Should Attorneys Just Starting Out Handle Their Own Marketing?
When you’re starting your own law firm, you may be strongly tempted to do everything yourself, especially when AI makes it seem so easy. At first, this can seem like the smart financial choice. New firms have limited budgets, and marketing can feel like an expense that should wait until your business is more established.
When it comes to marketing, however, entrepreneurial efforts can actually backfire. So much of a company’s success depends on its online presence. Recent law school graduates and attorneys who are branching out on their own may have outstanding legal knowledge and a great work ethic, but strong internet marketing skills aren’t usually a part of that knowledge base.
At OVC Lawyer Marketing, we help attorneys at every stage of their career build marketing strategies that fit their goals and budget without asking them to become full-time marketers on top of running a law practice.
Is It Cheaper to Handle Your Own Law Firm Marketing?
If you build your own website and write your own content, you may spend less cash than you would by hiring a marketing company, no doubt. For a solo attorney opening a practice with very little startup money, that can be an important consideration
But time is money, and for attorneys trying to create billable hours, the tradeoff of marketing vs. lawyering isn’t usually worth it. An attorney might spend an entire afternoon trying to fix a website issue that our developers could handle with a quick email to our support team. Writing one good practice-area page can take hours if you are also trying to learn SEO, choose keywords, and figure out how the page should be structured. This is all time you’re not spending on legal work, networking, client intake, or building referral relationships.
What Marketing Should a New Attorney Handle Personally?
There are parts of law firm marketing that attorneys should remain closely involved in, even when they hire outside help. Your marketing company can’t decide what kind of practice you want to run. You need to know:
-
Which clients you want
-
Which cases you want more of
-
What makes your approach different from other attorneys in your area
-
What kind of voice you want your firm to use
A criminal defense attorney who wants to build a trial-heavy practice will need different messaging from a family lawyer who focuses on collaborative solutions. At OVC, our best arrangements are usually those where the attorney provides the direction and then our marketing team turns that direction into effective content and strategy.
When Does DIY Law Firm Marketing Become a Bad Idea?
The biggest warning sign that you need to hire out a marketing team is when marketing starts taking time away from actually running the firm. A new attorney may begin by writing an occasional blog or updating the website. Before long, that can turn into managing rankings, troubleshooting technical problems, monitoring reviews, and trying to understand why competitors appear higher in search results. All that work defeats the purpose of specializing in law.
DIY legal marketing also becomes risky when attorneys start making decisions without enough information. For example, a lawyer may choose blog topics based on what seems interesting rather than what potential clients are actually searching for. A beautiful website may still perform poorly if its pages are slow or difficult for search engines to understand.
Working with OVC Lawyer Marketing prevents most of these problems and, when problems do come up, outsources the solutions to people who really know their stuff.
Contact OVC Lawyer Marketing to Build Your New Firm
At OVC Lawyer Marketing, we help new and established law firms build practical marketing strategies around the clients and cases they actually want. We can help you create a professional website and develop consistent content while keeping your firm’s voice and goals at the center of the process.
To learn how we can help you strengthen your new practice, contact OVC Lawyer Marketing online or at 630-635-8000 today and schedule a free site analysis.
