LegalMatch Marketing for Attorneys

Unbundling Your Legal Services: The New Way to Provide Legal Representation

Unbundling services, also known as providing limited scope representation, is a new trend in the legal field, spurred on by the willingness of the general population to still pay for certain services while also unable to afford a “soup-to-nuts” plan. While some lawyers have been jumping at providing unbundled services like airlines searching for new extra “perks” to charge for, many lawyers seem to find the idea of offering limited scope representation repugnant. Even if you fall into the latter group, you should at least give it some serious thought before completely turning your nose up at the idea.

What Does It Mean To Unbundle Services?

In the broadest sense, to unbundle your services means to simply offer specific services separately. This is in sharp contrast to what is still considered to be the traditional offering of legal services, which is full scope representation. Traditionally, a lawyer would assist a client from an initial consultation all the way through the legal matter being finally resolved at trial or a settlement conference. With unbundled services, a lawyer only performs specific tasks during specific steps of a legal process, such as only writing a demand letter or simply providing representation during a settlement negotiation.

Why Should I Unbundle My Services?

It may be scary to think about unbundling your services. After all, it is a completely new way of doing things and may involve a new way of billing your clients. However, there are very good reasons why you should consider unbundling the legal services that you offer.

1. Attract more clients. In light of the economic downturn and the increase of legal self-help websites such as Legalzoom, most people are choosing to save money by engaging in “do it yourself” legal work. This is primarily because they feel that they cannot afford full representation, and they may not want full representation. By offering unbundled services, people are more inclined to hire you for the specific task they want to have accomplished, knowing that they will not be wasting money on services that they feel that they do not need. Also, just as with more tradition arrangements, a client may end up hiring you for more than what they initially wanted. A simple representation at a mediation session may turn into representing the client in a trial if the mediation fails. 
2. Earn more money. If you offer certain unbundled services at a fixed rate based on a general time estimate, you may find that you occasionally perform the task at a slightly faster rate than usual for the same amount of money. Also, by only performing certain tasks for a client, you can avoid wasting time on unbillable tasks that often pop up during full-scope representation.
3. Avoid unpleasant tasks. You may absolutely love the area of law that you practice in, but there may also be certain tasks in that area of law that you would rather not perform. By unbundling your services, you can avoid performing certain less pleasant tasks in your practice area without having to give up practicing in that field.

Tips for Unbundling Your Services

If you do decide to unbundle your services, here are some basic tips to help you get started:

• Check with your state’s rules of professional conduct to see what services you can and cannot unbundle, as certain states only allow you to unbundle services that are related to non-criminal matters. You should also take some time to familiarize yourself with any rules related to withdrawing yourself as legal counsel in a limited scope representation scenario.
• Figure out which services that you perform on a regular basis that you feel you can offer as a stand-alone service. Some lawyers may feel comfortable offering most of their services as unbundled services, while others may choose to offer a few of their services as singular services.
• Calculate how much time a single task, such as drafting a response letter or writing interrogatories, generally takes you and how much you would usually charge for that amount of time. This allows you to provide an accurate estimate on the cost of that task as an unbundled service.
• Draft a standard limited scope of representation agreement for each of the services that you intend to offer as an unbundled service. This can be tweaked for each client depending on the complexity of their situation, but it should give you a good idea of how to explain to your client just what each service entails.
• Limit your initial consultation to just what the client wants to hire you for. There is no need to spend time discussing other parts of the client’s case unless they want to hire you to handle other tasks for them as well. This also helps to avoid any confusion as to the extent of representation that you are providing.

Good luck in your venture into this brave new world of limited scope representation.

Authored by Kristen Johnson, LegalMatch Editor

How The Billable Hour Is Harming Your Firm

Billable hours have been a mainstay of law firm profit for many years. The system requires law firms to charge by the hour for services performed at rate that varies depending on the seniority of the attorney. Clients are sometimes comforted when they receive an itemized hourly bill, detailing what work was done by whom. Ideally, this type of billing would keep firms honest about the amount and types of work that they do. However, in reality, the billable hour leads to waste of time and human resources, and clients are catching on.

Why Does the Billable Hour Exist?

