In this instructional video, Linda Artesani of The Accountant's Law Lab explains how bookkeeping firms can grow by niching in the legal industry and cultivating relationships with attorneys. She outlines why specializing in a complex field like law creates expertise and reputation, and stresses the importance of understanding attorneys' unique accounting needs—such as billing requirements, trust accounts, cash‑flow challenges, and industry‑specific terminology. Artesani recommends attending legal conferences (e.g., ALA, ClioCon), networking, and delivering elevator pitches, while emphasizing active listening. She differentiates personal and business branding, urging a clear, instantly recognizable website and consistent visual identity. Content marketing tactics include regular blog posts, video with the presenter’s face, SEO‑optimized keywords, and using attorney‑specific language, case studies, and testimonials. Building trust involves ongoing engagement, responsiveness, referrals, speaking at bar associations, and collaborating with peers. Finally, she advises creating a concrete marketing plan with a budget, treating the firm like a client, and joining her Law Lab mastermind group for continued support.
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Hi there, Linda Artesani from The Accountant's Law Lab. This week we're gonna delve into building relationships with attorneys so you can market your bookkeeping services and grow your firm. When you niche your accounting firm, you're making a decision to specialize in a particular industry, especially when you start to work with legal, you're looking at having a deep understanding of the industry itself, the unique challenges that you're going to face or that your client faces, and also trends. You want to stay on top of trends. And this is why when you start to laser focus into one industry, it really helps you to grow your firm and it allows you to have more time to focus on these things, which in the long run will allow you to give better service, provide better service to your client. And then it will let you build up an industry rep— will let you build up a reputation in this field, to be an industry expert. That's what we all want to be. You want to be known as that person, or as a lot of people say, the legal ladies when they talk about me and Sarah. We're those people you go to because we know our stuff. And it comes from having the time to focus narrowly on one specific industry and learn everything about it. I promise you, you won't be bored. And that was one of my worries in the beginning, is, am I gonna be bored with this? You don't. You're not gonna be bored. The legal industry is a complex industry. It's what you wanna find in an industry, even if you're not taking legal, find an industry that is complex. Those are the ones that are gonna need our services once automation takes over. And just take a little peek at ChatGPT, it's in its infancy. You can just imagine how that will develop and how a lot of the things that we do today will, will no longer be there. Just look at blog posting, for example. You can use ChatGPT to blog post and help you blog post. Don't always rely on it though. I've been having it assist me in figuring out topics, but it's not really that great yet. It's just really in its infancy, like I mentioned earlier. So the first thing you wanna do as you start to do this marketing is you have to understand the needs of the attorneys. It's really essential to know their needs, their preferences before you start to market to them. You really wanna know what those things are. You can start to funnel your way to those areas. That's how they're gonna find you. So if you start to look at specific requirements of billing, that they have very special billing requirements, start to focus there. That's a great place to start. If you are going down that road to legal, it's an area that they struggle with, that they have issues with. So definitely start there, figure out what softwares work. That's always a helpful place to go. And then if you wanna really step out of your little comfort zone of your office or your home office like I have, you wanna start to go to these networking events, start to get yourself out there in front of your clientele. So I don't mean going to, go to like a QuickBooks Connect, although you should go to that one. I, what I mean is going to where they go. So maybe the ALA if you're with lawyers, going to ClioCon, those are good places to start and you'll see and you'll be in front of an audience that you're you're looking to be in front of. So start to go to those events and conferences, practice your elevator pitch, have that in the background, have some business cards, or even if they're electronic business cards, have some way for them to find you. Create some marketing materials. When you speak to them, try not to just talk about yourself. Listen, listen to them. That's always a great tip because you don't wanna be just me, me, me, me, me. You wanna sit and listen. That's how you're gonna learn and grow from there. You're going to want to, as you start to travel down this road of marketing, you want to have a brand, a personal brand and a business brand. Remember that people want to work with Linda Artisani more than they want to work with the Proper Trust. They want to work with Sarah Prevost more than the Proper Trust. They, they know the people behind the software and behind QuickBooks, behind the details, behind the accounting services. So know that you want to differentiate yourself from your competitors, which is very easy to do once you specialize. But also you want to do that through your branding. Get a nice logo, something you're really happy with, and then really stick to it. Get a brand identity so that your clients will find you. That's really important to do, especially if you look at just your website. You want to know within 2 seconds that that's what you do, that I'm doing accounting services for the legal industry. They shouldn't have to scroll down to find that. So know that as you start to create your branding, your, your image, that's something you have to look at. So just take a look at your website. And if, if you can't really see the forest through the trees, find