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Answering Legal Presents: The Lawyer’s Guide To 2023

Joe Galotti

December 8, 2022

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Index

Planning For The Year Ahead

Baseball great Roger Maris once said, “You hit home runs not by chance but by preparation.” If your firm is looking to hit “home runs” in 2023 and have its best year yet, you’ll need to start putting in the work now to make sure you and your entire staff are ready to succeed. In this section we’ll cover the best ways to go about setting goals for the new year, some of the major pitfalls your firm might face over the next 12 months, and some of the top legal events taking place in 2023.

How do I even begin with setting goals for the upcoming year?

We know many of you may feel compelled to breeze past this question and skip ahead to other topics, but we strongly encourage you not to do so.

A recent study found that the rate of success is 20% higher for people who write down their goals compared to those who don’t. The study also revealed that having written goals raises the chances of achievement by 42%.

If you find the thought of sitting down and listing out goals for your firm a daunting task, don’t worry! Doug Brown, a long-time lawyer coach and Chief Learning Officer at Summit Success International, is here to simplify things and take you through the process.

How concerned do I need to be about the Great Resignation?

The Great Resignation, also known as the Big Quit and the Great Reshuffle, is an ongoing economic trend in which employees have voluntarily resigned from their jobs en masse. It began in early 2021 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A 2022 study from McKinsey & Company, found that 40% of workers were thinking about leaving their jobs in the next three to six months.

How much should lawyers be stressing about this trend in 2023? We posed the question to long-time lawyer coach and founder of On Trac Coach, Gary Mitchell.

What are some signs I’m working too much and need to adjust my schedule for the year ahead?

Going all in on improving your practice in 2023 shouldn’t mean having to work more hours. As we’ll cover more in-depth later on in this guide, working too much can severely impact your work performance and your mental and physical well-being.

According to data from Clio’s 2018 Legal Trends Report, full-time lawyers work 49.6 hours each week.

While reading this guide, you’ll get a number of tips on how to work smarter and more efficiently, so you can see your firm succeed without consistently working overtime. But, before we get to that, let’s hear from Cynthia Sharp and Becky Howlett (Founders of The Legal Burnout Solution) on how attorneys can know if they need to change their current working habits.

What are some signs I need to start delegating more tasks in 2023?

If you’re aiming to cut down on your working hours this year, a great place to start is figuring out which daily tasks you can delegate to someone else. Just about every attorney is guilty of dedicating their time to assignments that an employee or outside resource could easily handle for them.

Christopher Earley of the Earley Law Group has made it his mission to delegate as much as possible off his daily plate, and in recent years has been preaching the value of delegation to his fellow attorneys. Check out the clip below to hear his take on why all lawyers should be aiming to delegate more in 2023.

2023 Legal Conference Schedule

Looking for an excuse to travel more in the new year? Want to expand your knowledge and your network? Attending a legal conference can be a great way to accomplish all of those goals. They take place in some of America’s most exciting cities, and could prove to be an invaluable break from the daily grind of running your practice. Listed below are some of the top legal conferences you might want to consider attending in 2023.

Trial Lawyers Summit - January 23 - 26, Miami Beach, FL

LEX Summit (Filvine User Conference) - February 12-15, Salt Lake City, UT

ABA Tech Show - March 1 - 4, Chicago, IL

Legalweek - March 20 - 23, New York, NY

Legal Marketing Association’s Annual Conference - April 24 - 26, Hollywood, FL

AILA Annual Conference On Immigration Law - June 21 - 24, Orlando, FL

ILTACON 2023 - August 20 - 24, Lake Buena Vista, FL

Clio Cloud Conference - October 9 - 10, Nashville, TN

AIPLA Annual Meeting - Dates not yet announced

Crisp Game Changers Summit - Dates not yet announced

Institute For Well-Being In Law Conference - Dates not yet announced

MaxLawCon - Dates not yet announced

The Summit (National Solo & Small Law Firm Conference) - Dates not yet announced

The above details were last updated on December 8, 2022. Please see each event’s website for current information.

Improving Health And Mindset

If you want to see your law firm reach its full potential in 2023, there are two important things you need to address right now.

Your well-being. If your health is in question, you’re likely to be held back at multiple points during the year from doing your best work and living your best legal life.
Your mindset. In order to achieve your biggest goals in 2023, you’ll need to make sure you’re focusing on and prioritizing the right things.

In this section, we’ll share some expert tips on how to properly manage both.

What Recent Studies Tell Us About Lawyer Wellness Heading Into 2023

In the past, many lawyers have felt alone in dealing with wellness-related issues such as depression, anxiety or alcoholism. In recent years, we’ve seen tremendous research done on the subject, and are now beginning to see how prominent these issues actually are in the legal world.

In an appearance on our company’s “Everything Except The Law” podcast this past fall, Robin Wolpert, treasurer for the Institute For Well-Being In Law (IWIL) shared with us the following statistics.

28% of lawyers meet the criteria for depressive disorder.
18% of lawyers meet the criteria for anxiety disorder.
21% of lawyers engage in hazardous drinking.

You can see Robin’s full breakdown on how much of the legal industry is struggling with wellness related issues in the clip below.

Robin also shared that new attorneys seem to be especially struggling to stay well. She reported that 36% of attorneys under 30 years old engage in excessive drinking. Robin also mentioned that recent data is showing that many mental health and chemical dependency challenges for attorneys are beginning in law school.

So where can lawyers turn to if they or a colleague is dealing with a wellness-related issue?

Fortunately, as awareness about wellness issues has increased in the legal world, so have the number of organizations and outlets that are willing to help. In our interview with Robin, she encouraged those who are struggling to check out the Institute For Well-Being In Law’s website, which has a number of valuable resources for lawyers who are struggling. Robin also encouraged attorneys to check in with their state’s Lawyer Assistance Program to get additional help. Watch Robin talk more about these resources in the clip below.

If you believe meditation could be helpful in your path to wellness, we encourage you to check out the free meditation community hosted by The Legal Burnout Solution.

How real a problem is burnout for the legal community?