In the past, the cost of legal services was internally regulated through state bar associations by minimum fee schedules which detailed the lowest possible rates that a firm could charge. This prevented lawyers from cutting their rates in order to compete on the market. In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled that lawyers participating in “trade or commerce” were not except from federal anti-trust laws and could not engage in price fixing, which is per se illegal. 

Firms searched for new ways to profit without participating in “anticompetitive activities,” and the billable hour was born. Soon, some firms turned the new system into what one Bloomberg Business commentator called a “cash printing press.” Firms profit when associates churn thousands of billable hours. This often means working as hard as humanly possible to maximize the amount of research, writing, and other legal work done on each case.

Hourly Billing Creates Incentives to be Inefficient and Even Unethical

Under the billable hour, time really is money. As Nathaniel Burney writes, “billing by the hour can actually be a bad thing if one happens to be the kind of lawyer who gets results.” There’s simply no incentive for associates to get faster or to cut out busy work. Each attorney is encouraged to bill for every minute fraction of an hour worked, and may be professionally scorned for failing to work long hours---even if they get the most done.

Some clients, especially those with “deep pockets,” may also fall victim to unnecessary increases in billing due to differences in the attorneys assigned to their account. They may be told that more senior attorneys are more competent, justifying the greater expense. Thus, even routine research that most law school grads could do is billed at a much higher hourly rate: an associate billed out at $400 an hour might be replaced with a partner billed out at $850 an hour for the sake of “quality.” This is also inefficient: senior attorneys’ time would be better spent on complex matters that require great intellectual rigor and understanding of the law.

Lastly, clients who pay by the hour are often charged for a smidgeon more work than was actually required. In some firms, this can lead to unethical behavior. Attorneys may engage in work that is purposely duplicative or unnecessarily detailed just for the sake of consuming time. Hourly billing may also lead to stealing from clients by augmenting or even fabricating hours. The American Bar Association chronicles some outrageous examples of this: for example, a Connecticut lawyer once billed a client 94 hours for a single day of work.

Hourly Billing Wastes the Potential of Talented Associates

A reward for academic achievement in law school can often be a highly paid first-year associate position at a firm. For some, these positions can be disheartening burn-out traps. The true prize for these ambitious new attorneys turns out to be years of sleep deprivation, lack of personal time, and consistently increasing expectations for how many hours will be put in.

Mid-level associates are often required to work well upwards of 2000 billable hours (not total hours) a year. Yale Law School’s career center estimates that a year with 2200 billable hours would in fact require over 3,000 hours of time at work. With a half-hour commute to work, this means 7:30 am to 8:30 pm on Monday through Friday and an extra 9:30 am to 5:30 pm shift three Saturdays per month. 

The lack of life balance (and of sleep) that a schedule like this demands would be a concern in an industry where efficiency was valued. In law firms, however, lowered productivity due to overwork and mental fatigue just increases profit margins.

 Moving Away from the Billable Hour

The ideal firm for both discerning clients and talented, honest lawyers would be one that both achieved excellent results and billed fairly for them. Some of these outstanding firms already exist. However, reality dictates that for many firms, there are simply too many perverse incentives in the current system. Firms have also hit a dilemma, in that clients now demand good value for their money. Firms that stay on the current path may lose business by failing to differentiate themselves from their time and money wasting competitors.

Two main alternatives to hourly billing now exist.

Energetic firms may wish to bill for each task performed (or for the whole case) using a fixed rate. This is seen as one of the best alternative fee systems because it encourages efficiency, especially when performing routine legal tasks. Many large clients are now demanding this type of billing for some matters. However, beware one problem: when billing is only based on the end product, some attorneys may take time-saving shortcuts that decrease work quality.

Firms that operate in high-risk and high-reward areas such as tort law can (and already do) use contingency or reverse contingency billing. Contingency billing rewards a firm with a percentage of the settlement or judgment in a successful case. Reverse contingency billing, on the other hand, rewards a firm with the percentage of the amount a client doesn’t have to pay when an adversary loses a suit. These approaches transfer some of the risk of a lawsuit from client to firm. One downside is that this discourages firms from taking on the riskier cases.  On the other hand, it also forces attorneys to pay attention to the quality of their work and fight hard.

