Should You Renew Your Contract With FindLaw?

How To Deal With Law Clients Who Say They Have No Money

Question:

A lot of people come to my office and say they have no money. How do I combat this objection?

Answer:

Whenever someone says they don’t have the money they need, you’ve got to kind of dig in a little bit more. Because you have to remember, people will find money to avoid pain. Nobody expects a lawyer to just work for free. You get some people that are kind of thinking – they see the ads online or on TV “you don’t pay unless we win.” But in most cases, people are realistic and they don’t expect lawyers to work for free. The other side of that is nobody wants to spend money. Typically legal bills are unexpected. You get arrested. You get served with divorce papers. Whatever the issue is it’s not usually a happy scenario when you have to go see a lawyer. It’s typically unplanned and they don’t want to spend the money. I mean it’s several thousand dollars that people don’t necessarily want to spend that money.

People will find money, people will be able to find the money. I remember there’s one time an attorney basically said while we were on the phone with somebody who was saying they did not have the money to pay this attorney. The attorney said, “Well then you need to walk out to the mailbox and start filling out those pre-approved credit card offers. Because this case is going on with or without you and you’re going to need an attorney.” They did it and they got the money.

That’s one of the biggest things is that you really need to kind of talk to them and let them understand that if they want to continue to have money in the future then they need to find the money for an attorney right now. What do I mean by that? Let’s say you’re a DUI attorney and if someone gets a DUI and gets convicted of a DUI and they lose their license. They can’t drive to work so now they lose their job so now they can’t pay their bills so now they lose their house. There all these different scenarios where they need to find the money for an attorney so they can continue to make money in the future.

You’ve got to remember people have access to money even if they don’t have the cash for it. They’ve got family members that can loan them money. They’ve got credit cards. They can take out loans. There are so many different places that they can get money from if the pain is bad enough.

That’s kind of what you need to do you need to show them how much money it will cost them if they don’t hire an attorney. There is another option. There’s a program that we have access to. I don’t even have all the information on it yet. We’re using it for some of our stuff and what it actually does is provide a personal loan. I guess it is a funding program and lawyers can use this. If you want to learn how to use this or if you want to sign up for this, leave a message in the comments and I’ll send you the link.

Basically what happens is it’s pretty cool. They just fill out a short application. It’s like seven or eight questions and it shoots off an application to like 12 or13 different personal loan companies and within a minute they get offers from like 12 different personal loans. It’s anywhere from terms from 12 months to 60 months and varying interest rates but the cool part is that as long as they make $20,000 a year and have a 500 or greater credit score then they’re pretty much going to get approved. That’s a program that you could implement right away and you could actually provide the loan for them. You’re not actually providing the loan. You basically become a merchant and it works just like a credit card. If you get funding for the loan then what happens is you get charged 3.9% I think is what it is of the actual loan.

We just started working with this company. I don’t know all the details about it but if that’s something that you’re interested in let me know because we can hook you up. That will also be a big objection killer to the “I have no money” issue. Do you make $20,000 a year and have a 500 credit score we can set you up with this loan program so that you can get whatever this legal issue is taken care of. That’s the whole thing. You’ve got to remember that people have access to money. Most people have access to money. Most people have credit cards, personal loans, family members that’ll loan them money but nobody wants to spend money so you have to show them why they have to.

It’s funny, the last thing I’ll say about this we have an attorney who does nursing license defense. Basically what he does is he defends nurses who are about to have their licenses revoked. We figured out that the average nurse loses about $400,000 of the course of her career by having her license revoked. That’s a statistic we throw around all the time. He says look it’s going to cost you $4,000 to have me save your license or you’re going to lose your license and it’s going to cost you $400,000 over the course of your career. Which one do you want? it’s kind of a no-brainer at that point so that’s you know that’s kind of how you can handle that objection.

Update Your Law Firm’s Address Information Without Losing Google Ranking

Question:

I have a post office box as my GMB address and I have an unpublished office address. I want to update my office to this new address. What’s the best way to update my address and not lose any Google juice?

Answer:

You’ve got your GMB address, our post-office box and then an unpublished office address. As far as I know, you can just switch the address. I mean this is pretty common when a lawyer moves. We’ve had lawyers before that have moved office locations. The question comes down to where the new office is in relation to where the post office box is. Because basically you have got to remember Google is using proximity to the searcher as a pretty major ranking factor. If Google thinks that your new address is several miles away from that post office box then you could definitely run into some issues just because of the fact that now Google thinks you’re in a different location so there could be more competition.

