Episode 21: How to Build a Thriving Law Practice Through Attorney Referrals
The following is a transcript of Episode 21 of Championing Justice. You can listen to the full episode here, or watch it on YouTube.
Darl:
Thank you for listening to the Championing Justice podcast. My name is Darl Champion. I am a personal injury lawyer in Georgia. I have my own personal injury law firm called The Champion Firm and I’m the host of this podcast where we have a variety of different guests on talking about a number of topics relevant to personal injury cases and personal injury law firms both on the business side and on the practical side of actually handling the cases.
Today I am honored to have Delisi Friday on with us. She is the founder and owner of First Call Friday and she is going to be talking with us today about attorney referral marketing and how to build a law firm that generates attorney referrals. Thanks for joining me Delisi.
Delisi:
Thanks for having me.
Darl:
So I have to admit, I knew of you well before you knew of me and I was a big fan because I listened to Trial Lawyer Nation podcast.
Delisi:
Did you really?
Darl:
That was how I first knew who you were and I think there were some that you were also the guest on and I was like, you know whether you see people on LinkedIn or some other social media channel and they’re saying things that speak to you, that’s my philosophy. I’m like, she gets it. She’s somebody that I think I have a lot of alignment with.
And then I posted something on LinkedIn one day about something and you commented and I’m like, I got a celebrity.
Delisi:
Oh, what a compliment. I’m honored. Thank you.
Darl:
Well, so just for our listeners, First Call Friday is a new company that you have founded after working in the legal industry at a couple of different law firms, and I think you also worked at a consulting agency that consulted with law firms. So wherever you want to start and talk about your expertise and your background and how you kind of got to do what you’re currently doing with First Call Friday.
Delisi:
Sure. So my father is a trial lawyer. That’s how I have been in the legal industry for 20 years now because when he hung his shingle in 1987, I watched him. I grew up in a law firm. I’ve done all the jobs inside of a law firm and that’s where my passion comes from the last decade of my career.
I am so thankful to have learned my love in the legal industry is really in marketing law firms and helping law firms connect with other law firms to grow a case referral aspect of their business because it can be a challenge to keep up with the ad spend of those bigger firms that are out there. And quite honestly, because I know so many lawyers and because I truly do love connecting with people, case referrals is a passion of mine that really just takes advantage of my love of connecting lawyers with other lawyers.
So I’ve spent my last decade working inside of a law firm and helping with legal marketing that way, but I was also chief of staff to RJon Robins. RJon Robins is the attorney who created How to Manage a Small Law Firm among other businesses. He is an eight-figure serial entrepreneur and when I worked with RJohn, to be his chief of staff and his right hand, open my eyes to the management side of legal. So I now have a deep love for what it takes to actually manage, grow, scale a law firm as well now, which rounds out my experience quite nicely.
And when you’re working with someone who is an eight-figure serial entrepreneur, you start to realize, hey, maybe I have that in me too. And that’s exactly what happened. I worked with him and then I worked with another firm for six months and tested out the magic in this magic wand of mine and said, I want to help more people and I’m just going to take a leap and I will bet on myself any day of the week. So I’m betting on myself and that’s why I created First Call Friday.
Darl:
Awesome. And so obviously you’ve got an extensive background in marketing. You mentioned the management side. Are you working with lawyers and law firms primarily on the marketing side or are you weaving in a lot of the management stuff as well?
Delisi:
I am weaving in the management style for a select group of attorneys I represent. Now if they need it and I feel like I can add value, I don’t think I am the solution for everyone. I can certainly help guide them in the right direction, but if I’m not the right person, a hundred percent I will guide you to who those right people are in my opinion, if you want to take it.
I believe if I cannot provide a solution to someone, I should provide options to them. So I’m always a resource and I’m not someone who says, oh, you have a problem, problem. Good luck. I want to help you solve that problem even if that solution isn’t me.
Darl:
So we’re talking about attorney referrals today and I love attorney referrals. They are by far the biggest cases that we generated last year. I want to say it’s something like 80 plus percent of our revenue came from attorney referrals or somewhere in there, 70%.
It was high because we had several seven-figure cases. We had a $6 million case that was an attorney referral, a $3.4 million, a $2.5 million, a $1.8 million. We had one case that was a multimillion-dollar case. It was from a Google LSA ad. But those are the exceptions, right?
Delisi:
Oh yeah.
Darl:
And so I think this is a great discussion and one I’m really looking forward to because so much of the legal advice that I see now from whether it’s consultants or marketers or whoever, these lawyers that run these conferences is all about digital, all about direct to consumer marketing.
And I think there’s a way to do both if you’ve got the resources to do both. But I think so much gets neglected on the attorney side and it’s like, hey, let’s just put up some PPC ads and some LSAs and social media ads. Why do you like attorney referral marketing so much?