However, these two methods are only a starting point. As a profession, we must brainstorm new ways to fairly charge clients for our services. Until we do, firms will remain beholden to an inefficient system that encourages dishonesty and squanders attorney talent.

Authored by Alexis Watts, LegalMatch Legal Writer

Why Humans, Not Robots, Run the Legal Profession

In a recent article published in Wired, America's Justice System Sure Doesn't Know Much Science, Sarah Zhang discusses the legitimate issues of problems with eye-witness testimony, false confessions and police involvement. The criminal justice system, like almost every other system in the world, has flaws. Police intimidate innocents to confess. Police encourage victims of horrible crimes to identify certain people that they think are guilty. Although much of this is not some evil intentional design, people are people. 

The article argues that “We are not the people we wish we were.” Everyone has felt this way about some belief or thought they had, but the article’s next says, “The people we wish we were are kind of like computer robot humans who are able to control their biases.” Surprisingly, 35% of law firms in a recent study agree that first-year associates could be replaced with robots! This goes too far, as does the suggestion of replacing lawyers, judges, and witnesses with Avatars.

Human emotion is part of the justice system, but there are already issues with “robotic-emotionless” systems in the legal system. Sentencing guidelines imposed on criminal defendants is a robotic application that many people have issues with. Three strikes is one example of a flaw with a robotic approach. An avatar, without any human emotion, would only consider a single woman stealing a loaf of bread to feed her family a crime. 

If she had two prior offenses of stealing, she would be imprisoned for life and her two children would be placed into a foster-system. While stealing food is unquestionably a crime, humans would at least have mixed emotions about how to proceed. There would be many in favor of punishing the woman and many others would be lenient. With human involvement, debate would ensue and justice would occur. An avatar would have no discussion and the woman would be jailed.

Science Doesn't Know Much Law

That is one small emotion appeal, but the system advocated by Zhang is also likely to violate the confrontation clause of the Constitution. The confrontation clause requires that witnesses against a criminal defendant testify in front of the defendant. This is provided for the human emotion of confronting someone you may send to prison.

There are also times when people lie to gain advantages and make accusations based out of jealously, confusion, or greed. Signing a piece of paper or talking to an officer behind closed doors is nowhere near as difficult as the human emotion in a courtroom. The emotional problems that exist in the courtroom exist in real life and leaving these emotions to a robot is not ideal.

The shop owner whose loaf of bread is stolen may be gung-ho about prosecution the day his bread is stolen. However, months later when he sees a broke single mother of two children facing jail, he may decide to show mercy. Or he may aggressively testify against her. Neither approach would be wrong, but it is up to the individual human to decide how to proceed.

The well documented mortgage crisis is another example of why an avatar approach is not ideal. Numerous illegal documents were recorded on title and under a robot approach, if a document is recorded, it is correct. However, it is well known that many of these documents were forged, because Wall Street wolves understood that manipulating documents in a non-judicial foreclosure with no oversight was easy. Applying human emotion, we can understand how it happens and we do not want, or need, a robotic approach to forcing people out of their homes based on forged documents.

The current system is far from perfect, but law is more art than science. Technology should and does play an important and ever growing role in the legal system, but putting technology in charge of everything goes too far.

Authored by Ryan Griffith, LegalMatch Legal Writer and Attorney at Law

Welcome Feedback from Clients to Improve Satisfaction

Everyone wants to be appreciated for their hard work, but while praise can be encouraging, it’s not nearly as constructive as addressing faulty areas directly. Even though constructive criticism may be hard to handle, only honest feedback will truly help improvement.

Create a client survey that each can fill out upon completion of their case. You may want to avoid making sections for negative feedback, but being the best means allowing and understanding how clients really feel.

Start with an easy survey like the one below, and change it over time to reflect different needs.

Example:

On a scale of 1–10, please indicate your level of satisfaction with the following:

(1 = Very Satisfied, 10 = Very Dissatisfied)

1.       The frequency with which you received updates from your lawyer regarding your

   case.

