Conrad’s Crystal Ball Returns!

Episode Notes

Transcript

Gyi Tsakalakis: Before we get started today, we want to thank our sponsors Clio, Lawyaw and Alert Communications.

Conrad Saam: Hey Gyi, Happy Anniversary. We are 50 years old.

Gyi Tsakalakis: You’re 50 years old. I am –

Conrad Saam: I’m marching towards it.

Gyi Tsakalakis: — new to this, but yeah, I’m — 50 and I are becoming closely acquainted, but that’s chronological. This is the 50th Episode of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing for you.

Conrad Saam: Exciting. 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. I’m pretty excited.

Conrad Saam: And you know what, there’s longevity that, one of the things that we noticed, I talked about why you shouldn’t start at legal podcast, is that 84% of podcasts fail on the first six months. And yet here, we’re still going, we’re tagging along.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Here we are, failing way after that. 

Conrad Saam: Way after that. Okay. So for today in the rundown, we’re going to cover some news. We are going back to one of my favorite segments By the numbers, and then, back by popular demand for 2022, Conrad’s Crystal Ball.

[Music]

Intro: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, teaching you how to promote market and make fat stacks for your legal practice, here on Legal Talk Network.

[Music]

Conrad Saam: All right. Welcome to 2022 dear listener. Gyi and I have a lot to go over today. We found that last year, our most popular show was this show, it look to the future. And so, today we’re going to be talking about what we expect to see in 2022, but as usual, we’re going to start with some news.

[Music]

Conrad Saam: Unfortunately, as of this recording, the news came out that we had hit one million COVID infections. And along with that news, when Gyi and I were planning on the show, we’ve been planning to talk about, hey, Legalweek is still on, so go to Legalweek, and this morning we got the notification that Legalweek has been pushed back and Gyi that the dates on that for Legalweek in New York?

Gyi Tsakalakis: The dates for Legalweek as I understand them from the updated website, which I’ve now lost, is March 8 to 11. There you go.

Conrad Saam: All right. So let me try another throw to Gyi. Hey Gyi, the other piece of news that we wanted to cover was the Vicinity Algorithm Update. Spoken intensively for by Joy Hawkins from Sterling Sky. When we were planning for the show, you said this looks like one of the most significant algo updates. Can you talk about what’s going on with the Vicinity Algorithm Update?

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m usually kind of a hater on the FUD that us marketing people do on these updates, but this one’s actually pretty significant from what I can tell, still kind of early, looks like it started at the end of November beginning of December. Like Conrad mentioned check out Joy Hawkins Sterling Sky Vicinity update. If you search Google, I’m sure will come up.

But this is the first real significant action I guess that I’ve seen to reduce the number of firms that show up in local pack that have Keywords in the business name field, which has been a huge problem. So I think that’s a positive thing from my perspective. So check it out.

Conrad Saam: Hey Gyi, do you know what time it is?

Gyi Tsakalakis: I do not.

Conrad Saam: It is time for By the Numbers.

Gyi Tsakalakis: All right, so a couple numbers. I want to thank the folks at Justia, they put together a really nice By the Numbers for 2021. And one of the things that really jumped out at both of us, is that the respondents to their 2021 survey, the big number here is 17% are eliminating Google Ads from their 2022 marketing plan, which is interesting, we’ll get to it but, I think they also — there was a significant number that we’re going to start Google Ads in 2022 and we had talked about this in the prep for the show, that just sounds so like Google Ads and lawyers, right. So you got a bunch of people had tried Google Ads that are like I’m never doing this again. And a bunch of people who have never tried it were like, I’m going to try it in 2022.

Conrad Saam: Yeah, I think, I was really surprised to hear that coming from Justia, so 17% dropping out of Google Ads. I have my thoughts on why that is, Gyi what are your thoughts and I suspect we have the same exact thought.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I mean, you know, I think that a lot of lawyers like they’re not having the economics conversations, whether they’re running the ads themselves or they’re working with somebody to run the ads like, you know one, it’s complicated. You know, Google tries to makes it really — we talk about it all time, but Google makes it super easy to open up an Ads account, but managing an ad to a campaign, or an account, to a positive, a profitable return on ad spend, that’s why there’s a whole business of people that do that for a living.

