Attorney Credit Card Services: What to look for and avoid

Attorney credit card services are abundant, yet many law firms are still hesitant to make the switch to online payments. Part of the reason behind this hesitation is a certain degree of uncertainty. Attorneys don’t know what to look for.

They’re not sure about the focus, features, or options that should be included. They’re not sure how to differentiate between one credit card services provider and another. Today we’re going to take a closer look at credit card processors, outlining what firms should look for and what they should avoid. 

What attorneys should look for in an online payment processor

If you’re in the market for an online payment processor, it’s a good idea to look for processors who offer the following:

1. PCI compliance: Compliance means your provider has taken on the burden of ensuring you, your clients, and your data remain safe and secure. Your credit card service provider should be willing to walk you through a self-assessment questionnaire to verify that compliance is achieved on your end. They do most of the heavy lifting, but compliance is an absolute must. Your provider should be willing to provide you with an attestation of compliance when requested. If they can’t, walk away.
2. Strict security protocols: Working with you, your payment processor should be fully capable of protecting sensitive business and client data, whether you’re dealing with data-in-use, data-at-rest, or data-in-transit. They should be able to provide this level of security without negatively impacting your firm’s performance or productivity.
3. Open and transparent: Your payment processor should provide you with clear agreements with precise language. They should provide you with a clear list of fees (e.g., pricing is 3.3% + $.60 per transaction + $60 per mo.). If there are any unexpected fees or expenses, these should be disclosed clearly and completely before you sign on the dotted line.
4. Attentive customer service: It’s a good idea to identify what you want first. Do you want your payment processor to provide you with the handholding you need, or would you prefer them to process your payments and leave you alone? Determine what you’re looking for first, then find a reliable provider who’s willing to accommodate. Remember the adage, “how they sell you is how they’ll serve you.”

Third party processors can be a hassle and may not meet legal standards for accepting online payments. Attorneys should look for payments processors that are easy to use with transparent pricing. Built-in processors, like Bill4Time Payments, are compliant and offer industry-low fees. The feature is accessible within your Bill4Time account and easy to activate.

Attorney credit card services are straightforward

Many law firms are still hesitant to make the switch to online payments even thought billing software has been show to increase productivity across their practice.

A hidden concern that’s driving their hesitation is the fear that something will go wrong. They’re not sure how to differentiate between credit card services providers. They don’t want to be burned.

With the right education, attorneys will be able to choose the credit card service provider that meets their needs. They’ll be able to identify the focus, features, or options that should be included with their ideal provider, no mishaps necessary.

If you’re not already using Bill4Time, schedule a demo to learn how to get access to Bill4Time Payments and other features to streamline your business.

What’s the first thing most professionals do on social media? They beg. Add a new follower on Twitter or Facebook, and almost immediately, you’re bombarded with a request or demand; your new “friend” wants a favor, one that requires you to share personal information, spend a lot of money, or donate your time. Attorneys using social media should take these steps to build valuable relationships and generate clients.

Begging destroys business development opportunities

When I use the word “begging,” I’m not referring to the indigent or those in need. I’m referring to those who can’t be bothered to build a relationship with you the right way, before asking you for your time, resources, or energy on their behalf.

Here’s how the scenario works: You’re a corporate attorney, and you’re trying to connect with small business owners online. You greet followers, and you work hard to engage with business owners authentically. On the other hand, these business owners see you as a mark, just another customer.

So they spam your inbox with requests like this.

They’re interested in the value you provide, but they also want you to invest what’s yours in their business, for free, with no relationship established. This is the problem with business development and social media. It’s the same problem many new law firms make on social media platforms.

Successful business development begins with a relationship

Professional relationships are built around value. Inexperienced attorneys invert the value equation. They immediately attempt to extract value from new followers and connections. This immediately ruins the relationship with potential clients. Savvy attorneys work with the value equation to generate clients.

You’re probably wondering, what is this value equation? It’s actually two equations that work together.

