Speakeasy Authority Marketing

This week I spoke with a Google AdWords expert, Adam Kreitman Of Words That Click.

Adam highlighted the challenges that law firms are facing with paid search and he answered all the burning questions like, 'Law-related keywords are expensive', 'Fierce Competition in Law industry' and "Getting qualified leads is hrad'.

If you're not getting the expected results from your PPC campaigns or if you're confused whether to try PPC or not, listen to the podcast for a detailed take on PPC for law firms. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and post a review.

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Richard Jacobs: Hi. This is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today I've got a long term friend of mine that I have on the call. I hope he will be of interest to you. His name is Adam Kreitman. His company is called Words that Click. His specialty especially of late has been helping attorneys with Google Adwords or Google Pay per Click. I can tell you from personal experience that it is a very tough challenge. Lots of companies out there offering Pay per Click in a standardized format but it really takes specialization to do it right especially for attorneys that can pay very high amounts on a pay per click basis. So how are you doing Adam?

Adam Kreitman: I'm doing great Rich. Appreciate you having me.

Richard Jacobs: Sure. Yeah. Thanks for being on the call. This will be brief and we are just going to talk about your experience with Adwords and how you can help attorneys? That's why we are sending it out. I'm here to provide value to my listeners and that's why I have you on the call. For anyone that doesn't know, let me know first. What's the deal with Pay per Click? Where do people see it? How does it show up in search results?

Adam Kreitman: Yes. That is a good place to start because there is a lot of confusion about that. Google Adwords is Google's pay per click program. Essentially when you are an attorney and you want to show up when somebody types in divorce attorney, personal injury attorney, whatever it is. In Google, there are a few ways that you can get there. There's the map listings, there's the organic listings and you can't pay for placement in either of those two. But with Google Adwords, it's basically an auction where you pay on a per click basis. So it's pay per click where you are only paying when someone sees your ad and clicks on it. These ads are how Google makes most of it's billions and billions of dollars. It's no coincidence that when you do a search, the ads are what appear at the very top of this screen. It used to be the Top 3 results but now it's Top 4 results and depending on the screen size and especially for more people searching from Mobile devices, the Google paid ads, the Google Adword ads may be the only things that somebody sees when they first land on a search results page. Essentially Google Adwords is just paid advertising on Google.

Richard Jacobs: I see now that mobile is such a predominant way that people search. On mobile, I mean people don't even see the organic listings, you see pay per click ads covering the whole screen, right?

Adam Kreitman: Yes, that's it.

Richard Jacobs: In your work, do you deal with laptops, mobile devices and all that or do you just stick with the laptop portion?

Adam Kreitman: You have to do everything. When I first started out, you could ignore mobile and tablet because most people were doing searches on desktops but that's not the case anymore. In fact, I'd say, out of the 3 mobile is the most important now and the one that we tend to see the best results from.

Richard Jacobs: That's great. That's what I'm seeing with SEO now, mobile is now more than laptop and desktop, so the focus has changed to that first and laptop and desktop next. That's good to know. Adwords, Google Pay per click, it kind of has a bad rap though, extremely expensive, it's very difficult to do. Why do you think that happens?

Adam Kreitman: I think that there is a lot of confusion and frustration out there. I think that many attorneys who have used it in the past and not have gotten good results and I don't think that it's undeserved in some cases. Sometimes Adwords just doesn't work and people get frustrated and they give it a bad name. They don't say very pleasant things about their experience with it but I think that a lot of the times where people have not gotten a good result from Adwords, it's either because they've tried to do it themselves and especially as a business owner, an attorney running a firm, you just can't get the knowledge required to manage your own Google Adwords account correctly. The concept sounds pretty easy. Write an ad, pick some keywords and start getting people to your website but it's a lot more complex than that. So it's just hard for a business owner to do that themselves. Then in any industry, there are the snake oil salesmen out there. I think they sow the seeds for a lot of the confusion and frustration on purpose and they are just out there to make money for themselves and don't really take the time to do things right. I think when you combine all those things together, it just feeds into this confusion, frustration and misunderstanding and I think that's even more of the case in the legal industry because the competition is just so great and as you said, the click costs are too high so if people don't start seeing results soon, they kind of give up on it and it gets this bad reputation.

Richard Jacobs: In terms of complexity, how many different variables do you think there are. I mean, I've seen, just from location alone, you could target a city, you could exclude a city, you could target multiple cities, you could target geographic areas, you could run ads at certain times of the day and not others. You can adjust to fit on mobile vs. Laptop. How many factors are there inside of Adwords that you know of?

Adam Kreitman: I've lost count. I think when you start factoring in all the potential keywords and potential adcopy and as you were saying, the days your ads run, where they run, the devices that they run on. There is clearly a limit but I haven't reached it yet because There are just so many factors out there.

Richard Jacobs: It's so complex that it really takes a dedicated person to look at it.

Adam Kreitman: You need to know what you are doing. That's for sure.

Richard Jacobs: When you talk about expensive click costs, what are you seeing right now as click costs and what do you recommend as a budget for an attorney to spend so they get any traction so that they ca test out Adwords?

Adam Kreitman: The click costs vary widely. It depends on where in the country you are located and what your area of practice is. I would say, on the high end, the big cities, personal injury attorney type keywords, DUI type keywords, they can easily be over $100 a click. If you are talking about smaller cities and you are talking about less competitive niches, you could see $10 to $20 per click. The one thing I'd say about it being expensive is if you are looking at a cost per click and you say, Yeah $100 a click sure sounds expensive and it is but I would advise people to look more at the cost per lead than the cost per click meaning how much would you have to spend to get somebody to raise their hand and contact you and say yes, I'm interested in what you have to offer. I was talking to an attorney the other day and he had just put down $10,000 for a 3 month run of billboards around town. He did not get one quality lead for that $10,000. That's expensive. I could generally get leads, again depending on the niche and location for $150 to $250 range in Adwords. So compared to his experience with Billboard advertising, like that's cheap.

Richard Jacobs: So, a good lead is a phone call from a client that has a potential problem, one that may not be as good but still workable is an email lead. Someone emails in a question but that's what we mean by lead.

Adam Kreitman: Exactly. Yes.

Richard Jacobs: Then don't forget, it's still your job as an attorney to convert them to get them to retain you and pay your fee but with some average retainer fee for DUI, $1500 or $2000. It's definitely workable because you can see by the numbers and the PI. I know a case won't be taken until they can estimate your recovery to be $10,000 or more. In Family Law, you are going to have $3000 to $5000 or more. So that's why Adwords is expensive but it's a game that can be played and won. Are there any practice areas that should or shouldn't deal with adwords? Under what circumstances should an attorney entertain Adwords as opposed to not?

Adam Kreitman: I think that the ones that should say away from it are if you are in a very specific niche, like if you are in a very small niche of law. Especially if you are like a B2B or in a B2B type situation where instead of trying to reach consumers, you are trying to reach business people, that can get challenging. You are probably better off trying other types of advertising. You asked me about the budget in the last question and I got a bit side tracked on that. I would say at least budget $2000 a month for clicks. If you spend less than that, it's still workable but it takes a while to get data and that data is really important in figuring out is this working? What are the keywords? What are the ads that are actually driving the results? So you can improve the campaign and actually focus on what's actually driving the results instead of just very slowly getting a click here and there and not really having a data set to be able to determine what is working for you or not. So if you are not willing to spend that much, I would say, you probably should avoid Adwords but as far as the types of attorneys that it works for, it's certainly popular in terms of searches. There are a lot of people out there looking for personal injury attorneys, auto accident attorneys, divorce attorneys, family law attorneys, DUI attorneys, criminal defense attorneys. There is a lot of search traffic around those keywords and if you know what you are doing and if you know how to play the Adwords game, you can have a very profitable campaign and use it to build your practice up.

Richard Jacobs: Any other contra indications to doing that? Here is a question. How long should someone do it for so they can ascertain whether it works or not? 3 months, 6 months?

Adam Kreitman: I would say, 3 months on the high end. If I'm working with somebody and we don't start getting not just leads but they don't start getting any clients out of it after 3 months, then either the campaign should be shut down or we say, okay this landing page, these keywords, these ads, they are not doing what we want them to do, let's create a different strategy. For example, let's say, we just want to go for the phone call on the landing page. Maybe we take a step back and say instead of the phone call, let's offer a free guide or something just to insert another step in the process to provide value and get people to raise their hand in a way that's not too risky. For a lot of people, actually having to call is just scary. It's scary for them so maybe we try offering them something before that to get them to kind of notice you like a trusted source, build a relationship and then from that point, jump off from there and then go for the phone call. Offer a free consultation or something like that.

Richard Jacobs: One thing that I liked about what you said is that 3 months is the upper limit. A lot of strategies, SEO may take 6 months or an year, other strategies like big name advertising where you buy a Billboard, you have to do searching for weeks or sometimes an year. This you can test very quickly. So even though it may seem like a high monthly amount, if it does seem like that to you, you'll know quickly. You are not locked in to do this for a long time. It's actually not that expensive to test and figure things out.

Adam Kreitman: Yes and just to pick up on something that you said, you should not be locked into doing this for a long time. There are companies out there that will make you sign up for 6 months or an year or whatever their contract is and I tell people when it comes to pay per click advertising, don't do that because if you are not seeing results after 3 months, nothing is really going to change. If they have you locked in, there is just nothing they will do over the term of that remaining contract that is going to change things and you'll just end up sinking money into Adwords which by the way feeds into the frustration and confusion and everything that we talked about before. Don't sign a long term contract.

Richard Jacobs: Any other tips? Good things to do, bad things to avoid.

