How can legal firms attain growth through peer referrals and reviews?

Sabah Noor

Sep 14, 2021

7 min read

Law firms should not neglect the importance of online reviews. These reviews or feedback can encourage or discourage a prospect from doing business with you. According to the survey conducted by Statista in 2020, in the USA, 17% of the respondents said that they use an online search engine to find an attorney. Hence, online reviews of legal firms can allow users to choose which firms they can work with.

As per the Google Consumer Surveys, 27.6% of the respondents read Google reviews of legal firms before approaching them. 18.4% of the respondents said they would consider reviews of a law firm available anywhere on the internet apart from Google. Therefore online reviews have become an extremely crucial factor in determining the success of a legal firm. Other review platforms like Yelp, Yahoo, etc., are also important. Hence, if a law firm ranks higher on search engine page results, it must ensure excellent ratings or reviews.

Why are online reviews crucial for your legal business?

1. Reviews bring credibility to your firm

Regardless of how your law firm generates clients or new cases, your brand credibility and authority remain among the most crucial factors that help you develop long-term benefits. Therefore, you need to establish a polished online reputation for your legal firm. Before analyzing your final work, potential clients check your online reputation.

You can alter the first impression they make of your firm by establishing an excellent online reputation. You can maximize the potential of these impressions by maintaining online reviews. As an attorney, you have to appear innovative, robust, and reputed. Online reviews can help you achieve so.

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2. Confirms your legal expertise

The legal business is a competitive space. Hence, it can be highly complicated for a new law firm to attract high-value audiences. Today, several legal firms invest in various advertising techniques to build their reputation, spread word of mouth, and gain more business. However, in the internet era, there are affordable ways to showcase your legal expertise.

If a legal firm implements a sophisticated online reputation strategy, it can showcase its unique expertise to targeted audiences. Boosting online reviews can be a robust way of building your brand name in the market. An excellent online reputation can act as a powerful tool for an online legal firm to speak out its success stories. 

If you have an online business, there are huge chances that your clients are already posting their experiences. It can be on different social media websites or search engines like Google. With a forward-thinking approach, your firm can encourage client conversions over the internet through online reviews. Your previous clients can narrate the positive experiences when they hired you for a particular legal niche. All this will allow new prospects to know more about you; hence, it will help you showcase your legal expertise.

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3. It gives you an advantage over your competitors

If your law firm can develop a professional way of encouraging clients to upload their positive reviews, you can beat your competitors. Showing off successful cases can prove an effective way of establishing your superiority over your competitors. You can develop email marketing tactics, social media message campaigns, personalized emails, etc., to encourage previous clients to drop their reviews. You have to request them, don’t make them feel pressured!

Remember: asking for a review should not sound like a marketing plan! To make the process seamless, you can create a separate webpage for reviews or ask them to write a review on search engines directly. Just provide them the link and guide them on how they can drop feedback. You can also explore other avenues like Facebook reviews, LinkedIn reviews, etc. However, you must encourage online reviews on Google because Google reviews have the most significant influence on new clients.

How can your firm get more reviews?

Why are Referrals crucial for your law firm?

Quickly build relationships with other clients.

We would suggest that you should identify your top five referral sources. Once you have done that, you can schedule regular meetups with them. You can introduce sessions or free consultation where you can have a conversion with your potential clients. If you can highlight the benefits they can get from your services, you can tap into new business opportunities.

Apart from educating them about specific services, you can also educate them about the target market or different practice areas. However, you should never forget that developing referrals is a two-way relationship. You should contact your prospects regularly, learn more bout your target clients, and focus on business development goals.

Promote your victories.

To drive excellent referrals, you need to establish your brand credibility and online reputation. To achieve a premium online reputation, you can use different legal marketing techniques to promote your thought leadership. One of the best ways to establish your expertise is by promoting your success stories or your client’s success stories. You can also make use of high-quality case studies to advertise your client victories.

You can approach some prominent publications or websites to publish your blogs or articles to highlight your achievements. Ensure to select publications that are popular among legal clients because that will help you drive maximum returns. You must actively participate in community organizations, talks, seminars, etc., where you can network with potential clients. These tactics can help you generate business or referrals.

Credibility & authority

We highlighted the importance of networking in the previous section; however, networking is way more than giving out business cards. Before attending a seminar, talk, or networking event, make sure you have defined goals. To establish your credibility and authority effectively in a networking event, you must determine what you want to accomplish.

You must have three straight answers for these questions – What is your professional background? What unique does your legal firm do? How can clients reach out to you? You need to answer these questions. It will help you to establish your legal firm’s authority. If you have made new connections, make sure to drop a formal email to them. It is essential to contact your prospects once they get out of that networking zone. Emails are effective in creating a long-term relationship with new prospects.

How Do Law Firms generate client referrals?

Prioritize Key Referral Sources

Prioritizing the best referral sources is a critical element of business development. You need to focus on attorneys who are bringing high-value clients to your law firm. You need not focus on attorneys with the most cases; you should concentrate on lawyers bringing the best cases. Once you start recognizing these critical aspects, you can analyze the funnels. You must evaluate funnels that help you to capture leads. If you can realize these referrals, you can spend time and resources on them. You might end up getting better results than before.

Schedule Meetups Efficiently

As discussed in the previous sections, conferences and meetups are great to establish brand authority and credibility. However, such networking events are great for building referrals. You can make the most out of these events by getting aware of your target clients or peers. The value you get from these events depends upon you. Once you are aware of your target peers attending the event, you can gain valuable returns.

Take Up Pro Bono Cases

Pro Bono cases are where the lawyer provides their services to a person without expecting any return from them. Pro Bono cases are often seen as community work where lawyers tend to help others. However, offering Pro Bono services can help a law firm drive more contacts, leads, or recognition.

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Start Automating Your Newsletters

Once you start automating your newsletters, you will be able to keep in touch with your clients, business partners, and attorneys. It’s a great way to help your business scale further. You can send a newsletter via email, or you can send it in a physical form.

• Benefits to Email Newsletters – Email newsletters are very budget-friendly; they are highly scalable too. Once you develop a template for your email campaign, you can smoothly pitch in your law firm’s blogs, case studies, submission forms, etc.
• Benefits to Physical Newsletters – Many people observe the numerous advantages of email newsletters. However, there are some significant advantages of using physical newsletters. Many email newsletters go unnoticed, in the bin, or end up cluttering themselves among hundreds of other emails. The best part about using a physical newsletter is that it allows you to stand apart from the crowd.

Conclusion

The legal industry is highly competitive; therefore, you need strategic ways to gain new clients. You need a robust client acquisition strategy through which you can keep your business alive. If you are a legal firm, you might be aware of the exponential rise in searches for online legal-related queries for attorneys. If you want to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy for your law firm,
contact us today!