For this section of the guide, we bring back our friends from The Legal Burnout Solution, Cynthia Sharp and Becky Howlett. In the below clip, they share some alarming information and statistics about how burnout and other wellness issues have impacted the legal community in recent years, and how things have evolved since the beginning of the pandemic.

How dangerous is it for attorneys to try and push through wellness-related issues?

If you’ve been feeling the effects of burnout and aren’t actively taking steps to address it, you could be putting yourself at serious risk.

According to research shared by the Harvard Business Review, burnout is linked to many negative physical and mental health outcomes, including coronary artery disease, hypertension, sleep disturbances, depression, and anxiety, as well as to increased alcohol and drug use. Burnout has also been shown to produce feelings of futility and alienation, undermine the quality of relationships, and diminish long-term career prospects.

We asked Cynthia Sharp and Becky Howlett of The Legal Burnout Solution to weigh in on just how damaging trying to power through burnout can be for a lawyer’s health and the health of their practice.

What self-care tips should lawyers consider adopting?

Whether you’re trying to overcome an existing wellness issue or want to do more to prevent potential future health problems, increasing the amount of self-care in your life is always a good idea.

Once again we’re turning to Cynthia Sharp and Becky Howlett of The Legal Burnout Solution to share some of their favorite self-care tips for attorneys.

How big a role does mindset play in the success or failure of a firm?

If you get to speak with some of today’s top lawyer coaches, such as Gary Mitchell (Founder of On Trac Coach), you’re likely to hear them bring up the word “mindset” a lot. Gary goes as far to say that “attitude is 95% of everything”. You can hear him elaborate on this viewpoint in the clip below.

What mindset changes must attorneys make to become better at the business side of running a law practice?

One of the biggest ways law schools typically fail attorneys is that they don’t teach them how to properly run a business. Like it or not, a law firm is ultimately a business, and if you aren’t doing the right things with your day-to-day office management and marketing, you won’t get to reap the rewards of all that legal knowledge you spent years accumulating.

According to Doug Brown, Chief Learning Officer at Summit Success International, many legal professionals tend to underestimate just how hard it is to operate a growing law business, and often look to gain profitability for their firm through shortcuts rather than investing time into learning business management skills.

In the below clip, Doug goes in-depth on some key mindset alterations lawyers must make in 2023 in order to see their business actually grow.

Managing Your Work Days

Whether you’re operating out of a traditional office setting or an office setup out of your home, there will be plenty of opportunities for your work day to go off the rails in 2023. In this section, we’ll provide expert advice on how to keep that from happening. We’ll be covering what tasks lawyers should actually be devoting time to, how to eliminate distractions from your work day and how to make the transition to a virtual office.

What Did We Learn From The 2022 Clio Legal Trends Report?

The annual Clio Legal Trends Report has become must-read content for all attorneys. The 2022 edition, which was released last fall, once again provided a number of fascinating insights regarding the modern lawyer’s work life. Here are just a few of the notable stats to be aware of from this year’s report.

Lawyer utilization rate has increased 18% over the six years Clio has been publishing data. The past year saw the biggest jump in utilization rate—from 31% to 33%

Utilization rate is a measure of how much of a typical eight-hour work day is spent on billable hours for clients. According to Clio’s data, attorneys are doing a better job than ever before in making sure that their work time is being dedicated to tasks that actually get them paid.

Law firms are finding a path to making more money that doesn’t require them to simply work more hours. Instead they seem to be making a dedicated effort towards being more intentional with how they manage their days, and are becoming more open to using technology and outside resources that can allow them to work more efficiently.

Fewer than 30% of lawyers continue to work only from the office. 49% of lawyers say they prefer working from home and 45% prefer meeting with clients virtually. 39% of lawyers also prefer meeting colleagues virtually.

The events of 2020 forced a significant portion of the legal industry to abandon their traditional office spaces and learn how to operate from home. And as we enter 2023, and just about all restrictions for working in-office settings have faded, it appears many lawyers have embraced the work from home lifestyle.

As legal technology only continues to improve, and legal clients become more and more open to virtual communication, it’s hard not to see the trend of lawyers abandoning their traditional offices growing. Of course, some practices, especially those with larger staffs, may still find it valuable to work together in the same physical setting. But, in any case, it’s good to see that lawyers have more choice and flexibility in how they decide to operate.

86% of lawyers work outside of the typical workday. 74% of lawyers offer to communicate with clients on the weekend. Lawyers who work regular business hours are 28% more likely to have a positive professional life than those working irregular hours.

Lawyers working outside of the typical 9 to 5 schedule is nothing new, and it’s certainly not surprising now that lawyers don’t even need to leave their home to address a client’s concern. And while increasing availability to clients sounds good in theory and is likely to earn lawyers rave reviews from clients, it can make it difficult to maintain a proper work-life balance.

Law firms are likely feeling the pressure from modern day legal clients, who have come to expect instant answers for all of their questions in life. Once competing firms start making themselves available to clients outside of normal office hours, lawyers can feel pressured to match that availability in order to keep up.

In 2023, lawyers will need to equip their firm with as much help as possible, whether it’s in the form of hiring new employees to address client matters outside of office hours, or using a professional phone answering service such as Answering Legal to give clients a live receptionist to speak with on a 24/7 basis.

What types of tasks should lawyers be dedicating time to, and which tasks should they be looking to delegate?

In order to start working more efficiently in 2023, you’ll need to determine what exactly you shouldn’t be spending your time on. If you have a difficult time letting go of control and aren’t sure which tasks you can really afford to pass on to someone else, we encourage you to listen to the wisdom of Christopher Earley, an attorney at the Earley Law Group. As Christopher explains in the below clip, striving for perfection with everything you do can actually end up being quite detrimental to your firm.

What can attorneys do to overcome information overload?

In 2019, Columbia Business School professor Sheena Iyengar estimated that the average knowledge worker must process, consciously or subconsciously, the equivalent of 174 newspapers of information every day.

We’re guessing this number hasn’t fallen over the past few years when we’ve become more reliant than ever before on the technology around us. Information overload is a real problem for just about every worker these days, and attorneys are certainly no exception.