Adam Kreitman: Yes. I would say, probably the top 2 things is that whatever type of advertising you do, you really want to measure the results as closely as you can. Know what you are getting in return. When you are running an adwords campaign, you're really trying to drive phone calls in most cases. There is a technology out there that is called dynamic call tracking. What that does is it allows you to tie the phone calls that you are getting in your office back to the specific keywords and ads that made the phone ring. So if you end up in a situation and I've seen situations like this in the past where an attorney is spending thousands of dollars on this keyword that you would think is this obvious keyword, then they are getting a lot of traffic and the metrics that you have about the keyword all look good but then when you use dynamic call tracking, you start seeing that for all the clicks and all the money that you are spending for that ad, it's not making your phone ring. Having that information is absolutely critical because when you have dynamic call tracking, you can see precisely the keywords and the ads that are making the phone ring and you can adjust your budget accordingly so that you are spending your money on the ones that are driving up results and backing off the ones that you may be spending money on but really, are not helping move your business forward. The other big thing I would say, is using a dedicated landing page for your adwords campaign. Most pages on your website are better focused for your SEO. There is a lot of content on them, there are a lot of links, all these things that are good for search engine optimization. With pay per click, people who click on the ads tend to be really focused on what they want. If you start providing too much content or too many links where they start clicking and get distracted and go down this rabbit hole, the chances of them raising their hand or calling your office get lower and lower. So we always set up dedicated landing pages for the Adwords campaigns. We have few, if any links, we have one very clear call to action. This is what we want you to do. Sign up for this free consultation or whatever it is and we just focus on a very concise message on why someone should pick up the phone and call you. Those types of landing pages tend to perform the best for pay per click.

Richard Jacobs: From what I've seen, most people will just send everyone to the homepage. What's wrong with doing that?

Adam Kreitman: That's probably the worst thing you could do because everybody tries to cram so much information in their webpage especially attorneys who have multiple practice areas. If somebody is looking for a personal injury attorney and they go to a landing page that talks about family law and personal injury and whatever else, it's not talking to that person. We can't be all things to all people. So the more tightly formed your message is around the keywords that the people type in before going to your website, the more likely you are to get that person to raise their hand and say I'm interested in this. I was in an auto accident. I want an auto accident attorney and I see that this attorney helps people who are in auto accidents. Follow that train of thought all the way through from the initial thought process going on and the prospect's bringing the fees and go to Google and type that keyword and they see that ad that is relevant to that keyword and then they go to the landing page and that's again relevant to the keyword and the ad. That's how you gather people.

Richard Jacobs: Just so it's very clear. The path is someone sees an ad when they put in a keyword, they click on that ad, it goes to what we are calling a landing page. They land on your website, on a specific page that you've geared to get them to call or email you. That's the path

Adam Kreitman: Yes. That is the path.

Richard Jacobs: Okay, I have a couple of wrap up questions. I don't know if you want to disclose it but you spoke to me about a kind of unusual strategy that you were using with one of your PI attorney clients to get clicks at an affordable cost. Do you want to talk about that?

Adam Kreitman: Yeah. I don't want to like totally unveil our special sauce and actually we are using it for a couple of PI attorneys right now. As I said before, personal injury is one of the most competitive markets out there and you could easily be paying $100 or so per click in this market. We have this counter intuitive strategy where instead of focusing on the most obvious keywords, we take a step back and we focus on some keywords that are still relevant but not quite as obvious, that get a lot of traffic. The way that we structure or target a campaign leads to a situation for our clients where we are getting leads for less than what most personal injury attorneys are paying per click. Not all the leads are perfect leads or highly targeted leads but it's a numbers game and so far the numbers are working. I have one client in one of the Top 10 markets in the US and within the first 2 weeks of turning this campaign on, he got 2 new clients. I have another one in one of the Top 2 markets in the US and he just settled on a case that was worth $30,000 to his firm which covered all the costs for advertising for this campaign that he spent here to date. That wasn't the only one that he's closed, so he's well ahead of the game. It's a counter intuitive strategy that seems to be working and I hope it keeps working for my clients.

Richard Jacobs: Okay. Well, you've been doing it for a while, so far so good. For attorneys listening that want to get in contact with you and work with you on their pay per click. How do they do that? Wat's the best way to reach you?

Adam Kreitman: The best way to reach me is always email. My email address is [email protected]. That is the best way. If you want to call me my phone number is (314) 329-1422. Those are the 2 best ways to reach me.

Richard Jacobs: Do you have capacity right now to take on a few more attorney clients?

Adam Kreitman: I do. Especially on the strategy that I just mentioned. It's working well and we've got a good system in place so I'd be excited to help other attorneys benefit from that strategy.

Richard Jacobs: Okay. Very Good. I guess we'll call it a day. It's a short call but thanks for being on it and anyone that needs help contact Adam. Let him know that you heard about it on the Speakeasy Marketing podcasts so he knows, not that he will treat you any good, but he knows where you came from. Thanks a lot Adam, I appreciate you being on the call.

Adam Kreitman: Thanks. Rich.

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Tracy Merda (Client Care Counselor Speakeasy Marketing, Inc.) interviews James Baer – Partner at BAER & TROFF LLP.

Jim goes in great detail about how he and his partner both came from big law firms and decided they wanted to start their own boutique firm instead. He talked about about starting a new law practice and growing it. He also talked about the difference between the large law firm vs. small law firm. More on this in this podcast. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and post a review.

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Tracy: Okay. This is Tracy Merda with Speakeasy Marketing. And today, I have a wonderful guest with me. It's Attorney Jim Baer of Baer & Troff also a counsel at Glaser Weil in California. Thanks for joining me today, Jim. I really appreciate it.

Jim: My pleasure, and thank you, Tracy and thank you Speakeasy.

Tracy: Jim, you have an interesting background in that you've came from a large firm and decided to open your own practice. Tell me a little bit about Baer & Troff and who are the players, what got you started?

Jim: What got me started, Tracy, was the search for sophisticated law but also having a balanced approach. Coming out of the big law firm environment, there is high overhead and very little flexibility with respect to try to raise a family and have a balance. And I have always been somebody who has tried to deliver high quality legal services but at the same time, I did not want to miss my children growing up and I wanted to have an opportunity to kind of make the world the better place and do some non-profit work as well. So I found the "Big Firm" environment as opposed to the small firm environment less flexible.

Tracy: What areas of the law does Baer & Troff LLP handle?

Jim: So, we specialize in what I would call the middle market corporate law as well as sophisticated business litigation but what we grown into is kind of the one stop place for the middle market, meaning what we try to do because we are big firm trained experienced people is we try to partner with our clients and essentially solve their business challenges. So when I meet someone and I have a relationship, for instance, grafted for years, I don't want them feeling that I am not their first call. So if they have a business challenge, whether or not if they want to buy a company, sell a company, raise financing or they want to collect money from someone that owes them money or they want to defend a lawsuit they're in, or if they are going to a restructuring and they need to figure out what is the best way that we start or shut down their company, I want to capture that business because I have got the relationship and because I am an expert in those areas, I want the call. So whether or not it's through Baer & Troff or my relation with Glaser Weil, which is a middle market high-end law firm that does high-end litigation and real estate work as well as corporate for bigger things, or CMBG Advisors, Inc., which is a restructuring company that I also run. I want that call so that I can essentially what the person or company needs and how I best can help them.

Tracy: And Jim, I mentioned that both you and Attorney Troff started with major larger law firms, correct?

Jim: Eric and I met together the first day in law school and I went to Gibson, Dunn and he went to Musick Peeler and we essentially collectively had years in the big firm environment. And coincidentally, we got to a point in our lives where we wanted to combine forces and take that knowledge and essentially build a middle market firm.

Tracy: So, how did that background that you both came from, how did that really shaped your vision for starting your own private practice?

Jim: I think that what I realized in the corporate world is that you are dealing often with very complex, challenging situations and it's not one size fits all. So for instance, if you need a heart surgeon, you don't look at a billboard on the freeway and call 1800 heart surgeon whereas if it's a slip and fall, you may call that PI that's advertising. I realized long time ago that marketing in the old traditional way does not work because people don't want somebody to kind of it's just a one stop shop cramming in there. People want IQ and they want experience. And so Eric & I learned from the big firm experience that there is no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and knowing what the heck you are talking about. But by the same token, if you surround yourself with bright people, manage your overhead, you can keep your rates down and attract sophisticated clients but they essentially are more cost conscious.

Tracy: So, tell me a little bit about your career path and sort of the pros and cons of practicing law with the large firm versus a small firm of your own?

Jim: Well, first of all, lawyers are typically risk averse, so one of the advantages of a big firm is you have a sense of security. You get a paycheck, you get a paycheck from a big firm, you don't have to be a rainmaker, you get up in the morning, you go in, you get given work typically and if you bill your hours and keep your head down and you are smart and you work hard, that's all you have to really do. And that's an oversimplification but that's the key. When you go out on your own, you really kind of eat what you kill and you are responsible for your destiny. But having said that, I am not reportable to anybody. I am accountable to my clients but at the end of the day, I have more flexibility. But if there is no money in the bank account, I am not getting the paycheck. So you have to be willing to live with that uncertainty and so I think it does take a little more faith.

Tracy: And starting any business of course is usually a pretty tough and risk venture. How did you guys survive the early months?

Jim: The key is, and this is true for small businesses, the number one thing to kill small businesses is underestimating your expenses and overestimating your revenue. And so you have to know realistically what you can count on from clients and of course there is a leap of faith. But you need to talk to your clients and know who will come with you and who won't and you have to figure out what kind of overhead you can realistically afford. For instance, do you work at a home for a period of time, do you need a fancy office? I don't think people need fancy offices in this virtual world. I am sitting here right now looking out over the pacific and yes, we have nice offices but it's really more for me than my clients and at the end of the day, for years, I didn't have this nice office. So you have to manage your overhead and manage expectations and really kind of know which clients are going to come with you and which ones won't so that you kind of don't get overextended.

Tracy: So real quick, what are dos and don'ts of starting a law firm?

Jim: Good question. The do's are as we talked about having a realistic vision and really not being naïve about what goes into it. So having some experience, throwing your back pack over the law meaning you have to be commit to it but really doing your home work, having a budget, knowing are you doing it by yourself, are you doing it with the partner; and if you are doing with the partner, you're only as good as the ethics of the partner. It's like a marriage. You really have to know who you are getting into bed with and so do your homework with your partner, make sure it's somebody that really doesn't have addiction issues that has integrity that really is going to be there for you in the same way you candidly would pick a spouse or a significant other. So I think you really have to do your home work. In terms of the don'ts, I think it's kind of the reverse to that. You jump in without doing your home work, you associate with people that you shouldn't be associating with and you essentially overestimate your revenue and underestimate your expenses. So go in with a vision in a plan, find out what malpractice insurance is going to cost, find out what rent is going to be, find out who is going to join you and who isn't, find out what lawyers you are going to — what clients are going to follow you and which ones won't. And so do your home work and don't jump in impulsively, do your home work.

Tracy: Jim, you touched on this earlier just a bit but how did you start in finding good clients or how did they find you?

