Case Study: Growing a Solo Law Firm with Smart Legal Directory Advertising

Cynthia Pietrucha started as a lawyer while she was still working a full-time job outside of the legal industry. During that time, she was doing pro bono work to build experience without having to join a law firm or take on the huge financial risk of starting a practice of her own. Once she felt confident enough to start a solo law firm, she left her old nine-to-five for a new career as an attorney. Sounds frightening, right? Especially considering the urgent and necessary shift from serving pro bono clients to building a new client pool that was willing to pay. It was time to start effectively marketing herself without consuming her entire budget, so Cynthia turned to the FindLaw.com legal directory. With a small investment on a Premium Profile and strategic ads around the directory, along with the time it took to create a well-rounded biography, Cynthia Pietrucha’s phone began to ring. As she started signing new clients Cynthia was able to choose the cases she wanted then later hire more attorneys and grow into the law firm she’d been imagining.

The leading legal directory and you.

As Cynthia and thousands of other lawyers can attest, legal directories are a great way to jump-start your marketing plans. They are designed to provide the information legal consumers need when they are at their most receptive and more than likely ready to hire an attorney. With a directory, you can begin your legal marketing the same way Cynthia did, with a thorough profile and well-placed ads that draw people to your listing. Want more exposure? On FindLaw.com, TopSpots place attorneys at the top of local search results in their practice area. With Skylight ads, you can also reach legal consumers when they are in the discovery phase, researching their legal issues and learning about their options. Think of it as a ground floor opportunity for reaching emergent clients before anyone else.

Why FindLaw.com?

If you’ve read enough about FindLaw.com, you probably know that the directory receives more than 11 million monthly visits and that that number has steadily risen year over year. In November of 2017 alone the site reached more than half a million daily visits on three different occasions. These visitors are legal consumers and attorneys who trust FindLaw for the information they need. Legal consumers especially can learn a great deal from FindLaw’s online resources. And because so many people who need an attorney are in their situation for the first time, they often know very little about what to do or who to hire. Placing yourself and your firm’s information on FindLaw.com helps meet their needs and yours.

We’ll do the marketing so you can focus on the law.

FindLaw has more than twenty years of experience as an industry-leading legal directory. This longevity matters because we’ve done the hard work to get traffic flowing to FindLaw.com; and that traffic teaches us a lot. FindLaw knows the legal consumer and the business of law. That knowledge is put to good use in our products, services and online properties. When you partner with FindLaw, your law firm benefits from our history and position in the industry by being in front of eager consumers who need an attorney. Need another reason? FindLaw directory listings are less labor intensive than most marketing tactics. This is especially important for a solo attorney who’s doing the work of a lawyer, an assistant, an accountant and a marketer (and who still wants to make it home by dinner). True, a more broad approach to legal marketing is often necessary for long-term sustainability, but when your law firm is just getting started, a legal directory is the place to turn. Take a lesson from Cynthia Piertrucha and choose FindLaw. She’d used other advertising methods in the past, but once she started working with FindLaw the volume of calls and emails quadrupled. In her own words, her “listing on the FindLaw directory gave me an immediate boost in potential clients calling my firm.” If you’re looking for more tips on building your brand as a solo attorney, listen to FindLaw’s webcast on how to future-proof your law firm. You can also check out our playbook on client acquisition for solo law firms for more law firm marketing tips.