The drive to the courthouse is three hours. Some firms have ad billboards or a satellite office. They spend a lot of money to have a bigger presence in their community. I get more cases from LegalMatch without all of that.
I get a tremendous number of leads from LegalMatch. We try to respond quickly if it’s someone that is definitely in our wheelhouse. If, based on what they said, I know I can help, then I'll call them immediately or email them and communicate with them. I've had a lot of success with it.
I have plenty of business and I joined LegalMatch not because I needed more business. In New Mexico, where our firm is located, we are far away from each other. We have a lot of people who need help. And you know, in New Mexico, we can bundle services for people without even entering as their attorney. In other words, I have to put a disclaimer on it, but I can prepare documents for people.
A lot of people think that LegalMatch offers services to those who need a free attorney. But we've been with those people. Sometimes we're able to help them just by bundling services and helping them prepare a plea. We give them advice on what they need to do in court. So I think this work helps a lot of people, not by necessarily retaining an attorney. We give them more options.
There's a lot of times I'll get someone who calls me from LegalMatch and I don't even charge for the initial consultation. It's something I can do, talking to potential clients for a few minutes, and I just do it.
Our LegalMatch subscription pays for itself. It doesn't take a lot. The ability to be able to respond to people, it’s definitely been beneficial to us. So in that aspect, it's worthwhile for me to continue doing it.
Anytime that you have the ability to help people, do that successfully and satisfy them. This will make others turn to you for help with their legal issues. This way, your name becomes word of mouth.
LegalMatch gives you an opportunity to have clients that you would not normally have, who normally would not have contacted you. This gives you an opportunity to increase your revenue. And if you do a good job for these people, then you're naturally going to get more cases further down the road that don't come through LegalMatch.
I would tell a new attorney that most time when they go out on their own, they should start out doing different areas of law. They're going to take on these cases because they need initial clients.
So normally, attorneys start out taking a wide variety of cases. I think that LegalMatch offers a new attorney a wide variety of choices that he can get leads from. It also offers him as wide a geographical area to work with as they want.
I'm in one county and so I get leads in my county. I can also have leads from adjoining counties with LegalMatch attorney-matching services. You either choose to have leads from your geographical area or, if you need to expand and try to start building a name in other adjoining areas, then these services give you that opportunity.
I had an attorney ask me one time about how a LegalMatch attorney subscription works. I usually work in the fifth judicial district, which is a long drive to the courthouse, because we're in rural New Mexico. The drive to the courthouse is three hours. Some firms have ad billboards or a satellite office. They spend a lot of money to have a bigger presence in their community. I get more cases from LegalMatch without all of that.
For the money that you spend to be able to get LegalMatch leads, it's far less expensive than other advertising methods or having to set up satellite offices. I had a person come to me one day and say, “How the hell are you getting all these leads down here? I've got billboards and an office and all this stuff and you're in court down here more than I am.”
You have to respond quickly when someone calls from a LegalMatch lead. He is there to the point that he is searching out an attorney, he’s ready to be captured by an attorney. And so I think that making that initial contact and responding as quickly as you can is rule number one. Send an email or call. Those leads are ready for an attorney.
My advice is to be a little more flexible with LegalMatch clients because they may not all be able to render full retainers. Sometimes you're going to have to be willing to work with them a little bit. But I think that it's a great opening for a new attorney to get more exposure.
One of the features on LegalMatch is that you send out your initial responses and you're able to go into cases you've responded to with updates. The system will update you about responses, like if you've sent out your initial response and the client didn't bite on it.
That happens at least in New Mexico because of the geographical distance. In other words, someone two hours away from me may be hesitant about calling an attorney two hours away, but then maybe in a week he’s still looking for an attorney. So at that point, I’d certainly probably want to send another response to him, reach out again, maybe try to call. That’s what I liked about the feature.
I absolutely recommend LegalMatch. It's not a complicated platform to use. I think that it’s especially good for attorneys who are busy and find it hard to schedule 15 minutes without something getting in the way.
So I really like the ease of use in a LegalMatch subscription. You get all the information you need on your clients immediately so that you have an opportunity to talk to them or reach out to them.
The cost of the program versus the number of leads that you get makes LegalMatch as good as any other platform out there.
If I could get my staff to run an update, honestly, I think that the actual value provided by my subscription would safely be at least in the $10,000 range. Some years we may get $20,000 off it. I’ve covered the main things about LegalMatch that I can think of. It’s beneficial, it's a very easy platform to use, and every time that an attorney's name goes out, even if the clients don’t respond and use you. You've gotten your name in front of them and somewhere down the road, they may use you.
It's one of the least expensive legal advertising platforms that you can use because your name gets out there to so many people.