Jim: When I first started at Gibson, Dunn in 1983, I was filled with entrepreneurial zeal and I met with two very, very successful businessmen because I was concerned that maybe I didn't want to be a lawyer, maybe I wanted to go off into the business world, and they said, "Kid, anybody that could go to law school for 3 years go to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher is not particularly entrepreneurial. So keep your head down, be a lawyer and get over yourself", and they said, "The reason going to Gibson, Dunn, the good thing is think about headhunters. They can pick up the phone and call somebody and in 5 minutes get a million dollar check and that life is all who you know". And so going to Gibson, Dunn, whether or not you are there for a month or you are there for 20 years – and I was there for 9 years – is less important than kind of "Learning your preps and getting to know people". So at the end of the day, after being at Gibson, Dunn for 9 years and after being at Katten, Muchin, which is another national firm for 5 years, after 14 years of contact, I had people to call when I went out on my own.

Tracy: How important are ethics in running a successful law firm?

Jim: Well, without putting politics on the table, I suppose it depends on who you ask. From my perspective, they are very important but that's because I want to look in the mirror and like what I see in the morning. I know people that make good livings that are not ethical. But on the other hand, from my perspective, what goes around comes around and at the end of the day, I don't feel we are serving our clients well if we are unethical, we are not serving our maker if we are not ethical, or we are not serving ourselves if we are not ethical. And so at the end of the day, Shakespeare said, "Take all the lawyers and throw them to the bottom of the ocean". From my perspective, we have an opportunity to set an example and serve people or we have an opportunity to be someone that lowers our profession. And so from my perspective, ethics are extremely important.

Tracy: Jim, what have you found are some of the characteristics of successful leaders and law firms?

Jim: I would say that hard work and consistency are the most important. And you know this again, I didn't say ethics in the sense that there are people presumably that make a good living, that yell at their employees and they probably over bill and do things although often that catches up with them, there are probably examples of people where they do get away with it. But I don't think there is any shortcut when it comes to hard work and consistency at least if you are not going to be "The person putting it out on the 4 or 5 freeways that says 'slip and fall, call me". If you are going, as I said, go back to the heart surgery analogy, I always have been a marketing oriented lawyer and I always did more than the next guy but I looked around after being a lawyer for 10 or 15 years and I realized that those people that really were good, good hardworking lawyers were actually more successful than I was. And I said to myself, "Wait a second! I am this really marketing oriented lawyer, I am a smart lawyer, I am a good lawyer but why is it this other lawyer has more business than me? And the answer is at the end of the day, you can start out with flashy marketing, fancy business cards, and great office, take a lot of people to dinner, take a lot of people to lunch and you can sometimes even get work that way. But whether or not you get repeat business is whether or not you "Exceed" a client's expectation. People go out of their way when they are paying large legal bills to come back and/or refer their friends when you have exceeded their expectations, not met, exceeded. You cannot do that without hard work and consistency.

Tracy: So on the flipside, what are easy mistakes that people make when they are trying to lead a law firm?

Jim: I think seeing people as commodities and not treating people with respect, I think it's looking for shortcuts, I don't think there are shortcuts. I think that it's over promising and under performing and it's essentially not taking the time to control the client's expectations because you can't exceed someone's expectations if you have over promised. So I think people often under communicate and miss deadlines. There are certain things I learned from Gibson, Dunn that I think are priceless. One, you always return a phone call the same day, and number two, Frank Wheat, one of my mentors at Gibson, Dunn, said to me, "You check the name three times. Once, twice, three times". Tracy, people do not want their names pronounced wrong and they don't want them spelled wrong. And people have egos and people want to be seen. And if they are paying you X dollars and hour and you don't spell their name right, it doesn't go over well and they don't want you to calling back 3 days later because they realize they are not important. People want to feel important, they want to know they matter, and at the end of the day, the mistake people make is they see people as a commodity and they get arrogant or they get complaints and they don't pay attention to those little things. I'll give you one other thing that I learned at Gibson, Dunn which I thought was extremely important, and that is, when you go into a meeting and somebody is paying thousands of dollars for an answer, there are no problems, there are only challenges and when you go into that meeting, you say to them when you don't know what the heck you are talking about, those are excellent questions, we will get answers for you, we're in this together, we will work this out. You don't start sweating, you act like solely landing that airplane on the Hudson, and you exercise great under pressure. And again, I have had an amazing opportunity to work with people like Patty Glaser who is not only consistent, hardworking, extremely bright but she does all of that and then she goes out to dinner at the end of the day and it doesn't matter if the client is a peer or the client is a first year lawyer, Patty is genuinely interested about in that person and their life and ask meaningful questions and so even though she is probably one of the top 5 lawyers in the world, she cares about people. And she works hard, she is consistent and she cares about the little person. And those types of things make all the difference in the world.

Tracy: Jim, how did you define or create your firm's culture at Baer & Troff?

Jim: One of my heroes is a guy named Stephen Covey who wrote a book called the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And I felt like the principles that he'd been teaching in business school that he was trying to kind of get businesses to follow were things that I thought could be utilized in a law firm setting and so thinking where we went starting out with his principles, I first seek to understand and then be understood and essentially most of the principles we are talking now about, balance, synergy, think win-win, think out of the box, all of those things come from that book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Tracy: What do you think has made Baer & Troff so successful?

Jim: Hard work, consistency and following the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Tracy: Sweet and simple, right?

Jim: Yes, keep it simple.

Tracy: Are there any final words of wisdom you would like to share with other attorneys who might be either starting their own firm or may be they already have one and they are in a little bit of trouble and looking for some help?

Jim: There are no dumb questions. Be willing to learn from everyone, whether or not it's the person in the elevator or it's a mentor like Patty Glaser. Surround yourself with the best and the brightest, like John Kennedy did, and essentially have the humility to ask questions and know what you don't know and to have the confidence to go for it. But I am only as good as the people that work for me and I did figure out a while ago that having hardworking, extremely bright, dedicated ethical people around me makes me affective. I am absolutely only as affective as the team I have and I think that if you look around, I have traded up and I would not substitute anyone in for one of the people that work with me because they are part of my family and they make me look good and so you literally are only as good as the people you associate yourself with. So if you look around and there is a weak link in your team, that's a problem. And there is no "I and team", you have to build the right team.

Tracy: Especial thanks to my guest Attorney Jim Baer of Baer & Troff LLP with offices in Brentwood and Pasadena as well as Jim has also come from Glaser Weil. Jim, if someone would like to reach out to you with their legal matters, what is the best way to reach you?

Jim: I would say that the best way to reach me is one of two ways. They can email me at [email protected], or they can email me at [email protected], or they can call our office 310-802-4200 and that would be the easiest way to get in touch with me.

Tracy: All right. Thank you so much for your time today, Jim. I wish you a good one.

Jim: Thank you, Tracy.

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Tracy Merda (Client Care Counselor Speakeasy Marketing, Inc.) interviews a business mentoring expert at Heartrepreneur, Terri Levine. Terri explains in detail how she has been able to help business owners, solopreneurs and lawyers to heart-based communication, heart-centered marketing and sell their sevices & products. Listen to the podcast for a deep dive into Heartrepreneur and how it can change your law practice. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast and post a review.

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Tracy: Okay. Good morning. This is Tracy Merda with Speakeasy Marketing and Secrets of Attorney Marketing. This morning, I have with me Terri Levine, the author of one of the best selling book "Turbo Charge: How to Transform Your Business as a Heart-repreneur". Terri, welcome. Thank you for joining me this morning.

Terri Levine: It's a pleasure to be with you; thanks for having me.

Tracy: Terri, you are the owner and sort of entrepreneur of Heart-repreneur. Tell me a little bit about what that actually means to you?

Terri Levine: Well, I coined the term trademark that I guess about a year and a half ago when I was describing to my publisher how I really wanted to transform the way that this was done that I just am not seeing enough heart in marketing, I am not seeing enough heart in how people talk to their prospects, talk to their clients, talk to employees, talk to vendors and I really just wanted to make a change for business owners, for professional business owners to really understand that we've got to communicate with our hearts and open up the space in communication and that really changes our businesses and makes us a lot more money.

Tracy: So, you certainly had a list that sort of led you to start Heart-Repreneur from your own personal experiences or just what you've seen over the years in your course of the career?

Terri Levine: Well, what's happening to me is I have been in business for over 3 decades and over the last 10 years or so, it just felt like the way people were marketing was all about having people twist from place to place instead of understanding that we really do business face to face. And we have got to put ourselves into our businesses and I work with all kinds of business, whether it's physicians or attorneys or whoever, we have got to use our own personalities, our own connections, our own heart and I really got pretty lit up about that, really serious about it.

Tracy: So who are your typical clients? I hate to use that word but just generally speaking, are you talking about small businesses, large businesses or everybody in-between?

Terri Levine: Really good question. I have worked with all kinds of business since I have worked with Solopreneur Businesses and I have worked all the way up to companies like General Electric. And I will tell you that I am also a keynote speak on Heart-Repreneur, this is relevant for every business. I don't care if you're a one person firm or if you have got hundreds or thousands of employees, this is literally the way to do business in the 21st century, PERIOD.

Tracy: I can even see where — I mean even someone as an independent contractor, that could just sit in and be so important even for a one man show.

Terri Levine: Hundred per cent. It really is and when people are moving into become Heart-Repreneurs, and I get a lot of texts and a lot of messages on my website and email and people are really seeing a difference and they are also seeing a difference in how much easier it is to do work in this kind of way and how much more money they are making. So that's all really important to me.

Tracy: So, let's break it down. What are the programs or services that Heart-Repreneur offers small businesses?

Terri Levine: We provide a better way of getting leads, that's the first thing that we do. How do you get a lot of leads without spending marketing dollars, and how do you do it so that – we call it reverse marketing – people come to you, people raise their hands and they say, "I am interested in working with you, your company, your firm, I want to hire you" and they come to you, you don't hunt for them. So that's the first thing we do. The second thing we do is we teach what's called Reverse Selling. And Reverse Selling is where you meet with a prospect, you chat with the prospect and instantly the prospect says, "I want to hire you", or, "How do I hire you" instead of you talking about here's what we do, here's how we work, here's how it goes, there is no selling. It's reverse selling. They raise their hands and hire themselves.

And then the third thing that we specialize is once you learn how to use the Heart-Repreneur process to really put more heart into everything, and you can actually work a lot less and make a lot more. So we teach you the third part which is how to create an extraordinary life while making more money as a business owner.

