Small Firm Help

[pria(kin)16]

I was recently hired at a small law firm in Toronto as Director of Business Development until I complete my NCA exams and then hopefully will article here. Until then I am managing and expanding the practice. Currently we have 2 lawyers with a 3rd starting in January and hopefully 1 or 2 more by the summer. We are a business law firm that provides a variety of services including corporate secretary and counsel, governance/compliance, and other business advisory services. The name is AUM Law and the website is www.aumlaw.com (1 of my responsibilities is a total overhaul of the site, which it needs, so if you know a decent web developer....)

My question for the wise members of CP is if you have any advice for marketing/expanding. This is not necessarily restricted to experience with law firms and any advice is appreciated. I am developing an Internet marketing plan with all the standard social media outlets (linkedin, twitter, etc). If you guys could give me any advice or describe any of your experiences it would be greatly appreciated. Including anything as to the management of a small firm, ie cost-efficiency, client retention, etc. Thanks in advance for any input you might have.

Sorry for the shorthand/abbreviation but this is essentially copied from the CP Bar association group and I was limited for characters. Mods feel free to move this to the Power Ring or another forum if you find it fitting.

[Ducay]

My advice is that social networking won't help you in expanding your practice (unless the 18-28 demographic is busy in the M&A market). Save your efforts and cash and spend it otherwise.
Get some ads out there that will hit businesspeople, oh, and be prepared to wine & dine your way into the market.

[fredr123]

Try getting in touch with these guys: http://www.stemlegal.com/

Most of them, especially Steve Matthews and Jordan Furlong, are well known legal personalities in the social media world. Neither of them are actually practicing lawyers as far as I know.

Another interesting fellow to speak to is Edward Prutschi. He's a big twitter guy and his firm seems to be doing a lot of social media networking stuff as well. He is a practicing lawyer in the Toronto area (I think).

[Ashartus]

While I'm not in law, I was involved in the building of a successful small business, and I suspect at least some of my experiences would apply. I agree with Ducay - social networking probably won't be an effective use of time/resources for your type of business, though sometimes you never know. Even a web page is only useful if you can get prospective clients to go to it. To be honest, the easiest way to bring in clients is to have someone on staff with an existing client base. Other than that, what we found effective was networking - actually meeting with prospective clients. Once we were able to get some work, by doing high quality work at good value we were able to bring in more business from word of mouth. Targeted advertising may also be useful - you need to identify who your potential clients are and figure out how to get them to see your ads.

[pria(kin)16]

When I was referring to social networking I didn't mean making a facebook profile for the firm and adding friends. Sites like linkedin and jdsupra are more business oriented and I was wondering what peoples experiences were like. As for twitter it is surprising how many firms/companies use twitter not only to disperse information, but also to make new connections. Thanks for the advice so far, keep it coming.

[Nage Waza]

Ignore those two regarding avoiding Facebook...there are many ways to get the lawfirm involved in events and groups that do in fact appear on facebook. This association may increase awareness to your firm and could increase business.

Facebook is making it more obvious that old school email may get pushed aside for the depth that Facebook provides. You may as well be part of the evolution.