2.       Your lawyer’s ability to achieve desired results for your case.

3.       The accessibility of your lawyer.

4.       Your lawyer’s knowledge of the law relating to your legal case.

5.       Your lawyer’s level of professionalism.

6.       Your lawyer’s personality and behavior.

7.       Your overall experience at this firm/practice.

8.       Would you hire this lawyer again? Y/N

9.       Would you recommend this lawyer to a friend or colleague? Y/N

If you are interested in more specific client feedback, which is always valuable, consider adding an area at the bottom or on the back of your survey for clients to free write. This will allow clients to explain their choices and address issues that may not have been covered by your questions.

Some clients may be hesitant to add constructive criticism if not prompted, so adding a question such as: “In what areas can the lawyer or law firm improve in and why?” is beneficial.

As a bonus, you can show your good reviews to other potential clients, feature them on your website, or add them into your practice’s other marketing avenues.

And your bad reviews?

Learn from them, and make necessary changes. Your practice in turn will be stronger than ever.

5 Mistakes Lawyers Make When Marketing

Mistake #1: Thinking One Size Fits All

Marketing is essential to any law practice. But no single marketing strategy is best for all lawyers. Search Engine Optimization or pay-per click campaigns may benefit a trusts and estates lawyer serving. But for a general practitioner, optimizing search may only bring a flood of tire kickers.

Random marketing campaigns are rarely successful. To achieve the greatest return on investment of time and resources, an effective marketing strategy should identify the target market and integrate your personality traits.

Mistake #2: Not Having a Consistent Online Presence

As a lawyer, a remarkable reputation is one of the most valuable assets to have. While lawyers carefully cultivate offline reputations, they often do not give the same level of attention to their online reputations.

Whether online marketing is part of your strategy or not, you almost certainly have an online reputation. Many websites automatically aggregate information about you from public sources, including your education, firm, practice areas, and experience, packaging it into a searchable profile. This information may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date.

Whether potential clients find you through online marketing, the Yellow Pages, or through an offline referral, most will take the time to Google your name or your firm before contacting you. Taking the time to create a law firm website, keeping your bio up to date, and making sure information on other websites is accurate will help confirm the image you have crafted offline is reflected online.

Mistake #3: “Networking” Without Building a Network

Most lawyers will say their best cases come from referrals. Recognizing the value of a referral network, many lawyers attend “networking” events; bar functions, or cocktail parties, only to leave without having made any meaningful connections.

Building a productive referral network involves forming relationships built on trust and mutual respect. These relationships are usually formed naturally, without the expectation that they will result in new business.

Some of the best ways to start building a network is to simply become involved in activities that bring you in contact with different people. This can include joining an amateur Shakespeare troupe or coaching your son’s soccer team. Choose activities that would be meaningful even if they never generate business.

Mistake #4: Using Social Media to Advertise

Done well, social media can be a platform for building your firm’s brand, reputation, and industry recognition. But social media is not a traditional advertising medium. Lawyers should avoid sending weekly Twitter blasts along the lines of: “Injured…lost your job? We’ll fight for you!”

Traditional advertising is a one-way communication: A Ford television ad shows it’s newest family sedan and boasts about its fuel economy and high safety rating. But social media is not a one-way medium like television. It is a platform for exchanging and sharing information, ideas, and experiences. Trying to shoehorn an advertisement into a social media post risks alienating your intended audience.

Social media is not for everyone. Creating social media content requires time and long-term commitment. But if you enjoy writing, then blogging about a legal issue that interests you can demonstrate your knowledge and passion for your practice area. If you are a voracious consumer of Internet content, using Twitter to share links or make witty observations about a recent news story or court decision can help shape your brand.

Mistake #5: Not Recognizing Clients as Referral Sources

Happy clients are proud of their lawyers and will recommend your services to their friends and family, effectively merging their networks with your own.

Many attorneys, not recognizing their clients’ potential as referral sources, may work hard to get clients, but then fail to deliver quality services. They may be late returning phone calls and emails, go to court unprepared, or not take the time to listen to and address their clients’ principal concerns. These actions will ensure an existing client will not act as a future referral source.

By honoring your legal skills, delivering above and beyond your clients’ expectations, and keeping in touch with your clients after the conclusion of your representation, you can tap into a steady stream of new business. 

How Can LegalMatch’s Marketing Services Help?

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Become a member with LegalMatch today by visiting www.legalmatch.com/attorneys. You can also contact us directly by calling (866) 953-4259.

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