Tracy: Terri, what do you find are some of the biggest obstacles to overcome when working from your heart so to speak for most small businesses?

Terri Levine: Most small business owners never work this way. And I have been one who has been working out 30 some years so I know that it's actual. So they are not use to this, they think they got to do a lot of marketing, they think they have got to convince people or tell people or sell people and it's a bit of a shift to really learn that you don't have to do any of those things. You can just sit back, you can just literally be honest, be transparent, be more conscious, be open in your communication and the business will flow to you without you having to do what you thought you had to do sales and marketing, which you actually don't have to do.

Tracy: And that saves dollars as well.

Terri Levine: It sure does. Time, energy and dollars.

Tracy: Why do you think with small businesses, specifically with attorneys, we'll kind of address our audience here, they haven't been necessarily running their business or approaching it authentically. And what does that really look like when it comes to let's say an attorney interacting with a potential client?

Terri Levine: Well, I work with a lot of attorneys. So I am pretty familiar with what's going on with them and what's happening with them. And I'll just say that attorneys, I'm generalizing a bit but I have worked with a lot of attorneys over the years, they are not used to doing marketing in a heart-centered way. So some don't do very much marketing and some do marketing but they are not doing it by being transparent, by being open, by even knowing what to say or do to get people to raise their hand, come to them and then ask them to be their attorney. They are used to trying to convince or sell and/or the way of marketing today is spending money. A lot of people think you have to spend money to market, so it's a very different paradigm shift and once they start doing it this way, my experience is they catch on really, really fast. Not all professions do but I've had a lot of successful attorneys catching on to the Heart-Repreneur mode.

Tracy: That's something that I thought was kind of interesting that you had either been quoted as saying or sort of referenced. And it refers to why you try to get your clients to be known as a celebrity in their own region before trying to become an international star. And I thought that's so true and I think a lot of our clients or attorneys and whomever, you see the big picture and you want to go for that versus starting on a local level.

Terri Levine: It's so interesting because as a business consultant, I can work internationally and I do. And the way I started was — it's just what I teach, just what you're talking now here, Tracy, is get known in your local area first, let your local area kind of make you a celebrity so you become a celebrity and/or your law firm becomes celebrity. You get known as the go-to divorce attorney that's really supportive of women or whatever it might be, you get known for that. You get expert status in your locale and then you can make the geography wider, broader, larger. Start within a small radius, so it's very, very easy to regionalized and get known really, really well and get a lot of prospects in a smaller area that what most people try to do. They try to cover broad range area. We don't recommend that because this works extremely well.

Tracy: Terri, tell me a little bit about the book Turbo Charge-How to Transfer Your Business as a Heart-Repreneur.

Terri Levine: Well, it was such a joy really to write this book, so this is my — I think it's my book 19 or book 20, I can't even remember because I have been writing for many, many years. I had so much passion about cheering this whole Heart-Repreneur movement and I really wasn't sure what book I was going to write, I just kept talking to my publisher about this whole movement of getting people to work with their hearts. And he looked at me and he said, "You need to write a book. That will explain to people really like step by step how to be a Heart-Repreneur. That's what I want you to write". And I thought about it, it resonated straightaway and I asked some clients. I said, "If I were to teach this to masses of people, not just to you individually, what's the ultimate result it would get", and one of my clients said, "They would Turbo-Charge their business". So I literally dissected my entire process of how I have turbo-charged, what I have taught my 5000 plus clients and I have put it all down in Turbo Charge: How to Transfer Your Business as a Heart-Repreneur, and from this feedback I am getting, it's definitely something that people are following, they are loaning, they are resonating with and literally overnight, it became an international best seller before we even promoted it, so I know that I am on the right path for people.

Tracy: So Terri, with the Heart-Repreneur programs and services, what areas of the country are you servicing? Sort of break it down for me if I were to come to you and hire you, what am I looking at in terms of programs, interacting with you just sort of an idea on what someone might expect?

Terri Levine: Sure. So, we are international. I do have consultants in all over the world but we travel. To work with me directly, you can work with me by phone, you can work with me by Skype, by Zoom. And if you want me in person, you can come and work with me. I live in Philadelphia area part of the year; I live in Mexico part of the year and I live in New Jersey part of the year, and I also travel. So if people want me to come to their office, if they want to work with me privately, I travel to them, I often do a lot of training workshops, keynote speeches, so we make ourselves really accessible. It's so important to me that we transform thousands of people to do business this way. And the more professionals that learn to do business this way the more successful they will be.

Tracy: Spending time in Mexico part of the year. Obviously you are doing something there, right.

Terri Levine: Well, part of what I teach, and this is really important, part of what my consulting clients learn is not only how to make a lot more money in your business and do it with your heart that also how to create more freedom in their life using systems that I have developed and I have a number of them just for attorneys, what are the systems that literally allow you to work less and make more and it's all proprietary systems I have developed and I share that with all my clients.

Tracy: I love that. Any last words or tips and advice for some of our small businesses who might be sort of looking at their business models going, "Okay, something is missing. Something needs to change here"?

Terri Levine: Great question. So the first thing I always say to people is take a notebook with you for the next 7 days and start writing down what you do in every hour. So in other words, I read email, I talk to a client, I have to do some paperwork, whatever it might be, write it down, just quick little journal over a 7-day work period so that you really can see what you might be doing that's a time-waster, what you might be doing that's not allowing you to have as much freedom as you want, and start looking at how am I communicating that might not be heart-to-heart. I'll give you a real example. So, my attorney that represents my company normally would just have sent me emails about whatever was happening, "Well, we did this and we did that". So now, he is learning to be more heart-to-heart in communication and a great example is last week, he wanted to update me on something and he actually just left me a voicemail and he said, "Hey Terri, I thought of leaving you a voicemail, I am seeing more of a Heart-Repreneur. Here is what happened, here is what I am working on. You don't have to get back to me, I just wanted to update you". That heart-to-heart communication was totally different than the typical emails I receive, much, much better received.

Tracy: Well, I want to thank you for your time today, Terri. Again, this was a great interview and time to speak with Terri Levine, author of Turbo Charge: How to Transform Your Business as a Heart-Repreneur. Terri, what is the best way if someone is interested in either the book and/or some of your Heart-Repreneur programs, how can they reach you; what's the best way to contact you?

Terri Levine: They can actually just go to heartrepreneur.com and there is a contact form, or they can email me, [email protected] and I do respond and answer all my email. And they can also follow up on facebook.com/heartrepreneurs.

Tracy: And the book is also available on Amazon.com as well; is there anywhere else that someone can get it?

Terri Levine: Yes. They can definitely get the book from Amazon, any other online store retailer. In addition to that, if they go to heartrepreneur.com, they can get 3 chapters of the book to get them started while they are waiting for the book to come, and I highly recommend they do that.

Tracy: That's excellent. Okay, well I think you again, Terri and I wish you a great day and, please, reach out to Terri if you are looking at transforming your business model as well as sounds like transforming your life.

Terri Levine: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

Tracy: Thank you so much, Terri.

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Your clients are not attorneys, and have none of the hard-earned legal training you do. They don't use the same terms, and certainly don't understand legalese. Recovery vs. Settlement. Spousal Maintenance vs. Alimony. 4th Amendment vs. Search and Seizure. Administrative Hearing vs. DMV Hearing.

When using legal expressions and jargon on your website articles, and anytime you interact with potential and current clients, make sure to translate into terms the layperson can understand. Use clear, simple and easy-to-understand language, make your content digestible. Find more about this in today's podcast. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and post a review.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I want to talk about something real basic. Do you speak English to your prospects or do you speak using legal terms aka gobbledygook to the layman's ear or the untrained ear? This is very important. This stems from a recent conversation I had with one of my clients who does personal injury. And we were talking about the words used on his website and we were talking about a recovery versus settlement. And he said, "Well, I don't want to call staff for settlement because I think this and I think that. I want to call a recovery". I said, "Well, what do your clients call it?" And he thought about it and he said, "Yes, money or settlement that kind of thing", I said "Well, that's probably what you should call that on your website even though to you, it may not be the most precise language and it may not be a 100% accurate", because if your clients call it that and that's what you have in your website, well now, they'll see that and it'll make sense to them. Their brain will automatically say, "Settlement, settlement, great". Recovery, they may understand or they may not but you don't want to take that chance. This happens in other arenas. Let's take the DUI world. In some states, they call it DWI, OUI, OVI, OWI, DUI, DUID, DUAC. There is a whole host of terms depending on the state. And almost every time when I talk to the attorney in a particular state and they'll those acronyms, I'll say, "What do your clients call it", and they'll almost always say, "DUI or drunk driving", sometimes they'll say "DWI". Well guess what? Yes, you want to put the normal terms that you have on your website for Google's sake but you also want to put again the terms that real people will use because when they are looking around and they are in the state of panic or emotional distress which accompanies almost every legal situation if you think about it, even a parking ticket. You have that emotional distress. Imagine murder, sex crime, divorce, bankruptcy, I mean look at the level of emotion there. And you know emotion clouds judgment and when you are emotional, you miss things right under your nose. So you got to make your site easy to understand.

Some other examples. Let's say you have a board certification of something that applies in your state; not all states it does, I know. What does that mean? I don't know what that means. Does your client know what it means? You know what it means. So explain it. So if you have any badges on your site or a specific terminology that people don't understand, you've got to explain it. Let's look at divorce. So there is contested and uncontested, what does that mean? A lot of people may be familiar with the term Annulment, that may not apply in your state. A big division I have seen is spousal maintenance versus alimony, that's a big division; some states have one, some states have the other. Some people call it one thing, some people call it another. I recently worked with a guy that does prenup and post-nup agreements. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a post-nup agreement. I had only heard about pre-nup. And not all cases but many times, I am a good indicator because yes, I know about the law from working with many, many attorneys but thankfully, I haven't had too many run-ins with it in serious situations. I haven't been divorced or any of that, thank goodness, but I am more like the layperson when it comes to those circumstances. So what I would do, if I were you, is again, think back and listen to your customers, what are they saying. And then when you are reviewing your website and all your marketing material and even your presentation, live or over the phone when you are doing a phone consult, avoid using as much as possible legal terminology. If you have to, explain what it means in real simple terms because the confused mind says no, and the confused and frightened and emotionally dragged down mind, which is the mind that you interact with on pretty much every client call or potential client call, that mind is going to run away screaming if it doesn't understand what you're talking about. And it's just going to put up an artificial barrier between you and the potential client, why do that, why not get more cases and again, you may not even realize you are coming across like this. Last example I'll give you is in the marketing world, you may get calls, probably you do all the time, from marketing companies, SEO companies and they are throwing all kinds of gobbledygook terms at you, you know, "We're Google partner certified, we use SEM not SEO, we'll optimize your site using keyword", this and that, "We'll have a proprietary dashboard that does this", we'll use Google maps or Google+ to do that, I bet if you are listening to this podcast, you are already like (snoring sound) hearing that stuff snoring because you don't care. You just want the bottom-line, you want to know what will make me money, what will get me customers. So again, back to your potentials. What will get me legal help and what's going to happen to me or what could happen to me, that's what they want to know. And you're the person that's going to do it.

