Effective Strategies for a Bookkeeper to Aquire Attorney Clients

So this week we're gonna talk about how to get attorney clients. And I know that's something that if you're here and you're either interested in learning and working with attorneys, or you have a couple of attorneys, you wanna know how to expand your base, this is probably gonna be the video for you. One of the things that is interesting about our group in the Law Lab is that we have, between Sarah, me, and Steve, we have 3 people who all approached getting attorney clients in different ways. I took a very organic method of hopping in and starting to shift my blogs and posts to be working with attorneys. And I just completely changed how I was writing my— I used to write articles to everybody how to fix things, and now I was narrowly focusing on the law firm or the legal industry. And that worked, but it takes time. It takes time to grow legs. So know that it's going to take time to be able to gain clients based upon blog posting and videos. Does it work? Yes. And then you have to be very social media enveloped. You have to be, you have to really be, take the time to post and share what you know. And I think that doing that sets yourself up as the expert. You let the clients know. You always have the client in mind when you write these posts that you are there to help them solve a problem. And I always think of it as how can I help my attorney clients that come to me that have problems maybe with advanced client costs or trust accounting or any of the things that they have trouble with— compensation, how do they automate those systems? And I just start to write about it. Maybe just picking software. They don't know what software to go with. So I'll help write articles about that. Once you start to develop a cadence and a blog post, you have to be very consistent with with posting. It doesn't have to be every day. I think if you're going to hit Twitter up, you probably do have to post something insightful every day. Something with maybe a picture or something that'll grab people's attention because you're competing with a lot of other minutiae out there. But if you pick LinkedIn, you want it to be very professional. So think about the platform that you're choosing. Maybe you're choosing Instagram because you're wanting to grab that cutting-edge 40-ish-year-old attorney that's probably stepping into a partner role. And they spend their time, you know, he or she may spend their time on Instagram. So you want to look at pushing the social posts out there and sharing your blog posts, letting people know you know what you're talking about. You don't have to go into great detail on how to fix or tackle these things. Actually, the ultimate goal is for them to call you because they see how complex it is and they want you to do it, right? So that's kind of my methodology to get there. Sarah's all referral-based. She lives in Portland, Oregon. She's in a city. She's well known in the city. She already had established herself as a bookkeeper there. And when she started to really focus on attorneys, she got a couple of clients that really loved her work, some pretty high-up people in that area, and they just kept referring her, referring her. I got referrals that way too, and I did that with aligning with LeanLaw and the app software LeanLaw, and they would send me referrals. So you could find a software that you find really works well with QuickBooks, maybe Clio, maybe LeanLaw, and just get to know these people. And then they might send you some referrals. And those are great referrals. We've gotten some from Gusto even. So there's plenty of ways you can get some referrals. And Sarah has been the master at referral base. And then now our clients refer us, which is really heartwarming. Steve really hit up going to the— he started working with going towards working with the Bar Association, the local bar in Colorado. And he started to do speaking gigs and he got kind of boots on the ground, got right in front of people and got to know them. And he set himself up as the expert. He would give nice webinars for them to learn about trust accounting with the same method in mind. He expected— he was hoping that people would come to him because they really don't want to do this work. And believe me, attorneys don't want to do this work. That's why there's such a good niche to develop. You get paid well for it. They appreciate you. They're professional. I mean, I could go on and on. The list could go on and on about why attorneys are great clients. Yeah. So I think that if you start to look at doing those steps, look at blog— if you want to blog post and let people know that you're the expert and you can post it in many places, just be consistent with your blog posting. Really follow up. Don't miss a week. Do 4 weeks at a time and then try to get that all caught up and get ahead of yourself so you can go on vacation. You don't have to be worrying about doing a blog post or you have to go to a conference or something like that. You've got it set up. And start to let the blog post tell people in a broader view who you are. Put a face with a name and that you're the expert. Share what you know. It may seem counterintuitive to give them all your secret sauce, but it will come back to you. The more you give, the more you get. Referral-based. If you're in a city and you've got a lot of opportunity there, maybe, you know, Sarah was on the board of one of the at the bar association. So you can get on some of those bigger places where you can get to be in front of a lot of attorneys. So think about where do they go and how can I get in front of them? Maybe it's a BNI meeting. There's plenty of ways out there. Maybe you go to their conferences. We just went to ClioCon. Great example of being in front of a lot of attorneys and you just talk to them and they kind of expect that you're an attorney. And then you say, no, I'm not an attorney. Or do like Steve did. Go start getting active in the bar association that's local to you. And show that you're the expert. Offer your services to teach the attorneys about trust accounting or business planning or whatever. And you'll be surprised at that. Just those few things, they all take time. Some take longer than others, but the more you start to do it, the more you get out there and put yourself out there, the more it will come back to you. And I promise you, you'll have a lot of attorney clients when you get to the point where I'm like, oh my goodness, now I need to slim my, slim my list down to be more exactly the clients I wanna work with. So I hope that's you in a year from now, and maybe you can come back and revisit this video and say, "Gee, I remember where I was a year ago." But I hope this helps. And if you need more help and wanna work with us one-on-one, please feel free to join us in the Accountants Law Lab. You'll be glad you did.