(00:05:05)

And even a lot of those folks are not, they struggle to do that consistently. And so, you know, again, at the end of the day, I think it’s a results thing, right? People, they go out, broad match, lawyer run up a bunch of clicks, maybe some calls, but they’re not qualified and those clicks are expensive.

Conrad Saam: My gut it, it’s a measuring results plus the overall size of that budget. That is, sorry, it’s a failure to accurately measure results, right. I suspect the number of law firms that have a really solid understanding of, this is my cost per consultation, and therefore this make sense or it doesn’t make sense is pretty limited. We are still in the phase of i.e. we probably still get those two. How do you know where clients are coming from? We ask them, yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

Conrad Saam: So if you’re still doing that like yeah, and if you do that, right and the answer is the internet, well, that’s not Google Ads, it’s the internet. So what does that really mean? It means nothing. It’s there is, there is no clarity on how that money is being spent. And then I look at my biggest marketing spend. Yeah, it’s frequently Google Ads, right. Your biggest marketing line item goes straight to the Google. So you do that simplistically. You look at things without having an understanding of the economic or having infrastructure to actually measure the economics. And of course, that thing gets the bullet, right. Don’t necessarily think this is a great move for firms.

You know the other thing Gyi is, 11% send their removing local service ads, right. That’s, that’s big numbers.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, and the other thing too, you have alluded at to this. I think it’s worth calling out again too, is we talk about this with lawyers all the time, but you got to lock in take down first because –

Conrad Saam: Yes.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Lawyers, especially if you’re brand-new to advertising, you’re like, oh, if I spend money on ads, people will call the leave me a voicemail, they’ll send me an email, they’ll do a lot of things, try to get ahold of me and they won’t, they’re going to bounce right off of that page. And if you’re not locking in takedown, responding quickly, handling intake professionally, helping them find the answer they’re looking for or you know, if they’re great fit for your firm signing them up right there. Yeah, no surprise. You paid for a bunch of clicks and you never converted anybody to clients.

Conrad Saam: And this is why I like especially with the LSAs. I have this conversation frequently, should we be investing in LSAs, and the answer is I don’t like this answer, but it is frequently a — how well-run is your intake, how well run is your firm. If you’re a smooth, smoothly oiled the answer, smooth, smooth, smoothly oiled.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Smoothly oiled. It sounds like a suntan lotion advertisement.

Conrad Saam: If you are a well-oiled machine, there are — no, I am not mixing my metaphors. If you’re a well-oiled machine, LSAs might work really well for you, right. But if you are just starting out and half of the time you don’t answer the phone when it rings, maybe not, maybe not a good move.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Hey, well look, ads aren’t right for everybody. You know, I was just having this conversation with a lawyer on LinkedIn, he’s talking about referrals and look referrals are amazing. Like you should definitely have, you should be building relationships, marshalling the evidence of your great reputation for client service and competence as a lawyer.

And if your firm is running and you’re growing and hitting your growth objectives and your lifestyle objectives without advertising, fantastic. Then the ads are not, they are not for everybody, they’re not. It depends on how your firms built, it depends on, we talk about this all the time. Where you’re trying to go, what are your objectives, but you know, incrementally, you know it’s very difficult to scale referrals, right. That’s not to say, you can’t do it, but it’s a different ballgame.

And the other thing too is, it’s not ads versus referrals, it’s that they are drives me nuts.

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s like oh, I’m a referral based because we don’t do advertising. Okay, fine, or I’m an advertising business, should I be good trying to generate referrals. Like, what, why is this? Why are you trying to fight these? They should be working together, and guess what, a good ad campaign that has some good retargeting in place, fantastic way to have those referral relationship and advertising working together to amplify your reputation for being a great lawyer.