1. Value equation #1: 80 percent giving, 20 percent receiving.
2. Value equation #2: Create X dollars of value. Capture Y percent of X.

This is how successful business development is done online. Now, let’s take a closer look at these equations so we can use them effectively to attract and win new clients.

• 80 percent giving, 20 percent receiving: 80 percent giving is exactly what it sounds like. You’re spending most of the time you have allotted for social media business development, on sharing valuable information with prospective clients. 20 percent receiving, on the other hand, is different. You’re spending 20 percent of your time, making an offer that creates more value for prospective clients.
• Create X dollars of value, capture Y percent of X: You create value for prospective clients, then you create a complementary offer that amplifies the potential value clients will receive if they choose to work with your law firm.

Apply these equations consistently along with the details you’ve learned about making and keeping friends, and you’ll find business development on social media is fairly straightforward.

How do you use social media to generate clients? 

Imagine that you’re a real estate attorney. You work with investors, real estate agents, and other corporations — you assist them with all things real estate. Now imagine that a prospective client is in the market for a real estate attorney. 

They have a specific set of problems, but they’re not sure where to start. How do you apply these value equations? How do you go about creating value for your clients? Here’s a list of ideas we can apply to our real estate attorney example.

1. Answering real estate questions on Quora
2. Creating profiles on real estate forums like Bigger Pockets and answering questions with people
3. Creating city-specific groups on Facebook and LinkedIn to help people in your local area
4. Use hashtags and geotargeting to help locals on Twitter who need advice
5. Join a Meetup group to discuss real estate or create your own. Meet online and in-person
6. Create YouTube videos that focus on real estate
7. Join Clarity.fm; add each of your junior associates as experts on their platform, then promote them as paid advisors
8. Make a list of all of the local Eventbrite real estate events in your area. Contact the event organizer and offer to speak or present at their next event
9. Reach out to influential thought leaders and publishers to generate clients (i.e., Loopnet) on social media and make an offer to create content for them (e.g., Q&A, articles, videos, podcasts, etc.)

These ideas are simple, but they require a long-term commitment. Once you become known for these ideas, you’ll have the trust you need to scale business development.

Did you catch it? The equations in action? Each of these ideas is an example of the value equation in action. These ideas are focused on giving prospective clients maximum value. How do you capture a percentage of that value?

Generate clients with a lead magnet.

You give them a helpful checklist, resource, guide, or book in exchange for their email address. Using these tools along with local SEO, you will have a steady supply of leads. When clients are interested in purchasing a property, you’re the professional they’ll contact. Why? The law of reciprocity.

Our cultural conditioning tells us that we’re supposed to respond in-kind. If we receive a positive action, we’re expected to reward the giver with positive action in turn. If we receive a concession during a negotiation, we reward that concession with a conciliatory reward.

Attorneys using social media to generate clients should build relationships through a value exchange; this is the secret to social media business development. This is how business is done at the highest levels.

Getting clients using social media is easy

When you earn a friend, follower, or fan, build the relationship by looking for ways to add value to the relationship. To generate clients, focus your attention on giving and serving, spend most of your time focused on taking care of those around you and opportunities to receive will present themselves.

Work to avoid begging. Avoid professionals who can’t be bothered to build a relationship in the right way. Give and serve before you ask. The attorney/client relationship hasn’t been established yet, that’s okay. Stay within the bounds of professional conduct but provide value.

Focus your attention on adding value, and you’ll find prospective clients are begging for your help and support.  

Your law firm could increase revenue by 53 percent or more by selling both products and services to clients—attorneys billing hours by the day, selling legal products by night.

According to Mark Cohen, speaker on law firm innovation at LegalMosaic, “The traditional law firm economic model is predicated on high-intensity, high-priced labor as opposed to products, but nonetheless, this is something clients are increasingly demanding.”

Most firms haven’t embraced this model, but it’s a revenue model law firms can use to attract, earn, and win more high-quality clients consistently. Today I’m going to show you how this model can provide you with free advertising. 

