Legal Marketing: Marketing Tips for Young Lawyers

As a young lawyer, you may think that what’s holding back your career is the lack of experience. However, in reality there are other factors such as legal marketing tactics which need to be addressed before moving forward with any law firm or business opportunity.

 

Lawyers have built their client bases over time with high quality work, marketing strategies that are well calculated and targeted to the exact audience they want. As a young lawyer, you don’t have to strain yourself by diving into an expensive marketing tactic. In reality, as a young lawyer with law school debt to pay and no big budget for your campaign, it might be wiser not to attempt any extravagant advertising strategies just yet.

 

Instead of thinking along the lines of expensive legal marketing tactics, why not try leveraging free technology strategies that don’t require a budget at all? Because if you do it well, it will return hundreds or even thousands of dollars in the form of a client base.

 

What can lawyers do to ensure they are moving in the right direction with their legal marketing campaign? It’s important to know that young attorneys have different needs and challenges from established ones when it comes to marketing themselves.

 

Below are some of the proven legal marketing hacks that will help you as a young lawyer hoping to dive into the market and gain a client base.

 

Marketing Tips for Young Lawyers to Boost their Personal Branding 

 

1. Secure a mentor

 

In the beginning of your legal career, it’s important to have a mentor. You’ll face many new challenges and experiences that will be different from school or previous jobs. That’s why you should leverage any mentorship program offered by your law firm in order to find someone trustworthy as a mentor who can guide you through these first years.

 

Seek opportunities to learn marketing from other partners at your firm, in addition to the formal training offered by your employer. If you are an associate at a firm that has a marketing function, inquire if they have other partners and if they do, make sure you take advantage of those offerings to take your legal marketing to the next level. 

 

And in the case where you can’t access specific legal training programs meant for young lawyers, you should make sure to connect with experienced attorneys who have excelled in the profession for quite some time. Make them your mentors and listen to what they have to say. 

 

If possible, engage these attorneys to look into your marketing strategies and let them give you their honest feedback. Also, it’s important to be receptive to feedback at this stage if you are serious about taking your legal career to the next level. 

 

One of the sure-fire ways to ramp up your legal career is by learning from those who have succeeded. Experienced lawyers have great advice when it comes to building a client base. They know the ups and downs and can share best practices on how to overcome some of the worst moments in a legal career. 

 

2. Create awareness among your firm colleagues 

 

It all starts with the people around you. Do you work with partners in a law firm? If yes, that’s where your legal marketing begins. Let them know that you are an upcoming young lawyer hungry for more attorney experience. 

 

It sounds weird, but it’s really simple to implement this. You first need to make sure that you treat people around you as clients: be respectful, open to new ideas, and ask questions when you want to learn more. 

 

It’s also important to take initiative. If you want to research a discovery issue, go ahead and draft the motion. If you complete the assignment early enough, and there’s more work pending, offer to help with other tasks. This sends a strong message to potential clients and partners you work with that you are passionate about your job.

 

Tackling a problem early on demonstrates that you care about getting the work done, and it will help to establish your reputation as someone who stays ahead of their game. 

 

You want potential clients or partners to know they can trust you with important projects because first impressions are critical when establishing relationships in this industry. If there’s still more work pending after completing an assignment quickly, offer assistance if possible so nothing is left undone at the end of the day.

 

And because you do quality work, no partner would hesitate about working with you even more. Because you have made an excellent first impression, you can leverage this in your marketing strategy.

 

Doing all these can be summarized in one phrase: marketing your legal expertise. It is indirect marketing, but potential clients are intelligent enough to identify those valuable traits from you. 

 

3. Have a professional website and personal branding

 

Have a website? Yes, you need a website with a great design to showcase your expertise. To get a website up and running, you’ll need a domain name and hosting. Bluehost is one of the best hosting providers that offer to host as low as $2.95 per month. Even more, you get a free domain name when you sign up. 

 

If you are new to WordPress, you may need to hire a developer on Upwork or Fiverr to help you with the design. Make the freelance developer design the website with legal services in mind. It would help if the developer knows about the legal industry to help them build a top-notch and relevant professional website for you. 

 

When the website is up and running, you’ll need to develop insightful content for your audience. Your potential clients are looking for legal advice and services on your site, so be helpful with a free offer! Let them know that they should work with you by convincing them through valuable content about how great of an expert at this practice area you really are.

 

Additionally, you need to outline your services on the website on a specific Services page. Also, make it easier for people to contact you by having a simple and clear contact page. This will help potential clients reach out to you with ease. Heck, you could wrap some good deals from this. 

 

4. Work on your reputation 

 

At this stage, we believe that you are growing into a confident and upright lawyer who can handle clients and deliver high quality work. But don’t let your guard down just yet – it is important to build up your reputation by getting out your name in the media.

 

Some industries allow experts to write a piece for their website. Look for guest posting opportunities on top law practice publications. Doing this is pretty straightforward. You can simply search on Google, “Legal write for us,” then send a killer pitch to the publication, explaining how you can bring more to their readers through your legal expertise on specific topics.

 

And because there are a ton of legal publications looking to add a few more legal experts into their contribution team, this should be an opportunity worth leveraging. Reaching out to these publications with a well-structured content plan would give them many reasons to work with you. In your pitch, clearly state how you can transform the lives of their readers because it’s obvious that these publications are more worried about how to offer their top-notch audience content continuously. 

 

5. Network! Network! Network!

 

As a young lawyer, you might think that networking is complicated. However, it’s pretty straightforward – even starting by connecting with your former classmates or schoolmates!

 

It is important to get to know your new connections so they can understand the types of opportunities you are looking for. These schoolmates will introduce you to some of their friends over time, and soon enough your network becomes bigger and bigger!

 

Because you feel you don’t have time to waste, you might think that attending law school alumni events or social engagements is a complete waste of time, but it’s important to find time to attend these events. They are an opportunity for you to network. 

 

Also, it’s great to network with other young lawyers, young financial partners, bank professionals, and realtors because these are some of your likely clients. At some point, these professionals will require legal assistance. 

 

In Conclusion

 

Overall, you have learned some of the proven legal marketing tips for young lawyers, and it’s time to implement them. Of course, reading is one step and implementation is another, rinsing and repeating makes you even better. 

 

It’s your choice to implement some of these legal marketing tips for young lawyers and continuously improve them. In no time, your legal career will take shape, and more and more clients will be seeking your professional services.