How to Build a Large, Influential Law Firm (Part #5)

Crush Your #1 Priority and Brace for Criticism

This series lifts the kimono and exposes the unvarnished details on how we built Sterling Law from scratch to be the largest, most influential family law firm in Wisconsin in less than 3 years.

I hope our story and the lessons help you build your practice or business.

Focus on Getting the Most Important Thing Right

From the start, we invested maximum effort on building our website fundamentally strong. This was the most critical component of our strategy thesis to execute.

We could survive mediocre results in any part of our firm–except our web presence. This had to be dominant.

When you have a steady stream of new client opportunities, your margin for error goes up. You can afford mistakes and underperformance in other parts of your business.

Consequently, Tony obsessed on studying local search engine optimization (SEO). I obsessed on asking him if he was obsessing.

Our whole strategy hinged on winning client attention online.

We focused everything we had on being #1 online. Being #2 was not an option we allowed ourselves to consider.

No less than 80% of our initial effort and investment went into our website.

Our Online Blueprint

Our initial online blueprint focused on three areas:

1. Quality content

2. Mobile first

3. Hyper local SEO

To create a winning website, we started with quality content.

We studied what potential clients wanted and cared about. There are many tools available that tell you what people search for. This is a goldmine of information to use as an outline for content creation.

Some of the best content ideas came from reading client questions on other websites. We would then answer those questions on our website.

As we understood client demand, we worked hard to give them what they wanted and needed.

We developed some of the content ourselves and outsourced the rest.

Most competitor websites are built for desk and laptops with smartphones an afterthought. We went the mobile direction and designed our site to work on phones first.

He knew mobile usage trended up. At that time, it wasn’t quite 50% of the searches. (As of this posting, ~52% of web searching happens on a smartphone.)

Finally, law firms are local business. So, we went hyper local in our online marketing strategy.

Tony knew that the vast majority of our traffic would come from searches with a local geo-identifier. For example, one of the most valuable searches in family law is “Milwaukee Lawyer.”  So, we optimized for geo-identified terms.

The map search feature in Google is very important. Tony paid a lot of attention to winning the “map pack” in the Google results.

Potential clients put a big priority on their lawyer being close and accessible. Additionally, a very high percentage of traffic comes to websites from the map pack.

Hiring Our First Lawyer for Opening Day

By the spring of 2014, we set June 23 as our launch day.

Our site was already generating interest from potential clients. So, we felt comfortable that we would have clients from the start.

It was time to hire our first lawyer. So, I put this ad in the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine:

Bold Lawyer — SE Wisconsin: Rare career opportunity for attorney in family and criminal law. Must have three plus years experience, proven track record of leadership success, with a confident, risk-taking personality. To apply, visit www.SterlingLawyers.com/associate

We got lucky.

Many applicants applied. Most were not interesting.

Dan Exner applied.  He was our first big break.   I knew right away he was my guy. It was his spirit of adventure that captivated me.

He gravitated to the ad copy that didn’t sound and look like every other law firm job posting.

This is an important point. All the other job postings looked totally boring and unimaginative. They spoke to things that don’t matter much to today’s workforce.

So, with Dan on our team, we prepared to launch on June 23, 2014

Provoking a Peer Reaction is a Good Thing

Within days of our ad posting, a Madison attorney sent out mocking message on the Wisconsin family law list serve. This is a bulletin board type service that many of our lawyer colleagues use.

Here is what she said:

“Because you’re going to get to deal with a guy who is looking to establish a new kind of family law firm, one that is “disruptive” and “aggressive.” http://www.sterlinglawyers.com/careers/associate/

“Can’t make this stuff up.”

Even though she was making fun of us, I knew this was a big positive for our new firm.

First, competitors were talking about us. So, now people would know who we were before we even started.

Second, I loved that internal motivation that this provided. Her condescending tone was fuel on our intensity.

We loved the public criticism. It stoked our competitive juices to prove her and the other naysayers wrong.

Startup Cost Analysis

In 2014, before launch, here is a listing of our expenses:

· $13,070 Rent

· $697 Professional Fees

· $1,078 Business Insurance

· $5,144 Web Listings – mainly to “seed” our website and build momentum.  This was for sites like Lawyers.com, FindLaw, and Avvo.

· $255 Phone numbers – for tracking different call sources

· $47,500 Internet Marketing Vendors – Winning online was central to our strategy. So, we didn’t spare any expense here.  We hired several different agencies that specialized on different things.

· $142 Website Hosting

· $320 Fees and Subscriptions

· $623 Office Supplies

· $616 Employee Relations

$69,445 Total

Launch Day on June 23, 2014

We opened our firm on Jun 23, 2014. The fledgling venture was now off the ground.

Takeaways from Building Our Initial Website and Hiring:

1) Strong marketing is more important than product quality in the beginning. This may sound heretical. I am not saying quality is not important. Nothing is further from the truth.

I am saying that if you tell your story well and have a steady stream of new business in the beginning, your margin for error goes way up. You can make mistakes, screw stuff up, lose clients–and still have time to survive to improve.

Also, customers are more forgiving in the early days of a business. Over time, however, a crappy service or product will put a lid on your business. You won’t get repeat business or referrals. You will get the naive new clients who have never heard of you, and you won’t be very profitable.

2) Identify your #1 priority and execute that at all costs. Every startup has a top priority. Hopefully, it is simple to understand. Whatever it is, crush it. Focus on it. Be single-minded. Put all your eggs in that one basket and watch that basket very, very carefully. In our new firm, we went “all in” on our website and executed that very well. We didn’t have a backup plan.

3) Be imaginative as you attract new team members. Our competitor’s job postings are super boring and all say about the same thing. For example, some firms brag about being “A-V rated.” Hardly anyone born after 1980 has any idea what that means. It’s like boasting that your product is in the Sears & Roebuck catalog.

4) If you are going to do something new and better, you will break things. You will be criticized. Anytime you seek to disrupt the status quo, you will hurt feelings, rouse jealousy, and provoke fear. Gird your loins and go win.

Dear Reader, I would love to read your comments or questions below.

I will post the next Part of our journey each week until done.  You can subscribe below to receive updates.

See “How to Build a Large, Influential Law Firm (Part #1)” here.

See “How to Build a Large, Influential Law Firm (Part #2)” here.

See “How to Build a Large, Influential Law Firm (Part #3)” here.

See “How to Build a Large, Influential Law Firm (Part #)” here.