So anyway, before I beat this to death, as usual, hope this advice is helpful to you. Look over your marketing material and again, see if you are doing this kind of gobbledygook talk. So that's what I have for you today. If you need help in translating what you do so the mind of the customer matches what you have on your site and in your marketing material, it'll get you more clients and I'll help you do it. Email me [email protected], or call 888-225-8594. And if you like this podcast, please subscribe to it and review it. It helps get this out to more attorneys just like you. Thank you.

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Jordan Ostraff opened his law practice in late 2015, yet is doing phenomenally well.

Jordan talks about how he launched his own practice and, more importantly, how he was able to grow it in a matter of months using SEO, marketing and relationships to make it the juggernaut it is today. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and post a review. Even if you've been practicing for 30 years, this interview is a must listen… why? Because if Jordan can do it in 1 year, so can you.

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Tracy: Good morning. This is Tracy Merda with Speakeasy Marketing and Secrets of Attorney Marketing. This morning, I am joined here with Attorney Jordan Ostraff of Jordan Firm in Orlando, Florida. Welcome and thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Jordan Ostraff: Happy to be here. It's the Jordan Law Firm.

Tracy: Okay. Well, Jordan, I am very excited to have you here. I know a little bit about your firm and what you do and that you've started out on your own practice and it's been a successful venture so far. So I am wondering if you could just tell me a little bit about the background of Jordan Law Firm and who are your partners and attorneys and a little bit about when and how it got started?

Jordan Ostraff: So, I started out when I graduated law school, I wanted to be a prosecutor so I worked in Orange County, Florida for 3 years, worked my way all the way up to trying DUI manslaughters, robbery with the firearm, attempted murders those kinds of cases. And one day, I decided I wanted to take what I learned onto the other side, so I jumpstarted a criminal defense and family law practice and then very early on, got joined by my first associate and wife Heather Trick and then now we have two more associates Jeff Lotter who spent 12 years as a DUI cop and a drug recognition expert before becoming an attorney, and then Luis Herrera who actually coached the trial team in law school who was a prosecutor for a little under a year and then since jumped over and joined us.

Tracy: So, what about those practice areas kind of got you started because you are talking about two very different areas of the law?

Jordan Ostraff: Well, in my experience, they are not — a lot of times, they are not that different. We see a lot of cases that start out as a divorce case and then become domestic violence or start out as a domestic violence case and then become a junction. So the way that I looked at it was I know I wanted to do criminal law, I like being in the courtroom, I like the speed and the pace of it as opposed to traditional civil law which takes a lot longer, so I tried to figure out what I could see that would be on the periphery of regular criminal defense because obviously criminal defense is a very saturated market I would assume across the country, certainly in Orlando, Florida. We have got a number of phenomenal criminal defense attorneys. So I thought that by doing family law and then we actually recently started doing some academic hearings over at the University of Central Florida and the other colleges. A lot of times those are attached to a criminal case, either the kid picks up a DUI and then have to go before the school for it or again, it's a domestic violence injunction that gets violated with a domestic violence battery charge, something along those lines.

Tracy: Starting out a new practice on your own, that can be pretty risky venture. What made you decide that you wanted to go this route versus joining up with and sticking with a firm that's already been around for a while?

Jordan Ostraff: Well, the thing for me is Orlando, Florida has a phenomenal criminal defense bar. So having been able to work with or work against a number of the local attorneys, when I was on the fence about if I wanted to stay, if I wanted to jump, if I wanted to open my own firm, I just went out to lunch with as many different people as I could, picked everybody's brain, especially former prosecutors or solo practitioners, talk to them about what they like and then decided that I wanted the flexibility of having my own practice, I was willing to take the risk associated with having to bring everything in or not eat and knew that I have enough of the support system in place that there would be some people who would throw me a case here and there to help me get started and get my feet wet and that hopefully things would pan out quickly enough and thankfully they did.

Tracy: Jordan, what was your goal and vision when you were setting up your private practice? What did you really kind of have in your heart and mind that you wanted this practice to look like?

Jordan Ostraff: I guess initially I wanted something that was going to keep food on the table but thankfully once that was solved, the biggest thing was I wanted to be able to provide people with top level representation for a fair price and be able to kind of pick and choose the cases that I wanted, the counties that I wanted to go to etc., because you'll see a lot of people unfortunately, especially solo practitioners who have to take whatever cases comes in the door and then next thing you know you're driving around at four different courthouses at the exact same time trying to prep for the next hearing while you're in the car on the way to it. I didn't want to get stuck in that situation and I wanted to be able to sit down and put the right time and effort into each and every case that came out in the door so that hopefully not only would those clients be happy but then obviously you are building referral basis from those people so that when somebody calls them looking for an attorney, they can say, "Hey, I went with so and so, they were fantastic. They did a great job, they were easy to contact", those sorts of things.

Tracy: So, surely there had to be some challenges in that first year. Tell me a little bit about some of those biggest challenges in the early months and how you and your team sort of overcame those?

Jordan Ostraff: Well, thankfully from my standpoint, the biggest challenge was before I had a team, and that was just going weeks without the phone ringing, no new calls, no new cases, nothing along those lines, that would be the most difficult part of it. The easiest way for me to overcome that stuff was buckle down, make sure you're doing a 100% on all the cases that are there and then I tried to make a list of where I could go to potentially get cases for free, what groups could I go and speak to, could I call in favors with somebody etc. And so when it was flow, those were the best times to write an extra blog post for SEO, call a couple of people back, go and give a free speech over at one of the organizations in the local colleges, something along those lines just to try and get the business card out there, get the firm out there all of that stuff. And then thankfully, since we've brought people on, everybody kind of has that same mentality. So it might be a situation where if I'm slow for that month, somebody else is busier and then I can pick up whatever slack they need that they're able to go do more consultations, do more court hearings, whatever it is that they are having the situation with.

Tracy: Jordan, what do you find or what did you find out I guess I should say where some of the dos and don'ts of starting a new practice?

Jordan Ostraff: I think it's easier to learn the don'ts. Unfortunately, it's usually the problems that blow up in our face faster than the successes that blossom slowly. I think the biggest problem that I see people making in that when I talk to people, the biggest problems they had made was taking on too much overhead too quickly. So I was able — when I made that decision to jump to find an office base with some people that I knew from being prosecutors in the office at a price I could afford, and that way I knew that as long as a couple of thousands dollars a month were coming in, all of the firm stuff would be covered and that was the easiest thing. And then obviously as we've done better and better, we've tried to slowly bring on more and more overhead without overextending ourselves. So we try and stay away from — I haven't find a 3-year lease for office base somewhere, I know a lot of people do that within the first couple of months and then you're on the hook for another 30/36 months of a lease at a place you can no longer afford.

Tracy: So you've kind of touched on this already but I think for anyone I am sure starting out, this is critical. How did you find good clients or how did they find you?

Jordan Ostraff: From the very beginning, the clients found me from a referral from somebody else, either another attorney that charged too much, didn't do that kind of law, didn't handle that specific county. So at the very beginning, I mean it wasn't really a question of good clients; it was just the question of clients and being willing to drive, do the right thing on their case all of that stuff. As we have expanded our practice and as we have settled in to having a much more consistent income of cases, it's been a lot easier to determine what kind of clients to bring in and what we did was we looked at it from their perspective. How is the client that I want to bring in going to find me? So we've found out that for the people over at UCF and Valencia, the colleges and universities in town, they are going to use the internet. So doing some targeted Google ads or going on campus and passing out coasters or pens, that's how we're going to bring in that sort of contact from those people. And then obviously from your normal criminal defense people, a lot of them are going to start out with the public defender or start out with an attorney, something bad is going to happen, they may want to go with the private attorney or go with somebody else, so we targeted a lot of the marketing there to somebody pulling out their phone on their way out of court and looking for an attorney, so doing ads through AVVO or something along those lines, targeted to the area around our courthouse.

Tracy: It's a sort of little grassroots marketing.

Jordan Ostraff: Well, I mean you have to do at least some grassroots at the beginning. There are plenty of things that we looked into to do SEO, to rank on the first page for Orlando Criminal Defense, that's going to be a 15, $20,000 a month outlay and if I was bringing that in every month, I would be very, very happy.

Tracy: That is true. It takes a little time and takes a little work. What about ethics? I mean that's important in any business obviously but how specifically — how important is that when it comes to running a law firm?

Jordan Ostraff: To me, it's very important. The benefit the Florida Bar dues for lawyers are some of the highest across the entire country. We're paying over $250 a year for our dues. As part of that, we have a 24×7 ethics line. So there are certainly especially when the practice is very new, having that line on speed dial to be, "Hey, this is how I'd like to market. Is that ethical?" And of course there are a number of rules that say that certain things are and certain things aren't and the unfortunate reality is I'll find that things that I wanted to do that I was unable to, there are other people doing those things.

Tracy: How have you seen maybe some of your competitors who perhaps don't practice such ethical behavior or uncivil behavior? How does that seem to affect someone's business?

Jordan Ostraff: I mean I would say on the — the quick answer is we have an ethical obligation to tell the Florida Bar when we see an ethics violation. So people that do that stuff, that go over that line, normally I would think that they get caught pretty quickly especially when it comes to any of the black hat SEO in violating Google's terms, those organizations spend so much time and effort that something somebody does to pay someone in China to put a $100,000 back length on their page, it's going to get caught pretty quickly and flagged and any short term success is going to be outweighed by the long term punishment anyway.

Tracy: Okay. What do you find are some of the characteristics of successful leaders and law firms that sort of shaped the way that you practice law?