Using products to attract more clients

The business model is simple, and it doesn’t require a whole lot of babysitting. It needs some upfront work to set things up, and a willingness to maintain the revenue model, so it continues to perform well for you. 

Here’s how this model works:

1. You advertise on a specific platform. I’m recommending pay per click advertising (e.g., Google ads or Bing ads) to start. 
2. You send customers to a specific landing page with an irresistible quid pro quo offer (i.e., trading education for an email address). 
3. You offer the subscribers an irresistible, low-cost product to gauge interest levels and segment prospective clients.
4. Clients subsidize your advertising; they pay you to promote your law firm. 

Here the ingredients you’ll need.

• An irresistible offer
• A strong value proposition
• Money to advertise ($300 per mo. minimum)
• An email service provider
• A website or landing page (and all that comes with it)
• Strong educational content
• Social proof, credibility, and authority markers
• Product risk-reversals (you’ll need to verify the legalities)

You must invest the time needed to get these details right. Shoddy website design, an unreliable email service provider, or weak educational content, will sabotage the results you receive. As the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out.

The product you offer depends on your goals

Lead generation for attorneys involves planning and you’ll need to determine what your goals and objectives will be ahead of time. Are you merely looking for a way to generate more leads? Would you prefer to transition fully to products? Maybe you’re interested in creating a hybrid firm — 70 percent of the revenue comes from billables, 30 percent from products.

It’s entirely up to you. You must identify these goals ahead of time, so you aren’t distracted by offers that take you away from your goals and objectives. Which products should you sell? You can sell:

• Books
• Courses
• Workshops
• Seminars
• Events
• Initial consultations
• Productized services 
• Tools
• Apps
• Connections
• Access

There’s more ways to increase revenue without sacrificing billable hours, but I think you get the point. Using these resources, you can generate a significant amount of revenue for your law firm and attract new clients simultaneously. 

Let’s take a look at our fictitious firm, Goldsmith, Price & Cooper, who wants to expand lead generation for attorneys and test this model. Goldsmith, Price & Cooper specializes in business law. They’re particularly interested in startups and small businesses. They’ve noticed that prospective clients have some common misconceptions about incorporating in Nevada.

Their clients are worried about asset protection. They want to provide their clients with the help and support they need, but they also want to make sure their firm is profitable. They gather their ingredients together.

• Two irresistible offers: (1.) An asset protection toolkit and (2.) They write a book on asset protection
• A strong value proposition: Their firm offers battle-tested asset protection
• Money to advertise: $2,500
• An email service provider: Mailchimp
• A website or landing page: (a.) A landing page for their asset protection toolkit and (b.) A sales page (with checkout via easy-to-use tools like Gumroad) to sell their book
• Strong educational content: Thorough, informative content that exposes their need for help. 
• Social proof, credibility, and authority markers: “As seen on” badges that highlight your firm’s expertise and recognition in the marketplace
• Product risk-reversals: A 30 day, no questions asked refund policy for the book 

Next, Goldsmith, Price & Cooper arranges these ingredients in the right order. They set things up so prospective clients: 

1. See their ad on Google or Bing
2. Click on their ads
3. Arrive on their landing page
4. Enter their email address to receive the asset protection toolkit
5. Views their irresistible offer and decides to purchase their asset protection book
6. Are invited to set up an initial consultation with a partner (not an associate) at their firm

Using this structure, you can produce a consistent stream of high-quality clients who are eager and willing to invest the amount needed to receive your expertise. You create products that deliver a substantial amount of revenue for your firm, subsidizes your advertising (so it’s free), and generates leads — all at the same time.

Selling legal products boosts law firm profitability

Your law firm can increase revenue by 53 percent or more by selling both products and services to clients. As we’ve seen, the issue with lead generation for attorneys isn’t whether this strategy is viable; it’s about structure. 