Conrad Saam: I mean, the only reason you really shouldn’t be thinking about referrals is, if you have deliberately chosen to be a high-volume low-cost bad experience provider.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right. Or you’re a jerk and no one in your community likes you, right. So that’s like no one’s going to refer to you.

Conrad Saam: With the self-identifying jerks, please step forward. Okay, but going along those lines, you are talking about like not spending money on these things. One of the things that I got out of Tim Stanley’s — by the way, Tim Stanley, just he is one of — one of my favorite people in this industry. He is also just like Gyi and myself a rabid Michigan fan. So the three of us are going to commiserate over last week’s horrendous performance on the Gridiron. That’s a different conversation.

(00:09:56)

But 55% of the participants to Tim’s survey said they’re spending less than 5% of their revenue on marketing. Was that right? But I’m kind of aghast at that. Are you surprised Gyi?

Gyi Tsakalakis: No, it just keeps coming up. I mean, we’re going to talk the ABA’s 2021 Tech Report related to web marketing too. Having a budget is a business thing, and for here we are and we’ve made progress, right, but we’re not having the conversations that we had in 2007-2008, where it’s like, I don’t really know if people are going to use the internet to hire lawyers like me, that we made progress from there. But like it’s — it’s time to grow up like you want to know why, you got — you see all these reports lawyers are struggling, revenues down and like yes, I get it. There’s a lot of impact of COVID and that kind of thing, no question.

But how can we be surprised at all when we see that the overwhelming majority, still number one, as we’re top of the tech report, which is check this out too, the ABA Tech Report, you can go to search that, and it will come up, but the most lawyers don’t even have a marketing budget. Marketing budget, what’s that? And then those that do the budget, it’s a very small budget based on the fees that they’re generating.

And then of course, there’s like I got no budget, but I actually put a plan together for my goals in 2022 and it’s massive, right, goals are up budgets down. That’s the classic annual planning session.

Conrad Saam: Champagne taste with Michelob budget.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Michelob, I haven’t heard that in a while.

Conrad Saam: Yes, I was trying to come up with a bad relic of a beer and I came up with Michelob. Sorry, for those of you. Is that from Wisconsin, I can’t — can’t remember.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I don’t remember either.

Conrad Saam: Okay. Yeah, so I mean we’ve talked about this a lot in the past, like know where you want to go and make sure they have enough gas in the tank to actually get there, right. Start out that. We’re talking a lot of law firms right now. Beginning of the year, what are your plans for 2022, we want to grow. Good, how much?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, it looks like there’s one thing they are spending money on because as the Tech Report showed us, in 2018, only 77% of respondents said, they even had a website and that’s up to 94%. So, hey, a bunch of people between 2018 and 2021 decided finally, hey, now is a good time to get a website.

Conrad Saam: And 20% of you still have your website from 2018.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right. I know, and sadly, a lot of those lawyers who finally were like, okay, I get it, the Internets of Things actually happening, and I can’t actually see people in person, so I better have some kind of web presence. Now, they’re going to — they’re going to go to the evolution of oh I set up a website, so now I can just sit and wait for the phone to ring, right. That’s what happens next after you launch your first website.

Conrad Saam: And you can’t wait for the phone to ring. So again, coming out of the ABA, 17% of law firms, I think this is, this is a positive number, but 17% of law firms said consultations, you can book consultations available through the website.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Why is that positive?

Conrad Saam: It’s a lot higher than I would have thought to be.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Okay, so that you’re just more of a measure of your cynicism than I think.

