I rely on LegalMatch at this point for my clients. I don't need to do anything further. It gives the quantity, the flow of the volume of clients coming in, and the diversity as well. It just keeps me going basically for everything!
I have been a member of LegalMatch since 2017 and it's my third year now. The very practical reason why I joined LegalMatch is I needed clients!
As a solo practitioner, I’m more than settled not to join even a small law firm. I just wanted to start on my own. I very much appreciate being a solo now though I would say that it has its trials and tribulations. On the whole, if you weigh everything together, I really love being a solo.
With a platform like LegalMatch, I sift through the different clients that are presented to me and I find the ones that I can mostly work with in every way, financially and legally.
Out of the 10 to 12 clients or problems in housing that are presented to me every single day, I end up retaining three or four over the course of the month.
LegalMatch gives me that variety and diversity of cases and I am able to pick and choose for myself as a lawyer. I rely on LegalMatch at this point for my clients. I don't need to do anything further. It gives the quantity, the flow of the volume of clients coming in, and the diversity as well. It just keeps me going basically for everything!
Right now that I'm entering into business law with LegalMatch, I'm going to be hiring an assistant to deal with the clients and the intake. It just provides me what I need as a solo at this point.
What I like about LegalMatch is that it provides me with clients, so I don't have to do much spending on things like advertising or a lawyer referral service. As a solo, I'm more than busy with the clients that have been with me or that are coming in.
LegalMatch provides a diversity of clients and cases. So far, as I have seen for three years now, I can pick and choose and then I decide to go with the cases that make the most sense to me. I'm mindful of what my strengths are and what I can do for the clients.
LegalMatch has a good reputation and that has been very helpful. One of the things I have found is that you do not let the clients pick you but you pick your clients. You've got to be very forceful and disciplined right off the bat in terms of the clients. Client intake is very important in this way. In this kind of field, you know what you can do and what you cannot do. Don’t leave the clients. Tell them if you can help them or not, right from the beginning.
I am mostly happy with the wide variety and diversity of cases that I get from LegalMatch.
As a solo practitioner, I can only financially afford to specialize in one area. That’s how I do it in an ethical way. I have to make both ends meet and LegalMatch was kind of a godsend to me!
One of the things that I adore about it is that it's kind of collected. It is basically, in a nutshell, the wide variety of clients and the different kinds of problems that you have to deal with intellectually. It's extremely stimulating! There's never a dull day from all these clients that I see.
In the beginning, I got into litigation very quickly and then I realized I'm not a natural-born litigator. What I prefer is transactional law and LegalMatch provides you that possibility. You've got to know yourself and what kind of law you want to do and how far you want to push something.
My caveat to attorneys is first of all know yourself, know what you want to do, know how far you want to go. Then after that, use LegalMatch as an opportunity to advance your career goals in the process of helping people concretely and ethically.
Given the volume of clients, you need to get an intake formula or questionnaire right off the bat! Be very disciplined about your intake questionnaire because you'll be getting a lot of clients.
You'll be getting maybe four or five calls a day if you're a solo like me. If you have a legal assistant, then they can take care of the next steps. Make sure that your clients provide you, as soon as they can with their busy lives, the elements for you to figure out whether this case is worth it.
In other words, do not lead on clients. Try and stop very quickly those clients that you feel you cannot help either because they don't have the money or because a case isn't worth it. You have to try to be extremely honest with the clients very quickly. Once you've done that, then you retain the clients whom you can really help.
The first way to deal with these issues is to do an extremely dramatic and drastic look over the different clients and within maybe a day or two, decide what you can do and what you cannot do. Be honest with clients right up front and do not leave them right off the bat! It's a much more productive and satisfying journey when you have done that.
LegalMatch has been the one that I've been with since I started my practice. I can’t have a comparative view of everything else. What I do know is that compared to a regular lawyer referral service that might work if you happen to have a lot of experience under your belt, LegalMatch has allowed me to kick start my practice.
There are approximately 10 to 12 cases on average once every two or three days.
