mts's blog

Evaluating Your Firm’s New Service

mts — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 15:36:23 +0000

Evaluating Your Firm’s New Service

Recently, we wrote a blog post about expanding your firm. If you have decided to make that leap into a new service or area of law, how do you know if that was the right decision?

In this post, we will talk about the different factors that should be considered when evaluating your decision to expand.

Sample Size

The first factor to consider is sample size. You want to make sure that you have gathered enough data to make a sound decision. Without enough of a sample size, an unusually bad string of cases at the beginning can cause you to miss out on a profitable opportunity. Likewise, an unusually good string might convince you to keep a product around that is not worth your time and effort.

With a large enough sample, you will be able to notice those anomalies and make a general prediction of the case types that will come through your door, the work required for each case type, and the fees that you are able to generate with each new case.

Can You Generate Enough Leads?

Although it is pretty straightforward, you want to make sure that you are able to generate enough leads. Ideally, consistent flow of quality leads, means a consistent flow of cases, which results in consistent cash flow to cover your expenses.

The right number of leads will vary from firm to firm. For cases types that require intense litigation, and generate large fees, you might only need a few leads per month. For cases that generate smaller fees, having a high volume of leads can increase your profitability.

Can You Generate Enough Cases?

Having the right flow of leads is not enough on its own. You need to be able to convert those leads into cases. Cases are ultimately what generate fees. There will be costs associated with creating a lead, qualifying a lead, and then essentially selling your services to that lead. If you are unable to convert the leads into cases, all of the time and money spent on the leads is wasted.

When expanding into a new area of law, make sure that you are tracking your cost per case. A quick way to measure cost per case is the sum of your marketing expenses divided by the number of cases you were able to convert. This will tell you how much it costs to generate one case.

Next, you will then want to compare the costs to generate a case and the fees that you expect to make off of that case. If it costs you more to generate a case, then you know it will not be profitable.

Opportunity Cost

The final consideration to make is your opportunity cost. This is a little harder to quantify and will depend on your situation. With each new area of law that you expand to, there will be both time and money spent.

You want to make sure that the same resources could not be better utilized elsewhere. For example, if you move an attorney and intake staff away from the most profitable part of the business, will the new area of law make up the lost value?

This value might not be measured in profits. An expansion can help with branding and open up future opportunities which is why it is important to consider both short term impact and long term value.

eGen Can Help

If you are in the process of expanding your firm, consider working with a lead generation service. Lead generation is one way to help set up a consistent stream of leads, evaluate case types and find new opportunities. We currently generate Social Security disability, workers’ compensation, personal injury, and employment law leads. Contact eGen today to learn more about how lead generation can help your firm.

mts Fri, 03/05/2021 - 10:36

How To Approach Expanding Your Firm

mts — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 15:47:58 +0000

How To Approach Expanding Your Firm

Making the decision to expand your firm is exciting, but knowing what to add is not an easy decision. Here are a few ways to approach that choice:

Create Lifetime Clients

One way to expand is to see what aligns most closely with your current offerings. This can be done by thinking about your current client base. When a client comes to you, is there an additional area of law that they might need help with?

For example, if you help a client through a divorce, they might also need help creating a new estate plan. If you are able to offer that service, you now likely have a lifetime client that will turn to you first when they have a legal matter.

Capitalize on Confusion

Another way that your current clients can help is with their confusion. For example, the line between personal injury and workers’ compensation claims can be confusing for someone that does not know about the law. If someone was hurt at work, they still might end up in your personal injury office because they were looking for an “injury lawyer”.

In that situation, without putting in any marketing effort you are already generating potential workers compensation clients. It is also possible that someone seeking a workers’ compensation attorney actually needs a personal injury attorney. By noticing what people are most often confused about, you can create a synergy between your practice areas that keeps all of that business in house as opposed to referring it out.

Focus On The Basics

Expanding based on your clients’ needs is one way that you can find new areas of law. Another is to expand based on the skills that your firm has. If your firm excels in litigation, you will want to look for areas of law that put you in the court room.

If your firm puts an emphasis on your relationship with the client, you want to make sure that you expand into an area where you are meeting with clients face to face.

Another skill that you might have is your ability to handle a high volume of process-based cases. Helping someone apply for Social Security benefits and helping someone incorporate a business might not have much overlap. However, the way that you would go about handling these would require the creation of a process that allows you to handle a high volume of cases.

Take a minute to think about what really makes your firm work and look for an area of law that would allow you to capitalize on those skills.