So what’s the key to overcoming it? Doug Brown (Chief Learning Officer at Summit Success International) says being more intentional about how you operate each day is a good place to start, and that learning to say “no” to clients is an absolute must! See his full breakdown in the clip below.

How many times a day should attorneys ideally be checking their email?

In a recent study, the McKinsey Global Institute found that on average, 28% of work time is spent on email, and that workers check their email on average 11 times per hour.

These days there’s no escaping your email. If you carry a smartphone with you at all times, there will always be the option to check your email. But, just because you can check your email at any given moment, doesn’t mean you should.

Christopher Earley of the Earley Law Group believes attorneys should be checking their email no more than twice a day. Not twice an hour, but twice a day! If this number shocks you to your core, you’ll definitely want to check out the clip below to hear Christopher’s reasoning.

How To Keep Constant Phone Calls From Derailing Your Work Day

By Tony Prieto - Answering Legal Staff Writer

Attorneys are notorious workaholics. It’s not uncommon for lawyers to work much more than a typical 40-hour workweek. But have you ever wondered how much more you could get done if you didn’t have to stop what you were doing every time the phone rings?

Of course, if you don’t answer the phone for new clients, they can’t hire you, which is no way to run a business. In this case, however, the ever-changing, fast-paced legal world works to your advantage. Thanks to changes in tech and the business experience of other attorneys, there are plenty of ways to capture new business while staying on schedule. Below, we’ll go over tips and tools lawyers can use to keep constant phone calls from derailing your work days.

How To Put An End To Interruption

The most important thing you can do to make sure your day stays on track is to stop experiencing interruptions.

According to Clio’s 2017 Legal Trends Report, over 50% of attorneys are interrupted more than six times per day, and on average, those interruptions cost 23 minutes of productivity each time.

Multiply that out, and it’s clear that eliminating interruption is a surefire way to make more of each day.

On a recent episode of our Everything Except the Law podcast, attorney Christopher Earley gave some key advice to our listeners: stop taking unscheduled phone calls. He said, “I have found that the more unavailable I become, the more productive I become. And, ironically, the more people respect my time.”

Earley noted that when he stopped taking unscheduled calls, he opened himself up to better time management. He got more done, and felt less pressured every time the phone rang. For more of Earley’s thoughts, check out the clip below.

In order to put this tip to work, however, you need to have a receptionist you can trust to handle the calls that come in, and who can help schedule those new leads for consultations and follow up calls. For many attorneys, a virtual receptionist is the perfect candidate to delegate their phone calls to so they can focus on their work.

What A Virtual Receptionist Can Do

Here at Answering Legal, we pride ourselves on making sure our service is flexible. Our virtual receptionists should fit right into your firm’s workflow. We focus on customizable features to make sure we can do just that.

First of all, our virtual receptionists can let you handle the important calls yourself. They act as an extension of your firm, taking only the calls you don’t want interrupting your work. For example, if you only want to speak to new client callers, our virtual receptionist can reach out to you when they answer one of these calls. If you’re free, they can transfer the caller to you so you can handle it yourself.

If you’re not free or you need to focus on your work, our virtual receptionist will take your new clients through a customized, unique to your firm legal intake process that will get you all the information you need to follow up. Clients who go through legal intake will be much less likely to call another firm.

If you’re going to stop taking unscheduled calls as discussed above, our virtual receptionists can even schedule a follow-up call into your calendar. Otherwise, for existing clients and other non-urgent phone calls, our virtual receptionists can take messages.

Detailed messages will be delivered to your email and/or text message inboxes, making them less distracting and more easily accessible. Those messages will be sent as soon as each call concludes, so you’ll never be waiting on our receptionists if you want to follow up right away.

Optimize Your Workflow With Answering Legal

If you’re looking to cut down on interruptions to your work day, look no further than Answering Legal. Our virtual receptionists are trained to answer exclusively for lawyers, so that they’re prepared for anything your clients can throw at them and will always come across as experts.

With our virtual receptionists handling your calls, you’ll be able to focus on your work, get more done, and capture more clients. Our virtual receptionists can become a key part of making your firm more efficient, scheduling follow-up calls and taking messages so you don’t experience as many interruptions.

Start making the most of every work day. Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up for our service their first 400 minutes free.

How do you know if it’s time to transition to a virtual office?

As Clio reported in their most recent legal trends report, working virtually has become pretty common for those in the legal community. So should all firms be comfortable making this jump, and allow their employees to start working out of office? Are all attorneys better off operating out of their homes? Gary Mitchell (Founder of On Trac Coach) weighs in with some valuable thoughts on the matter in the clip below.

If I do decide to take my firm virtual in 2023, what technology will I need?

It’s no secret that if you want to see your firm thrive in a virtual environment, you’ll need the right legal tech behind you. Few people know more about the legal tech world than Jared Correia, the Founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. The next section of this guide will offer a deeper dive on the topic of legal tech, but before proceeding, check out Jared’s advice for how law firms can technologically prepare themselves to make the jump to a virtual office in 2023.

Incorporating Technology

The Answering Legal Lawyer’s Guide is a judgment-free zone. No matter what step you’re at in your journey to get your firm technologically up-to-date, we have advice in this section that can help. We’ll cover what technology lawyers should look to invest in, what parts of your practice likely need updating, and what outdated technology you should be looking to ditch in 2023.

How much of my law practice should be automated in 2023?

Is your firm ahead of the pack or trailing behind when it comes to automating your firm? Jared Correia (Founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting) will be able to give you a pretty good idea in the clip below. Jared breaks down the four types of law firm workflows, and how to know whether a task should still be handled by a human or software.

How do I go about determining which legal softwares are an ideal fit for my firm?

Recent Clio data revealed that 85% of legal professionals were using some form of software to manage their firms.

It seems that the majority of the lawyer community has gotten the memo that using legal software can provide a major boost to their practice, and help them work more efficiently in a number of different areas. The next step for attorneys is to figure out which software platforms are a good match for their practice and its day-to-day needs.

