Legal Market Basics

To identify opportunities in any marketplace, professionals often begin their analysis by asking three fundamental questions -- regardless of the product or service.

1. What do consumers want?
2. How are they currently satisfying that want?
3. How can we meet that demand more effectively?

A sound Legal Marketing strategy will reflect an understanding of the answers to these questions. By working through these questions here, we hope to provide usable insights for all of your future marketing activities. We will also demonstrate why the Black-Belt Legal Guide^TM is a uniquely effective practice-building tool.

The first axiom of analyzing the legal market is this: there is an absolute difference between what your clients want and the legal services that you provide. Your legal services are merely a means for your clients to get what they want.

In broad terms, legal clients want one of three things: to achieve a positive outcome, to avoid a negative outcome, or some combination of the two. In a purely rational world, a hiring decision would only consider the probability that a given firm had the best odds of getting the desired outcome in the most efficient manner possible.

The reality is that your clients make hiring decisions based on an array of psychological and emotional needs. Understanding and appealing to those needs is the basis of effective legal marketing. You can promote your firm far and wide, but until you communicate a message that appeals to the client’s underlying needs, you will have limited success. This is true for both institutional clients and individual consumers.

So, what are these psychological and emotional needs? Our research shows that prospective clients evaluate law firms using four criteria, which we put into question form here and list in their general order of importance.

1. Does this firm understand what I need?
2. Does this firm care about what I need?
3. Does this firm have the skill to deliver what I need?
4. Can I afford to hire this firm?

An effective marketing strategy will craft a message to address these criteria while communicating the unique character and ability of your firm.

There is an additional dimension to consider with consumer clients. These individuals experience situational anxiety that comes from being thrust into a legal situation, usually without warning or preparation. Specifically, they struggle to answer the seminal question for themselves, “What do I need?” This sets up a precondition to hiring a law firm. In other words, before they can determine if you understand what they need, prospective clients must first understand what they need for themselves.

The Black-Belt Legal Guide^TM was created specifically to resolve this precondition. The Black-Belt Legal Guide^TM provides the essential information your clients need to frame the issue and their desired outcome.

In a recent survey, we sought to define the specific anxieties that legal clients experience and measure their significance. We asked 60 legal clients to rate how well these statements describe their experience. Using a 1-to-5 scale (1 being not at all, and 5 being describes me perfectly) this is how they responded.

On a scale of 1-to-5, how well does this describe your experience?	Mean	Median	Mode
The best legal solution is too expensive.	3.6	4	5
The legal process creates an uncontrollable situation and threatens my sense of security.	3.6	4	5
I feel like I lack the resources to find the best solution to my legal issue.	3.4	3	5
I find it difficult to clearly understand all the legal workings regarding my legal issue.	3.2	3	5
I worry that I am making the wrong decision.	3.1	3	5
High emotional costs prevent me from taking the most "effective" course of action.	3.1	3	5
The emotional costs have to be considered before deciding on a course of action.	3.1	1	5
I get different information from different resources.	2.9	3	3
It’s difficult to know which resource gives the right information.	2.8	3	1

Generally speaking, legal-service consumers work through a routine series of steps before hiring a law firm.

1. First, the individual or institution encounters a problem that requires a legal solution.
2. Next, the prospective client begins researching, gathering information and other resources to define the issue and frame a desired solution.
3. Once they have established an understanding of the issue, the prospective client looks for leads to qualified law firms, using the four criteria listed above.
4. Finally, the client makes a hiring decision using their list of qualified firms.

Common legal marketing tools are all geared to the third step of this process. TV commercials, radio ads, print promotions and directory listings are all based on a service-marketing model. One law firm fights to be heard through the din of other firms clamoring to reach the same prospective clients.

Legal Franca Publishing^® takes a fundamentally different approach. We believe that there is a significant advantage to reaching consumers earlier in the process, as they’re conducting their preliminary research. The Black-Belt Legal Guide^TM is created to meet these information needs. The author’s firm is presented as a well qualified candidate, without having to battle through the noise of the service-advertising marketplace. Black-Belt Legal Guide^TM authors have a unique opportunity to educate and influence their prospective clients, while establishing their leadership.

These conclusions are based on our research of how consumers resolve legal problems. In one recent study, we surveyed 60 clients about how they made their decisions. Here are two of our findings:

Finding #1: Legal clients spend an average of 17 hours researching their issue before they make their first inquiry to a law firm.

Finding #2: The Internet is the most widely used source for information gathering among prospective clients.

As we've demonstrated, the behavior of legal-service consumers follows a fairly regular pattern. They are motivated either to attain or to avoid a specific legal outcome – or some combination of the two.

We've also shown that hiring decisions are affected by an array of emotional and psychological factors, including common anxieties over cost, loss of control and the dependability of information.

Finally, we've established that clients spend a significant amount of time looking for information that will allow them to hire an attorney with confidence, 17 hours on average. So is there an opportunity here to develop a better legal marketing strategy? In a word, YES!

In the study discussed above, we asked participants to rate the helpfulness of the information resources they used. This is how they responded.

On a scale of 1-to-5, rate the helpfulness of these resources?	Mean
Attorney advice	4.0
Internet websites	2.9
Advice from family, friends, or co-workers	2.8
Self-help or how-to books	2.4
Newspaper or magazine articles	2.4
Court or agency services	2.2

When we consider this data along with the findings previously discussed, we conclude that,

1. There is no substitute for the information that a qualified attorney can provide.
2. Although the internet is the most used resource, the quality of the content found there is average at best.
3. There is a big demand for better resources online and in print, preferably authored by qualified attorneys.

This represents a real opportunity in the legal market. On one hand consumers have an unmet demand for quality information. On the other hand, law firms need better ways to win new clients and establish leadership in a crowded and noisy marketplace.

The Black-Belt Legal Guide^TM is the only resource created specifically to meet the demands of both groups. It informs consumers and helps them make better hiring decisions. It also provides law firms with an effective way to build their practices without advertising, using the information marketplace instead.

The Black-Belt Legal Guide^TM is published in print and online, across the Legal Franca Publishing^® platform. Online publications are supported with Legal Franca Publishing’s 360° management services, including hosting, optimization, performance analytics and tuning, promotion and social media integration.

Legal Franca Publishing^® believes that our information-marketplace approach provides a sounder legal-marketing strategy than the conventional service marketing model. We would urge all law firms and legal-marketing consultants to employ the concepts presented here and to integrate the Black-Belt Legal Guide^TM into your overall marketing plan.