Growing Business from Past Clients

00:00 Speaker 1 Welcome to the Effective Lawyer, a podcast for ambitious attorneys who want to improve their practice. My name is Jack Zinda and I'll be your host. Hey, Jack Zinda. Here today I want to talk about how to generate clients from existing and past clients. As you all know, generating business is one of the most critical aspects to any law firm. Most law firms go out of business not because they don't know how to practice law or because they're bad lawyers. It's because they don't have enough business to keep them and their staff busy. And one of the best ways to get clients is from old clients and current clients. So today I'm going to give you a list of ways to get business from those two different types of sources. 00:58 Speaker 1 So the first thing, and this is obvious, you have to do a great job for your current clients and a great job for any client that comes to you in the future. That sounds simple, but honestly, that's one of the reasons why a lot of law firms don't get referrals from past clients because they weren't happy with their experience. The attorney may have done a great job, but they didn't do a good job of explaining the process or a good job of explaining how much work they law firm put in or how value add they were. 01:26 Speaker 1 So the first thing you want to do is make sure that you are explaining to the client the value added to their case, explaining where they were when they found you and where they were at the end of the case, and then show them all of the work you did, all the depositions you took or the demands you drafted or the medical records you got, and make sure you remind them of the value added to them. And I like to do that every time I'm updating the client and is say, hey, let's zoom out for a minute and let's talk about where were versus where we are and all of the things that we have done. The second thing that's going to lead to happy clients is you personally interacting with your clients once a month. 02:02 Speaker 1 I would recommend doing it via zoom or at a minimum, phone call. In person is fine. But you know, with everyone work remote these days, sometimes that can be tricky. So I prefer to do zoom meetings. Now zoom is critical because you need to have eye to eye contact face to face, they need to see you. All sorts of studies have shown visual interactions lead to a better feeling about someone, feeling like you got to know them better. And I think if you think about the situations we're on a zoom call versus being on a phone call, you would realize that the zoom call is going to have a much bigger impact. 02:34 Speaker 1 You also want to make sure that you've set aside time to meet with your client in person at some point to get to know them on a personal basis to have them come into your office. Now, if that's just impossible, given logistics you might want to examine, does it make sense for me to take that case? I know some attorneys do mass torts or class actions where in person might be impossible or not advisable. But if you're working on a wrongful death case or a large personal injury case, you really need to take the time to get to know the client. So, number one, have great client service. Number two, resell what you're doing for the client. Number three, interact on a regular basis via zoom with the client. Then number four, you want to survey the client regularly. Okay. 03:20 Speaker 1 You do this by sending out surveys once a quarter. It can be automated. That just asks the client, how happy are you with the services you're getting from our law firm? And then they reply. And then you measure the results and you note any clients that are not happy with how things are going. The second way is at the end of each case, you want to have a required survey that the client fills out as part of your closing statement. That goes down the breakdown of how well the law firm did and what the breakdown of what the client's going to get. Almost all firms have these where you lay out. Here's how much you're going to get out of the settlement. If you're an hourly practice, I'm sure you have some sort of here's the end of the case documentation. 04:02 Speaker 1 We include a simple survey that takes about two minutes to fill out. That's included in our closing statement that they have to go through to get to the section where they sign off on how much money they're going to get. Obviously, the client really doesn't want to do. We're not going to force them to, but we've noticed that's gotten our survey rate up way higher. Then we note any clients that aren't happy and try to figure out why they're not happy. But then we see which ones are very happy and love us. And then we're really intentional about reaching back out to those clients and making sure we appreciate their kind words. 04:38 Speaker 2 This podcast is presented by Zynda Law Group, a nationwide personal injury firm. For over 10 years, the experienced lawyers at ZLG have been partnering with outside counsel across the United States on all types of personal injury and wrongful death cases. With over 30 attorneys, Zynda Law Group has paid out millions in referral and joint venture fees since 2015. To learn more about partnering with Zynda Law Group, please email us@re referralsindalaw.com we'll schedule a time for you to meet with Jack Zynda or one of our trial lawyers to discuss your case. 05:15 Speaker 1 Now, once you've done that, you need to figure out, how am I going to keep in touch with this client on a regular basis. I think it's advisable to at least once a year to reach out to the client. It could be on some sort of anniversary of either the case, their birthday. But just once a year, send them something that's meaningful that they'd hold on to that will remind them of the good work you did and remind them about your law firm. I cannot tell you how many cases I have gotten where the client had an attorney before a personal injury lawyer, but could not remember their name. And I found that's very common. You also want to ask them to follow you on social media. 05:52 Speaker 1 If they're on social media, you want to make sure that they're part of your email newsletter subscription list so they receive that regularly. And then you want to make sure to tell them if they need help with any legal services under the sun for them to reach out to you, or if a friend or family has needs help with those issues to reach out to you as well. Now, once that happens, you need to make sure someone on your team is treating those referrals with white gloves. You know, nothing is more frustrating for, you know, a client. 06:26 Speaker 1 If they call in to talk to you because you were their lawyer and they have a new legal problem and you hand them off to an intake person who doesn't treat them as well as you would or doesn't, you know, say, hey, thank you so much for being a client and thinking of us again. And you're not very likely to get a referral like that in the future. So to break down what you want to do is, number one, great client service. Number two, make sure you ask the client for referrals. Number three, you want to interact with them on a regular basis. Also number four, include a survey of the clients to measure client satisfaction. Next, you want to measure how many clients do I get from old client referrals? 07:07 Speaker 1 And every time you get a potential client, make sure you send that client a thank you letter, a thank you card, or a thank you gift. Thanking them for the referral so you're encouraging that type of behavior. Make sure you consult with your local borrowers if you send anything of monetary value to see if that's ethical to do that. You know, obviously you can't send them cash, but sending them a gift is usually not prohibited if they sent you a potential client or a referral. As long as there's not a quid pro quo there and you really want to make a big deal out of it. Another step is you can have someone on your team track the social media of your ex clients and then when they have a celebration or a big event in their life, send them something. 07:50 Speaker 1 Send them flowers, send them a bottle of wine if their daughter got married. Send them things so you show that you care about them. And then you want to track your results. Okay, how many clients do I have? How many times did I interact with my ex clients and then how many client referrals? And you should see a trend line up as your client base continues to grow and grow. Well, I hope everyone found this helpful. If you have any more questions on how to get clients via referrals from ex clients, please reach out. I'm happy to talk to you at any time. Also, there's great members of our marketing team that do a great job in this space as well, and I always love to see law firms grow. Till next time, thanks. 08:32 Speaker 2 Thanks for listening today's episode of the Effective Lawyer. You can learn more about our team and find other episodes of our podcast at zindalaw.com as always, we'd appreciate that you subscribe, rate and review the pod. Thanks.