Do Your Own Research and Networking

Expanding your business can be a big decision on your own. Luckily, there are many resources available to you. It is likely that there are groups and associates for each of the areas of law that you are looking to expand into. One example is NOSSCR which is the National Organization Of Social Security Claimant Representatives. There are over 3,000 members that have experience in the field of Social Security. Consider joining an or connecting with someone in an organization to discuss what it is like handling this area of law.

You might not find one that big for the area that you are looking for, but a quick Google search and you can begin building a network of people that have experience in that field.

Consider Lead Generation

When expanding into a new area of law, building a case load can be difficult because you have not had a chance to establish your reputation and get referrals from past clients. One way to jumpstart your caseload is through lead generation. Lead generation can help provide a consistent stream of potential clients each month.

If you are expanding your firm and want to learn more about how lead generation can help you build your client base, give us a call now.

mts Fri, 12/18/2020 - 10:47

Team Building Activities That Can Be Done Virtually

mts — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 01:52:35 +0000

Team Building Activities That Can Be Done Virtually

As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, your firm has probably transitioned to the virtual world. In this time, it is important that team building does not get left behind. To help, we have come up with some fun activities that can be done virtually with your team:

Trivia

What you will need:

Quizmaster
Question List
Video Conferencing
Paper and Marker

Virtual trivia will take a bit of prep work to come up with a list of questions, but it is a fun way to spend the evening. The question master will read off the question and set a timer for around 45 seconds. The contestants will write down their answer and at the end of the time hold It up to the camera.

Those with the correct answers can leave their answer up for the score keeper to track who earned points for that question. It is a good idea to split the questions into rounds with quick intermissions to update on scores or refill any beverages.

Bingo

What you will need:

MC
Unique Bingo Boards for all participants
A website that generates the numbers

There are plenty of websites that generate both bingo cards and bingo numbers. These boards can be printed out, copied down on a piece of paper, or even recreated in Excel and the rest of the game played like normal. There are a variety of patterns that can determine the winner. The most common is the first to fill a full row, full column or diagonal. Some other patterns that you can use are filling in all 4 corners, an uppercase or lower case ‘T’. If you are looking for a ling game, the winner can even be the person who fills their whole board first.

Scattergories

What you will need:

Pen and Paper
Scattergories game

Categories list
Random Letter Generator (excluding Q, U, V, X, Y, and Z)

Scattergories has been around since the late 80’s and surprisingly will translate well to a virtual gathering. The rules of the game are simple. To start each round a letter will be given along with a category. Once the category is stated participants have 3 minutes to write down as many answers as they can think of. After time is up, each person goes around and reads their answers. Points are awarded for each unique answer.

Just make sure that you are ready to debate whether or not “Posh” counts as a spice/herb.

Happy hour

One of the most popular teambuilding events is attending a happy hour. However, with restaurants and bars being closed this is no longer an option. Luckily, this can be done from the comfort of your own couch. Just grab your favorite wine or beer or stir up your favorite cocktail and enjoy with your team.

Dinner club

After work, everyone heads to the kitchen to whip up their favorite meal and reports back in an hour or so to share it with their co-workers. Over the course of eating everyone can talk about what they made, their favorite recipes and some of their tips and tricks from the kitchen. Don’t forget to pair your meal with your favorite brew!

Virtual Talent Show

A talent show is a great way to learn more about how your co-workers spend their time outside of the office and if you have a secret talent this is the time to show it off. Set a time limit for each performance and let creativity take over. If you would like to name a winner, it is possible to do this using Google Forms where a survey can be created to rate the performances on a scale of 1-10. The person with the highest average is your winner!

Team building and camaraderie is an important part of running a successful office. It is important that this is not forgotten as work transitions to the virtual world. Hopefully these activities can help provide some entertainment in a difficult time. For some more tips on working from home check out our recent posts on how to maintain a work life balance and use our case management software eLuminate more effectively while working from home.

mts Sun, 04/05/2020 - 21:52

Using eLuminate to Determine Success Rate by OHO

mts — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 20:27:15 +0000

Using eLuminate to Determine Success Rate by OHO

Each OHO location (formerly known as ODAR) has a distinct percentage of cases that are ruled favorably. We know this because the SSA makes all of this data public online. You can even look at the record of each judge’s decisions divided into fully favorable, partially favorable, and denials.

You can use these variances to your advantage. Here is a step-by-step guide for small firms on using eLuminate to increase your conversion rate based on data you collect from the offices where your hearings are held.

There are three steps that you need to take:

Define what a successful case looks like to you.
Set up eLuminate with a couple of custom fields.
Compare your successful clients to all of your cases and see if there is a pattern that suggests you have more success at a specific OHO location.

