Jay Foonberg reported that, as of 2006, only 22% of blue-collar Americans and 11% of middle-class Americans use the phone book to find a lawyer. And that was two years ago.

If you don’t market online, that means you are ignoring 80-90% of your potential future clients.

And not just the younger ones. According to the AARP, 52% of americans 62-71 are online, using search engines (59%), staying in touch (59%, presumably with social networking sites as well as email and IM).

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Like time-share shysters and ultra high-end restaurants, most lawyers prefer not to advertise their fees. Oh, many attorneys advertise their hourly rate, but that does not really help consumers, who have no idea how long a task should take.

Why not?

Sure, you have a better chance of getting a client to sign a retainer once they walk in the door, so many attorneys focus on that. But if potential clients already know what you charge before they walk in the door, your potential client:client ratio should approach 1:1.

Will you lose clients if you give up the opportunity to give your “spiel” to each one? I suppose that, in part, depends on your spiel.

I have seen criminal defense attorneys whose sales method seems to be scaring the hell out of potential clients, then trying to find out how much money the client could beg, borrow, or steal for a retainer fee. That is definitely harder to do through a website or phone book ad.

If, on the other hand, your strategy is to be straightforward, up front, and consistent, I think advertising your fees—to the extent you can—could only help. We’ll see, anyway. I am giving it a try to see how it goes.

Ah, Avvo – the new rating system lawyers love to hate. Lawyers instinctively do not like Avvo because it looks like they are using a secret formula that measures lawyer quality to try to make money off of hooking prospective clients up with lawyers.

But, for a moment, change Avvo to a non-profit, consumer rights and information organization, like Consumer Reports.  This non-profit’s sole mission is to help prevent consumers of legal services from being ripped off by dishonest, incompetent, inefficient, unpleasant, or greedy lawyers.  But how would one do that?

Short of some sort of court-sanctioned audit process that reviewed a lawyers briefs and transaction documents, sat in on random client meetings and negotiations, talked to the receptionist, and went to trials, it’s nearly impossible to accurately get an objective rating of a lawyer’s quality.

So how do consumers, who may only use a lawyer once or twice in their lives, pick a lawyer? Most would say get a recommendation from a friend or relative.  But of course, the friend or relative only used the lawyer once or twice themselves, and a lawyer’s good work in one case is really very little indication of whether the lawyer will do a good job in your case.

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Time seems to be one of the most-common reasons why attorneys who do not use social networks do not start. In the world of hourly billing, all time has a value, and many attorneys seem to believe that (1) networking online will take a lot of time and (2) may not be worthwhile in the end.

The second belief may or may not be true, just like having lunch with a potential client or colleague may not result in a new client or referral to the firm. The first belief is a misconception, at least partially.

Networking takes time, whether that networking takes the form of a bar association event, a happy hour with colleagues, or online social networking. Just like “regular,” offline networking, time spent networking online is up to the person doing the networking online. Networking online is “real” marketing. It should be a necessary part of your job, not just frivolous web surfing. But you do not need to spend more than 15-20 minutes a day to benefit from networking online.

So let’s take a look at three major online social networking tools—LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter—and how much time you will probably have to spend to see some benefit.

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Avvo has finally come to Minnesota. The controversial lawyer rating site has been sued, panned, and lauded. Whatever your feelings on it, Avvo is here, and soon your clients will be looking you up on Avvo and reviewing your performance.

On the plus side, Avvo lets lawyers claim their profile and add information like practice areas, contact information, publications, etc. Lawyers can also raise their profile by answering questions in the “Answers & Advice” section of Avvo.

Like it or not, people will soon be shopping around for attorneys. Best get to Avvo, claim your profile, and ask your favorite clients to review you.

As people are able to do more legal work themselves, the value of full-service legal representation will diminish. As a result, lawyers will have to adjust to clients’ needs in order to stay profitable (and busy).

There are three basic reasons why clients hire lawyers: expertise, efficiency, and to assume risk.

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So there’s this social networking, Web 2.0 site—Twitter—that a lot of people are talking about, me included. It is a great site, if you use it well. But most attorneys are as confused by Twitter as they are by more “full-featured” social networking sites like Facebook and mypractice.

Be confused no more! Jon Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing does a great job laying out the dos and don’ts of twittering (PDF link) in his guide, Twitter for Business. Check it out, register for your Twitter account, and profit!

Most attorney bio pages are nothing special. Mine, for example, is basically just a CV.

Not at the Van Winkle Law Firm in North Carolina. Each attorney there has a “professional” and a “personal” page with more about what they do when not at work.

Adventures in Lawyer Advertising: It’s Dress-Up Barbie Time! | Above The Law

Website and e-mail hosting are services for which you can pay a little or a lot with little difference in service. And sometimes you actually get more when you pay less.

For example, I pay $10/month for hosting for my firm website, three blogs (this blog, Caveat Emptor, and Lawyerist), and unlimited e-mail accounts. I get 2 GB of storage—more than I need at the moment—and plenty of bandwidth.

You can find cheaper hosting or more storage for less money, but I like my hosting provider and do not see any reason to move.

On the other end of the spectrum, I know of attorneys who pay $250 per month for hosting from “specialized” hosting providers like LexisNexis/Martindale-Hubbell and Findlaw. These services supposedly offer more traffic, but I am dubious. Basically, they offer a directory listing and a few web site templates, but little else that I can discover.

For about $1,000-2,000, or four to eight months of Martindale hosting, you could instead hire a professional website developer to build a beautiful, dynamic, search-engine optimized, and easy-to-update website, probably with some new stationery to match your new look, as well.

From time to time, take a good, hard look at what you are paying for, and make sure you are getting your money’s worth.

When it comes to marketing, what Web 2.0 tools are part of your plan? Jon Gordon asked me how I would describe Twitter’s usefulness to a group of communications lawyers, and I told him I would recommend it as a way to help create an “ecosystem” around a law practice (or, sans buzzwords, to help build one’s online relationships and reputation).

Twitter is a sort of reductio ad absurdum of the blog and the social network. But the end result is not absurd, it is potentially very useful to the attorney-marketer.

Twitter is the essense of personal blogging: it provides a simple space to answer the question “what are you doing now?” and see what others are doing (or thinking, or saying), as well. While blogging and online social networking take a lot of time, Twitter does not. And since many lawyers are tempted to wax poetic, Twitter posts are nicely limited to 140 characters.

In other words, Twitter is one way to build one’s reputation 140 characters and a few seconds at a time. And keep up with colleagues, as well.

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