Jordan Ostraff: That's a very good question. It was actually funny, a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were sitting down talking about all the attorneys that have helped us get where we are now and all the attorneys running practice that we'd like to see ours growing to as it continues to get larger. I think the big thing for us that people that we really look up to, they are the ones that are running a successful practice, making a good amount of money but really, they are the ones that are known for being fantastic attorneys. There are a lot of really good businessmen who are also attorneys or businesspeople that are also attorneys, that's not what I want to fall into. Obviously I want to make money to keep the firm open and to be able to afford nice things but for us, the big thing was continuing to build a reputation as a fantastic attorney in the courtroom in motions at depositions, all of those things. That was the big thing that we try everyday not to lose sight of.

Tracy: What do you see are some of the biggest mistakes that some of the leading law firms or other law firm leaders have made that you are now able to caution yourself again?

Jordan Ostraff: From the standpoint of running a practice or from the standpoint of just being a lawyer?

Tracy: On both, I guess.

Jordan Ostraff: From running a practice, I think the biggest thing is biting off more than you can chew, taking too many cases, getting too much overhead. At the end of the day, all you have is your reputation. There is no guarantee that my phone will ever ring again, there is no guarantee that anybody will walk in the door, so building a good reputation in town and having a word that people know, my word is my bond, that gets other attorneys sending you cases that gets clients coming back, those kinds of things. I think the biggest thing that I'm seeing with, you know, a lot of the people I went to law school with, they are year behind me or a year ahead of me coming up to — I am just passing my 5-year mark as an attorney. So somewhere in there, those people are looking at their second or for some of them, their third job and the focus is I want to make more money and they may end up going from a job that they like that doesn't pay so well to a job they really hate that does pay well but then they have no time and no inclination to actually enjoy life. So I think that's the biggest mistake that I see from attorneys in general, unfortunately.

Tracy: Tell me do law schools, when you were in law school, do they at all cover anything about law firm, business management or anything like that?

Jordan Ostraff: So I went to Barry University here in Orlando. So the way that Barry is set up, obviously it's a not tier 1 law school, it's not a Harvard or anything like that. So they do have a couple of different classes that are designed, law office management, law office practice, those kinds of things, one or two classes. The best thing that I think Barry does that other schools don't necessarily do or don't do as much is Barry University has a lot of hands-on skills type classes. So I was able to take motions and depositions in school, we would do fake motion argument to the professor, we would do fake motion practice, trial advocacy and all of those things so that by the time I got into my third year, my last semester, I was at the state attorney's office 35 hours a week as a certified legal intern trying my own cases, doing my own motions all of that stuff. So my exit interview as an intern for them became my job interview as an attorney for them and then once the bar was over, I started working as an attorney doing basically the same work I had been doing for them 3 or 4 months earlier.

Tracy: What do you think are the factors that really sort of made your firm a success in its first year? I mean that's definitely something to ride home about.

Jordan Ostraff: I think the best thing that I have is the ability to know what I don't know. A lot of people — to be an attorney, you have to be arrogant, you have to be confident in your own abilities. I have to be able to genuinely tell a client or a potential client, convince them I am the best attorney for them. So knowing I have no idea about taxes, I found an accountant who I could send all of that stuff to to make sure there wasn't an issue there. I didn't know that much about online marketing or pay per click ads and all of that stuff, I've found people that did, that I could sit down and talk to and hire them or at least pick their brain and figured out what I wanted to do going forward. And then the best thing was we just didn't and we still haven't gotten into any long term serious contracts. So if any mistake was made, it was easy to fix 30 days later, "okay, let's not do these sort of ads, let's do this ", "Okay, let's not take these types of cases; let's focus over here", "Okay, let's not take cases this far away", we weren't locked into anything too serious that we're able to kind of continually reassess where the firm is at, where the firm needs to go, what is working, what isn't working and that ability to change so quickly has really helped us as other opportunities had presented themselves.

Tracy: And just lastly, are there any final words of wisdom that you'd like to share with other attorneys who might be just fresh out of law school starting out or those who may be — who have been around a while and are just looking at opening their own law firms?

Jordan Ostraff: The best piece of advice that I would have for anybody is understand that it's a community. You are going to need other people; they are going to need you, build that relationship with people. It helps not just from the standpoint of so and so will send me cases, there are 35 year experienced attorney, they are charging thousands of dollars more for the same case than I would, a client can't afford them, they send those to me. But also it's that benefit of, "Hey, I don't know what to do on this case. I haven't been in front of this judge who is new to the bench for me but they were on the criminal bench 4 years ago. How are they? What was the experience with them", all of those things. And then the other thing for me, I don't know how many other attorneys do this but I always try to give back when I can. So I coach, I still coach trial team over at Barry, I make myself available to a number of law students and talk to them about all of this advice and what I wish I had done differently going through law school and being a young attorney and then I hope that those people look to me if they have questions, just like I look to the people that are at the 15-year mark, the 20-year mark as an attorney. But also many of those people are not going to go into the kind of law that I am going to go into and so hopefully, they'll send me cases, I'll send them cases for kinds of law that they don't go into. I just looked at it as one giant community of relationships. And the more good relationships you have with people the better it's going to be for you as an attorney, as a businessperson, as a mentor, as a mentee, as a person.

Tracy: I want to send a special thanks to my guest Attorney Jordon Ostraff of the Jordan Law Firm in Orlando, Florida. Now, Jordan, if someone would like to reach out to you with their legal matters or for some advice, what is the best way to reach you?

Jordan Ostraff: The best way to reach me is probably email. It's [email protected] but they can call at the office 24×7 407-906-5529 and that number will ring. And then when the office is closed, that number will ring all the attorney's cell phones as well. So 407-906-5529.

Tracy: And what's your website again, Jordan?

Jordan Ostraff: The website is jordanlawfl.com.

Tracy: Thank you so much. I appreciate your time today and thanks for sharing your insight into your experience in starting your own law firm. I appreciate it, Jordan.

Jordan Ostraff: Thank you very much for having me.

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How many times have you been approached by a marketing company who claims: "We're a Google Certified Partner", "Your Website is not Optimized Properly for Keywords", "Your SEO is not optimized"?

What the heck does any of this jargon mean? It's meant to confuse you and get you to sign up with a marketing company who, when pressed for details, says their marketing methods are proprietary.

I say, "bullshit". If a marketing company comes at you with jargon, demand answers and clear explanations. Act like a good lawyer does and cross examine what they're saying before you invest thousands on hopes and dreams.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I want to talk to you about a couple of calls I've gotten recently from clients that are being approached by a company that I won't name but I'll tell you what they are saying because it's interesting. So this company is calling them up and is saying that they are going to do all this new kind of marketing for them, so they — my one client says, "Yes, they are going to do target marketing, they are going to look at demographics, they are going to do community marketing and outreach marketing and they are going to do — they are going to put ads all over the place, all over the web and places that you can't normally reach", okay, great, sounds wonderful. So I'd say what does that mean target marketing, what does that mean community marketing, what do all these buzzwords they're saying, what do they mean? Well, I don't know, you got to talk to the rep but they said that they are going to put all of the stuff out all over the place and okay fine, I'll talk to them. So we set up a call, I spoke to their rep today and I get the same speech from them, "We're going to target this attorney's clients. We're going to do this marketing and that marketing", so I said okay, well how are you going to do that? Are you going to use Google AdWords, are you going to use Facebook, are you going to use, "Oh, we do it all, we do it all. We do everything". Okay, well how much you're going to allocate specifically to AdWords to do that, are you going to allocate to Facebook, are you buying banner Ads on different websites, what kind of targeting are you going to do, how are you going to do the targeting? "Oh, we've got proprietary software that does all that and we target everyone and we know how to get people in all areas" and I said, "Okay, that's great. You didn't answer my question. What percentage of the budget's going to go here and there and what is the budget?" "Well, we can't disclose any of that", okay, well how about the targeting, what metrics you're going to use? "Well, we're going to use appropriate targeting for the demographic and the psychographic of the clients of that particular attorney", I said okay, well give me an example. Let's talk about auto accidents. Who is more likely to get into an auto accident versus another person in any given state or city? "Well, our software does that and we have proprietary models that do that", okay well, that's news to me because I have never been able to target specific people that get into more accidents than others. To me, it seems like a pretty random occurrence. So if you've figured that out, that's amazing. "Oh yes, we have these models", all right, how about DUI? Again, it seems to happen to people from all walks of my life, what kind of targeting you're going to do? "We have again proprietary model", I said okay, so you don't know anything, you don't have any answers to me. "Well, we really can't discuss", and I said okay, what's the point of the call, what do you need me for? I said obviously you have convinced them, thrown a lot of buzzards at them and they want to do business with you, great. What do you need for me? "Well, we needed to put this code on the website and that code on the website", okay sure, I'll do that for you, no problem. So I talked to my guys and they said, "What do you think, pretty impressive", and I said, "Well, they say a lot of great words, sounds good but when I questioned them and asked them specifics, I didn't get any. It sounds very much like a political person, they don't give any specific answers, they just beat around the bush." So I said it may work, it may not. Are you going to be in a long term contract, is this month to month? Oh, it's a one year contract, it's a 2-year contract. Okay, what if it doesn't work? "Well, no. It's going to work. They are really good", okay. Well, I guess my advice for you ends there. I'll work with the company and I'll see what they do and let's see how it works. So, the reason I am telling you this is that this is a very common thing that happens in business. People that are supposedly in the know will throw around jargon and buzzwords and terms meant to confuse you. Unfortunately, some lawyers do this with clients, they'll use legal terms and that just confuses potential clients and sometimes it wins them over but many times, clients are quite smart just like you are quite smarter than attorney and you see through all that. So next time you are confronted with any rep that speaks to you, myself included, and they are throwing around terms and jargon and all that, make sure you ask them what does that mean. And if they are not able to give you specifics, don't do business with them. If they are able to give you specifics, well great, now, you've got a hope of understanding what they are doing because if you don't understand it and they can't explain it, chances are it's going to be a whole bunch of voodoo that's pushed on you by some sales rep that in fact knows nothing about the real business. So go for specifics, use your training as an attorney to dig deep and find out exactly what you need to know and how it will benefit you. And this applies again to all of life but especially marketing. You are spending likely good money, quite a bit of money to do your marketing and you want to make sure it works for you. So don't be afraid to ask these tough questions. I hope this helps.