Defining a Successful Client:

The first step that you have to take is defining a good client. This definition is entirely up to your firm. In general, a good client can be defined in terms of a return on your investment, marketing return on your investment, as well as the time spent on the case. Here is one way to set up an equation that factors in all three.

(Fees Generated / Cost to Acquire Client) / (Hours Spent) = X

It is up to you to define the ration that you consider successful. Once you set that level, anything above X is a successful case. On its own, X might not tell you much, however when compared to other cases you can see what is generating the best ratio of returns on your time and money investments. The reason that we include time is because of the opportunity cost. For example, if two cases generate the same fees and had the same cost to acquire, your return on your marketing investment would look the same. Now, if case A took 20 hours of work and case B took 60 hours of work the return on your time investment would be 3 times as much for case A.

Setting Up Fields in eLuminate:

Now that you have set a definition of a successful case, you can differentiate all of your cases by setting up custom fields in eLuminate. You can always break this into tiers of success if you want to dive deeper. However to start, create a drop down menu that allows you to mark the case as successful or unsuccessful. Successful cases are those that are the ones that fit your definition, the unsuccessful cases are those that were lost or were not worth the investment. For the purpose of this example, this will be the “Outcome” field.

You will also need to keep track of where the hearing was. Again, create a dropdown menu of the OHO locations that your cases are heard at. This is the “OHO Location” Field.

Analyzing The Data

Now that you have created those fields, you will have to run a report that gives you a baseline. Without any filters, run a report by “OHO Location”. This will tell you the percentage of your cases that are tried at each location.

Next, you can filter out all of the cases that are unsuccessful, which will leave you with a list of just successful cases. Then run the same report by “OHO Location”. This will tell you where your successful cases come from.

Now, using the percentages from the last two reports, you can see what your most successful OHO locations are.

For example, if your hearings are split 50-50 between two locations and your successful cases are also split 50-50, that would suggest that there is not a major difference between locations.

However, if your cases are split 50-50 and 70% of your successful cases come from one location, you might want to target cases that you can try at that specific OHO.

Targeting Cases

It can be difficult to choose where your cases come from; however, eGen can help. Our leads can be selected from specific regions using zip code prefixes. For large firms with the ability to travel, this might not make sense. However, if you operate a small firm, our exclusive, no minimum contract leads let you choose exactly where your cases are coming from.

mts Mon, 11/25/2019 - 15:27

From Law School to Celebrity: 8 Entertainers With Law Degrees

mts — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 19:03:35 +0000

From Law School to Celebrity: 8 Entertainers With Law Degrees

With Labor Day around the corner, law school students around the country are rushing back to class. Throughout the years, all of the people on this list have been one of those students. Not all of them would go on to use their law degrees, but they spent many late nights in the library to earn them. Here are 8 celebrities with law degrees:

Jerry Springer
Before the chants of “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” began, Jerry Springer was completing his Juris Doctorate Degree at Northwestern University. In just 5 years after graduating, Springer became a named partner at the law firm of Grinker, Sudman & Springer. He would wear many hats the rest of his career, (including a one year stint as the mayor of Cincinnati) before a 27 year run as the host of the Jerry Springer Show.

Howard Cosell
Although he is one of the most famous broadcasters of all time, Howard Cosell did not know that’s where his career would take him. Cosell earned a law degree from New York University. After serving in World War II, he began practicing law in Manhattan. Cosell’s broadcasting career started when he was asked to host a radio show about Little League baseball in New York. He may have been one of the first broadcasters with a law degree, but he would not be the last.

Cris Collinsworth
Every winter for the last 10 years, football fans have tuned in to NBC and watched Cris Collinsworth on the broadcast of Sunday Night Football. After a stellar college career at Florida and an NFL career in which he was named to the Pro Bowl 3 times for the Bengals, Collinsworth retired and returned to school. In 1991, Collinsworth earned his JD from the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

Ben Stein
“Bueller? Bueller?” A lawyer actually delivered one of the most quoted movie lines ever. Ben Stein’s career is an eclectic one with stops as an attorney, presidential speechwriter, economist, professor, and entertainer. Stein has an impressive academic record that includes graduating from Columbia University before graduating as the valedictorian of Yale Law School.

Gemma Chan
Gemma Chan’s on-screen career has taken her to 3 of the most popular movie franchises of all time. She has appeared in the Harry Potter franchise, Transformers, and The Marvel Cinematic Universe. Chan studied law at Worcester College, Oxford and was offered a training contract before she ultimately decided to pursue her acting career.