Unfortunately, the software market has gotten pretty crowded, and the process of choosing a software has become quite overwhelming. Fortunately, we have experts such as Jared Correia (Founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting) to help guide us in the right direction. In the below clip he tells us some of the top things to consider when shopping for new softwares.

Jared Correia Shares His Top Legal Software Picks

In our sit down with Jared Correia (Founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting) we asked him to share his top software recommendations. Here are some that made his list for 2023.

Case management software:

(Our staff would also like to recommend CASEpeer for personal injury firms)

Productivity software:

Accounting software:

Customer relationship management software:

Lawmatics

Workflow software:

Video conference software:

Zoom

Check out the video below to see how this list came together, and what Jared likes about each of the above softwares.

Why Voicemail Is One Piece Of Tech You Should Leave Behind In 2023

By Tony Prieto - Answering Legal Staff Writer

There was a time when voicemail was a technological marvel. Before the digital age, answering machines used tape to record and deliver messages. All of a sudden, it was possible to respond to and keep track of calls that came in while you were unable to answer the phone.

But those days are long gone. For decades now, voicemail has been in decline. Consumers of all kinds just don’t want to wait for the product or service they need. And that includes legal consumers too; they want their legal problems solved as soon as possible.

Luckily, voicemail is far from the only option for handling calls that come in when you can’t get to the phone. Below, we’ll go into why you should leave your voicemail behind in 2023, and what you can use to replace it and make your firm stronger in the year to come.

Nobody Uses Voicemail Anymore

Let’s be honest: how often do potential clients actually leave a voicemail when you miss their call? It’s a tough statistic to track, but we have some research to help. Studies have shown that 75 percent of callers don’t leave voicemail at all. That means only a quarter of your new leads are actually using your voicemail.

And of that fraction of callers who leave voicemail, how many actually end up as new clients for your firm? ABA research found that it takes law firms an average of three days to get back to those 25 percent of new leads who actually leave voicemails. Even if you’re way below average, if it takes you 24 hours to get back to one of those voicemail leads, how likely are you to capture their business?

In today’s high-speed, on-demand world, voicemail just isn’t good enough. Even in an ideal scenario, where you get back to a caller as soon as you can, that lead has probably reached out to other firms by the time you reach them. That potential client is likely to have already hired another attorney.

There Are Better Alternatives To Voicemail

So if voicemail doesn’t work anymore, what are attorneys to do? Wait by the phone 24/7 to capture new business? Well, sort of.

A 24/7 answering service like Answering Legal is the perfect replacement for voicemail. With a team of virtual receptionists ready to answer your calls during business hours and on nights and weekends, you won’t ever need to use voicemail again.

Think of it this way: Legal consumers are often anxious. They’re not lawyers; they are likely facing a problem they can’t solve or don’t understand, and want to know that someone will help them.

A voicemail can’t provide that comfort, but a live virtual receptionist on the other line can. They can personally assure new leads that you’ll get back to them as soon as possible, providing a lifeline to anxious callers.

In addition, voicemail can’t capture leads. At best, voicemail will buy you some time to get back to a new lead if you missed their call, but as we discussed above, that best-case scenario is actually quite rare. Voicemail is like a fishing net with holes in it; it can do the job, but it won’t do it very often.

On the other hand, our virtual receptionists are lead capturing experts. They undergo months of training to prepare for answering for firms like yours. Once your new leads have been taken through a legal intake process by our virtual receptionists, they’ll be much more likely to wait for your follow-up call. They’ll feel like they’ve already started hiring your firm.

Answering Legal Will Capture Your Valuable Leads 24/7

If you’re looking to leave voicemail behind in 2023, Answering Legal is the perfect replacement. Our premier answering service will give your firm a boost in the coming year, allowing you to focus on your legal work while our virtual receptionists handle your phones.

We’re confident in our virtual receptionists because unlike other answering services, we answer exclusively for lawyers. That means we can devote more time to making our virtual receptionists experts who know exactly what your new leads need to hear to stick with your firm.

Start the year off strong. Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up with our service their first 400 minutes free.

Reaching New Clients

Marketing is often one of the biggest areas of struggle for those running growing law practices. There’s a lot to know and a lot to keep track of, and it can be all too easy for busy attorneys to fall behind with their marketing knowledge. In this section, we’ll try to get you back up to speed, covering recent developments in the legal marketing space, ways to upgrade your existing marketing efforts, the secrets to converting new leads into clients and much more!

What Recent Studies Tell Us About Legal Marketing In 2023?

Before we turn to our panel of experts for advice, let’s take a look at a few key statistics to learn a bit more about where the legal marketing world currently stands.

According to a recent study by Nivan, over 33% of clients start looking for a lawyer online.

If your online presence is currently weak you’ll need to change that as soon as possible or risk losing out on a third of your new lead opportunities. Updating your website and staying on top of your online reviews also will be crucial. Even if a potential new client finds your firm online, they are likely to do further research on your practice. If prospects find that your website is out-of-date or your former clients consistently have bad things to say about working with you, you’re likely to scare off a lot of new business.

According to a recent ABA study, 49% of law firms say their best marketing channel is buying web leads.

These days buying leads has become one of the fastest and simplest ways to get more clients for your practice, and in recent years law firms haven’t been shy about dipping into the lead market. Ideally lawyers can create a highly diverse marketing game plan for their practice which allows them to bring in leads from a variety of different sources, including sources such as referrals that don’t cost them any money to bring in. But the option to buy leads always remains highly enticing, and in some cases may feel like a necessary investment.

According to data shared by Embroker, 66% of solo attorneys do their own marketing.

Whether it be because of financial limitations or a lack of trust, solo attorneys are often reluctant to rely on outside sources for help. This certainly appears to be the case when it comes to marketing, as solo lawyers have largely stayed away from hiring marketing professionals. There are some clear pros and cons to this way of doing business. The obvious pro is attorneys will save money in the short-term. However, marketing has gotten pretty complicated over the past decade, and being successful in the digital marketing space typically requires a significant amount of knowledge. If solos are finding that they’re having success handling their own marketing, then perhaps they can continue down that path. But, if solos are seeing their marketing efforts consistently fail and not result in new business, they should make 2023 the year they seek out professional guidance.

