Practice Management

I Have No Problem With Lawyer Advertising

By chucknewton

One of my readers asked me if I had a problem with lawyers advertising on TV, in phone books, on the radio and in the papers given my advice to gain clients through networking.

I do not have a problem with advertising.  In fact, in a prior life I operated a consumer bankruptcy law firm that relied on advertising.  At the firm's peak we managed to spend just at $360,000.00 a year in advertising, most of it on TV.

I was one of the lawyers that brought suit against the State Bar of Texas in the Texas Supreme Court and then in the Federal District Court in Tyler, Texas over its restrictions on lawyer advertising, and we mostly won.

Many lawyers believe that lawyer advertising (and more specifically lawyer TV advertising) is unseemly, unethical and somehow gives lawyers a bad image with the public.  But TV advertising is directed at consumers who rely on TV and do not have traditional referral sources. In fact, there use to be an ABA study that showed that of people that chose lawyers based upon TV have generally better perception of lawyers than the rest of the population.  So, I do not understand the argument.

From my position today, however, TV advertising has its restrictions - its obstacles.

First, TV does not work equally with all practice areas.  I could take out all of the TV ads I want asking consumers if they have ever had their bankruptcy stay violated by a creditor, and I think I would be spending much money for little result.  I have watched a good number of lawyers have tried to advertise general practices or business law without much success.

Second, advertising pretty much requires you to develop a widely acceptable practice niche.  General legal ads almost never work.  Ads listing a laundry list of services almost never work.

Third, advertising is very expensive if done correctly.  It is also very unforgiving.  A lot goes into crafting the perfect ad or spot.  It is true that, with the exception of phone books, you can change it fast if it does not work, but that takes monitoring and money and the expensive ad space or time purchased is lost in the process.  I did not, but I have known many lawyers who have failed at advertising.  To succeed advertising takes saturation.  You do not have to go after the entire market.  You can limit your TV spot to one TV station, for example, but you have to saturate your audience to have any real effect.  You have to be there in front of your prospects every day and often.  Advertising has a short tail.  When it ends the boost in business does not last long.  I found when I sought clients from TV that anything less than 8 spots a day concentrated in what they call "day parts" did not work well enough.  Cable was often too fractured to work well, or despite its low cost the enormity of the number of spots you had to buy to break through on multiple stations was costly.  It is not unheard of to spend at least $1,600 per day, every day on one major TV station in a major TV market.

Fourth, advertising does not work well (outside of some advertising cooperative) for a home office environment where you are looking for a few quality clients.  In TV, for example, the way the system is perfected is that you hone a narrow message and present it well.  You buy a lot of spots for an extended period of time in a particular time slot that serves you.  These need to be spots that encourage immediate action.  You then direct the calls to an information line for two reasons.  First, people want more information before they buy and they do NOT want to speak to a live person to get it.  You will inhibit calls if they have to call through to your secretary.  They do not have the certainty that referral clients have.  Second, this allows you to monitor the ads.  You can count the "clicks" or calls that come in as a result of the ads.  A spat of ads run and you can run to your machine and count the calls to the information number.  Then over the next few days you can count the calls that are made to the secretary.  You can count the appointments that are made.  You can count the appointments that show up.  You can then count the appointments that turn into clients.  In order to succeed it is all a matter of measurement. It takes a lot of infrastructure  to do this and it is not prone to succeed with a one man, or one woman, shop.

Fifth, you have to generate a lot of leads and a lot of clients to succeed at advertising.  Generally speaking you plan on spending 20% of everything you make to generate a paying client.  So, even in a small market where you might be able to spend $10,000 a month for TV day parts (ROS) on the lead station -- and you really cannot effectively expect to spend less -- you need to generate at least $50,000 in revenues a month to justify your efforts.  Let us say that you practice consumer bankruptcy or family law in which, after standard losses, you average $1,500.00 a case signed.  You have to generate about 34 cases a month, every month, in order to make the advertising work.  Efficiency and technology can only go so far.  In order to handle 34 cases a month you will need highly trained receptionist to take the calls, you will need staff to handle the initial interviews.  Even if you have an 80% sign rate, you will need to see 42 potential clients in your offices each and every month, and possibly more.  Then there is court that must be covered, and support that will be necessary after the case is filed.  This represents untold man hours.  All of these man hours and services require large amount of office space, equipment, furniture and expensive technology.

Sixth, there is the lag time involved in advertising.  Contrary to popular belief, advertising is not a magic bullet.  Although, if done right it has some instant results, it is generally not enough to overcome the ongoing costs.  Familiarity breeds increased results.  It is a trust that develops TV style.  The longer Opra is on the air the more people trust her and feel comfortable with her.  The same is true for advertising.  The point is that it will take months before TV or other advertising, even if done right, will begin to work well or to its maximum effect.  In the meantime, you have to have the ads and spots produced, you have to by space and time each month, you have to find office space, staffing, equipment, furniture and tech sufficient enough to handle the eventual crowd.  In short, even if done right you are going to bleed money for a while.  A lot of money.  A potential practice threatening amount of money.

Seventh, (and this is really the point) most of the attorneys that contact me simply do not have the funds sufficient to get or keep this juggling act up in the air.  This is not what they want.  They want a few quality clients that pay them well enough and they can be happy practicing law with nothing but a carpet commute.  Advertising does not work well for these attorneys.  Networking does work well.  And, it is relatively cheaply.  And, although it will not produce hoards of clients, you do not need hoards of clients in order to feel like you have contributed in some way to society, helped someone, and to make a moderately good living.

Do I miss advertising?  You bet I do.  I just love the mechanics of it all.  I love generating the ads.  Watching the responses.  To me it is like a random act of kindness.  If someone was closed up in their home starving, you would bring them food.  If they have a legal problem you have the real ability to affect their lives by showing them how they can be helped. But, in my particular case, I had to decide if I wanted to narrow my niche further (which I did), and whether I wanted to represent 80 or 100 people a year, or 1,200 people a year.  And, the truth of the matter is if you have 1,200 clients a year you are managing and not lawyering.  Now, some people are better suited for the former.  It just depends, and there is nothing wrong with either.

Full post as published by Chuck Newton on January 05, 2008 (boomark / email).