We have a client right now that we’re dealing with. They have a Regis office and the problem is, he’s a family law attorney. There’s like six other family law attorneys in that same office building so he’s being filtered because Google’s not going to show six of the same law firm in one location. You run into some issues there. That’s about two miles. Dan, what city are you in and also will the address change? For example, if your post office box is Boston and then I mean you could end up moving to Wellesley or something which is like a suburb is that going to change as well? I’m not sure. There’s a bit of a delay so I don’t know if Dan’s going to give me the answer or not.

That would be another issue if your city and your address changes. For example, if you’re trying to rank in Orlando and your post office box is in Orlando and then your new office location is in Winter Park then you’re going to lose your Orlando rankings because it’s very difficult. If your old office is in Fountain Valley and your new office is in Garden Grove, Fountain Valley and Garden Grove are pretty small areas so it could work in small areas Honestly, I don’t know. My point is that if you’re in two different areas so for example if your office is in Orlando. Then you move to a suburb like Winter Park. Those are pretty too decent-sized areas. You’re very rarely going to rank for Orlando and Winter Park in the maps. If you have an Orlando address you’re probably not going to rank for Winter Park in the maps and if you have a Winter Park address you’re probably not going to rank for Orlando in the maps.

We have seen some exceptions to this. For example, we have a client in Long Beach California and he also wants to rank in Seal Beach. His Long Beach address actually does rank in Seal Beach but it’s because Seal Beach is such a small area and it’s really not a competitive area at all. If you’re talking about any sort of population whatsoever in an area it’s going to be very difficult. I don’t have a great answer for you. Really it’s changing the address and see what happens but those are some things to consider. I would definitely consider the city’s going to change so that means your rankings are likely going to change, although I don’t know how big Fountain Valley is. I know Garden Grove. I don’t know how big Garden Grove is either though. The only reason I think I know Garden Grove is from the Sublime song so I don’t know. Hopefully, that helps. The next person said okay, that’s another option to keep them both and just have a second location.

Can Exchanging Reviews With Other Lawyers Help You Get More Clients

The question:

Do you recommend exchanging reviews with other lawyers?

My answer:

Yes and no, so you’ve got to be really careful with this. I actually saw somebody posting in the lawyer marketing Facebook group a few weeks ago. They were saying let’s get a thread going where we all exchange reviews with one another.

Be careful about review exchanges

I think that it’s okay if you’re in the same city because you got to remember Google looks at a lot of different things and one of the things that they look at is IP address locations.

They know that if you’re a law firm that works locally, like a family lawyer or a DUI attorney, the majority of your clients are going to be local to the area that you’re in.

If you start getting a lot of reviews from all over the country then it’s pretty obvious that they’re not real. One thing that will happen is that the reviews will start getting flagged and they’ll start getting deleted. In a worst case scenario, your Google My Business profile could actually get shut down.

Focus on trading reviews locally

If you’re talking about actually trading reviews with other attorneys in your city, I don’t have a problem with that. A lot of times you can do that with attorneys. You can also do it with family members and with friends. In fact,  you can do with anybody even if they’re not clients.

How to word the reviews

Just don’t have anyone lie about what you did for them. They could say something like Bill Smith is a great attorney. If I was ever arrested for DUI in wherever you live, he’s the first person I would call. They don’t have to say he represented me or stuff like that but it’s still a good character review.

That is how I would exchange reviews. Just make sure that the attorneys that you’re exchanging reviews with are local to your area. That’s because you don’t want to get dinged for having reviews that are coming from all over the place. It’s just not a good idea and it could put your Google My Business profile in jeopardy.

Lawyers! Use the Team Selfie Hack To Get More Law Clients

The question:

I had some questions about ways to increase the distance from my three-pack. You mentioned geo-tagging pictures and the team selfie hack. I had some employees add photos from around our area and I’m unable to see the locations, any suggestions?

My answer:

I recently talked about a certain strategy at my PILMMA Event. It’s something that we do that that my SEO team actually told me about that is working really well. I call it the team selfie hack.

The team selfie hack

The team selfie hack is a way to make your law firm more relevant to a larger area. Here’s something you may notice in the Google Maps. Let’s say you’re sitting in your office and you Google a term that you would appear for. Maybe it’s DUI attorney, personal injury attorney, family law attorney, divorce lawyer, or whatever type of lawyer you are.