How has the legal marketing world evolved in recent years?

If keeping up with the latest legal marketing trends hasn’t been your focus these past few years, there’s no need to fret. Gary Mitchell, Founder of On Trac Coach, will get you caught up in the video below, as he details what’s changed and hasn’t changed with legal marketing since the COVID-19 crisis began.

How do I go about finding ideal clients for my firm?

It’s important for your practice to not just be attracting clients, but the right types of clients. We’re talking about clients who you actually enjoy working with, who have cases you actually want to pursue.

If you want to attract more clients who are a good match for your practice, you’ll need to make some adjustments to your marketing approach in 2023. Doug Brown, Chief Learning Officer at Summit Success International, goes deeper on this topic in the video below.

What does a well-balanced and successful marketing game plan look like in 2023?

Annette Choti, the founder of Law Quill, lives and breathes legal marketing, and was kind enough to sit down with us for this guide to answer some of our biggest marketing-related questions. Before finalizing any marketing plans you have for the year ahead, make sure you take notes on what Annette has to say in the video below. She details why tailoring your content towards voice search and Spanish speaking clients could be a smart call for 2023.

What are some potential upgrades I can make to my website in 2023 that will help me attract new clients?

Most law firms have gotten the message by now that they can’t afford to have a subpar website in the digital age. Or at least that’s what we thought.

According to a 2020 survey shared by the ABA, 87% of lawyers report that their firm has a website. But solos still lag far behind firms of other sizes, as only 59% of solos have a firm website.

Any lawyer reading this that does not have a high-functioning website in 2023, we urge you to amend that as soon as you possibly can. We can almost guarantee you’re losing out on clients because of it.

For firms with an up-to-date website, check out the video below, as Law Quill’s Annette Choti provides tips on how to take your site to the next level.

Can appearing on podcasts help grow my brand? Should I be hosting my own?

Just about everyone listens to podcasts these days. It sometimes feels like just about everyone has their own podcast as well. (We are guilty of this, shameless plug for “Everything Except The Law”)

In 2023, you’re likely to receive invitations to appear as a guest on podcasts, or pressure to start a podcast of your own. Are these opportunities lawyers should be pursuing? We brought in our friend Michelle Calcote King, the Principal & President of Reputation Ink, to share some thoughts on the value of podcasting for attorneys.

If you are creating a podcast in 2023, you may want to consider reaching out to LawPods. The company can handle all of the podcast production and promotion work for you, and help you build a show that is professional, polished and on-brand. You can learn more about LawPods in our recent interview with its creator Robert Ingalls.

How do I go about incorporating my clients’ FAQs into my website and content?

When creating content for your firm, you’ll want to do everything you can to eliminate any fears your prospective clients might have about their upcoming legal process. Hiring an attorney, after all, is quite the daunting process, and your prospective clients are likely to have a lot of questions.

With this being the case, it makes a lot of sense to work your firm’s most frequently asked questions into the content you produce. For guidance on how to best accomplish this, check out the below video, featuring Law Quill’s Annette Choti.

How can PR be used as a tool for reaching new clients?

PR or public relations refers to the strategic communication from an organization to the public to maintain or cultivate public image and/or respond to public discourse.

We’ll be diving deeper into the topic of PR in the next section of this guide, but before we do, we wanted to bring in Michelle Calcote King (Principal & President of Reputation Ink) to offer some thoughts on how engaging in public relations activities can help law firms connect with new clients.

How To Ensure New Leads Become Actual Clients

By Tony Prieto - Answering Legal Staff Writer

If you’ve been investing in your marketing strategy, you’ve hopefully got an abundance of new leads calling your firm, looking to hire you to solve their legal problems. But, unless you’ve got a strong lead capturing strategy, some of those new leads are likely slipping through your fingers.

While lead generation is, of course, an extremely important part of running a business, lead capturing is often overlooked. As important as it is to get people calling your firm, it’s also important to make sure they hire you, rather than the next attorney whose advertisement they came across.

In this blog we’re offering a quick tip to pump up your lead capturing in the coming year, and a tool that will help you do it. Below we’ll go into how to make sure your new leads become actual clients.

Pick Up The Phone When They Call!

It sounds simple and obvious, but it bears repeating: You can’t work for a client who doesn’t hire you. And a new lead can’t hire you if you don’t answer their phone call.

There’s voicemail, of course, but it just doesn’t cut it. Voicemail doesn’t capture leads; it occasionally will buy you some extra time to follow up, but even that hasn’t been true for years.

The truth is, voicemail or not, when you miss a prospective client’s call, they aren’t patiently waiting for you to call them back. They’re more than likely looking for another firm in your practice area. When you miss a new lead’s call, they’re more than likely calling up your competition before you can get back to them.

Now, you could dedicate yourself to answering every call, but you’ll never get anything done if you drop everything whenever the phone rings. Firms hire receptionists for that reason, but even if you have a receptionist, they can’t always be around to answer the phone.

If capturing more clients means never missing a call, how do you handle calls that come in once everyone at your firm leaves for the day? That’s where virtual receptionists come in.

With A Virtual Receptionist, You’ll Never Miss A New Client

Answering Legal’s virtual receptionists are available 24/7 to handle your phone calls. With a virtual receptionist, you’ll never miss a call, whether those are panicked late-night calls from stressed out new leads or lunch hour calls from existing clients looking to check in.

If you’d like the opportunity to speak to your new leads yourself, we can always patch new client callers directly through to you. Your new leads will appreciate feeling like their issues are important to your firm. Our receptionists can just call you to make sure you’re available to speak to any new clients that call.

If you’re not available to speak to new clients, or don’t want them patched through to you, our virtual receptionists can perform legal intakes to help capture leads. You design the legal intake process our receptionists will follow to get the information you need from new leads. Once your new leads have spoken to our receptionists and undergone legal intakes, they’ll be much less likely to call another firm.

Once the call is over, you’ll get messages sent to your phone and/or email so you can stay on top of what’s happening with your firm. Everything you need to call the client and secure their business will be in that message, so you’ll never hear “I already explained this to your receptionist” again.

