inbound marketing Archives | LegalUp

3 Skills That Define The Future Lawyer

inbal — Thu, 02 May 2019 11:49:24 +0000

3 Skills That Define The Future Lawyer

No one can be 100% certain of what the future will bring for lawyers, but wise lawyers should ask themselves already today in which skills and areas they should focus more in order to be ready to the changing reality. The top answers are listed below:

Numerous work fields have undergone disruption caused by technology such as, tourism (Airbnb), financial services (Paypal etc.), public transportation (Gett, Uber), however, the legal world has not yet undergone a disruption. The reason for this is that up until recently, there was limited use of sophisticated technology such as AI and automation in the legal world.
Some might say that the reason technology has not influenced the legal world until now might be related to the notion that lawyers are relatively conservative and don’t tend to be innovative and early adopters of new technologies.
There is a consensus that the way law firms are currently operating will change in the future, however there are many different opinions on when exactly the change will occur and what will be its scope.

Lawyers around the world are dealing with the question – How would the Future Lawyer job looks like? How can we prepare for it?
While some lawyers want tech to help them with their repetitive tasks to free up their time to more complex, professional work are looking forward for the change to occur, others are intimidated by the legalTech and are worried that no work will be left for them. While no one can be 100% certain of the answer to the above questions, it is wise for lawyers to invest time enhancing the skills below more in order to be ready to the changes in the legal world that are coming due to AI and document automation.

Here are 3 main skills that every lawyer should strengthen

1. Embrace Technology

Seeing technology as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Embracing Technologies like document automation, document review and AI will disrupt the business of your law firm for the better. . Even something as simple as moving your firm’s accounts from paper and digitalizing them is a small step that can reduce your expenses and minimizing operations efforts . None of the activities such as accounting, billing, scheduling meetings and filing documents, qualify as “legal work”, yet they are core business operations for effective legal practice and it’s time to use technology to improve them as a first step.

Many legal professionals have resisted change, but now is the time for them to use technology to make their lives easier for the following reasons:

Efficiency: Lawyers in practice go through tens or hundreds of past cases to find the specific ones that will help them with their clients case. This a bit like sending a human to find a needle in the haystack. According to studies, lawyers spend a quarter (and in certain cases up to one third) of their time doing such research. Document automation for example can manage you know-how when it comes to contracts and other legal documents creation, make you more efficient and more agile to the changes the future may bring, such as changes in the business models, or changes in the way clients wants to consume their legal services (some of them may be furnished online).

Cost-effective legal advice to clients – One of the biggest reasons for lawyers to deploy technology in their practice is to provide cost-effective legal advice to clients. Clients may not care about the complexity of their legal problem. They want to hire the best lawyers at fees that suit their pockets. This makes it imperative for lawyers to use technology that saves their time and completes redundant tasks at a lesser cost and address a wider audience.

Mundane tasks: Whilst some lawyers fear technology, wrongly thinking that it might replace them, the reality is that many lawyers end up spending significant amounts of time carrying out relatively mundane task that can easily be done more efficiently through technology. Would you be more liberated, challenged and mentally uplifted if you were able to free up your time to focus on meeting clients or dealing with academic legal issues?

Cost-savings – Legal practice management software allows users to track every billable second, assign tasks, offer online payment options, manage client funds and give an accurate picture of a firm’s performance. With the extra time afforded by these efficiencies, lawyers are able to bill more hours and improve the firm’s bottom line. In addition, many law firms are choosing to go paperless, freeing up time that was once spent on managing paper documents to concentrate on more important aspects of the legal profession.

Better customer experience. – Now more than ever, it’s critical for a law firm or lawyer to keep their clients happy. Even if you provide the best legal work in your area, if your customers are not satisfied with the overall service that they received, you won’t be hearing from them again. Customer satisfaction should be a top priority for lawyers nowadays, and legal technology can make this easier for you. Software that specializes in e-mail marketing helps you reach out to your client and keep them engaged. A live chat feature on your firm’s website can also help increase customer satisfaction and translate website visitors to clients. An online questionnaire to create a bespoke contract based on the firm’s know-how can give your clients a 24/7 service on a designated clients portal using a sophisticated document automation tool.

2. Understand clients business requirements

Individuals and business clients of every shape, size, and industry want the same basic things from their lawyers. Generally speaking, they say their attorney should be “Responsive and really knows my business.”

Technically, what lawyers do are tasks like write contracts, give legal advice, negotiate, litigate disputes, and assist with regulatory compliance.. However, how we do this work—responsively, and with and an understanding of the client’s needs, business and industry—is where we need to focus if we want to be perceived as great lawyers which stands our great reputation also in a changing world.