Delisi:
I personally love referral attorney marketing because if you were someone who is watching your cost of acquisition, the cost of acquisition is going to be much lower if it’s an attorney referral, versus how much money you likely have to spend in digital marketing to try and obtain that case. That’s one reason why I like it.
The other reason why I like it, and you touched on this a little bit in your episode with Matt Dolman, but when I refer a case to another lawyer, there is a high likelihood that they will want to reciprocate and refer a case back to me because we’ve created a relationship with one another and you want to work with people you know and you trust. So I see a real value in obtaining a case at a low cost or no cost of acquisition and then also cultivating a relationship with someone who could also give you a case back too.
And so I think there’s a win-win for everyone when you’re doing that. And for anyone who is a so low practitioner or has a small law firm with a handful of lawyers, those dollars are really important. So you have to find ways to maximize what you have. And in my opinion, that’s case referrals.
Darl:
You touched on the cost per acquisition of digital and I think those by themselves, that’s just expensive. We’re in a suburb of Atlanta. I know friends of mine that have Atlanta addresses and it’s just brutal to try and rank for organic SEO.
So you’ve got the upfront outlay of expenses to try and get those. You’ve got PPC, but what a lot of lawyers overlook is you got to have somebody to process those leads. That’s very different. I mean than an attorney referral. I mean an attorney referral comes in differently. You’re not having this whole infrastructure to process it. There’s not this sense of urgency.
We have a better system now, but it used to be like if we would get a lead, it was like a fire drill. If we got one from our website, it was like, who’s doing this? Let’s call ’em. Let’s be sure that we get on it. And it’s just a different pace.
Delisi:
Oh, absolutely. I remember when I started in legal marketing, I didn’t start with attorney referrals, it was all B2C. We hired a big digital marketing company I won’t name. We spent a six-figure amount of money trying to compete and it was so difficult. But what I learned from that experience is if you are going to invest your money in digital, you are hoping it’s going to work. And if or when it does, your intake department also has to be at a capacity to accept those phone calls.
And what I learned through that process was I had to hire more people on intake to take the calls when I was investing that much money. Then I would look at the calls and really say, okay, let me look at the quality of these calls. I’m doing these ads, but for some reason I’m getting phone calls on a practice area I don’t even do. And then I have to think and how fast are we converting? What am I going to do to make sure my staff is turning those into clients if they should be?
And at the end of the day, I realized the juice just wasn’t worth this squeeze I was putting a lot of money in. I had to invest extra money in overhead, I had to take extra time to train my intake team appropriately. You don’t want to invest that money in digital and then someone on your team isn’t properly trained or you don’t have capacity.
Darl:
And not only that, just to touch on that, that can work against you if you have a bad team member. I mean a common source of bad reviews is a bad intake experience.
Delisi:
Absolutely, absolutely. Intake, I have a huge love for intake because I think intake is where the client has a first impression of you and that’s a really important first impression for your law firm because it sets the tone for the entire relationship you have with the client.
So I think intake is really where you start to create that relationship with a client. And if you have people in your intake team who are doing really well, that’s excellent and you’re going to get great reviews. But to your point, if you have the wrong person in intake sometimes that can really negatively impact your firm as well.
Darl:
Yeah. So it sounds like you worked in the legal industry at least in that kind of direct to consumer type marketing. At what point did you or the firm or firms you were working for, at what point did they make the decision to kind of say, Hey, maybe it’s better to focus on attorney referrals?
Delisi:
Sure. So I’m certain there has to be some episode in the Trial Lawyer Nation podcast where Michael Cowen and I talked about this, but it was a moment and I encourage everyone who’s listening to this podcast to please do this at the end of the year and, if you can multiple times throughout the year. You should be looking at your cases and saying to yourself, where did these cases come from?
So when you’re making decisions about where you invest your money to market your law firm, you’re making very strategic and purposeful decisions based on data. You looked at the data and what Michael and I did at some point in our relationship together as we sat down and we said, Hey, let’s look at our numbers and decide where did our best cases come from this year. And when we did that, we realized, wow, it’s the Pareto principle, right?
We realized that so many of these cases actually came from referral partnerships that we had, and if we wanted to continue to have cases at that value, we should invest more time on cultivating those relationships and less of that spend in digital. So to your point, when we spoke earlier, you were saying some of my best cases came from referral attorneys. That was the exact data that we were looking at when we decided let’s take the leap, and it was a less risky leap to take because we already had the info to know my best cases came from these referral sources.