Answering Legal Has Your Back

We’re confident our virtual receptionists will be the key to making sure your new leads become new clients. They undergo months of training before they ever pick up the phone for a law firm.

We can afford that time because unlike other answering services, our receptionists answer exclusively for law firms. They understand that your new leads are looking to feel more confident about their legal issues when they dial your number, and are uniquely qualified to supply that confidence.

Want to get your lead capture rate up as high as it can go? Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up with our service their first 400 minutes free.

Bringing More Attention To Your Practice

Law firms play a crucial role within their community. Beyond just handling individual client cases, they are often asked to publicly share their expertise on complex legal matters. If you and your colleagues are open to sharing expertise in 2023, there could be tremendous opportunities for your practice to grab the public spotlight and significantly increase awareness of your firm. In this section we’ll share some expert tips on how to become a thought leader in your field, engage with the press, weigh in on hot-button issues and more!

Why should I want to be a thought leader in my industry?

This likely isn’t the first time you as an attorney have been encouraged to engage in thought leadership. And we understand why you may be hesitant to give out your expertise for free, especially when the rewards for doing so usually aren’t all that clear.

However, before you completely dismiss taking part in thought leadership activities, take a look at some of the biggest benefits that can come from being a thought leader.

1- You’ll open yourself up to more PR opportunities. Publicly sharing your expertise is likely to catch the attention of reporters and bloggers, and can lead to you being asked to share your opinions in an upcoming story.

2- You’ll give potential clients more reason to trust you. If you’re seen consistently sharing valuable information with the public, you’ll quickly grow into an authority figure within your field. Prospective clients are likely to see you as more knowledgeable and credible then some of your peers and will be more eager to hire you.

3- You’ll gain more respect within your field. Becoming a thought leader will help you establish yourself as a leader in your field, and will likely lead to peers wanting to collaborate with you and new legal talent being more interested in joining your firm.

These are just a few of many reasons to want to become a thought leader. In the clip below, Michelle Calcote King (Principal & President of Reputation Ink) explains why lawyers tend to be a great fit for thought leadership roles, and elaborates further on some of the biggest benefits attorneys will see from sharing their expertise publicly.

Why should I take the time to publicly share my expertise with other attorneys?

The legal industry is a pretty crowded space, so if you have knowledge about how to be a more successful lawyer, why on earth would you be sharing it with potential competitors?

We certainly understand this point of view, and for many attorneys who are still trying to establish their footing in the profession, it may not be the best time for you to go about giving out tips to your peers. However, we should note that many of today’s top lawyers do engage in activities that involve offering expertise for others in the legal community, and find it to be incredibly rewarding.

Christopher Earley of the Earley Law Group is one of those lawyers, and in the clip below he gives his argument for why attorneys should consider publicly sharing the knowledge they’ve accumulated over the years.

How do I go about building valuable connections with the press?

If you want to make appearances in your local media outlets, you’ll first need to make connections with their editors and reporters. Becoming a go-to resource for a media member won’t be the easiest task, but if you can pull it off, you could be rewarded with a significant amount of free attention for your firm.

In order to catch the eye of an editor or reporter, you’ll need to demonstrate why you’ll be a valuable source to them. Michelle Calcote King, the Principal &

President of Reputation Ink, explains how to accomplish that in the clip below.

If I have opinions I want to share about hot-button issues, what do I need to consider before publicly doing so?

Thanks to social media, lawyers have the ability to instantly share their thoughts with the public. This can allow them to be one of the first voices people hear after a controversial news event or issue comes to light.

Some attorneys may find that weighing in on big stories can be a great way to grow their following and show off their legal expertise. However, weighing in on divisive issues always presents the risk of alienating a portion of your audience, and potentially turning off prospective clients from wanting to hire you.

Clearly there is a lot of risk and reward here, so with that in mind we wanted to consult with an expert on what lawyers need to be considering before hitting that post button. Michelle Calcote King, the Principal & President of Reputation Ink, shares her thoughts below.

What can I do to increase the number of backlinks my firm receives in 2023?

A backlink is an incoming hyperlink from one web page to another website. If you’re not overly familiar with backlinks, aren’t sure why they are valuable, or need tips on how to get more of them, we strongly encourage you to watch the below video. Annette Choti, the founder of Law Quill, is ready to get you all caught up on the topic.

Improving Your Client Experience

Legal clients have a ton of options to choose from these days. In order to ensure that your firm doesn’t fall behind the competition and continues to remain an attractive option for those seeking legal help, you’ll need to make sure the experience you’re offering clients is an extremely high quality one. In this section, we’ll cover the most important things you can do for your clients in 2023, how legal tech can help improve the client experience, how to set professional boundaries with clients without upsetting them and much more!

What can lawyers do to make their clients feel more appreciated?

Clients will always care greatly about the legal results you get for them. But they also want to know that you care about them and their legal needs. If clients end up feeling neglected by you or that you’re difficult to work with, you could start racking up a number of one-star reviews online.

Gary Mitchell, Founder of On Trac Coach, is here to help you avoid that scenario with some advice on how to make your clients really feel valued.

How can I use technology to improve my client experience?

In 2023, legal tech will play a role in just about every part of a law firm’s workings, and the client experience is no exception. Legal clients have certain technological expectations these days, and if a firm is not doing enough to meet them, they will quickly be viewed as a dinosaur.

If you want to avoid seeing your practice go the way of the dinosaurs, make sure you listen carefully to the advice of Jared Correia (Founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting) in the below video.

How can lawyers set appropriate boundaries with clients, while still providing them with a great experience?

It’s often said that availability is the best ability. When it comes to providing a great experience for clients, being available to answer their questions and talk them through bumps in the road is crucial. However, as we’ve covered in this guide, lawyers also require time away from their job in order to avoid becoming burnt out or unhappy in their profession. Additionally, they require uninterrupted time away from their clients to get billable work done.

If you fail to set appropriate boundaries with clients, your life could get messy in a hurry. For years, Doug Brown (Chief Learning Officer at Summit Success International) has advised lawyers on how to go about setting boundaries with their clients, and in the clip below, he shares his best practices.

