Practice Management

Marketing A Start-Up Solo Practice

By chucknewton

Burman E. Burger has a nice article on FindLaw with this title.  The article is a little quaint, but I truly think it expresses some relevant points from the perspective of someone how had to go through the solo process just a few years ago.

The first point is that marketing should be the first concern and it should be directed to get referrals. This means that it should be done cheaply because most solos starting out do not have gobs of money to throw at at the promotion of their practices or their causes.

Mr. Burger's practice is general in nature, but even he suggest that maybe a niche practice is best.  I like his description of general practice as "Suburban Law".

Mr. Burger spends some space describing the benefits of setting up his own personalized URL with an internet service provider so that he would not have to change email addresses.  All of that is fine, but I could not connect to any website when entering BaBergerLaw.Com,  That is a shame to get national recognition of this sort and not to have an active website.  He is right that a website can costs only a few bucks a month, so why not use it.  It is one of the most effective tools available to the solo and getting better.

I strongly disagree with his concept of spending money on quality paper and letterhead, except for business cards.  Sure, it might project a slightly better image, but at what cost?    Letterhead and mail should be your final recourse.  You need to strive mightily to operate totally online.  Traditional mail not only costs postage, it take a lot of your time as a solo, or it takes a lot of staff time that is costly, and it is as slow as molasses.  In this day and age I do not believe that people, and especially businesses, are overly impressed with expensive letterhead.  In fact, I think it might hurt your image as one who is not technically advanced.

I agree with Mr. Burger on his ideas or developing referrals -- websites, listserves, speaking engagements and the like are all good.  Nix the idea for yellow page ads.  They have always been expensive and only marginally successful for most solos, and they are dying.  The back cover, if you can afford it, might be good because that is more like a billboard, but the rest of the book is not.

Full post as published by Chuck Newton on January 31, 2008 (boomark / email).