Clients don’t trust lawyers who don’t have understanding of their industry
If you don’t understand how business is done, your client won’t trust you. Your client has come to you so that you can protect his business. As a lawyer you must talk to your client/clients at length about the services he wants, figure out how business is done in his domain or industry. Invest in researching the field to get a deep understanding of market and way of business As a lawyer, If you don’t know how business is done you wouldn’t even ask the right questions.

There will always be more experienced lawyers. You are competing with them for clients. Understanding business requirements is how you compete with more experienced lawyers and brand names – by having superior understanding of a niche.

Young lawyers can have an advantage of the rapidly changing business scenario, by building in-depth understanding of profitable business niches.

3. Communication/marketing skills

Marketing is strategic.
It is thinking about what you want in the way of more or better work, and then strategizing on the best way to find companies and individuals in need of the services you want them to buy. So too, lawyers are taught to canvas the landscape for available options to address a client’s situation and then chose one “decision‐tree” path for pursuing the matter.

If once marketing your law firm was through sponsoring a conference or promoting you placement in ranking and business credit scores, now those tactics are old fashioned and there is a shift.
Due to technology there are new ways to stand out as a lawyer and as a law firm.
New innovative marketing strategies could be, social media, digital marketing and inbound marketing.

Social media
Internet marketing involves creating and sharing content on social media networks in order to achieve your marketing and branding goals. Social media such as linkedin, Facebook, instagram, twitter are platforms that are becoming more and more dominant in today’s world. Being active on these platforms gives you a chance to engage with your audience and clients.
Lawyers too can benefit from these platforms in order to promote themselves and their firm.

Digital marketing
It may come as no surprise that the marketplace has become increasingly more digital as technology continues to evolve. Today, it is very likely that when a person finds themselves in need of a lawyer, they will turn to the internet first – specifically the mobile internet.
A successful marketing campaign will help clients find the right lawyer to handle their legal needs, converting those google searchers into new clients.

Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is a strategy is the recent world’s strongest keyword. This technique is fundamentally different from the classical marketing. The classical advertising strategy uses a direct approach which cries out, “come to us – we’re really awesome”. As opposed to the new strategy Inbound marketing focuses on the customer, in fact the clients journey does not start with his search for one ultimate service. The clients journey begins much earlier, long before he even knows what service is required.
The Inbound Marketing strategy distinguishes between several distinct personas. For each persona there is a layout of the various stages in the client’s journey of that persona and provide for each stage a suitable call for action.

Promoting and glorifying the individual lawyer makes them look like rockstars. As an attorney you are your personal brand.

Request a demo of LegalUp today!

GET YOUR FREE DEMO

The post 3 Skills That Define The Future Lawyer appeared first on LegalUp.

“Inbound Marketing”- why is it crucial for every law firm to know this term?

tomeronen — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 06:23:05 +0000

“Inbound Marketing”- why is it crucial for every law firm to know this term?

The fact that you lawyers are reading this article on advertising proves that there is a huge alteration in lawyers’ attitude towards marketing. Today, unlike the past, the importance that lawyers give to marketing, advertising and business development has risen much controversy.

Strong trend of shifting to online marketing amongst lawyers

In addition, even the platform in which lawyers choose to advertise themselves has changed. According to a survey published in “the marker”, lawyers reported on an 80% increase in advertising on online media and internet platforms as opposed to the newspaper and printed media platforms. The transitional trend from offline advertising and online advertising is a renowned trend and exists additionally in other areas. However, in the legal world this trend is much stronger.

According to the survey, there is an overall decrease of 9% in the offline advertising market in the years 2013-2014. On the contrary, there is a 24% increase in the online internet advertising world in the years 2013-2014. Combined the research above, we can see that in the legal world there was an 80% growth in online advertising compared to 24% growth in the general market.

Inbound Marketing

In the current competitive climate, “Inbound Marketing” has become a widely used buzzword.

This technique is fundamentally different from the classical outbound strategy.

How is the “Inbound” content strategy different?

Inbound Marketing is in the center of the customer, trying to figure out the following questions: who is the targeted customer? What are his needs?

When it comes to analyzing the needs of the target audience, Inbound Marketing strategy emphasizes the relevant service and advertising that is required.

However, the main difference is reflected on additional shared needs by the target audience without direct connection to the advertising service.

The focus of this strategy is the fact that our client’s journey does not start with his search for one ultimate service. Our clients journey begins much earlier, long before he even knows what service is required, and concludes after purchasing as an ambassador and a community member.