somebody that doesn't really know what you do and have them look at it and see if they, what they think you do for a living. Of course, blog posting wouldn't be a marketing class without blog posting. Blog posting is important. It's more important today to have video for sure. You need to have video with your face. You need your face. I did a lot of years. In fact, a good friend of mine was like, you've gotta put your face out there, Linda. I always stood, hid behind the camera. Put yourself out there. That's how they're gonna want to work with you. You— they'll see that your warm personality, they'll want to be with. They'll know how smart you are. But also the blog posting, as you do this continually and regularly. So consistency is king. But do it regularly because it keeps your website fresh. Every time I post something or change something on the website, Google goes, ooh, a new website, something that's just not out there lingering. So you wanna make sure that you do that. You wanna make sure you have your keywords in there for SEO. You want to make sure you have targeted traffic. You wanna really look at and figure out who you're speaking to, know that avatar, and make sure you direct your content towards that person. Mm-hmm. And that's how you'll find out those things if you go to those conferences and you listen. Attorneys really have unique needs. So if you're targeting yourself to attorneys, there are specific accounting needs. Know that the trust account's always a pain point. Know about the accounts receivable. Know about how much they spend on marketing, how much of that percentage should be. Know how to fix cash flow issues if they have them. If they're a personal injury attorney, know the pain points around cash flow with that. Lawyers are more likely to work with bookkeepers who have experiencing— experience working in other law firms. It's just a fact. If they know you've got that, it's probably one of those industries that they really will look and say, have you ever done law firm work? Because it's different. It's not the same as your norm, your typical small firm. There's a lot to it. So you want to make sure that you— Write your blog posts to that. You highlight that you work with them, use their language, use retainer, use advanced client cost, use hard cost, soft cost, use the words that they use. And maybe some case studies or some testimonials from satisfied clients is always gonna help you there. You wanna offer value and you wanna build trust, and that takes time. It's gonna take time even for your website to take, take, take a leap forward. You can fast track it, but you still need to do the work. And it does take time for Google to start to recognize that you're this trusted, trusted person. So it also, when you're offering value and building trust, you're doing that with relationships with the attorneys. Working with attorneys and law firms is not you sign up a client, you spend some time with them, onboarding them, and then you never see them again until January. No, that's not how it works. You need to be with them through the journey of the year. Know the ups and downs, get to know their family, get to know their personal goals. These are all important things. It's— you could offer even free— one of the ways you could offer to other attorneys, get yourself out in front of them, is you can actually go in front of the Bar Association and do speaking engagements. Try it. Sign up, be a member of the bar, and then reach out and see if they have a need for that. You'll be surprised to find that that is something that they may be looking for, somebody that does this work. That can speak from the accounting and bookkeeping side, and you might get some more clients there. Collaborate with others. And I like to say, if you're gonna specialize in an industry, let everybody know this is what you're doing. Go on top of the mountain and scream it out with a megaphone. That's how I want you to look at this. You wanna let everybody know, family members, friends, colleagues, because they're gonna refer to you. They're gonna look, some people look at accounting for an attorney and go, ugh, I don't wanna work with attorneys. And then they'll call you up and say, hey, Linda, do you want this? And it works both ways. Case. Once you start to specialize, I can remember the joy of being able to call somebody up and saying, hey, I've got this client for you. It's not what I do anymore. I don't take on, on anything else but the law firms, and then handing that off to somebody else. So it gives you, um, gratitude when somebody gives it to you. And also you just feel like this really sense of accomplishment that you're giving somebody over to an expert in the field that they're in. And I really think that's— it's such a joy to do. So I hope that you enjoyed this video. I've got a blog post that kind of steps you through all these steps. Make sure you respond promptly to your attorney clients. Don't let things sit behind, sit low. Don't forget to respond to any inquiries for your services, any referrals that you get. Jump on those right away. And if you can't set up a system where that happens for you, It's always important to do that as well. So remember that with marketing, it's all about building relationships, really developing a marketing plan. It's always good to do that. Put a number on it, a budget, just like we would do with our clients, and know that you're a small business owner, and so are your clients. So they have some of the same issues that you do. So start to think of it from that perspective, and I think you'll just wrap your arms around marketing, even if you're not a marketer, or even if you're kind of an introvert. Just wrap yourself around it and dive in and head forward and charge forward into your successful future specializing in the legal industry. On that note, I hope you enjoyed this video. Like or subscribe it if you wanna stay on top of seeing more of these and join our Count's Law Lab group. It's a great mastermind group. We meet every Friday and we talk about topics just like this. In fact, marketing is coming up. Mm-hmm. This Friday. So if you wanna join, please join us. And on that note, I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful week. Bye now. Bye.
