CONNECTICUT TRIAL
FIRM LLC

What I’m going to outline here will work for any firm in any space and will be as relevant 10 years from now as it is now. Or at least that’s the hope.
This case study will provide you with the playbook that I followed to take my firm from inconsistent cases to a predictable stream of new cases. It will go from no budget to a $100,000 a month spend and all points in between.Before we begin, I want to ask you: what is marketing?
To me, marketing is every outbound communication from you and your firm.

Blue ocean is a simple marketing concept that is best summarized as “fish where they’re not.”It is far easier to catch fish in an uncontested space than one where everyone is fishing.

If your market is saturated with players on TV, radio, and billboards it is probably best not to try and compete in that market (at least until you can afford to really compete).

Here are some places that we found blue ocean spaces to fish when we were getting started in 2016-2018:

• We went to national trial colleges that other lawyers from our state didn’t go to. This allowed us to build a network of trial lawyers across the country where we were the only Connecticut lawyers that they knew. Some of these lawyers were quite successful. We obtained a significant amount of high value cases simply because we showed up in groups that other Connecticut lawyers didn’t show up in.

 

• We took cases that other lawyers didn’t want to take and paid 50% referral fees. This allowed us to get practical experience in trying cases. And it also allowed us to build a client base by providing great representation and then those clients in turn referring their friends and family to us.

 

• We found significant organic engagement on Facebook business (no longer possible).

 

• We sponsored a road race to get our name out in the community.

 

• We spent what little money we had to advertise on directory listings which returned us quality cases at very low cost (no longer possible).

 

• We sent a lot of notecards.

Some really practical advice here is to play to your strengths and do things that others won’t do. Don’t be afraid to start small.Perhaps you speak a language that other lawyers don’t speak or you have a strong connection with a church or ethnic community.

Wherever you go and whatever you do, keep showing up and adding value.

Also we started building out our digital footprint. We claimed every social media profile that we could. We accepted invitations to speak even to the smallest of crowds.

Doing these things allowed us to grow to a steady stream of about 10 personal injury cases a month. Not enough to achieve our dreams but enough to keep the lights on and stay in the game.

When things were slow we sent our intake specialist out to local chiropractors with girl scout cookies. About a dozen of them said “thank you” and one of them became a great referral source for us.

There’s no right or wrong answer. I’m not sure anyone would have lent us money anyhow. But if they did, and I managed it right, it would have greatly accelerated our growth and profitability.What we did in this phase laid the foundation for our future growth.

First, we hired the best SEO Agency that we could afford. And we decided not to compete in the cities where all of the big players were investing their dollars. We chose to focus on towns that had decent population bases but were otherwise not targeted by bigger players.

Our SEO strategy allowed us to gain a broader digital footprint. It was slow but important.

We also focused a lot on building out our google profiles. We did office maps tours, checked every box that we could, and responded nearly immediately to any inquiry.

We critically focused on getting great reviews on Google and responding to them. This played immense dividends for us. Our competition was focused on TV and billboards. This allowed us to get a head start. At the time, reviews were blue ocean. They aren’t today.

The reviews allowed us to seize the opportunity that opened up in the form of Google LSA. In the summer of 2020, Google opened LSA to lawyers. We moved quickly, were amongst the first to be approved in our market and had the top reviews. We went from not doing paid ads to maxing out our paid spend on LSA. And it worked well. We were able to acquire a significant amount of cases at a low cost.

Again, this window would close quickly as the price of LSA increased and the quality of leads decreased. But for about a year, this was largely blue ocean territory for us.

We also did something a little out of the box. The 9th position we hired was a Client Happiness Coordinator (Brittany Green).

We understood that the best marketing that we could do was to our existing and former clients. Brittany checked in on clients, responded to ones who were upset, and sent succulents when they suffered a loss or a setback. Or when they were expecting a baby she sent spoons and diapers.

Brittany also automated sending out birthday and holiday cards. She built a client e-newsletter called “CT Trial Firm Insiders” where we gave away things like shakti mats, Hokas, and ice cream cones.

We rented out a movie theater and invited clients, friends, and big brothers and big sisters to watch Frozen 2.

She would also take the lead on having client appreciation night at the local AA baseball team and she would plan dinners for referral sources.

Investing in marketing to our existing clients paid significant dividends in our growth.

During this time we spent roughly 6% of our gross revenue each year on marketing.

And critically we invested in a CRM that allowed us to see where our clients were coming from and the return on various spends. This allowed us to double down on what was working and cut what was not.

Significantly, we invested in a client portal – Case Status. Our clients came to love this. Clients can only judge lawyers by how well and frequently they communicate and how long their matters take. Case Status helped with both of these things.We also kept posting on social media, sending note cards, engaging our clients, and getting reviews.

In surveying our competition we discovered that some of our biggest competitors weren’t aggressively investing in SEO so we decided to go all in as a digital first firm.

Our underpriced attention during this time frame was our personal social media accounts (particularly LinkedIn and Facebook) and Youtube unskippable ads.At this size we started working with a number of vendors and consultants. We also hired a media buyer to help us maximize our traditional marketing spend.

Brittany and I went from adhoc marketing to careful budgeting, yearly planning, and coordinated execution on that plan across the firm.

We had a business.