Basecamp Is The Best Marketing Tool!

Do not believe me.  Then you must be practice law all wrong.

Yes, Basecamp is an Internet based collaboration tool that allows you and your legal team to more easily work together or projects (read, cases).  You say, but it is a project manage system.  I say, but yet is is also a great marketing tool.  (Kind of like the you got chocolate in my peanut butter, no you got peanut butter on my chocolate type of argument).

Here is how I figured this out.

My group of attorneys decided to use Basecamp in order to coordinate our practice area and to allow each of us to have access to critical documents, notes and time matters concerning the cases that we manage together.  This was particularly important to us because we each practice out of our homes or separate offices, and not in the same geographic area. We do not employ staff, as we simply put together a group of attorneys to handle each case.  We decide at the outset how fees will be divided among the group when collected.  After all we run a Third Wave practice. It is similar to forming a new virtual law firm for each case.  It is truly dynamic, it works well and Basecamp fits into our practice of keeping it C-H-E-A-P!  We had been thinking about buying a server, placing it in a collocation and creating a VPN to give us the connectivity we felt we needed.  Whether you are a group of attorneys like us or a more traditional law firm down the hall from each other this is becoming increasingly important because our federal courts, in particular, are going hi tech.  They are WiFi ready and they expect you to practice off of your notebook computer.  The critical information in your office needs to be available online so you do not have to haul files all over kingdom come, like we use to do.  Instead of a complicated and expensive VPN, we tried Basecamp instead.  It obviously will not do everything for us that a VPN might, but it will do 70%-80% of what we want and it is considerably cheaper (only a small fraction of a dedicated server, collocation rent and the purchasing of software and bandwidth).

Our cases are primarily referral cases from bankruptcy attorneys.  Therefore, once a relationship is born, we try to rely on these bankruptcy attorneys to send us cases regularly. Referring us cases is not a preoccupation of these attorneys as they try to stay concentrated on their main task.

Even with this in mind, that is not the reason we bought into the Basecamp concept.  We just wanted to talk to each other and share documents and thoughts with each other in a more organized and real time fashion other than strictly using email.

Basecamp allows you to set up companies or organizations that will receive key notes, documents and messages other than your core team.  (You can restrict these organizations from particular information and messages if you need to).  From our perspective, these are the bankruptcy attorneys, their staff and law firms.  We added each bankruptcy law firm, and the attorneys and staff of each firm, to each case they referred.  We were not thinking marketing.  We were thinking of how to more easily communicate with our referral source as to the cases they referred.  In the past they would not necessarily be privy to our emails in which as a group we discussed the case, or the questions we had.  As for each document, it had to be separately emailed to each bankruptcy attorney with a note.  Basecamp managed to bring the referring attorney, staff and firm into the loop as an integral part of each referred case.

But, then a funny thing happened, or at least something we had not planned or anticipated.  By bringing the bankruptcy attorney, staff and firm into the loop on one case in such a dynamic fashion, it resulted in more frequent referrals from these bankruptcy law firms.  We actually got received more case referrals from those attorneys participating with us on each case through Basecamp.

Why?  I think many reasons.  Here are a few ideas:

1. The bankruptcy attorneys, firms and staff now feel invested in a case. They can see in real time what is happening.  Now when we have a question or they have a question they can easily and efficiently weigh in through Basecamp.  They can provide us documents we might have missed.  They can participate in real time.  They feel like they are part of the decision making process concerning their client, where they did not before.

2.  These notices from Basecamp are going to the decision makers in the firm.  Mail and email was getting filtered by the palace guards.

3.  Whether the bankruptcy lawyers, staff and law firm read carefully every message that is shared over Basecamp or review every document, these constant reminders keep us top of the mind with the decisions makers of the firm.  Chances are when another problem case hits the decision maker's desk in which the firm needs our help, the decision maker inevitably get a little reminder that we are out there willing and have the capacity to assist the firm's client.

4. The bankruptcy lawyers, staff and law firm now know we are working hard on the case that they referred.  Before, after referring a case, they might get a few communications from us.  Then at the end of the case or right before trial they would hear from us.  If the case settled they might see our fee, but they did not know or understand how hard we worked for that fee.  Now they do.  If we have to make a hard decision they know why we made the decision we did.

If yours is a referral practice, and that is the type of practice you should have, Basecamp should be one of your primary marketing tools.  Try it.

Comments

[Grant Griffiths]

I have been using Basecamp in my Home Office Lawyer practice now since December. My clients love it.

[Christopher McKinney]

I have been using Basecamp in my employment law practice here in San Antonio, Texas for about a year and a half and can verify that clients really like it. It allows us to provide a level of transparency and involvement from clients and referring counsel that even the largest firms in town don't provide.

[GAL]

You know my thoughts. It is an awesome productiivty tool. An you are right, bringing clients and other lawyers into basecamp increases the number of projects which you are invited to participate in.

[Chuck]

So what do I do about clients who DO NOT work for companies? How do I put them in the loop? Many of my clients are not working at the time of the case, so how do I add them.

[D. Todd Smith]

I am in the process of implementing Basecamp and, in addition to other benefits, am really turned on by the idea of using it to stay "top of mind" for referral sources. An initial concern I have is protecting confidentiality and attorney-client privilege. I'm not worried about security, given that Basecamp has SSL, is login/password protected, and I can pick and choose who sees what. I'm getting at the issues that go along with giving someone who isn't an attorney of record access to what would otherwise be confidential client files. I suppose it's not a problem if you just post pleadings, etc. and don't share work product before it goes into the public domain. Just wondering about your experience.

[Moni]

I totally agree with you,Basecamp is really nice one.