How Google treats lawyers like pizza

If you’re sitting in your office and you Google yourself, you’re very likely going to come up if you’ve done a good job optimizing your profile. But the farther you get away from your office, the less likely you are to show up because Google has this thing where they’re treating lawyers like pizzas. What I mean by that is they’re using distance from the searcher as a big ranking factor.

Basically what that means is that if you search for DUI attorney, Google is trying to return the closest DUI attorney and not necessarily the best DUI attorney. That’s fine if you want a pizza. If you want to order a pizza then you want the closest pizza place. But if you want an attorney, you want the best attorney. You don’t want the closest attorney.

To get around this, you can use something called the team selfie hack. This is a really interesting trick that works very well. When I was at PILMMA last week or two weeks ago, that is the Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing Association Conference, I spoke on stage and shared the team selfie hack.

Geotagging is the key

Geotagging images on Google is the key to showing up on Google maps. To start with, you want to take 20 pictures of the inside of your office and then 20 pictures around the outside of your office. You want to make sure that you have the location turned on and by doing that you’re getting the latitude and longitude of the of your location. Then you upload that to your Google My Business profile. This basically makes it more relevant.

How the team selfie hack works

The team selfie hack goes as follows. When you look on your Google My Business profile you’ll see a lot of different categories that you can choose to upload your pictures to. One of them is team.

What I do and what we tell our clients to do is to go around the city to different areas. You pull the city up on a map and say, let’s go to the northeast part of the of the city and then the northwest part of the city and then the southeast and the southwest. You try to blanket the entire city.

An easy way to do this is to go to all the famous landmarks and take selfies there and have members of your team do that. For example if you’re in New York City, you could go to Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty, Radio City Music Hall, Wall Street, or Central Park.

There are so many different places where you can go and have your team take selfies. Have them take selfies at each of these locations and then take those pictures and upload them in the team section of your Google My Business profile.

Why it works

This is going to get the latitude and longitude of all these different locations in the city. It’s going to make you relevant to all of them because you’re putting those locations on your Google My Business profile.

And because you’re taking pictures of your team, you’re not gaming the system. If you had just posted random pictures of all these places, then it would be kind of weird. Having your team in there makes it a white hat workaround for that.

How I created the map I showed at PILMMA

At PILMMA, I actually showed a picture of the Google Maps that had pictures of selfies in all these different places. The question was how did I generate that map that I showed at PILMMA.

I actually created that map. It’s not a real thing. You can’t just go and generate that. Unfortunately. It would be really helpful if you could.

So that’s what the team selfie hack is. It works really well. Try it out.

How To Get More Law Clients From Your GMB Profile Pictures

The question:

How can I geotag my photos for my Google My Business profile?

My answer:

There’s a very expensive tool you need for geo-tagging your profile. I’m holding it in my hand, and I bet you have yours with you right now as well. The only tool that you need to geotag your photos for your Google My Business profile is an iPhone or an Android… as long as the location services are turned on.

How does geotagging photos work?

A lot of people don’t know this, but if you take a picture on your iPhone or your Android, it stores the location of where the photo was taken, using latitude and longitude.

It stores it in the metadata. This means that Google can use that information and see exactly where the picture was taken. And your Google My Business profile has a spot where it allows you to upload photos.

We always tell our clients to take 20 pictures of the interior of their office and 20 pictures of the exterior of their office. We also tell them to upload them to their Google My Business Profile and make sure that they take them using their iPhone or their Android.

Why do you want to do that?

It will make sure that the metadata gets stored on your profile. That’s the easiest way to geotag photos and geotagging makes you more relevant to the location. It basically reaffirms to Google that you’re actually in that location. It also shows them that you’re a real business. It’s is one of the things that we do for all of our clients. We always make sure that we have geotagged photos added to their Google My Business profile.

An alternative and more information

There’s another program that you can use to geotag photos. I don’t remember the name of it off the top of my head. But if you go to HeyLawyers.com, you can get a free guide. It’s a 24-part video series that shows you step by step how you get your law firm ranked in the Google Maps.

And a couple of the videos in there show how to use this software that will allow you to do that. We also show you how to upload the photos, where to upload the photos and some other ways that you can actually geotag and get the most out of your pictures.

All you have to do is go to HeyLawyers.com. You can grab that guide for free. Just cover shipping and handling. We’ll send it out to you on a USB Drive.