Here is the secret you need to keep in mind - when it comes to referring cases or clients, potential referral sources are lazy.
I do not mean this in a bad way. I do not mean they are careless or inactive or that they are laggards. If fact, the opposite is most often true. Referral sources are diligent, active, lively and industrious people. But, because of this, they are preoccupied with all of the tasks at hand. They do not have the time or energy to clarify in their minds what you do or how you might be able to help. After all, they are not getting paid to go door to door for you.
My point is that if your practice area or practice areas are abstract, or if the potential referral sources are confounded in what you do or might want from them, you are going to lose out.
As a result, you need to become indispensable to the referral source. This goes beyond making yourself readily available, as you should. This goes beyond keeping yourself top of the mind, as you should. This goes beyond staying in touch, as you should. The act of being indispensable goes to the very heart of succeeding at the referral-based or network-based practice of law.
Selling yourself as a lawyer is so transcendent, so complex, so hypothetical that how do you expect many people to know what to send you? You will either not get many referrals, or you will receive such a wide sweep of cases with no money and outside your area of knowledge you still will not make a good living. Either way it is not good.
When it comes to your practice area, you have got to be, and it has to be, concrete and objective. You have to become well known for doing one thing and doing one thing well. What phrase or adjective comes to mind when potential referral sources think of your name or hear of you. Is it that you are a lawyer? If that is all, you lose, or at least you do not gain much in the way of what you want to make a living. As a lawyer, when a particular problem comes to mind, you want that potential referral source to think of you.
What word or group of words describes this? Well, the fact that you are a starving lawyer does not work well. And, really, although broad practice areas work better than general titles, more niche practices or tasks or problems to be solved work even better.
Referral sources, like all of us in this World, are flooded with too much information, and especially too much abstract information. In the age of social media, we are flooded with too many people doing too many indefinite and transcendental things. We overcome this by tuning much of it out. To break through you need to make yourself known for one thing and doing one thing very well.
Create a word or short phrase that describes what you do. Create an elevator speech or a twitpitch, as people like to call these short, practical description now, which describes in non-lawyer language what you do. Then live it. In your professional life, be that word, that phrase, that twitpitch.
In doing so, you are creating the indispensable you.
Chuck - nice post, covered some topics that are in the forefront of my thoughts this weekend.
About three months or so ago I launched my bankruptcy blog - aimed at the lay person who is looking for information about filing bankruptcy, or who needs defense of foreclosure or other creditor/indebtedness defense.
I'm beginning to get calls -- I've noticed an uptick in the last month or so -- but I really know nothing about SEO.
Very interested in this whole topic as I've been mulling over how to approach other attorneys who know me. (Typical conversation with opposing counsel: Them: "Oh, you do consumer bankruptcy? Great, I've been looking for someone to refer these cases to.)
Like you, I want to expand my practice to focus on the stay and FDCPA litigation areas.
Think I'm going to target some of my fellow attorneys with a targeted letter/email campaign (individually focused.) Your thoughts?
Ben Callicoat
http://tulsabankruptcyandconsumerlaw.blogspot.com
fbcallicoat@jarboelaw.com
Posted by: fbc | July 12, 2009 at 02:59 PM