Gerard Butler
Luckily, Gerard Butler’s acting ability was stronger than his work ethic. After graduating from the University of Glasgow School of Law, Butler’s time as a trainee lawyer ended one week before he became qualified. He was fired for repeatedly missing work because he had been out late the night before.

Rebel Wilson
The Australian actress has an impressive résumé that includes acting, singing, writing, and producing. Years before she would go on to star in the Pitch Perfect franchise, Rebel Wilson graduated from the University of New South Wales with a Bachelor of Laws degree.

Andrea Bocelli
Even if you don’t recognize the name, you might recognize the voice. For Andrea Bocelli, his career in music started as a way to make money while studying law at the University of Pisa. Bocelli would perform at local piano bars after class. Bocelli went on to practice law for a year before he was discovered by Italian rock star Zucchero and Luciano Pavarotti.

Takeaways

Although knowing that Cris Collinsworth graduated from law school might not help your legal practice, you could impress your friends the next time you are watching a Sunday Night Football game.

Besides graduating from law school, everyone listed above has something else in common. Their careers took them in a different direction than the one they started with. Throughout your own law career, you will have opportunities to grow, evolve and maybe even change directions. At those decision points, sticking with the status quo might be the right decision. However, there are other times when the right decisions are the unfamiliar ones.

mts Thu, 08/29/2019 - 15:03

The Power of Partnering

mts — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 15:41:00 +0000

The Power of Partnering

One of the hot words in today’s business vernacular is “ecosystem”. Ecosystem by definition is “the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit” (Merriam Webster). When you think of your business as one organism operating in a much larger environment, new opportunities for growth appear.

In a healthy ecosystem, there is a give and take. Each individual contributes something to the ecosystem and in return is rewarded. In the business world, studies have shown that a business that opens itself up to partnerships benefits both in terms of revenue and in the overall health of the business.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Partnering eliminates inefficiencies in the business environment. Take this hypothetical case as an example:

An individual contacts a Workers Compensation attorney for a consultation. By the end of the consultation the attorney determines the client actually needs a personal injury lawyer and refers them to the PI attorney down the street who is able to take care of them. Now, that PI attorney consults a new potential client and finds that the client doesn’t have the proper medical documentation. So the PI attorney refers them to a doctor that shares the same building. Later in that week, the doctor treats a client who’s injury sustained at work will be worse than previously thought and they are referred to the original Worker’s Comp attorney.

This is a small scale example, but it highlights the benefits of partnering even if it is as simple as just a network of referrals. Both attorneys and the doctor were able to retain clients they may not have gotten otherwise. In addition, the clients received the best possible treatment for their specific situation because of that ecosystem.

Benefits of Partnering

There are multiple benefits to partnering. One of the main benefits appears on the bottom line. The IBM Institute for Business Value found that executives who actively encouraged new types of arrangements significantly outperformed their competition in measures of revenue growth and operating efficiency. Additionally, those that were optimistic about the benefits of the ecosystem were more likely to be outperformers than underperformers.

The other benefits to partnering are harder to put a value on because they do not show up on the balance sheet. By partnering, you now have access to people and information that you previously didn’t have. This flow of information can help build your professional network and give access to some additional operational strategies that you hadn’t previously thought of.

Ways Attorneys Can Partner

All businesses should actively be seeking partnerships. For attorneys specifically, you should think about the other professionals that you deal with on a daily basis. Doctors, Physical Therapists, Auto repair shops etc. are all business that would benefit from a local ecosystem.

Another way that an attorney can partner is in their marketing department. Lead generation is a great way to add a consistent stream of clients in addition to referrals. Lead generation is something that can help lower your cost per acquired case, which in turn would boost profits.

How to Partner:

There are three key things to make sure you understand when looking for a partner:

Put Yourself In Their Shoes.

It is important to understand what you are getting out of the relationship, but it is equally important to understand what the other party is looking for. If they are not getting what they are looking for, then they will be looking for a way out and that will ultimately be detrimental to your business.

Pick Your Partner Carefully

In addition to ensuring that your partner is getting something out of the relationship, it is also important to make sure you pick a partner that operates at a level of quality that you want to be associated with. Once you enter into a partnership, you and the partner will be reflections of each other. Reputations are important as a low quality partner would hurt the reputation of your firm. At the same time however, a high quality partner is a great way to boost a reputation.

