The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

Law firms, especially big law firms, tend to rely on SEO to market their practices online.  The age-old question is: how do I get to Page One on Google?  The new problem is that Page One of Google is changing.   Leveraging search results has always been more of an art than a science; and, the picture is shifting again.  Google's algorithms and search results pages get tweaked from time to time, and it pays to monitor trends, which develop over time .  One current trend is the increasing exposure of paid advertising on the sought-after first page of Google search results.  Looking at a first page result now versus those same results, even as compared to a few years ago, yields a significant difference.  There are more paid advertising results (generally PPC) at the top of the page than ever before, and the prominence of those ads has been amplified.  Furthermore, map results are displayed directly below paid advertising, in a more prominent way than those results have pre ...

Business cards are  so  lame.     Yet, everybody carries one.  Business cards are still the coin of the realm, even in this paperless age.   Even so, everybody’s business card looks the same.   Y’all  went to Staples, too, right?   But, in a massively competitive environment like that occupied by solo and small firm attorneys, it pays (literally) to access every possible advantage that you can.  So, why don’t you tweak your business cards, too?  Making those even the slightest bit more unique and interesting, may provide the sliver of an advantage that you need to convert a client.   So, here are  five  ways you can improve your business card , lawyers :   Picture This .    Stop with the text-based business cards.  Nothing forms a more visceral connection than an image.  So, put your headshot on your business card.   (Make sure your logo’s o...

When most lawyers think about niche practice, their notion is that of a practice limited to one, or a few, practice areas.   And, that’s one of the chief reasons that attorneys approach the notion of a niche practice with s ome combination of trepidation and dread.  Because selling out on one or a few practice areas brings with it risk.   It could work out famously -- or, not so much -- which would necessitate a shift in the entire practice to resolve.  Of course, that’s not the only way to get niched.   If you work in a community with comparatively few lawyers -- not necessarily a ‘rural’ practice. just a practice operating as the sole, or one of a few providers in, a local community -- you can effectively create a niche as ‘the local attorney’.  Now, the nature of that locality  is almost entirely dependent on whether you can generate enough clients from it to support a practice.  Even so, the options are perhaps wider than...

Attorneys seeking inspiration or advice on reconfiguring or revising their business practices often seek out colleagues or friends for advice.  Most attorneys maintain other attorneys as colleagues and friends.  So, when they’re seeking business advice, they’re getting it from other attorneys. There are a couple of problems with relying on that strategy, however.  The first is that law firm managers tend to rely entirely on their own experience.  If you ask them what to do in a specific situation, they will invariably say: ‘Well, this is how  we  do it . . .’   But, there is no one size fits all model for law firms, which means that lawyers should refer to various scenarios, before determining which option works best for them.  (And so, that’s a good conversation to have with a law practice management consultant  *AHEM* , who regularly speaks to different law firms, to gauge their perspective s . )   The second problem w...

Review some law firm logos, and you’ll probably find similar characteristics: prominent use of gavels and/or columns; the logo design will likely be based on the first letters of the last names of the name partners; and, the color scheme will probably be blue/white or gray.  What I’m trying to say is that pretty much every law firm logo is the same.   In a massively competitive market, like legal, that’s a bad thing, because when you’re scraping  for business against every other estate planning law firm in your neighborhood, every little differentiation point helps.   So, let’s talk about the potential benefits of a new logo for your law firm: It can set the color scheme for your branding, including for website creation o r  redesign.  (What if -- gasp! -- your law firm  logo  color scheme was not blue and white.)   It can  encapsulate important elements of your business in a more visceral way.  (Amazon’s lo...