and their world by being represented by people who don't look like them. That's still you. Where there is a huge need, there is a huge opportunity. So let that sink in for a minute.
6:48
Where there's a huge need, there's a huge opportunity. What opportunities are you missing to grow your law firm business because you're too focused on the noise around you instead of focusing on filling a need in the community and in the marketplace? What percentage of the population in your community needs you as their lawyer, need your education, your gifts, your talents to help them overcome their legal issues? It's gonna be way more than you're probably even considering right now. And, no, I'm not talking about pro bono or low to bono work.
7:19
Yes. There's a need for that, but also there are a lot of men and women in our society who have paying jobs. They own businesses. They value expertise like the kind you provide. You do not have to grow your business depending on pro bono and low bono work.
7:37
In fact, you cannot grow your business that way. While you may want to do some of that work, you need good paying clients. And there are a lot of people out there who have jobs, who own businesses, who can be your good paying clients. But you have to go out there and let them know that you're there to serve them, which brings me to my second thought about recession proofing your law firm business. The fastest way I found to recession proof any law firm is to get really dialed in on who the people are that you wanna serve and the legal problems they're having that keep them awake at 3AM worrying.
8:13
So if they're waking up at 3AM, and I bet you most people with legal problems are waking up at 3AM with heartburn and anxiety because of their legal problems, You need to get in front of them and share how you can help them solve those problems. Stop trying to serve everybody and anybody, and instead focus on serving the people you want to serve, the people you feel compelled to serve, people who are desperately wanting to work with you and appreciate your help. So let me give you some examples of what I mean about being dialed in and specific on who your clients are. So Jay is a unicorn. I'm using initials here for all of these examples.
8:53
Jay is a unicorn. She is a black woman patent attorney. We know statistically just as a black lawyer, she's already a unicorn, and then she's a black woman and a patent attorney. So that really makes her very unique. There aren't many black women patent attorneys.
9:10
She loves patent work, in particular working with black innovators, inventors, and business owners. Yes. As an IP attorney, she can also do trademarks, but to her, trademarks are kind of a dime a dozen, it seems. So Jay has decided to have someone in her firm who handles the trademark request, but she focuses on showing up and getting visible where her prospective clients hang out often at trade shows and conventions because she wants to do that patent work for them. Not only does she secure thousands of dollars of patent work a year, she also secures multiple thousand dollars as outside general counsel getting monthly retainers from these inventors, innovators, and business owners who may own multiple businesses.
9:53
So she has really assessed her advantages that she brings to the table, and she's gone out there and gotten right in front of those that ideal client to grow her business. Kay is an entertainment and IP attorney, and she's also a black woman. She leveraged her prior career as a producer in the entertainment industry to grow her law firm business. So she knows her ideal clients are musicians, sports figures, other celebrities. And so she regularly attends events where they hang out and joins associations where they join.
10:26
She works hard to grow her business through that entertainment connection using that background. H is a white married divorce lawyer with a preteen and a teenager. She has five lawyers working for her now, so there's six including her. When she started her law firm, she spent a lot of time chatting in Facebook groups with other local moms and other attorney moms. In fact, she started some of her own groups.
10:52
So she not only went where her ideal prospective clients were hanging out, she also created a place for them to hang out. These groups, now years later, are constant referral engines for her and her business, and they are the foundation of her multimillion dollar wealth generating law firm business. Now she's expanded some of her marketing strategies and activities to branch out, but the foundation of it was she knew exactly where to go to get the clients where they were hanging out, and she got in front of them. Now people regularly recommend her because they've known her so long through these groups.
11:31
Davina: In the next ten years, 90% of legal services will be delivered online. Gavel is the software lawyers are using to streamline internal document automation and build online legal products like landlord legal or hello divorce. With Gavel, you can easily build client intake that generates document sets through powerful logic based document automation. Gavel, formerly known as document can be used internally or you can make it client facing. It also integrates with nearly everything.
12:05
Clio even rated Gavel their best integration tool. Visit www.gavel.io and mention the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast for a free fourteen day trial, or just click on the link in the show notes.
12:19
Davina: Each of these women law firm owners got really dialed in on who their ideal client is, and they went directly to where they hang out. As a result, all three have a water tap, basically, a faucet that they can turn on full blast anytime they need or want more clients. You can do the same in your practice area. I know you may be sitting here thinking, oh, it's not the same for my practice area. But I wanna tell you, I have worked with hundreds of women law firm owners in multiple different practice areas, many, many different practice areas.
12:48
And there are advantages that you have. You need to assess those advantages and really get dialed in on who your clients are and where they hang out. So last up for today, I wanna also recommend making it easier for people to work with you. So really taking down that friction that you may have built into your system and not be aware you have built into your system, that would be a turn off for people working with you, your ideal clients who might wanna work with you. So I'm gonna give you another example or two.
