Re: Best Way to Advertise?

More | Report Post

My 2 cents about yellow pages / online adv, gleaned while working
at a small firm in the midwest. (BTW, I had a lot of opportunity
to compare, as the firm principal had no resistance to salespeople
and would buy any advertising pitched to him)

1) The yellow pages works fine for any kind of private-individual
business, e.g., family law, probate, and personal injury. Be
prepared for a LOT of chaff, especially if you feel compelled to
include the term "Reasonable Rates." This does not mean the same
thing to a yellow-pages-reading layperson as it does to you. One
thing that did work was the one-line listing under Contract Law.
I got a number of good, paying small business clients with that.

2) Online advertising on the lawyer-match type of websites is
expensive and worthless. We had one of these services for
something like a year and it was my job to winnow responses.
Primarily family law came in, almost all truly horrible cases.
Even if you have decided to build your business by being a low,
low bidder, you would not want to work with these people.
Histories of withdrawn counsel (gee, wonder why . . .), pleas for
a "lawyer with a conscience / Christian lawyer who will help me;"
unwinnable custody disputes. And so on. Oh, they were often
incarcerated, too.

>>>>
>>>> Any suggestions? What has worked for people on this board?
>>>>
>>>> I saw 'Jim' posted about LawInfo. I'm guessing that its
>>>> just another one of the scams. Is there any legitimate
>>>> organization that does advertising for lawyers? Is the
>>>> yellow pages worth it?