If I invest that time in these places, I should get a really great return on investment. And that’s when we make the decision. But you can’t make that decision if you don’t track the data and you don’t look at the data. So before you can make that decision, I would encourage everyone to look at the data. So where did my best cases come from? And if they’re coming from your referral partnerships, take the leap and you will see results.
Darl:
Yeah. So one of the things I love when I found the Trial Lawyer Nation podcast is I was listening to Michael and you on some of the episodes and I’m like, these are the exact internal struggles that I have and internal debates that I have and hearing Michael talk about it, and I think this may have been the episodes you’re talking about, but there’s one I think probably several times where he talks about all the problems with kind of the routine car wreck cases that he was having to deal with and the property damage and all this.
And those are internal debates. We constantly talk about cases that are worth taking. For our listeners in Georgia, Georgia is now considering some pretty dramatic changes to the tort laws. And so some of those may make some of those cases even less valuable in terms of the medical bills that get to claim.
So that could affect people’s calculation on that. I think the one thing that I hear people say about attorney referrals though is they say, well, I don’t want to write a check on the backend, whether it’s, and I know every state’s different. I think Florida you’re capped at 25% for a referral fee or at least there’s a presumption that that’s what it is.
Georgia kind of the standard for most cases is a third. Some people will do 50 50 though, and it depends on the value of the case and they say, well, yeah, that’s the cost of the case. What do you say to that to people that may have that reaction?
Delisi:
Well, are you ready to go down a rabbit hole?
Darl:
Well, I’ll tell you mine briefly. I know from listening to you that we’re in alignment on this. You’re only paying that money because you got the money with PPC, I don’t know if you saw my post, it was somewhat humorous, somewhat sad about I spent $50,000 to get three PPC cases last year and I was like, here’s all the things I could have bought with $50,000.
And I was like, could have bought a Dodge Challenger, could have bought this, could have bought this. And I think that’s one big difference is you’re only paying the money because you got it. The other thing is what we talked about briefly is the infrastructure is just very different. Your cost is so much more than just your ad spend. There’s operations, you got to have the intake in the operations.
Delisi:
You do. And I think the other part of considering referring cases is not just saying, okay, how much money am I going to lose if I refer this case out? Stop thinking about it in terms of how much money might I lose? Because splitting a fee, think big picture. Think about the time your staff is going to spend working up that case. Think about the money you are investing in your people in your office who are working on that case. Think about the cost you are going to occur when you are working up that case.
Think about the time it takes to prepare for all of your depositions and hearings and all of the things. And then think about whether or not you have the time to invest in all of that, whether or not it’s going to really create an issue with your bandwidth, whether or not taking this case on means you are going to be spending less time working on these other cases over here and thinking about it in terms of your people, the money invested in the case, your bandwidth, the time you’re investing personally, the time your staff is investing, there’s so much more to it than just thinking about the end result and how much money you’re going to receive.
The other part of it is if you refer a case out, that referral attorney is going to be working really hard on that case to get great value for you and the client and to show you a great referral partner for you. And they may settle the case faster because they’re not going to have as big of a docket or they may do something a little bit differently and you guys can collaborate. I think the other value in a partnership is collaboration.
I really see a value in that. How many times does a small lawyer get to collaborate with another trial lawyer and bounce an idea around too? Yes, think about the attorney’s fees that you may or may not get, but also place a real value on the mentorship too. I think it’s a beautiful thing when two lawyers can brainstorm a strategy on a case. Maybe you don’t want to do that. And I’ve kind of gone on a bit of a tangent.
I think there’s a lot of different ways where you can slice it and say, what am I losing? But I think there’s more ways to spice it and say, but what are you gaining?
Darl:
The one… With law firms that kind of go heavy on the attorney referrals, is that sort of to the exclusion of other cases? Maybe if you’re saying, Hey, I’m getting these big cases from attorney referrals, are you seeing law firms being most successful. Just kind of leaning into that and referring out all those small cases and using those small cases to then further solidify those referral relationships on the big ones.
Delisi:
So I have seen a huge spectrum of the kind of lawyers and the kinds of cases that are getting referred out. So for example, I know and have worked with attorneys who have left a firm gone out on their own and now they refer out cases to other solo to small law firm owners because they don’t have the capacity or they have a case that they don’t handle themselves. So I see it on that side.
I also see it from a different perspective where a lawyer will refer what you mentioned, maybe a smaller car wreck auto case, and they’ll refer it out to somebody else because they’re just not set up for it. You really do have to have your firm set up for pre-lit and everyone is checking in on treatment and managing the treatment and checking in with the client and ordering that.
There’s a whole department that’s created when your law firm is set up to handle those cases that are going to settle faster because they’re the smaller MVA cases. So I know lawyers who will refer those out because they’re not set up for it, but they know someone who is.