Conrad Saam: Now, on the other side of that is like, hey guys, there’s this thing called COVID where we are not supposed to be hanging out in a room together. So if you’re not in that 17%, what are you doing?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, but I think this one was — this is be able to book a consultation. So this isn’t even like actually have it, this is book it, like you can’t even book — like you come to the website and it’s like I can’t even schedule a consultation with your website. Like, what’s it, it just has a — I mean, maybe, maybe it’s not fair, because maybe they’re talking about like well if you have your phone number listed, then maybe that’s your ability to book a consultation but —

Conrad Saam: I guess it all fairness like there’s a lot of vetting that frequently needs to be done before — in many cases you want to have that front desk vetting those consultations so you are not — 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, but yeah, I mean you can do that and still capture the content right, I mean, come on. 37% have a blog –

Conrad Saam: Yes. 37% firms have a blog. I’m going to guess 90% of you haven’t written anything interesting in that blog in the last six months.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, and many of those probably have written nothing because they’re outsourcing the blog to somebody else.

Conrad Saam: Oh. Well, blog —

Gyi Tsakalakis: I am just saying as you said you have written.

Conrad Saam: — about our super lawyers win last, four years ago, is that important to blog about?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right. And only 12% of solos, so solos, which is I thought that was kind of interesting because I thought –

Conrad Saam: That’s surprising low.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, because legal blogging was kind of like, it’s kicked off by a lot of solos, essentially, my experience with them and there are a couple firm lawyers who had been doing that. But most of the legal bloggers that I’ve known over the last 15 years there are solos and small, so – 

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: But LinkedIn, everybody’s on LinkedIn, 87% on LinkedIn.

Conrad Saam: And I’m surprised.  That’s the one where I’m surprised it’s that low. How are your profession? It’s interesting LinkedIn launched a series of ads really focused on professionals and it was — this came out over the Christmas holidays.

(00:15:08)

If you look at those ads, what LinkedIn is really trying to do is trying to — it’s an aspirational ad saying you are professional basically no matter if you have a job, you’re a professional and therefore you belong on LinkedIn.

So for the 13% of lawyers who are definitionally a professional, you are in a professional profession and you don’t have that LinkedIn profile, I have to ask, what are you doing? What rock are you living under?

Gyi Tsakalakis: No, they’re the same people. I’ve been referral based, word of mouth business, use the internet.

Conrad Saam: No, but like, that’s the whole point, like that, like — so the beauty of LinkedIn. So if that’s you in the unlikely event, that you don’t have a LinkedIn profile and you listen to a podcast on marketing for Carl, who’s the only person fits into that specific Venn diagram. LinkedIn is killer for name search, right. SEO, name search, LinkedIn, it is a great place when people get that off on referral, do vet you online which happens all the time. So get the on LinkedIn.

Gyi Tsakalakis: All right, let’s take a break.

[Music]

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[Music]

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[Music]

Gyi Tsakalakis: And we’re back. So we have asked, we always ask for reviews. We want to hear feedback, but last time as the smart aleck that I am, I asked for an indifferent review and thank you for this wonderful totally indifferent review. I got a ton of really valuable information from the podcast. It’s been helpful as I’m starting my own firm, but then again if it didn’t exist, I guess I could just do some research and find out what I need to know some other way. It would be tedious but maybe not that bad. Pineapple law via Apple podcast. Thank you Pineapple Law, and frankly that was more than indifferent. That was very kind.

Conrad Saam: I liked this review and I think it’s actually at the risk of stretching too far. It’s not like there’s a lack of this content to be found on the web and in the same way that there’s not a lack of content to be found on your — whatever specific practice area you have, no matter how niched you think you are, there is tons of content on the web. The question is, are people reading your content instead of someone else’s, that’s the key. That’s the real trick here, so —

Gyi Tsakalakis: Pineapple Law, I don’t know where you’re from, but thank you for sending us an amusing, totally indifferent review.

Conrad Saam: Right.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And of course, if you’ve got a review indifferent, hopefully positive, and even if it’s not great, please do leave it and you can also #LHLM, let us know what you think. Twitter, places, where hashtags work. We are here to listen. We want your feedback. Thank you.

And now we’re going to move into the Legal Trends Report Minute brought to you by Clio.