The Inbound Marketing strategy distinguishes between several distinct personas. For each persona there is a layout of the various stages in the client’s journey of that persona and provide for each stage a suitable call for action.

HubSpot as a case study

A good example for using the inbound marketing strategy is HubSpot. The company specializes in Developing advanced, advertising and marketing management platforms which are expensive. The company chose to reach its target audience by offering a CRM system.

This is based on the understanding that the target audience is relevant to the (expensive)

Inbound Marketing strategy and is also in need of a CRM system at an earlier stage. Therefore, the company’s “client journey” with the target audience begins early by offering a solution to the problem at no cost. This creates a trust in the company and the continued journey to acquire a customer is much simpler.

Marketing the services of a law firm

Marketing legal services of law firms is a complex issue:

there are many limitations under regulations,
the variety of the marketing messages are very limited,
legal online marketing cannot convey really “cool” innovative messages.

Frankly, Legal and law firm advertising is quite boring.

Applying the Inbound Marketing strategy in the legal field generates creative and innovative ideas. This sharpens our understanding that the first encounter with our client should be when I call him for a free value. This means that the beginning of my relationship with the potential client is not focused on me but on him.

It is much easier to advertise and promote a real and tangible value to the customer rather than only a “worthwhile” or “quality” service.

Use of “LegalTech” as a tool to apply Inbound Marketing

As we know, the Legalup software is used as an efficient tool to preserve knowledge. Such use is an internal organization system which allows lawyers to create their legal documents in an efficient way, while using “know how”.

Legal up provides a unique marketing tool for platform for law firms that enables implementation of the Inbound Marketing strategy in an innovative manner.

Exactly like HubSpot, those law firms can offer their target audience tangible value around real needs and occasionally early on in their journey become a client.

Legalup is a tool for law firm marketing which creates unique digital wizards to create legal documents on Legalup’s website or on a new dedicated site.

Some examples:

The law firm “Shibolet’s” website – Jumpstart

Ehrlich & Fenster suggest wizards

All these Wizards Are based on LEGLUP’s technology and give significant value to the customers.

In order for a client to receive the document, he must leave his details and in that moment the office got a very warm hand and in addition the customer received a free value. The next meeting will be more businesslike and familiar.

Want to learn more about marketing tool that puts you at the forefront of innovation (in the LegalTech world?) – and produce hot leads with viral potential for you?

We’d be happy to promote you to the forefront of the 2019 marketing strategy!

Request a demo of LegalUp today!

GET YOUR FREE DEMO

The post “Inbound Marketing”- why is it crucial for every law firm to know this term? appeared first on LegalUp.

How are lawyers actually using online advertising today?

inbal — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 20:41:15 +0000

How are lawyers actually using online advertising today?

With an astounding figure of 93 percent of people searching online for products and services, it is imperative for legal professionals to claim space in the virtual real estate. [Source]

And indeed, with the increase in internet penetration, there has been palpable shift in the mode of advertisement by lawyers – from traditional media like newspapers, radios, and televisions to marketing online.

Lawyers: heavy users of Google Adwords

Law firms marketers are heavy users of sponsored online research in search engines. A study on paid Google keywords conducted by the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform in association with Campaign Media Analysis Group found that the most searched keywords are actually legal terms:

9 out of the top 10 searched after keywords were legal terms, and
23 of the top 25 were legal terms!

[Source]

“Lawyer” is the no. 4 world most expensive keywords

We see that the strategy of advertising through Google, based on keywords (Google Adwords) is very popular among lawyers, and as a result the cost per click for a legal term is astonishingly high. The word “Lawyer” is number 4 in the World’s most expensive keywords on Google Adwords advertising, with an average per click price of $54.86.

[Source]

One of the most expensive keywords in the world is “truck accident lawyer houston” with a price per click on 2017 of $389.25.

[Source]

This is a saturated market. What’s next?

With the advancement of sophisticated technology in the legal field like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and legal documents automation, the arena of legal marketing will become more diverse than ever, providing lawyers with novel ways of communicating with their potential and existing clients and showcasing their abilities and innovative attitude.

Want to hear more about using legal tech as a marketing tool?

Want to learn more about a marketing tool that puts you at the forefront of innovation (in the LegalTech world?) – and produce hot leads with viral potential for you?

We’d be happy to promote you to the forefront of the 2019 marketing strategy!

Request a demo of LegalUp today!

GET YOUR FREE DEMO

The post How are lawyers actually using online advertising today? appeared first on LegalUp.