13:16
If I'm scrolling Instagram, let's say, and I see an ad for something I wanna buy. I click on the ad. I put the item in my cart, and then I find out that they don't accept PayPal. You can't just click PayPal. So I have to get my lazy ass up and go get my credit card.
13:30
If that is the case, I'm just gone. I'll leave it right there because I'm impulse shopping. Right? I'll leave it right there in the cart and I'll click away. And I won't ever go back.
13:39
The ad will follow me around for a while and eventually I'll hide the ad because I don't wanna see it anymore. Now I'm not suggesting that you take PayPal for your legal services, okay, with this example. That's not what the focus is. What I'm suggesting is that you take a really close look at that automated or the analog funnel that you have set up to attract clients into your business and lead them into working with you. And you see where you are making it difficult for your clients to work with you, to hire you, to pay you.
14:11
Okay? Are you waiting too long to bill them after they've hired you because you hate to put your time in temporaneously? Bill your time. So you're spending days trying to recreate your time before you send out bills. The longer it takes you to send out a bill after you provided a service that the client needed or wanted and was excited to have that result, the less happy they're going to be to pay it.
14:35
Why? Because it is human nature to think, what have you done for me lately? Right? They have already gotten this result that you got them and they're happy about it. And now here you are months later sending them a bill because you don't have your act together.
14:49
And you're creating a situation where people are going to be disgruntled, and now they're not gonna like you as much. They're probably not gonna leave you a review. They're probably not gonna refer you to people because of that situation. Is the person answering your phone unfriendly? I know I've certainly called places for appointments, and if I have somebody who's unfriendly, who sounds annoyed that I've interrupted them, then I'm not going to be likely to hire that business, whatever type of business that is.
15:17
Do you only take checks and not credit cards? I'm surprised in this day and age, but I think what's happening is a lot of people are seeing these merchant fees. So they're saying, oh, I'm gonna take checks now and not credit cards. If you do, you're making it difficult for people to pay you. Are you passing that merchant fee along to your client instead of figuring it into the cost of doing business?
15:38
In other words, if you're getting charged a higher percentage for your merchant fee, raise your fees a little bit. Wrap that in there. But don't say to your client, hey, you're gonna have to pay this merchant fee if you wanna pay me by credit card. That's gonna be a real turn off, and they're gonna go to somebody else. Where are you making them fill out voluminous mounds of paperwork before they've even hired you?
16:01
Are you doing that? Are you making them fill out a really long intake form? I'll give you an example. Oftentimes, I am a guest on podcast, and I do not mind at all filling out a little form to be sign up and pick a date to be a guest on a podcast. But if it is a very lengthy form where they want me to give them, you know, the names of my firstborn and my blood type and all my socials and everything, I'm too busy.
16:30
And I'm going to bounce away from that, and then I'll forget to go back and fill it out. Right? So where are you doing things like that? Where you're making people fill out these long intake forms. You need some sort of intake information to run a conflict check, but are you doing too much?
16:43
Is there a way that after they've hired you, someone can help them with the paperwork to make it easier, faster, lower friction. Right? I could go on. There are a lot of examples of this, but you get the idea. You wanna take a closer look at your systems to see where you may be turning people off who could be some of your repeat clients or your best referrers.
17:04
So if you're making it difficult for them to work with you because they've gotta jump through all your hoops, then you might want to reconsider how you can make something that is easier for you and the client. It's gonna benefit both you and the client. If you like this topic and you wanna go even deeper and get more ideas on how to recession proof your law firm business, then I invite you to check out my brand new training. It's called four strategies I deployed to recession proof my law firm in 2008 that still work today, and the one thing I do differently. In this training, which I'll be presenting live on June 15 at 2PM eastern time, I will share with you four strategies that helped me successfully scale my law firm business during the two thousand eight recession.
17:46
These are the same strategies I would deploy if I were to on a mission to scale my law firm business today. And they are what I teach my clients, and they will work for you if you put them into action. So just click on the link in the show notes to register and plan to join me live on June 15 at 2PM. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. And I do hope you'll join me live on June 15 at 2PM eastern, which incidentally, June 15 is my birthday.
18:14
So I've taken the rest of the day off. This is the only thing that I'm going to be doing that day. Come join me for this training and wear your party hats. I would love it if you wore your party hats and celebrate it with me. Also, if you enjoy the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, please subscribe to our channel.
18:30
It would mean the world to me. Also, if you are an Apple subscriber, as most of you are, about 90% of you are, please leave us a review there. The more five star reviews, the more people that Apple will show our podcast to. It'll expand our reach and also hopefully expand our impacts and our opportunity to help other women law firm owners. So thanks again for listening.
18:52
I'll see you back here next week.
18:55
Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.