[Music]

So we’re going to talk client intake. This is from the Trends Report. Similar to data that they report in 2018, traditional forms of communication remain the top preferences among clients, went into the first stages of legal matter.

So phone comes in 71%, kind of a no-brainer, I think everybody knows that. In-person 71%, and so, and again, we’re talking just and when they initially reach out to a law office with email and texts coming in at 59% and 53% as alternatives. And so, you know, I mean, look, I think that we talked about this before, but it’s not as simple to say like remote everything, right. Some people want to still see you where you can safely.

(00:20:09)

It’s interesting though to see texting to me jumping up so much right, over half of people prefer text.

Conrad Saam: I mean that is, I will go so far to say, I mean, the video thing is a no-brainer. The text thing is surprise, it is surprising and yet not surprising.

Let me put it this way. If you have not had a significant interaction with a prospective client over text, maybe you’re not being available in the way that your prospective clients want you to be available, because there are lots of anecdotes as you — talk to each other, talk to each other about the prospective clients you are talking to over text. It is very, very prevalent and I would really encourage you to think about like if that’s not part of your communication strategy with the prospect, you’re probably missing some of those prospects because people like to communicate that way. It’s weird to me, but that doesn’t matter.

Gyi Tsakalakis: You are old.

Conrad Saam: I’m old. I’m knocking on 50 as we said.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And when it comes to a first meeting or consultation, the most standout take away from the survey data is that video conferencing ranked very highly among consumers, in-person 76%, still the most commonly preferred. Phone 70%. Next most common video conferencing at 58%.

May be the standout take away, I’m not entirely surprised as we’ve moved into this pandemic mode here, but it is a shift, you know, certainly I think they’re what they’re calling out here is it shipped from the 2018 data, but at this stage in legal matter real-time communication, the opportunity for quick back and forth communication is likely most important. While many still seek traditional formats for communication video conferencing has quickly become a strong alternative for many clients. And you know, we see this — we were big on video conferencing.

To learn more about these opportunities and much more, for free download Clio’s Legal Trends Report at clio.com/trends. That’s Clio spelled C-L-I-O.

All right, this is the time that we’re really here to talk about, which is Conrad’s Crystal Ball, the Return. Conrad, do you have your crystal ball out?

Conrad Saam: I do. I’m firing up. I’m plugging it into the USB socket that is required to make it tell me the future.

But as I gaze into the future Gyi, what do we see here? Oh, no, it’s a freight train. It’s not a crystal ball, we are in a tunnel and it is a freight train coming straight towards us.

Okay. So the first thing as I think through the Crystal Ball of 2022. This is going to sound like a professor, but there are a whole bunch of exogenous macroeconomic factors that are really going to impact the economy as a whole. We talked about COVID crossing a million cases that came out yesterday. The supply chain issues are going to persist COVID is going to continue to mess up the supply chain. Inflation is going to have to be dealt with, right. Fed, it’s going to be hiking interest rates. There’s going to be the pre-election cycle Gong Show of 2023.

So there are a lot of things that have nothing.

Yeah, we may need to keep that Gong Show around for all of this year as the year kind of progresses, but there’s a lot of things that are going on that have nothing to do with the practice of law that are going to impact the practice of law, and so strap in, right?

I was wondering Gyi when we were talking about the move towards away from advertising, right, away from Google Ads and away from the LSAs. Are people just getting nervous about more chaos in 2023, right. I don’t know.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, I think, I mean, look, that’s, that’s the standard move, right. When things are uncertain, business owner and recessions it’s classic thing, the Harvard Business Review, people pull marketing dollars, right. It’s the first thing to cut. And it’s like — also the worst idea, because as we’ve talked about, we have to put a link to the episode that we talked about this, but if everybody’s doing that, that’s a great opportunity for you to take advantage of more market share.

Conrad Saam: A 100%. So yeah, we do need to find that episode. We did a great episode and we — I think we took data from Mike Ramsey and he was talking about how pay-per-click, the people who stuck it through when COVID initially hit, were cleaning up because the market forces, so many people got out, simple supply and demand, they did so much better.