Most firms haven’t embraced this model but it’s a revenue model law firms can use to outperform their traditional-minded competitors. Using the structure I’ve presented, your firm can generate a significant amount of revenue for your law firm and attract new clients simultaneously.
But it all depends on structure. Solve your prospective client’s problems, and you’ll find they’re eager to invest in the products and services they need to protect their interests.

Your prospective client needs a lawyer. They enter the keywords “lawyers near me” in Google and your law firm appears. As they scan through the search results, they see your law firm, again and again. Most of the information they see demonstrates your ability to get things done for your clients. Slowly they begin to realize the truth. You’re something special. 

Imagine that you could achieve these results in your law firm. What would this do for your career, reputation, or firm? 

Local SEO is the key to Google search success

The majority of small to medium-sized law firms struggle with at least one of the following problems: 

1. Firms aren’t receiving quality or quantity of leads they need
2. Lawyers are struggling to close the leads they have
3. Law firm margins are too small due to mistakes like discounts, write-downs, and write-offs
4. Firms are undercut by low cost providers and industry disruptors like LegalZoom or RocketLawyer
5. Their advertising costs are too high
6. They’re attracting poor quality clients, which hurts realization and retention rates in the long term

Local search can help lawyers address these problems. Using local search, law firms can:

• Increase the number of traffic-producing keywords that drive clients to their site  
• Make credibility, authority, and prestige markers (e.g., awards, specialization, wins) more visible in Google
• Increase the number of leads generated so they can raise their prices comfortably
• Make competitors irrelevant or zone them out of Google’s search results
• Decrease advertising costs by getting others to rave about your firm
• Attract clients who will fight for your attention, spend more with your firm and pay higher fees

It’s simple, but it’s also incredibly effective. 

How lawyers can increase traffic, leads, and revenue via local SEO 

There are several low cost and no cost tactics lawyers can use to boost search results. Before we take a look at these tactics, I want to cover some general principles regarding marketing. These aren’t absolute rules. They’re simply important details to keep in mind. 

1. Paid advertising produces results faster. Using services like Facebook or Google Ads means you’re able to generate traffic, leads, and revenue immediately. The nature of paid advertising and marketing means these paid services lack longevity. Results go away as soon as you stop paying. 
2. Free advertising takes time. Free tactics like search engine optimization, review management, influencer marketing, etc. all require time to generate results organically. If results are rushed, they’re typically pretty lackluster. As a general rule, free advertising tactics perform well over the long term. It takes time to set up but lasts for a long time. 
3. Combine free and paid advertising tactics for the best results. Combining free and paid advertising tactics produce exponential growth (think 2 + 2 = 42). Both of these tactics play off each other, boosting your firm’s reputed and presumed credibility. 
4. Paid advertising can be free. Structure your offers the right way, and your paid advertising can be free. This can be accomplished in several ways, i.e., using paid ads to send prospective clients to a paid consultation page to gauge their interest. 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the local search tactics you can use to generate 2x more leads. 

• Consistently build a robust online review portfolio
• Systematically build a strong publicity/mentions portfolio
• Use newsjacking to promote your firm’s pro bono work
• Pick a public fight against a worthy adversary
• Write for notable publications
• Speak at local events where your target audience is present
• Use positive controversy to raise your firm’s profile
• Local advertising via Google Ads 
• Remarketing advertising to boost sign-ups from previous visitors
• Become a career interviewee on radio and podcast shows
• Create your own podcast
• Syndicate your content to client-facing sources 
• Become a career interviewer, interviewing people your clients want to hear from

Just one of these tactics can 2x your lead generation campaigns. Overlap these strategies, and the positive results grow exponentially. These local SEO strategies can be used to dominate Google’s local search results, many of these strategies, yes, even paid advertising, can be low/no cost tactics when they’re used effectively. 

Here’s the most significant reason your law firm should invest in local SEO: Most law firms aren’t using it well. If most firms are doing the same things poorly, no wonder it isn’t working all that well. But it can. 

