Law Firm Marketing – £10,000 extra fee income per month

Most solicitors, wait, nearly all solicitors, track the wrong numbers.

Talking of tracks, if you were managing a schedule for a train, if you wanted your train to arrive at a station would you leave at the time that you wanted it to arrive, or would you take your arrival time, deduct the usual journey time, add a few minutes for delays (leaves on lines, unicorns jumping across the track etc) and then take that as your leaving time?

Hopefully, it would be the latter. So if you wanted to arrive at 10am and the journey took 2 hours,  adding some time for delays you might leave at 7.45am.

That is logical isn’t it?

In which case, if solicitors want to bill £10,000 per fee earner each month, where should they start?

The £10,000 figure is the end destination of the journey, so they need to start with the beginning of that journey, then add some time for delays.

What is the beginning of the £10,000 per month billing?

The answer is the number of files opened each month (the leaving time), plus some allowance for some clients dropping off (the delays).

Let’s say that your average bill per file is £1,000 (there is always an average), then clearly you need 10 filesLaw Firm Marketing - £10,000 extra fee income per month opened to, in time, produce your £10,000 billing per month. Add an extra two files for the drop off, and you now know that you must be opening 12 files every month to achieve your targets.

The great news about this is that once you know this number, you can sit down with yourself or each fee earner with this target every week and ask them if they opened 3 files last week. If they didn’t, you need to do one of two things:

1.    Generate more enquiries for them; and/or
2.    Ensure that they convert the enquiries coming into your firm better than they are currently doing so.

When I have a More Clients Strategy call with a solicitor, they rarely know these numbers. They know the billing target that they are looking to achieve, but they have no idea how many enquiries they need or receive each month or how many files they need to open to achieve their billing target.

Going back to the train journey, they know their arrival time but they have no idea when they need to leave.

If you don’t know your leaving time, I advise you to find it out pretty quickly.

FREE BOOK: How To Get New Clients For A Law Firm. Click to Download Now!

Case Study

“We’re busier and more profitable than ever before, but we’re also having more fun too.”

I came across Nick and Samson Consulting back when I was employed and looking for help to grow my caseload.

Unsurprisingly I found him on Google (he definitely has a knack for that platform!), while looking for a legal marketing expert, and ended up joining his Marketing4Solicitors group, learning from afar for several years.

His advice was smart, sound and – most importantly – it worked.

And that’s why when I came to start my own firm up three years ago, I pretty quickly ended up giving Nick a call and started working with him.

I had used another company to help me with some online marketing before that, and to be honest – it was an absolute disaster, costing huge amounts of money and not really delivering any tangible results.

I hoped that wouldn’t be the case with Nick, and I was right.

I brought him right into the business, getting him involved top to bottom, and I can honestly say that it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

His guidance quickly starting paying dividends, as he coached and mentored me on how to generate more interest and achieve more client instructions, as well as generally how to structure the firm in a way that was the most profitable and productive.

Three years in, and I’m over the moon with the impact that Nick has had on my business.

We’ve got a clear focus and a direction, we know why we do what we do, and most of importantly at all, we’re more successful.

We’re busier and more profitable than ever before, but we’re also having more fun too.

That’s one of the best things about working with Nick – the fact that the advice and guidance he gives is so holistic.

It’s not just about making money, although he has had a huge impact on that for us, but it’s also about helping me to enjoy my life, and growing my firm in a way that means that I have more money in the bank, but more time to enjoy life with my family too.

I guess that’s what makes him so different to others out there – he really does have my best interests at heart and I trust him implicitly.

It’s hard for me to convey just how good Nick is at what he does – before I started working with him, I thought I was pretty good with PR and marketing, but the truth is that in comparison to Nick, I really don’t know anything.

Nick really is a very, very smart guy, and when it comes to running a profitable legal firm, I think there are very few people who could touch him.

And that’s why I’m glad he’s on my team, and that isn’t just hyperbole – he really is a part of my team: any significant business decision I make is run by him first, because I know he’ll give me useful, tangible and practical advice that’ll result in the best outcome for me and the people I care about.

Before working with Nick, I felt like I was on my own, and the future of the firm was on my shoulders; to be honest it was quite a weight.

But now, I’m relaxed about the future, because I know that I’ve got Nick in my corner, one of the smartest marketing minds I’ve ever come across, and a truly honest good guy to boot.