On the flip side, and this is why I love case referrals, if you’re that lawyer who refers your auto cases to another firm because this other firm is set up for that, when this other firm that focuses on auto cases gets that big case and they know this one’s got to get filed, they need to have a good trial lawyer on it to get the best result. They’re not quite set up in a way to deliver that maximum value to the client or handle it internally. They’re going to refer it to the lawyer who’s sending them the cases that are the cases they do day in and day out.
And then there’s also the other attorneys like my father, my father is a 40 year trial lawyer who does criminal defense and personal injury. He’s going to refer out all the cases that he doesn’t want to take. And he is not your typical referral partner. It really just depends on what comes in. But he gets cases that come in all the time because he’s been doing it for so long and clients refer friends and family back to him because he helped ’em in the past.
So I’ve seen it all. I believe in it all, and I’m also a huge fan of the lawyers who will partner with someone if they have a case in a different state. In the past, I’ve reached out to you about cases we might be able to partner on because I needed someone in a different state. And that’s why I love LinkedIn because you can reach out to those people and create those relationships. Even if someone can’t handle a case if it’s in another state, they might say, okay, I’m going to find myself local counsel I know I can trust. I know Darl, I love his LinkedIn. I feel like we’ve already established a relationship because of that. Let me call him. So I’ve seen a huge gamut of it and I really think anyone can and should consider case referrals.
Darl:
So I have a great story about LinkedIn and I can’t release the details of the case because confidential, but I recently settled a case for $3 million that I got from an attorney in another state who found me on LinkedIn, who knew of me because of that. He followed me, he liked what I posted, he got this case through his own personal social media channel active on one of the major social media channels and reached out to me.
And I mean that’s a great success story. I mean you hear people all the time talk about LinkedIn doesn’t work. And I think this gets back to this whole idea of what does it mean to work? The platforms all very different. So your attorney referral platform is going to be very different than your direct to consumer platform. Your direct-to-consumer marketing, which is your lead gen, that’s your PPC, your social media, your SEO, yes, that’s lead gen. That’s getting the people that don’t know you.
LinkedIn is you’re not marketing to potential clients. Maybe somebody on there is not a lawyer who finds you and is just like, Hey, yeah, follow your stuff, it’s great. But for the most part it’s other lawyers and it’s building those relationships and that takes time.
So that’s a great point. So I don’t know how things are in Texas. I’ve been to Texas several times over just the last few years for a variety of reasons. I feel like Atlanta is the hotbed of attorney marketing that and probably California, but I know Texas is extremely competitive and one of the things I’ve noticed in Georgia is what I call the Morgan & Morgan model, which is the big advertisers used to refer a lot of their cases out. They would try and get ’em settled, and then if it needed to flip to litigation, they’d refer it out.
Morgan & Morgan kind of turned that model on its head. And despite all the criticisms I have of them and the way they do business, which is for an entirely different podcast episode, they did kind of change the way a lot of firms do that. And I see a lot of firms in the Atlanta area changing because of that.
Some of it also has to do with insurance companies just being incredibly unreasonable and needing to file almost everything. But are you seeing kind of a similar shift in Texas over the last 10 years with maybe more firms keeping stuff and building an in-house litigation team?
Delisi:
Yes. So in my previous experience, I have had relationships where I would work with a very well-known, reputable big law firm and they would refer cases because when you are that big, even then it’s hard to scale your firm in a way to know, okay, I need to hire five more lawyers because I’ve got this many cases and this is the amount of cases that I think every lawyer in our firm should have. That’s very difficult to do.
And so I have worked with firms of that size who have referred out, but I did see about five years ago those started to drop off and I started to figure out those bigger firms were, and you mentioned this, you are right. I totally agree with you. Those bigger firms are snatching up those trial lawyers and saying, Hey, you know what? You want to retire, sell your practice to me.
Let me buy you out. You come over here and just work on big cases that you want to. It’s a win-win for everybody, and I’ve seen that happen more than I thought it would in the last five years, and I think you’ll continue to see that in 2025 and in the future. And why not? If you’re thinking about retiring but you still love trial work, why not go work at one of those big firms that probably does have great cases for you to work on and just handle those, go be Keith Mitnick over at Morgan & Morgan, just go handle the big ones. And I’ve seen that in Texas, but I’ve also seen it across the country.
Darl:
And shout out to Keith Mitnick, love Keith Mitnick, despite all my criticisms of Morgan & Morgan.
Delisi:
Yeah.
Darl:
I read his books. I think he’s got some great trial advice and I always tell people that I don’t have anything with people that work at Morgan & Morgan, it’s just my business philosophy and my business model is just different and I just have a different way of doing business and that’s me, that’s them, good for them. I’m going to do things my way.