Should clients expect me to be available to answer calls and emails at any time?

The answer to this question should be a clear “no”. But it’s certainly fair to wonder if modern day clients will be okay with not getting immediate answers to their calls, texts, emails and other direct messages. Will not picking up a call or failing to offer a quick response to a message result in clients feeling like their lawyer is letting them down.

We wanted to get the perspective of a lawyer on this issue, so we asked Christopher Earley of the Earley Law Group for his thoughts on how much lawyers actually need to make themselves available for clients. See his thoughts below.

How To Make Your Firm Available To Clients, Even When You’re Not Available

By Tony Prieto - Answering Legal Staff Writer

We live in an on-demand world. Streaming services, delivery apps, and ride shares have made instant gratification the norm, and consumers expect everything from entertainment to services to be available to them 24/7.

Of course, that includes legal services. When a prospective client encounters a legal issue, they might stay up all night researching the right firm. When they make up their mind, they want to be able to reach that law firm as soon as possible. And existing clients have always wanted updates on their cases at any hour of the day.

We’re making this sound like a bad thing, but it doesn’t have to be. When you’re ready to address client concerns at any time, you open yourself up to opportunities you might not have been able to reach before. In this blog, we’ll show you how to make your firm available to clients at any time, and how that can give you an edge over your competitors.

Always Have Someone Available To Answer The Phone

Simple, right? Well, it’s much more difficult than it sounds. A traditional receptionist can handle the nine-to-five. When you’re meeting with clients and don’t want to be interrupted, or at the courthouse and couldn’t answer if you tried, you need someone to field calls from clients and let them know you’ll get back to them as soon as possible.

If you’re like most attorneys, your work day doesn’t end at five. Eventually, though, we all go home to get some sleep. Who picks up your phone then? When new clients call, they aren’t going to leave voicemails and wait for your follow up. They’ll keep calling your competitors until they reach someone who can help them.

When you’re the firm that’s available late, you’ll get all the prospective clients who can’t reach your competitors. But having someone available to answer the phone at 2 AM on a Sunday is very different from hiring someone for the nine-to-five. Luckily, there’s an easy way to make sure you’re able to capture clients whenever they call in.

A Virtual Receptionist Service Makes It Possible

What you need is to always have someone available to answer the phone, no matter when it rings. A virtual receptionist service is the perfect fit. Here at Answering Legal, our virtual receptionists are available 24/7, every day of the year.

But our virtual receptionists don’t just answer your phone; they can capture your leads as well. Our virtual receptionists can perform legal intakes to make sure new clients stick with your firm. Because you decide the questions our virtual receptionists ask, our virtual receptionists will perform legal intakes exactly as if you had trained them yourself.

A new lead who tells their side of the story to one of our virtual receptionists is much more likely to wait for your follow up when you’re able to call them back. If you’d like to read more about our legal intake, click here.

Our virtual receptionists act as extensions of your firm. With our detailed message taking, you’ll never hear “I already explained this to your receptionist” again. You can customize the information you want in your messages, so you’ll always have the information you need to follow up at your fingertips. And our virtual receptionists will send your messages to you via text and/or email as soon as the call concludes, so you’re always up-to-date on what’s going on with your firm.

Answering Legal Makes It Easy

If you’re looking for the best virtual receptionists around, look no further than Answering Legal. Our service is fully customizable and our white-glove setup is hassle-free. We make sure you’re always getting the quality service you need, and that your clients needs are always taken care of.

Our receptionists go through a months-long training process before ever picking up the phone for your firm. We can afford to spend that long training because our receptionists only answer for lawyers. We understand the unique needs of law firms, and are always ready to provide service that ensures your firm performs to the best of its potential.

Make sure you’re always able to secure new leads. Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up their first 400 minutes free.

Finding Additional Help

We’ve covered a lot in this guide so far, but recognize lawyers may need further assistance to ensure that they are living their best legal life these next 12 months. In the final section of our guide, we’ll be highlighting some additional resources lawyers can utilize in 2023.

Where can those who are currently suffering from wellness-related issues turn to for help?

One of the most encouraging trends we’ve seen in the legal profession in recent years is that more and more attorneys are being open about their wellness challenges and are taking action to get help in dealing with them. If you need help overcoming a wellness-related challenge in 2023, make sure you check out the clip below. Our friends Cynthia Sharp and Becky Howlett of The Legal Burnout Solution offer guidance on where lawyers who are struggling can turn to for assistance.

What parts of marketing am I most likely to need expert help with?

It can be difficult for lawyers to know how much of their marketing process they should be taking into their own hands in 2023. After all, there are plenty of places for attorneys to turn to these days for professional marketing help, and delegation is a must-learn skill for lawyers who want to work more efficiently and effectively. But it’s also quite easy for attorneys to find legal marketing guidance online these days, and there’s likely a lot of tasks they’ll be able to complete on their own after a little education.

Our friend Annette Choti is perhaps most qualified to weigh in on this issue as she is both a lawyer and runs the digital marketing agency Law Quill. Hear her thoughts in the clip below.

What Books Should Lawyers Be Reading In 2023?

Listen to some of the world’s most successful people and you’ll notice that they tend to have one big thing in common. They read a ton. They’re always looking to expand their knowledge through reading books and learning about topics that can make them better at their jobs.

If you’ve been slacking on reading these past few years, make 2023 the year that changes. Lawyers these days have a wide-selection of educational books to choose from. Below are just a few to consider.

Click Magnet: The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide For Law

Click Magnet is the step-by-step guide you have been looking for to grow your law firm online. Unlike other books that give a brief overview of search engine optimization (SEO) and offer some generalized digital marketing ideas, Click Magnet provides a comprehensive roadmap that an attorney can implement to grow online and gain more clients. Written by Annette Choti, Esq., Click Magnet encompasses two decades of legal and digital marketing experience combined.