Be Ready to Put in the Effort

Like all relationships, a business partnership takes effort to maintain. Large companies who operate with lots of partners have entire alliance management departments who dedicate all of their time to maintaining the health of the partnership. This may not be necessary depending on the scale of the partnership, but you should still treat the alliance as its own separate entity. If you are dedicated to the health of the alliance, operating with the interests of both organizations, then you can ensure you will receive the benefit over the course of the alliance.

If you would like to learn how eGenerationMarketing could become part of your ecosystem give us a call at 617.800.0089.

mts Fri, 02/22/2019 - 10:41

The Marketing Data That Small Firms Should Track

mts — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 18:22:52 +0000

The Marketing Data That Small Firms Should Track

As a partner in a small firm or as a solo practitioner you have to wear many hats. In addition to your own cases, managing finances and acting as HR, you also have to market your firm.

Organizations are collecting every bit of data they can to help inform their decisions, particularly when it comes to marketing. As a small business it can be tough to dedicate time and money to gathering and analyzing data, but data is too important to the decision making process to ignore. Below are several pieces of data that you should be tracking when marketing your firm.

Case Origin

Simple, but important. Case origin refers to the source of marketing that the case came from. Some common examples of case origin are referrals, paid Internet advertising, organic Internet traffic, television/radio advertisements, lead generation, etc. If you know where your cases come from, you can make a better decision on where to spend your marketing efforts.

For example, if you receive a consistent stream of cases from referrals, but claimants are not finding your firm online, you might want to put effort into search engine optimization. Generally, one of the first places someone will go when looking for an attorney is the Internet.

To track this data, add a “Case Origin” category to your case files and create a standardized list of the different sources you use. If this is digital in a program like Excel or CRM software you will be able to quickly summarize this data.

Cost Per Case

Cost per case (CPC) is the best way for attorneys to quickly determine what they’re actually getting for their marketing efforts. To calculate this, you need the amount spent on each marketing source and the number of cases generated by each marketing source.

Below is an example of how CPC is calculated and then used to make marketing decisions:

CPC = Amount Spent/Cases Generated

Type of Marketing	Amount spent	Cases Generated	Cost Per Case
TV Ads	$5,000	10	$500
Billboards	$2,000	5	$400
Lead Generation	$520	2	$260*

*Based on a hypothetical $26 SSD lead price and expected retention rate of around 10%

What can you deduct from this? Over a one-month period, TV advertising on the surface might look like the most effective way to spend your money because it generated 10 cases. However, one case generated by a TV ad might cost you twice as much as one by a lead generation source. Knowing this, you can make the decision to potentially spend more on lead generation and less on TV advertising, to get the best possible return on your investment.

Average Fees Generated

Tracking this stat becomes slightly complicated because you can break it down by both case type and marketing source. This is helpful because depending on your areas of law you practice, you may receive wildly different legal fees from some cases. For example, personal injury case fees aren’t capped whereas SSD cases are limited to $6,000 or 25% of the client’s back pay.

This might be too granular to track for your firm, but at a minimum you should know your average fees generated. This is easy to calculate:

Total $ Generated from Cases/Total Number of Cases

Comparing your CPC to your average fees generated give you an estimate of your return on your marketing investment. You can then use this number to determine where improvements need to be made. If you are bringing in a lot of money, but it is all spent on marketing, you might want to look into lowering your cost per case to a more sustainable level.

Benchmarks to Meet

Collecting data is important, but it doesn’t need to consume all of your time and money. These three are simply a way to help you make more informed marketing decisions. Here are two more benchmarks to compare your firm to that may help you make better marketing decisions in the future:

Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI):

Chris Leone, President of WebStrategies Inc., recommends a goal of a 5:1 ROMI. The ratio compares the additional money brought in through a specific marketing campaign and the amount of money spend on that campaign. (https://www.webstrategiesinc.com/blog/what-is-a-good-marketing-roi)

% of Budget Spent on Marketing

According to a survey done by Deloitte and Duke University found that about 11% of a company’s annual budget is spent on marketing (https://deloitte.wsj.com/cmo/2017/01/24/who-has-the-biggest-marketing-budgets/).

For a smaller business the SBA recommends that 7-8% of the budget is spent on marketing. This number can also be higher if you are in an expanding phase. (https://www.sba.gov/blogs/how-set-marketing-budget-fits-your-business-goals-and-provides-high-return-investment).

If your firm is spending a large percentage of its income on marketing, why not track how successful your efforts are to ensure that you’ll actually increase your firm’s profitability? By tracking your case origins, calculating your cost per case, and knowing how much you’ll receive from the average settlement, you can quickly pinpoint your most effective marketing campaigns and come up with a plan to increase your revenue in the future.

mts Thu, 07/26/2018 - 14:22