Lawyers near me = your firm, everywhere

At least, that’s how it should be. When your prospective clients enter location-specific keywords in Google, they should see your firm everywhere. As they scan through Google’s search results, your firm and your accomplishments should appear consistently. 
It sounds like a pipedream, but it’s remarkably simple. If you want to learn more, our previous post will show you how to set your local SEO campaigns up for success. It also provides you with a closer, in-depth look at each of these strategies mentioned.

Legal software is complicated and there’s a lot of ground to cover. Take billing for example. Firms need to manage billable rates for each of the timekeepers in your firm, bill in the appropriate billing increments and ensure timekeepers are tracking their time properly. 

That’s just billing. 

Here’s the problem plaguing legal software, it frequently gets in the way.

The best legal software disappears

Here’s a scenario firms deal with regularly. Let’s say your firm is asked to represent both a company and a client suing that company. That’s a straightforward conflict of interest, right? Here’s how the best legal software performs in that situation. 

The best legal software disappears. 

When I say it disappears, I don’t mean it’s suddenly invisible; I mean the software behaves in such a way that it’s easy for people to accomplish the tasks they need to complete — say a conflict check — with minimal interruptions. This doesn’t seem like a significant problem, does it? 

Imagine that you’d like to check for a client conflict. Your practice management software doesn’t really do that, so the attorneys handling a client matter will have to: 

1. Remember to search for a potential conflict, which let’s be honest, probably won’t happen as often and 
2. Run a manual conflict check using a series of outdated checklists. 

What’s the potential impact here? Increased liability and a potential malpractice suit if something happens to go wrong. This may sound a bit dramatic and far-fetched. Until you read the story Joseph O’Neill shared at The Expert Institute: 

“This case involves an insurer that was sued by a law firm for their alleged failure to pay legal fees, which then counter-sued alleging legal malpractice on the part of the law firm. The insurance group was responsible for providing medical malpractice insurance to a hospital network, and the events of the incident in question were initiated in response to a lawsuit against one of the network’s physicians. In that suit, another doctor was also sued, however, she was not covered by the same insurance group. 

Nevertheless, both physicians were represented by the same law firm in the malpractice suit, in spite of the fact that they had conflicting interests. There was apparently minimal effort on the part of the law firm to compartmentalize the work done for each physician, and the nature of the conflict was not made clear to the insurance provider.”

As a result of this conflict of interest, the insurance company was hit with a “significant verdict.” The insurer refused to pay their legal fees, and then they counter-sued alleging legal malpractice. What a messy yet avoidable disaster.

What should your legal software do?

Remind you that there’s a potential conflict, quickly identify conflicts via a search, and provide you with the data you need to correct the problem. Can you see the difference? It’s subtle, but it’s there. The best legal software works behind the scenes ensuring firm standards are met. 

The best legal software acts as a silent guardian. Do you want timekeepers in your law firm to bill in 15-minute increments? Need your software to point out potential conflicts? Find unbilled time/expenses? The best software handles it quietly, with minimal disruptions to your law firm. 

What about transitional pain and upfront work? 

Transitional pain, also known as switching pains, is inevitable. Upfront work is a necessary component that establishes standards and guidelines; the guidelines your software will use to keep everyone in your firm on the same page. 

Once that’s established, the best software disappears. It works behind the scenes, ensuring that your law firm performs as expected when expected. Poor software doesn’t function this way. It gets in the way, making it difficult for your firm to keep your team on the same page. 

Your legal software should disappear 

Your software should provide you with the alerts needed to address an issue or concern. Then it should disappear into the background, acting as the silent enforcer in your firm. 

Legal software often gets in the way, complicating a firm’s day-to-day operations. As we’ve seen, that’s a problem for most firms. The best legal software does one thing well. It enforces the boundaries you’ve set, and then it gets out of your way.

Law firms are complex but your software shouldn’t be. Choose the right legal software, and you’ll have the tools you need to grow your firm, no complications necessary. Let us show you how Bill4Time operates in the background, letting you focus on practicing law, while allowing you to collect more from your clients through accurate billing habits.

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