So, I mean, we are — this segment brought to you by Google Ads, just kidding, but we’re aggressive marketer, so we think these ways, but it’s really interesting. 

(00:25:02)

I am wondering how opportunistic 2023 will be for people. But what else is going on? Gyi what, what do you see coming up in 2023 that has to do with the practice of law and not necessarily kind of just mad Gong Show chaos?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Well, the positive side — I mean, it’s, I agree with a lot of the mad Gong Show chaos, but, I think that the — try to find the silver lining is that it’s force, we talked about all this before, but it’s forced a lot of lawyers to evolve. And so, early on it was how can I start delivering services without meeting people on it. If you’re still standing now, you hopefully solved that problem.

Carolyn Elefant posted a question on Facebook about, if hey — we’re going to say this and it’s oversimplifications or disclaimer, disclaimer, but you know, if you had to start a practice right now, what kind of models would you be thinking, business models would you be thinking about, what kind of practice areas would you be thinking. That was a great question there. A lot of great responses. If your connected with Carolyn, should go check that out on Facebook. But the other side of that coin is that there — it’s because people are in there, there’s going to be a lot of stress. So what stress do? Stress puts stress on marriages, right?

So if you’re a family law attorney, if you’re a virtual family law attorney, I think that that might be an opportunity. I was thinking bankruptcy, although we’ve been talking about bankruptcy, there are some issues with access to actually processing bankruptcies that are probably slowing that down, but that’s I think on the horizon for a lot of businesses.

I mean, if you’re in the — I still think it’s specially supply chain. If you’re in the restaurant bankruptcy business, that’s still on the table, not to use up terrible pun there. But I think it’s — I think there’s a lot of these things are still coming up and that’s — it’s being a smart business owner is about understanding the conditions on the ground, but look, I don’t think that any of this, I don’t think any of this going anywhere over the next year. I think we’re still — lawyers are getting more sophisticated, you see a lot of lawyers that are expanding, you see a lot of big firms that are breaking into new markets, the competition level, from my perspective hasn’t really gone down in any respect.

But I do think there’s been a really good influx of information, coaching help and lawyers have — they are making that evolution to adapt to the environment, which is good.

Conrad Saam: I think the competition while it hasn’t gone down, it is heated up specifically because more and more firms are becoming more business-oriented, right, and I have my very strong bias on this that more and more firms are getting a really solid understanding of their costs, their effectiveness, the efficiency of how they run, how quickly they get back to people.

So, as I look into 2022, the ability for CRM systems and actionable business data to improve the way firms are running is just immense. And I would say, if you do not have a CRM strategy and there’s another part to CRM, it’s building that database of perspective.

So, we’ve talked about this a little bit before. To me CRM does two things; one, it helps you develop data on how you are running and therefore to run more smoothly, but two, it builds a database full of prospective clients, right. And as privacy becomes more and more prevalent on the web ironically, as there bigger switch towards privacy, figuring out how to engage with prospective clients even before they actually need you and build them into your database which is part of your CRM strategy, that’s going to be a huge leg up for some firms and I don’t think many firms are thinking about this.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m glad you said that because I was going to challenge you. I agree with you aspirationally. I think that there’s a huge opportunity there and I think that if we — we’re going to say anything tactical here, it’s a message of get opt-in, get permission from people to send them emails, get them in your CRM, nurture those relationships, no doubt.

But when we’re talking about like do I see that coming in 2020? I mean, I know that you and I are going to be trying to persuade folks to move that direction, but look at the Clio Legal Trends report, that’s one of the biggest issues is that firm owners don’t have insight into even just like basics, like revenue, but all the things that we talked about that CRM solves, and so on the one hand, I think it’s a huge opportunity I hope lawyers are taking advantage of that. Call me cynical about it, but the gap is big. So big opportunity will happen 22, I don’t know, but it’s definitely something that we’ve been talking about, will continue to push.

