Over the past 19 years, our CEO, Dan Couvrette, has seen many family law practice grow while some of them have not. Some family law firms have experienced challenges and have been losing business because they have not evolved with time, never mind being proactive. He thinks that they lose clients because:
- There are more do-it-yourself divorces thanks to the availability of information on the internet.
- Here is increased competition for business and the Internet has had a significant impact on how and why a family lawyer is found and hired.
- Less people are divorcing. In fact, about 25% less over the past 30 years.
- More lawyers are taking on divorce cases to offset business they have lost in other practice areas as a result of the economic downturn.
Be proactive
Most family lawyers have been reactive rather than proactive to these changes, especially the more established lawyers and law firms. Because they rely heavily on referrals for clients, they stand to lose business, one client at a time, to new family lawyers and law firms who take full advantage of the Internet and embrace marketing to grow their practice. Think about it, if you are just starting out, where are you going to get referral business? In the absence of that source of business, The Internet becomes the natural alternative — go where the prospective clients are. While this seems obvious to Couvrette, it does not seem so obvious to all the family lawyers he has talked to across the country.
Embrace the Internet and Marketing
If you have noticed you have been getting less and less referral business, or your practice is not maintaining or growing as you wish, you have to turn to some other sources and actively promote yourself in order to stop losing business.
This means business as usual no longer works, that it has not been working for a while and is likely not going to work in the future.
Read Dan Couvrette’s article on this topic where he shares an example of a young family lawyer client of Divorce Marketing Group who got all her marketing in place before she even resigned from the family law firm she worked for. She got herself a better website, a better social media presence, a way to grow and nurture her referral sources and took on advertising. This article was published in Family Lawyer Magazine.