5-Star Attorney: A Proven System Any Law Firm Can Use to Earn More Reviews, Attract More Qualified Leads, and Increase Profits

In a world with Google, Yelp, and other online review services, a business can't survive without great 5-star reviews. Law firms are no different. Every time a potential client looks up a lawyer and sees very few (or no) reviews, that client takes their case somewhere else. It's an unwritten rule of the internet: without reviews, you won't get clients. In 5-Star Attorney, by Andrew Stickel, you'll learn an effective, inexpensive way to automate the process of getting great reviews for your law firm so you'll reach more potential clients and get more new cases and new revenue.

Solo by Choice: How to Start Your Own Law Firm, and Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be

Solo by Choice lands at a pivotal moment as the legal profession emerges from the shadow of the pandemic. Though solo practice has often been a tough sell, the legal community – from new grads to senior lawyers – is taking a fresh look at law firm ownership for numerous reasons. In this book, author Carolyn Elefant covers how to decide whether solo’ing and small firm practice might be right for you, how to select a practice area that serves your interests, financial goals, and lifestyle, how newly emerging business models can create new opportunities for solos and much more!

Virtual Law Firm Secrets: How to Run Your Law Firm So It Doesn't Run You

Virtual Law Firm Secrets reveals everything attorney Sam Mollaei learned from growing 7 virtual law firms, growing 3 of them into multi-million dollar businesses, and helping over 360 lawyers grow a virtual practice. It’s a no-fluff, 126 page book that reveals the repeatable proven system Sam uses to get 16,000 legal leads a month and convert them into 450-600 clients each month.

I Hope We Never Meet: Client Stories of Tragedy, Recovery, and Accountability from a Life in Deterrence Law

In I Hope We Never Meet, Andrew Finkelstein, with Sarah Lunham, tells his clients’ stories of tragedy and recovery, demonstrating how families have rebuilt their lives by holding offenders accountable. He discusses what personal recovery looks like and the journey of ensuring that justice is visited upon negligent actors. I Hope We Never Meet is an inspirational resource for anyone searching for ways to turn their pain into purpose and make the world a better, safer place.

Check Out The “Everything Except The Law” Podcast

Answering Legal’s “Everything Except The Law” podcast focuses on all the parts of running a law practice that attorneys weren’t exactly trained on in law school. Each episode, host Nick Werker welcomes a different expert guest for an in-depth discussion on a specific legal topic. While browsing through past episodes, you’ll find that the podcast covers many similar topics to the ones brought up in this guide, including health, mindset, law office management, technology, marketing, PR and client relations.

We’ll be releasing new episodes of the show throughout 2023, and bringing on some of the best and brightest from the legal world. So make sure to subscribe to “Everything Except The Law” on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Anchor so you can be alerted whenever we drop a new episode.

Want an inside look at what the show is like? Check out a few clips from the past year!

Law Firm Mentor Allison Williams Explains How Introverted Lawyers Can Still Achieve Marketing Success

Lawmatics’ Founder Matt Spiegel Details What Lawyers Need From Their Software

Legal Blogger Carolyn Elefant Shares What Future Trends Lawyers Need To Start Preparing For

Have a question about the show. Reach out via email to [email protected]

How To Get Started With 400 Free Minutes Of Our Virtual Receptionist Service

By Tony Prieto - Answering Legal Staff Writer

If you want to experience first-hand what Answering Legal can do for your firm, there’s no better place to start than with our 400 minute free trial. Click here if you’d like to sign up. There are no strings attached; we won’t even ask for your credit card details. We just want to give you an opportunity to experience our service for yourself.

Want to know what to expect from your free trial, from the sign up call to its end? In the blog below, we’ll go into detail about what the signup process is like, and what you can expect to get from your free trial.

What To Expect From Sign Up

The first step to accessing our free trial is to sign up for a call with one of our account executives. You can click here to do just that. We won’t take more than half an hour of your time.

In that half hour, we’ll tell you all about our service, and how our free trial works. Then we’ll get you set up. We’ll straighten out your call protocols, your custom legal intake, and your message taking options.

We want our service to be exactly what your firm needs, so we’re fully customizable. Want our receptionists to answer all your calls? We can settle that during setup. Don’t know exactly what legal intake you need? We have dozens of sample questions that we can customize for your practice area.

Don’t worry, these aren’t permanent. If at any time you think you would be better served by changing these options, you can give us a call or an email and we’ll change it to your specification. Once we have your customization options, our white glove setup team will then forward your calls to our virtual receptionists according to your protocols, and your free trial will have begun.

What You Get With Your Free Trial

During your free trial, you’ll get access to our entire suite of premium features. The only exception is appointment scheduling, as it takes some time to integrate with your calendar. But don’t worry! By the end of your free trial, if you decide to stick with us, we’ll have your calendaring up and running.

Our service is flat-rate, so the free trial experience, appointment scheduling aside, is exactly the experience you’ll have if you decide to hire us. For 400 minutes, you’ll have access to all of our premium features. Our detailed and customizable message taking will make sure you’re always up to date with your firm. Our virtual receptionists are trained to complete custom legal intakes for every new client caller to make sure they stick with you. And we’re available 24/7 in English and Spanish.

If you’d like to read more about what our service can do for you, we invite you to check out our blog. We’ve got plenty of posts about our service. For example, here’s an in-depth look at our legal intake process, where we go into detail about what makes our legal intake so effective at capturing your leads. Spoiler: it has a lot to do with the training our virtual receptionists receive!

What Makes Answering Legal Different

At the end of the trial, we’ll ask if you want to continue with our service. If you do, we’ll take what we learned about your firm from your free trial and apply it to your service, so that from the day you start paying you’re receiving exactly the answering service you need.

If you decide not to stick with Answering Legal, there are no strings attached. We never ask for your credit card. Our free trial is a way for you to see why we’re different from other answering services, and for us to make sure our paying customers are getting the best service possible from day one. Once you see how we can help your firm succeed, we’re sure you’ll stick around when your free trial is over.

Want to get started with Answering Legal and experience all the ways we can help your firm? Click here to sign up for your free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering 400 minutes to firms that sign up for our service.

Thanks for reading! If you have any feedback to share about the information in this guide, you can email [email protected].

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