And I think that’s happened in Atlanta, so not just with Morgan & Morgan but with other firms where they’ve come and brought these trial lawyers in. And one of the things that I’ve seen also over, so I’ve had my firm for 11 years now, and I kind of think back to that kind of 10 years ago, roughly that mark because that’s when I started my firm. Over the last 10 years, there’s been a big shift in advertising. There’s been a proliferation of advertisers, and I think the stigma’s gone away with it a lot too.
And so more and more people, it’s like there’s not the quote billboard lawyer anymore. It used to be. It’s like, oh, they advertise, let me call them. And even people that might be connected to a network of people they could ask for referrals seem to be more likely to go with some of those big advertisers.
So that brings me to my next question. For law firms like mine, which I consider a mid-size personal injury firm, we’ve got seven attorneys and a bunch of paralegals and legal assistants. What are some great ways to identify potential referral partners, if we’re not looking at those big advertisers?
Delisi:
I would start by looking at your cases and saying, did any of my referral partners on this list of cases that I settled where they knew and let me continue to nurture those relationships. That’s your low-hanging fruit. They already have a great relationship with you. You should continue that relationship because that’s an easy win for you. Trying to decide outside of that who might be a good referral partner for you. I think that depends on where you’re located, what kind of practice you have and what kind of cases you want.
So for example, for me, if I’m a personal injury lawyer, I’m probably going to want to partner with estate planning lawyers out there because if a family comes to an estate lawyer, it’s because something has happened, a loved one has passed away and now they’ve been told you need to go through this process because your loved one passed away.
And it may or may not include a tragic wrongful death collision. And so I love to nurture my estate planning lawyers because they are going to be the people who are getting that higher end case. They may not get it right away or they may know of a client who is just not happy with who they’ve hired and they’re referring to them to say, Hey, who should I contact? Not having a good experience here. So I like estate planning lawyers also because if I have a wrongful death case, I need to have my clients reach out to an estate planning lawyer to help with that aspect of the case, especially when we try and settle it. I would also reach out to other lawyers who are not in your industry.
Some of my best referral partners were lawyers who did not do personal injury, have no desire to do personal injury and just want to be able to say, Hey, Darl, I have this case that came in. I’m going to refer ’em your way. Med mal attorneys are another good one if you do personal injury because they’re likely going to get a personal injury adjacent call because they handle medical malpractice. And so med mal attorneys have been a good referral source for me because they’re kind of in that same vein to a certain extent and they’ve been really helpful for me.
Darl:
I’ll say on the med mal front, God, because we handle med mal cases, but we’re not an exclusive. There’s a lot of lawyers that is their sole thing they do. And you’re right, they refer everything out, but not only are they referring out non meow cases, they’re still referring out decent med mal cases that don’t meet their criteria because they typically are so selective, they only want to have maybe five cases at a time and you might get a case and it might be a million dollar case, but they’re like, yeah, I just didn’t have time for it or didn’t meet my criteria.
So there’s a lot of opportunities. It’s funny. So we have a suite at Mercedes-Benz Stadium where the Falcons play and Atlanta United, which is our soccer team, and I always take other lawyers there, many of whom are also personal injury lawyers, and we’ll also take some friends from the neighborhood occasionally and we’ll all be kind of intermingling.
And one of my neighbors in particular always ask me, she’s like, why are you bringing your competitors? And she’s kind of half joking about it, but it’s like that’s a mindset shift you need to have too, right? It is not just having an abundance mentality, but it’s recognizing that you don’t have to be selling yourself all the time to, Hey, refer me all these cases or whatever. It’s let me develop a genuine organic relationship with somebody I genuinely like and don’t even make it about the business, just let it happen. And that’s how some of my best referral relationships have developed.
Delisi:
Exactly in that same vein, you never know when one of those contacts of yours is going to have a conflict. They may have a conflict or they may represent a family involved in the vehicle and say, look, I don’t want to have ’em sign a waiver of conflict of interest. I really think I just want to separate this and I handle the dad. You handle the mom and they want to work with someone that they trust. And so that could be another way that you have a case that comes from them, but you never would have thought.
And the other part is they may just decide that they want to niche down a little bit more and when you make a decision that you don’t want to handle a certain kind of case, it doesn’t mean those phone calls aren’t still going to come in. I know personal injury attorneys who have said, look, I looked at my numbers and I just really don’t want to do any more premise liability cases. I don’t want to be in federal court because I hate it, and A, B, C, D.
But those cases are still going to come in and they’re still going to be another personal injury lawyer out there who wants to handle them. So why wouldn’t you maintain that relationship with that lawyer because they can refer you the kind of case they no longer want to take.