If you do need help with your marketing, if you are looking for specific answers and details and reasons why courses of action may be good or bad, call us at 888-225-8594, or email [email protected]. And don't forget to subscribe and vote for this podcast. It helps get the message out to more attorneys like you. Thank you.

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In 1906, Vilfredo Pareto discovered the 80/20 rule, aka "the law of the vital few". As applied to your law practice & specifically to your law firm's website, 20 percent of your website (the top 10 pages – the vital few) brings in 80% of the total traffic. Conversely, if you look at your clients, 20 percent of your clients will be responsible for the 80 percent of your headaches and 80 percent of the clients will never bother you.

Look for the Skew, take advantage of it and focus more on the vital few to grow your law practice. For detailed take on this, listen to the audio below. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and post a review.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I am going to bring up a subject I brought up a couple of times but one that's extremely important. It's called the 80/20 rule. So an Italian economist named called Vilfredo Pareto came up with the Pareto principle a 100 odd years ago, maybe more. What he found when he studied the populations in various parts of Italy is that a very small percentage of the people in a certain area held most of the wealth. And he saw this and he came up with the rule called the 80/20 rule. It means there are the vital few that get most of the result. So this phenomenon happens pretty much everywhere you can look. I had seen statistics from the social security administration in the 1970s or 60s and it shows that at retirement, about 1% of Americans are wealthy, 4% are moderately wealthy where they can take care of themselves, 15% were able to take care of themselves where they can take care of themselves, 15% were able to take care of themselves but barely got by, and a full 80% of Americans had no money for retirement dependent on the government or friends or family or essentially were broke and died penniless. Fast-forward to 2007 when this statistics came out again that I looked at, this is now 40 or 50 years after. The breakdown of American was exactly the same.

So in any population, there is always going to be a very few that succeed tremendously and a vast many that don't succeed long. So I am not saying this to you about economics or politics or any of that; I am saying this to you because in your law practice and in your marketing, the same phenomena comes up. So with my clients, my attorney clients, for instance, we look at their websites and we see that no matter how big the website is, and whether the website has 100 pages or even 1,000 pages, about 9 or 10 of those pages are responsible for 80 or 90% of all the traffic that first enters their site. So when an attorney says to me, "How do I improve my website? What do I do?" I said let's get those top 10 pages and let's focus on those pages first because those are the vital few, the ones that will get you the most bank for the buck because that's where most of the people are coming in the door.

Now, this also shows up when you are trying to rank for keywords. So many attorneys think that, "Oh, there are just a few keywords that are important and if I rank for those, I am going to do really well and get a lot of business". And this is where the 80/20 principle kind of goes in reverse because what I have found is that there are keywords called "Question Keywords" where people type in things like "Was arrested in downtown LA, second DUI, will I go to jail", or, "Been married for 20 years; will I have to pay perpetual spousal maintenance?" "Filing bankruptcy, can I keep the house even if it's in foreclosure?" These are question keywords and these make up 95 or maybe even 99% of all the things people type into Google and these are the keywords that you want to rank for instead of just a few at the very end such as "Los Angeles Injury Lawyer", or, "Houston Disability Attorney", or, "New York DWI Lawyer", those few actually are not going to get you the results and the vast many in this case which is the opposite of 80/20 but still askew is what rules in this scenario. A couple of other scenarios. If you look at your clients, a few of them will refer and they'll probably refer several times and most of them will never refer. Again, there is the 80/20 right there. Of your clients, a few of them are going to be real pains in the ass and ask for all kinds of stuff and take up all your time and 80 or 90% of them are going to be fine. They are not going to bother you. So you look for the skew, you'll see it everywhere in everything you do. And the power in this is that if you take advantage of the skew and you find the vital few that give you the outsized result and you're focused on that, you'll get a lot further than most people that treat everything as equal and think if they just work on something and they just give equal treatment to everything that they'll get a good result. You actually get a much better result by not giving equal treatments of things and focusing on the vital few, you'll get 4/5, maybe even 20 times the result. So I encourage you to look for this in your marketing, in your firm and everything you do and look for those skews and capitalize on them and you'll seed your goals in whatever arena they may be.

If you need help with your marketing and interpreting and finding the 80/20, finding the skews in it to get outsized results compared to what you used to get or what you're currently getting, call 888-225-8594 or email [email protected]. Thank you.

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Tracy Merda, of Speakeasy Marketing, Inc. talks to Laura Kibbe, Managing Director of RVM Enterprises, Inc. Laura analyzes and solves the challenges small law firms face when massive e-discovery is needed, and the budget is not there to do it.

Laura reveals how RVM provides big firm results for small firm prices, making the E-Discovery process reliable and easy. Listen to the audio below for complete interview. Make sure to subscribe and post a review.

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Tracy: This is Tracy Merda with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I have with me Judy Mine, a business development manager and Laura Kibbe, the managing director of RVM Enterprises. Hello, ladies. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Laura: Good afternoon.

Judy: Good afternoon.

Tracy: Ladies, let's just jump right in. Tell me, what is RVM Enterprises? What do you all do over there?

Laura: In a nutshell, we are an end-to-end e-discovery information management and consulting firm. Tackle all aspects of the discovery process within a litigation or an investigation and work with our attorney clients to get all of that evidence in a form that's easily usable so that they can develop the facts of their case.

Tracy: What services do you provide and let's also tackle who is your target client? Who are you able to help?

Laura: We can help any attorney or corporation that has to either sift through electronic information that was produced to them or that has to produce information to the other side in an investigation or litigation. When I say electronic information, I mean anything from records stored on your client's cell phones, their social media site, their emails, their texts.

Basically anything that can be done with a keyboard, virtual or otherwise needs to be collected, reviewed and produced in a particular way so that the information or the evidence, particularly in a criminal case is not tainted.

Tracy: You guys are based in New York but are you able to service and help small firm attorneys anywhere?

Laura: Absolutely. Our practice, our headquarters is in New York but we have offices around the country and our practice is actually international, so we help global clients who need to move data all around the world to produce in multiple cases to, say, the small divorce case in Kansas City.

Tracy: Okay. If you don't mind, I'd like to just get to know a little bit more about what e-discovery actually is. What kind of evidence? You touched on that a little bit, but if you can really get into the nitty-gritty of it, what is considered e-discovery?

Laura: E-discovery is just plain old fashioned discovery with electronic information. When I started practicing a billion years ago, everything was in paper. We produced it on a typewriter, maybe a word processor, but everything always ultimately got printed. There were no email or text messages or Facebook's or Twitters or cell phones.

Today, all of that information can be the kind of information that you have to gather and produce in an investigation in a criminal case. The geolocation data from your cell phone to prove where your particular client was located. The offending texts or email messages in a family law case where spouses are trying to prove infidelity. Today, almost all of the information you need to win your case is electronic, starts life electronically.

What we do is we employee all of the technical tools and professionals who know how to collect it, who know how to sort it and sift it and search, say, through millions of emails and find only the ones that you need for your case. We have contract attorneys who can then, if you have an extremely large volume and can't do all of that review yourself, take a first pass at the review and highlight the documents that you really need to take a close look at, and then ultimately get them ready and in a format, whether it's on a hard drive or a DVD if it's a small enough volume to give to the other side to meet your discovery obligations.

Tracy: Is this the same or is it different than digital forensics?

Laura: Forensics is a part of e-discovery. The way you collect it, we like to say all information should be collected in a forensically sound manner. You can collect it merely just to get the text messages, or you can do a forensic analysis, which is I have somebody's laptop and I know they deleted the files and I want to go do a more in-depth investigation into why they deleted, when they deleted it, any timestamps that we can find. That may be very necessary in criminal cases, in government investigations, when there has been a loss of evidence and you suspect it.

Many of the cases are just straightforward. I need all your email from this date to this date that dealt with this project, or this matter. Then we just go in and collect it. We help you come up with search terms to separate the fantasy football email from the ones that are actually relevant to the case, and then put them up in a format that is web-based that the attorney's can look at and make the responsiveness calls, privilege calls, that they need just like they would do in old fashioned paper days.

Tracy: You mentioned things that are deleted. What about if someone crashes their hard drive or it's destroyed? Can you do anything with equipment like that?

Laura: Sure, the best lawyer answer is it depends. What happened to it and when it happened. We do have a number of tools that we can throw at the problem to see if we can restore anything and many times we're successful. Sometimes we're not. Believe it or not, there's programs out there with wonderful names like Evidence Eliminator and others to completely wipe and eliminate all information from a drive or somebody spilled a cup of coffee on it and it completely fried.

That's what we do. We bring our expertise and a whole toolkit of things to the table to get whatever we can out of that, whether it's a hard drive or a cell phone that may have failed.

Tracy: From the legal standpoint, are there certain laws that protect e-discovery? I imagine there's got to be or had to be some push-back from somebody when it came to companies like yours coming about.

Laura: The federal rules were amended in 2006 to basically bring the federal rules of civil procedure into the electronic age and specifically enumerate electronic information as something that is within the scope of discovery and federal civil cases. From those amendments, many state courts then proceeded to update their state rules to account for it, and then effective last December, there was just another amendment to the federal rules to provide some more safeguards and descriptions around your obligations with respect to handling electronic information because lawyers are used to dealing with evidence. They're not necessarily as familiar with dealing with electronic information and things can go missing.

You probably have your own experience where you sat there and you spent three hours typing a Word document and you did something on the keyboard, you don't remember what, and the document went missing. It's very easy to do something to electronic data that would decrease its integrity from an evidentiary standpoint. The federal rules changed to say listen, the standard is reasonableness. We know all you have to deal with is electronic information. This is kind of a new age and here's some rules. Here's the kinds of things you should be aware of when you're dealing with electronic information.

Most of the state courts now have updated or are in the process of updating their state and local rules as well. In fact, some courts even recognize that this is so not what lawyers are comfortable with. That they actually require what they call an ESI liaison. The local rule says that's all right if you don't know anything about e-discovery but you better bring someone into court that does. It doesn't have to be a lawyer in your firm. It could be a company like RVM who can work with the other side and have discussions with the court about where all this evidence came from. It really is a shift in the procedures for civil and criminal matters where the evidence today is almost 100% electronic.

Tracy: You hit on a few things I would love to know a little bit more about. Let's say I've hired your company. You've done all this digging. You come up with some great information that's going to help my client. What does that look like when you're finished and you bring it to me? What format is it in? Who's testifying? Is it legal? How do you checks and balances, figure out all that stuff out?