Conrad Saam: Well the gap is big, but my take is that the gap is going to get even bigger for those firms who don’t jump in, right? 

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh right. I meant the gap of the, the firm’s that, I can’t remember what the number was, but it was like less than half have any visibility at all into some of the things that CRM provides, but Clio has been talking. There’s been big adoption.

(00:30:05)

The point here, but let’s use this, they’ve demonstrated their data, their respondent showed that the firms that are growing, are the ones that are adopting CRM in technology.

Conrad Saam: 100%

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah.

Conrad Saam: And like let’s use your buddy’s example. Matt over Lawmatics, they raised a whole bunch of money on this premise, right.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Oh sure.

Conrad Saam: This is a very real thing, a very real thing.

Gyi Tsakalakis: So yeah, I mean – look, we know it’s a — it really can be a game changer for your business in so many different — I mean we should do a whole episode on CRM really.

Conrad Saam: Okay.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There you go. There’s our prognostication, we are going to do a CRM episode.

Conrad Saam: Prognostication, yeah. This next episode brought to you by Salesforce, Clio Grow and HubSpot.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And Lawmatics.

Conrad Saam: And Lawmatics, sorry, and Lawmatics. Yeah, I mean, so that’s one thing and the other thing that I look at into the future and this is really inspired. This you and I talked about our favorite episode; we have the same favorite episode which was the episode with Erin Levine. But if I want to connect all these dots together, Erin Levine’s Hello Divorce was about helping — it starts with the premise that a lot of people can do it yourself. And when you assist people in the do-it-yourself, the first steps in their legal path, whatever that might be, boom, you have now created a relationship with that person that you can continue to market to. 

And I would really challenge all of you listening to think about, what are the things that I can do to help that DIY with a — it’s the legal assist model, then that, that person turns into someone that I can continue a relationship with. And that’s what Erin has done masterfully, those types of models and those types of engagements are going to continue to become more and more effective in the legal marketing realm. That’s my perspective.

Gyi Tsakalakis: It’s such a great example to me of — like lawyers know this, right. Like the word of mouth referral lawyer, they’re like, I don’t use technology, I don’t use the internet. I’m a word-of-mouth referral lawyer. It’s just people that know me. I send them holiday cards. I see him in the community. Like, that’s my whole game plan.

The funny thing is, that’s exactly what CRM is, is it allows you to do that in a more organized and from the comfort of your own home and on the regular and mindful intentional way then just —

Conrad Saam: And scalable.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Scalable that’s it, thank you, then just like, oh, you have an epiphany that you need to go to your local networking thing, right. So, it’s just one of those examples of where it’s like lawyers have known this stuff forever, then you hear something like client relationship management software, and you’re like oh, I don’t know what that sounds like outside, but that’s exactly what it does. 

Conrad Saam: Gyi, are we going to see Michigan win this year?

Gyi Tsakalakis: In 2022?

Conrad Saam: Yeah.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, we’ll see a win or two, I mean.

Conrad Saam: Maybe you, myself, and Tim Stanley from Justia should get together and watch, watch the game together.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’m just worried. How about going back to the NFL? And to you, thank you, dear listeners for sticking with us for another episode and hopefully full year of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.

As always, if you just landed on this, never heard of it before, please do subscribe, sign up, whatever you do these days for podcasting and send us feedback #LHLM. You can leave us a review.

Conrad Saam: Leave us an indifferent review.

Gyi Tsakalakis: You can email us and you can call Conrad cell phone number, which is, just kidding. Thanks so much. Gyi and Conrad, Lunch Hour Legal Marketing, out.

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Outro: Thank you for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. If you’d like more information about what you heard today, please visit legaltalknetwork.com.  Subscribe via Apple Podcast and RSS. Follow Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and/or download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google Play and iTunes. 

The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders or subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer. 

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Podcast transcription by Tech-Synergy.com

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