Darl:
I had Brian Glass on my podcast and it’s been some time I think over the last two months, and one of the things he mentioned was that they utilized a referral relationship manager and that was kind of a new thing for them. Is that something that you’ve seen a role for in law firms where it’s like you’ve got your kind of overall marketing person, but then you’ve got somebody else that’s just focused on referrals?
Delisi:
That makes my heart happy. It’s not for everybody. It’s not for everybody. That could be a job I would do for people, maybe even for free when I’m getting older because I just don’t want to be out of the business and I love it so much. Here’s why I wholeheartedly agree with that, agree with, I agree with it.
If case referrals is an important part of your business development and you get enough cases referred in or referred out where that makes sense. The reason why I believe that can be a full-time, if not full-time part-time job is because if you refer a case out, you need someone within your firm who’s going to check in with your referral partner and just see how things are going, you should do it because you want to make sure the case is being handled and it’s moving. You want to make sure the client’s happy.
But here’s the other reason why you should do it. Every law firm owner should know their financials. They should use their case management system to put estimated settlement dates. They should use their case management system to put estimated settlement values. If you are planning on a case referred out to settle for, let’s just say $200,000, but something happens in the case and now the value of it’s gone down, there’s this bad fact or there’s no insurance, who knows? You need to adjust your case management system and your expectations of how much that case is going to settle for and when.
So you as a law firm owner can make really smart decisions about the financials in your business. So for that reason, I think it’s really important to have someone who owns the follow-up in those cases. The other part of it is if you are creating relationships, it’s nice to have that relationship manager because they continue to maintain that relationship.
In marketing, we call it staying top of mind. If you Darl are not doing something to stay top of mind with those referral partners every month, every two months, whatever criteria you put in place, your relationship manager is doing that for you. And I place a real value in that because if I have someone following up with a referral source once a month on a different case, I’m much more likely going to get a case back because my relationship manager is consistently keeping in touch with them.
So I see a real value in that and also not just because you refer a case out, but if you have referral attorneys who are sending you cases, coming up with a strategy to say, okay, what am I doing to get more cases into the firm? It can be a job where you say, okay, Kayla, I need you to follow up with these five attorneys once a month and Leticia, I need you to follow up with these 10 attorneys once a quarter.
And you’re delegating those business development activities to other people in the firm who are not you, but are still doing it and will maintain those relationships for you and hopefully get a case referred in sooner than if you didn’t have those people and those tasks in place.
Darl:
So one of the things that we talked about, and I think this might’ve been before we started recording, was one of the benefits of attorney referrals is you’re not having to compete with your Morgan & Morgan and these other giant law firms in their ad spend. And so I think that’s one differentiator that I wanted to use to dovetail into this other thing, which is a lot of what I see now online and with conferences and conventions and whatever is, again, it’s just all focused on lead gen.
And I’ve said this before, if your unique selling proposition is just how many eyeballs are on your ad, that’s a tough game to play. You’ve got to be a good lawyer. And that’s to me the most important thing for attorney referrals. But so much of what I’m seeing now is PPC, social media SEO, which again is great. We have a presence in those areas, but it’s like that’s what those firms are doing, these legion things, and you’re not built to have a sustainable practice if that’s what you’re doing because again, there’s nothing unique about what you’re offering to the public.
Delisi:
I agree. It is also very costly. I think when it comes to referral marketing. If I pick up the phone and I call you or I text you or I open my computer and I email you, or I have someone in my office send you a gift or I ask you to meet for coffee or lunch, what’s the real cost involved in doing something like that? It is minimal.
I would say that the bigger cost is your time invested in doing that. I think it can be very challenging if your only marketing plan is to put a whole bunch of money in digital. I think it’s very risky. I’ll give you an example. Think about how many lawyers you saw on LinkedIn freaking out because TikTok was down for 48 hours and they said, oh my God, that’s where I get all my cases. Oh my God, that’s where all my clients are.
I was the person starting fights on LinkedIn saying, and you know what? You should never put all your eggs in one basket. You are going to learn this lesson the hard way. And I’m sorry, but you need to learn it. It’s the same when it comes to your marketing in a law firm, not just on social media.
If you’re only putting money in digital marketing and you’re not doing anything else, you are really hoping that digital marketing pays off and you’re not giving your chance at, you’re not giving yourself a chance to test out if other things can work. And if there is one thing that I learned in 2020 and 2021, it’s how important it is to try different things and to have a plan that does not revolve around one thing. You never know when something crazy is going to happen and rock your world.
Darl:
Absolutely. I mean an algorithm change on Google. I mean, look at how much Google has changed over the last 10 years, not only in terms of the tactics that work, but so much real estate. Now you’ve got LSA ads, the PPC ads, the map pack, and that’s before you even get to the organic listings. And then within the organic listings, you’ve got directories, you’ve got all this volatility in the rankings.