The volume of clients every day that I can see coming through is about six or seven new cases a day, so you can multiply that by seven. On the weekends, there are approximately 50 cases a week. I end up talking on the phone to maybe 20 of those cases to get a free consultation.
There are evidently several steps you need to do and I would end up retaining one or two every week, but that's only because I'm a solo practitioner, so far.
I think that of all the cases that I have had over the last three years, if I could have more manpower to help me out, I would have taken maybe four or five cases every week. There are lots of good cases out there!
I've had a lot of help. I'm basically solo, but I do have mentors and colleagues I can talk to in the legal field and partly these are kind of interesting people. These are council or attorneys that have been on opposing sides of cases that I have done and we end up becoming friends and acquaintances.
My LegalMatch support team reaches out to me. They have been very helpful. My account manager in LegalMatch and the follow ups have been extremely valuable. They’re willing to listen to my problems. There were multiple of them in the beginning when I started my practice.
Kendra Smith, my account manager is great. She checks in with me once a month. When she calls me, she just listens when sometimes, I need that to just blow off steam. She's very helpful. She gives me advice, even if she's not in the legal field. Although she doesn't know all the aspects of ethics, the California code and about how lawyers should operate in certain very dicey situations, she listens and she gives me her advice. She's been very helpful and supportive.
I was surprised to tell you the truth because I thought that an organization like this that provides you the clients, you have to pay for the service and then they let you fend for yourself and that's not the case with LegalMatch!
Even in this pandemic, I was kind of surprised that for the most part, I'm working a lot on existing clients right now. There's a lot of that, as well as clients who are like a year or two old at this point. I’m working on the litigation that still exists.
It is true that the volume of clients has declined, but certainly people don't have that much money to start out a new case. However, what's interesting is that the COVID situation has created a whole new set of problems in the housing-related area. 20-30 percent of my practice was in land or tenant stuff.
What happened with COVID is that all of a sudden, you have a whole bunch of landlords coming on board who really want to see what they can do with these clients or tenants who are just hanging on and are sometimes taking advantage of the situation.
These are just landlords who have to pay their bills like everybody else. In some sense, COVID has created some kind of new problems that have presented themselves in the context of land and tenant law.
I would recommend LegalMatch to others! I have to say one thing to any of my colleagues taking on LegalMatch: “It's a great platform!”
Client intake is a very important feature. You have to be careful with client intake. Deal with all the flow of clients coming in because you have all kinds and most of them are good clients.
You got to be aggressive. You've got to make sure you know what your limits are and you've got to put limits on clients that you get from LegalMatch. You've got to be devoted to those clients that you do pick. Those are the clients with the best intentions and there’s probably 80 to 85 percent of those clients on LegalMatch given the volume.
I have done the calculation because obviously, I had to know how LegalMatch has allowed me to make money. I have been doing this for three years and in the beginning, it was very rocky. Maybe the second year was still very rocky. Last year, there's something in the return on investment when I did a very cold calculation on the gross revenues.
Compared to the intake of what I pay for LegalMatch, the level of return on investment is approximately eighteen to nineteen percent.
I'm just beginning. I'm just a new practitioner and I imagine if I'm more seasoned, I can get those numbers even higher based on what I think the clientele that comes through LegalMatch is.
You've got to be very disciplined and systematic on how you do intake with clients from the very beginning. Don't waste your time running after red herrings. Once you do that, get an intake questionnaire or get a paralegal or legal assistant, deal with that issue, then you can get that figure on the return on investment that could be much higher in my opinion.
Remember this, when people come to you with their legal problems through LegalMatch or any other platform, they're at the most vulnerable and that they're most stressed out. These people are in really bad situations! They're at their wits’ end! Generally, a lot of times, they have made their problems into mountains and you've got to bring those mountains down to moles and tell them "Well, it's not that bad".
Sometimes they have really serious problems, but you can't help them all the time. You have to be respectful to these people and try to tell them if you cannot help them out with all due respect. Show them you understand the nature of their problems. It can be a very joyful experience dealing with these people!