Laura: One of the reasons to engage a company like RVM at the beginning of the process is if you think of it in criminal terms is to establish the chain of custody. These emails, these Facebook posts, whatever, they live in their native environment, wherever that is, in somebody's email box or on Facebook, when you go and gather and move all of this information into one place so that the lawyers can look at it, ensuring that it was all collected properly and that chain of custody is being captured so that we can say nobody went in and changed a word on that post, nobody modified the date on that email.

At the end, what you ultimately get is a series of images. Picture a picture, a JPEG or a TIFF image that looks basically like an Adobe PDF of each of the documents. Then with those images you can use those in any trial program you want. We've maintained the chain of custody so that you can do all of your authentication in court to be able to use the evidence and then you can take the images and put them in whatever trial graphics program you like to use in the courtroom to show to the jury.

Tracy: How can you help them out? What kind of special services would you say are best for these smaller firms?

Laura: I think that's the beauty of associating with an e-discovery company. In the past, only the big firms who had a full staff of people inside the law firm doing all of this electronic discovery work. Now, the small firm can stand shoulder to shoulder to the large firm in court by simply associating with a service provider like RVM who can be their back office so you can do all the stuff that you're good at.

All of the depositions and expert work and anything you may have to do to get ready for trial and RVM can stand there next to you and help you get all of the electronic evidence, get it sorted and sliced and diced in a way that you can understand it, and then make sure that it is ready will be admissible when you need to use it at trial or as in most cases settlement negotiations.

Tracy: The sounds like an awesome service. How long has this been around?

Laura: I think as an industry, electronic discovery was probably about 25 years old when much of the document production work started to include electronic information. The industry really has its roots back in the old paper days when people would copy and scan the paper documents and put them into a system to review. Contrast today where we do very little, if any, paper or scanning work anymore. It's all the electronic information. It's a very mature industry with very mainstream accepted technologies. This is not something that anybody should be afraid to use. It's very mainstream.

We do have some cutting edge technologies that are still in the process of being vetted and approved by the courts but that's the nice part about working with someone who's an expert in the field is you can be as conservative or as aggressive as you want in this realm as long as you're working with somebody who knows how to use the tool.

Tracy: Everybody wants to know about price, obviously. It's a price-sensitive world we live in. When it comes to using RVM's services, are attorneys supposed to sign up for a year? Do they just sign up for a one-time deal? What is the most cost-effective way to use your company?

Laura: There are several pricing models. It is not generally a subscription service, although it can be where you sign up for a period of time. Most of the projects are handled on a project-by-project or case-by-case basis. It is all pretty much volume-driven.

RVM's goal in working with our clients is to say listen, in the old days if your client gave you 100 boxes, you started at box one and you reviewed every single page until you got to the end of box 100. Now, multiply that by millions because that's what an average person can have in their email box. Our goal is to work with our clients to collect, as broadly as we need to make sure that we've preserved everything and nothing is going missing. Then, throw a bunch of technology and tools and expertise at that really large data set to narrow it down to the box of document equivalent that you need to get ready for your case.

By far the largest expense associated with e-discovery is the review of the documents. All of the technology to of the slicing and the dicing is negligible compared to the attorney time to review the documents, so that's why we want to put all our time and energy into helping you reduce that volume so you don't have to review a ton of documents. We're very successful with our many tools in our toolkit to get the volume reduced. As I said before, if for some reason, despite all of our best efforts, it's still a volume that is too large for a smaller firm to handle, we could augment their review team with our review attorneys and help them get through that review quicker.

It is generally priced per project with attorney review by the hour, but it's an industry that's ever evolving as far as pricing so there are also a ton of alternative fee arrangements in place and we can certainly work with any client to come up with flat-fee pricing, volume discounts, things like that.

Tracy: Excellent. Is there anything else, Laura, that you feel maybe our listeners would benefit from knowing? Being small firm attorneys, they're always looking for ways to benefit their business, grow it, while still only having a few people in the office.

Laura: Absolutely. I think the biggest takeaway for your clients is that with everything being created electronically today, you do have to be aware of what you don't know. When you start interviewing all of your clients when they come in for their initial case intake and you're asking them about where might I find all of this evidence that I need and they start telling you it's in electronic format, it's in email and cell phones and things like that, to know that if handled improperly, none of that evidence will be able to be used in court. Be able to issue spot when you need to retain an expert and then hire someone you trust and that can explain the electronic information to the judges who are even more removed than the lawyers going to come to this discovery stuff generally.

You'll be in a position not only to service not only your existing clients but, as I said earlier, take on the bigger clients you otherwise might not have thought you could take on.

Tracy: Awesome. I really want to thank you both for joining me today. Laura, how can listeners find out more about RVM Enterprises and what you all offer? What's a good website, phone number, or email address?

Laura: Judy, I'm going to let you.

Judy: They can reach out to me. My email is [email protected], and I can be reached at 646-871-2331, and I will get the appropriate person on the phone to discuss a matter or to see what we can do for someone.

Tracy: Excellent. Again, this is Tracy Merda with Speakeasy Marketing. I want to thank my guests today, Judy Mines and Laura Kibbe or RVM Enterprises. Thank you so much, ladies. Have a great day.

Judy: You as well. Thank you.

Laura: Thank you.

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The one true thing about human beings is that we love when something is custom-tailored for OUR needs. This is especially true when it comes to marketing your law practice. Potential clients are far more likely to respond to your advertising if your advertising itself answers their questions and speaks to their deepest fears and desires.

To understand your potential clients better, stand in their shoes and think about their range of choices and how they feel about their legal situation. Only then are you better able to target them with specific marketing messages that they can relate to. Listen to the audio below to find out how it's done. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and post a review.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I want to talk to you about a conversation I just had yesterday with one of my clients. He does personal injury and there are a couple of new areas that he wants to start targeting. One is Johnson & Johnson Talcum Powder lawsuits. So we were talking about it and he wanted to ads created and he wanted to target people that now have ovarian cancer unfortunately because of the Johnson & Johnson baby powder. So it's like a class action lawsuit. So he is saying, "All right. Let's put up a page, let's drive leads to it, let's drive traffic to it and try to get leads etc.", and I said, "All right, that's great. But we got to talk a lot more about who was affected by this and how and why". And he said, "What do you mean", and I said, "All right, so you want to find people that have ovarian cancer now because of the Johnson & Johnson baby powder", "Yes", okay. So you can't just put you have ovarian cancer or did you use Johnson & Johnson baby powder. The reason why is that everyone that wants to target this, every lawyer is going to put the same thing. And if you want your ads to be a lot more effective, it has to be a lot more targeted. What you have to do is get the person that sees it to say, "Oh my god, this is exactly what's going on", and then take action, meaning contact him. So you start it off with the fact someone has ovarian cancer, what happens to them.

He says, "Well, they passed away pretty quickly". How quickly? This is not good stuff but how quickly? "3 to 5 years", okay. So why would they hire an attorney, I highly doubt that they are just looking for a money because they are not going to be around for long. They may be, at best, looking for it for children or grandchildren, and he said, "Well, some of them do". I said, what are other reasons? What do people tell you on the phone as to the reason why they would want to be involved in a case like this? He said, "Well, justice, they want to get back in the company because of what they did to them. They told them that the powder was good, it could be used on babies and on themselves and everything for years and years and years, so they want justice and again, they may want money for a family". I said, all right, the ad now needs to look a bit different. It needs to talk about the powder and how it's affected you when you're sick and what kind of legacy do you want to leave? That may be a call to action in there. Again, money for children, money for your children's college or your grandchildren, these are not fun topics but again, this would be on someone's mind. Again, to get justice against this purportedly evil company that did this thing. So he said, "That should be essentially in bullet form on the first page people see about this stuff, not just have you been affected by this powder". It's much more stronger emotional hooks and it ties into what people actually would want if they called you on the phone.

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When your client hires you and fills in your intake form, there's a great opportunity for you to get a variety of personal information about them and their legal situation such as their phone number, email, home address and a description of the legal problems they're having in their OWN WORDS.

With this contact data, you can follow up with your clients later via email or by sending them your newsletter, you can also ask them for reviews etc. Listen to the audio below for more information on this. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and post a review.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs from Speakeasy Marketing. Today, I want to talk to you about something very interesting I came across. It was in response to a question one of my new clients had. She wanted to have an intake form or her intake form posted on her website behind a password protected area so potential clients can go on the website and fill out the intake form. She wanted this for her own reasons, for convenience which I think is a great idea. So if you are not doing that, you definitely should do it but there are the hidden benefits to this that I wanted to tell you about and it relates to newsletters and it relates to clients follow up.

Now, when someone gets to the point where they are filling in an intake form, you got them, they are your clients. Congratulations. But to do client management, to follow up with them on a regular basis and to get in touch with them, you are going to need their contact info, their phone, their email, their home address and all of that stuff. When someone is in the mode of filling out an intake form, they are filling out answers to questions and they are much more likely to give you pretty much any information you want. Date of birth, social, almost any of that stuff you are asking them because the intake form usually have very personal stuff on it, okay. So you are getting this information, they're in that mode, they're in compliance mode where they are just putting in whatever you want them to put in because they are scared about the legal situation, they are worried, they just want to get it resolved, that's why they are very compliant, great. What you might not have realized is this is a great place to build your follow up for later. So if you have someone's phone number and their email and their home address, now once they become a client and once they go through that process and they are done, you can follow up and ask them for reviews, you could ask by email or maybe mail something to their house, a postcard asking for help. You could phone them every so often, not too much. You can keep up with them that way and get reviews, you could also send a newsletter to them. An email newsletter, a physical newsletter, you can call and just check in on them every certain number of months just to see if there's anything else they need in their life. Nothing wrong with any of these things, very few law firms do them. But now, you have a reliable way to capture your client's information and build the list. So even if you've never captured your client's information before, there is no time like today. So if you get this information on your site and is done in this way, you'll have a nice database that builds up. And if you are an average attorney that does let's say 80 or 100 cases a year, that's a great start. Within a year, you'll have a substantial list to mail to; within a couple of years, you'll have a really substantial list to mail to. Again, email, physical mail etc. So this one little thing came up that I thought was very interesting and very helpful.

If you need help in getting your intake form put online on your website behind a password wall in a protected area, let us know. Call 888-225-8594. And if you want to jumpstart your newsletter list and your contact list to get yourself a lot more referrals, again same process, the two become one. So give us a call, email and we'll help you out. Thank you.

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