I would hate to build a practice around that, and I think I heard a podcast one time, maybe it was lunch hour legal marketing where they were talking about LSA ads, and I remember when they first became a thing and we started getting some cases from it, I’m like, this is the greatest thing ever. They’re super cheap and we’re actually getting business online that at the time we had never done.
And they were talking about how some law firms built their entire infrastructure around this idea that that was going to continue. Oh, we’re getting all these cases, we got to hire all these people. And six months later it was like, poof, gone. That’s a major problem. But the attorney stuff, the relationship building that lasts.
Delisi:
That’s forever.
Darl:
Yeah.
Delisi:
That’s forever. You mentioned Google in the last week, I can’t even count how many people I have heard and seen say, Hey, what’s going on? I lost 15 Google reviews. What’s going on? I lost 25 Google reviews. And all of those SEO experts who are out there are saying, Hey, it is this update. They are doing something on their end. Send requests for help doing this, this, and this. And some of ’em are actually putting videos out there showing you how to do it.
And it just goes back to, you have no idea when Google is going to change something. So you should be proactive and not put all of your faith into Google. Because when that happens, not if when we watch it, that could hurt you more than it should.
Darl:
And again, being a good lawyer, that doesn’t change because of an algorithm. We had a client find us over the weekend on Chat GPT. Oh, so you talk about that on Google changing, but new tools coming out and adapting to that, and nobody talks about Chat GPT SEO or whatever’s going on to find it.
Delisi:
You should. Oh, Darl, I’m having deja vu. Do you remember when Siri came out and everyone was like, how long do you think it’s going to be before someone says, Hey, Siri, buy me a personal injury lawyer in San Antonio, Texas.
When that happened, I got so nerdy excited. Like, guys, this is a change in our legal industry. I’m telling you Siri is going to change things. And that’s how people found lawyers. Darl, I a hundred percent agree, Chat GPT is going to tell people how to find their lawyers and a whole bunch of other service providers as well. That’s so exciting.
Darl:
It was interesting. It was a little scary. Like I wonder what Chat GPT is saying about us.
Delisi:
Well clearly it worked, because they called you.
Darl:
They did and we got the case. It was a more routine personal injury case, but still, I mean, it was a qualified lead and we got it.
Delisi:
Yes.
Darl:
Definitely there’s a few things I want to cover before we go. So what are your top three tips for attorneys looking to develop attorney referral marketing. And you can give less than three. You can give more than three. If you have a bunch you want to give and you can’t decide.
Delisi:
My top three tips: One, make the decision. It starts by making the decision. That’s your first step. Once you make the decision, put it on your calendar. The reality is I could say I’m going to do a whole bunch of things, but life’s going to get in the way, work’s going to get in the way.
And the next thing I know I made this goal and it didn’t happen. I didn’t save the time in my calendar. If you are a practicing lawyer, you have so many things in your calendar right now, do yourself a favor and block the time in your calendar to do it. Maybe it’s saying, I’m going to go onto my local bar association website and block the dates for the next upcoming CLE luncheons or happy hours or whatever, and actually devoting time to put it on your calendar so it gets done.
The next tip I would give is following up. It blows my mind how many lawyers I’ve spoken to and they go to an event and they meet someone great. And I say, okay. And then they just look at me with deer in the headlights and these big eyes. Well, I mean we had a great conversation and I said, and then what? Did you follow up with an email? Did you follow up with a text?
I’ll give the example I give all the time: Creating those relationships is like dating. If you and I go on a date and we have a great vibe and I want to go out on a next date, if I don’t ask for that next date within the first date, maybe two at the most, that magic is gone. You have to strike while the iron is hot and that magic is still there. And let’s be honest while you still remember, because how many times have you gone to an event and you’re like, oh man, I met this great lawyer. Her name was Delisi, and she told me something and I wanted to follow up on it. Oh, what was it? And you just forget. So if you’re going to devote the time to make those connections, devote the time to actually follow up to, because I see that ball getting dropped way more often than it should. And you’ve essentially wasted your time by not following up.
Darl:
Right.
Delisi:
And then take it a step further and say, and what action am I going to take next? Because the follow up happens. But then what do you do after that? You have to take another step after that. Whether it’s saying, Hey, Darl, let’s keep in touch. Do you want to grab lunch in April? Let’s set the date. Now I know we’re both really busy or making a decision to say, you know what? I’m going to have Kayla get me a card and I’m going to hand write a nice note and send it to DEI because I want to follow up with that. And I think a handwritten note would be a really nice way to follow up, make the decision, put it on your calendar when you make the connection follow up. And those were the three things if everyone did it and they’re very simple, but if everyone did it, they would have great results.
Darl:
I’m going to have, I want to ask you something else that’s not necessarily marketing related, but it could be marketing. But before I do that, one of the things that we are kind of deciding internally is how to track that. How do we, because right now I’ve got a spreadsheet with who I invited to, my Hawks games, my Falcons, all this. Do you have a tool or a CRM that you recommend because my marketing director’s listening and she would love to know what are some good tools for that?
Delisi:
So I think it depends on the tools that you have available in your firm. There are certainly CRMs, client relationship manager programs out there you can purchase. Not everyone has that kind of money. And if you’re going to invest that kind of money, you’re also really hoping that someone is filling in the data and keeping up with it. I do, if anyone wants it.
When I started my business, one of the things I did was I created an Excel template. And my Excel template has tiers of context, tier one, two, and three and different columns of information that you fill in. And for anyone who’s on a shoestring budget or doesn’t have a budget, but they have invested money in Microsoft Office, I’m happy to share my Excel template that I created with any of ’em and say, look, here’s a start. Divide up your contacts like this and then decide where you are spending your time based on where it makes the most sense.
Because some of that time might be great for you Darl to invest in, and some of it might be best for someone else on your team. But you’ve got to divide up the list and then come up with a plan. And that plan’s going to be different for everyone based on how much time you have.
So you don’t need a fancy software program, quite honestly. You can just start with a simple Excel template. I can share with anyone who would like, because you have to start somewhere and once you build out an Excel template, if you’re ready to go, then go buy yourself that fancy software that’s probably going to automate some of this stuff too. But don’t do that first because you need to crawl before you start to walk and then you start to run.
Darl:
So here’s my last question for you this mean? This could be marketing. I want to start asking everybody on my podcast any predictions they have about the future of personal injury and any trends they see.
Because something that I’ve sort of fascinated about as I look back and see how much the world has changed in this area. And you in particular have worked in this industry for a long time, so do you have any predictions for the future of whether it’s legal marketing, the way businesses are run trends over the next 3, 5, 10 years?
Delisi:
Yes, I have a few. One Chat GPT you already saw it happen this weekend. Absolutely. You are going to see people who go to Chat GPT to help them find a lawyer. Two, I’m not going to get political, but I will say in 2024, America saw that podcasts are incredibly valuable and there are a lot more people than before who will go to a podcast to educate themselves and obtain information.
I think you’ll see a lot of lawyers out there creating podcasts just like yours for personal and professional branding. Third, you now have states in this country that are allowing non-lawyers like me or big business to start to play in the game.
Darl:
Arizona.
Delisi:
We cannot ignore that. We can’t ignore that. You are going to see these firms popping up and it’s not just going to be Morgan & Morgan anymore. You’re going to have to worry about those firms too, which is why I’m such a cheerleader and advocate for case referral marketing because we have to create a community of lawyers referring business to one another because that’s how we continue to obtain business.
If we don’t have that bigger budget like those firms, and you see it already, but I promise you you’re going to see it continue to happen. I don’t know what additional states you’re going to see it in 2025, but I promise you it will be more this year and next year and the year after and it’s going to change our legal industry for sure.
Darl:
I think the one thing that you’re seeing, I mean obviously private equity is involved in some of these, and I think what you’re seeing now and we’ll see in the future is firms based in Arizona marketing for cases in other states, referring them out, and again, this all gets back to the cost per acquisition.
You’re in a marketing arms race at that point, and again, a lot of it’s driven by Morgan & Morgan. There was an announcement a few weeks ago that Sweet James, which is a large firm in California, was opening an office in Atlanta, and those are all things I think that people are going to have to grapple with.
Well, Delisi thank you so much for your time. Before we sign off, please tell us where can people find you and reach out to you if they want to talk to you about your business and the services you offer.
Delisi:
Sure. Well, I would love to provide my LinkedIn profile link so you can share it in the show notes.
Darl:
Yeah, send it to us. For all of our listeners, we will have it on YouTube. It’ll be listed there for any other podcast platforms. We’ll put it there. Kayla is our expert on all that. I don’t know how all of that works, but we will link to your LinkedIn bio there and people can reach out to you there and talk to you.
Delisi:
And if you don’t have a LinkedIn, I do have a website, www.firstcallfriday.com and first was spelled out, F-I-R-S-T call friday.com. They can reach out to me there too.
Darl:
Awesome. We will also grab that link and put it in the comments, summary, wherever. It’ll be there. You’ll see it when you go and click on the podcast. Thank you so much, Delisi. This has been very engaging. I’m going to leave here and go talk to Leticia about all the ideas that we have now. Thank you.
Delisi:
Sounds good. Thanks, Darl.