Lower Your Client-Acquisition Costs With Quality Law Firm Leads

Lower Your Client-Acquisition Costs With Quality Law Firm Leads

What makes a law firm successful? It's more than winning cases and providing reliable services. Success also depends on efficient business practices.


There are some costs that you just can't cut if you want to stay in business. However, most firms can lower the cost of their client acquisition without seeing any decline in performance. In this article, we will go over how to lower those costs by using purchased leads. Here's what we'll cover:


● Defining Client Acquisition Cost

● Client Acquisition Versus Price Per Lead

● Calculating Your Firm's Client Acquisition Cost

● The Importance of Pre-Qualified Leads

● Getting Started With Pay-Per-Lead


Legal Locator provides pre-qualified, quality law firm leads in real-time so you can lower costs and grow your business. Please feel free to contact us with any questions you might have.


Defining Client Acquisition Cost


Everybody knows it costs money to get new clients. Client acquisition cost is that sum. Although you can calculate it for specific clients or specific acquisition methods, the general statistic is going to be an average per-client cost that covers pay-per-click, websites, and any other technique you use at your firm.


The nice thing about this particular statistic is that you don't have to wait to calculate it. In other words, you don't have to know how much revenue a client will bring to your firm over the course of your relationship — all you need to know is how much it costs to secure the client's business in the first place.


Client Acquisition Versus Price Per Lead


Client acquisition costs are related to the costs per lead for your law firm. However, they are not the same statistic. It's easy to get them confused, but keeping the definitions straight will be a big help when you're making business-development decisions.


Price per lead is simply the price you pay to acquire a case lead. This can also be averaged across all of the lead generation techniques that your firm uses. The cost of client acquisition is the price it takes to turn a lead into a paying client.


Client acquisition cost will always be higher than cost per lead because, at the very least, you'll need to spend time signing a representation contract and doing a conflict check. Additionally, higher-quality leads usually produce lower acquisition costs — simply because you should get more clients from better leads.


Calculating Your Firm's Client Acquisition Cost


If you want to know if the leads you purchase really lower your costs, the first step is to figure out your starting point. Luckily, calculating client acquisition cost is relatively simple.


The cost of average client acquisition for your firm is essentially the total cost of acquiring all clients divided by the number of clients. It usually makes sense to start by focusing on a specific period of time, such as a month or a quarter.


First, determine the value of the time you spend on getting new clients. This will probably include some attorney hours as well as some staff hours. Remember to include every step in the sales process, such as intake, outreach, and new-client consultations.


The next step is figuring out how much money you spend on acquiring clients. If you pay for it and it's supposed to get you new clients, include it in your calculations — even if it did not produce any results during the period for which you're calculating. Examples of typical client acquisition costs for a law firm include websites, advertising campaigns, and directory listings. For one-time costs, such as a web page you pay someone to write, it's fair to divide the cost over the expected effective lifespan of the tool.


The last step is to add the money and time costs together, then divide by the number of clients you acquired in the time period you selected. That should be your unique client acquisition cost.


The Importance of Pre-Qualified Leads


Quality leads are important, but they also need to be relative. Be sure to look for definitive offers to filter the leads you buy.


No agency can promise that all your leads will convert to new clients. In part, that's because your internal intake processes response times can easily change your chances for a conversion. What agencies can do is allow you to filter leads so you only get the most relevant information possible.


As you might already know from calculating your cost of client acquisition, qualifying a potential client is a major source of cost. It takes time, skill, and knowledge to accurately and ethically match a client's needs to your legal services — a prequalification process removes a large portion of this cost. That process is often conducted automatically through a combination of lead-generation campaign settings and custom filters you set.


Getting Started With Pay-Per-Lead


Integrating a new service partner into your firm's business-development strategy always seems daunting, but most pay-per-lead services make it easy. Here's the general process:


Shop around: There are many firms out there, so look for one with the flexibility and level of quality you need to grow over the long term.

Contact your candidates: Many, including Legal Locator, offer demos and consultations.

Select a service: Choose the service that fits best with your firm. Seriously consider flexibility as a factor: you will probably want to change the number of leads you receive from one month to the next.

Customize your leads: Ideally, you should have several variables through which you can customize the leads you receive. Be as specific as possible to reduce the need for qualification during your intake process.

Stay on top of incoming leads: Leads can go stale relatively quickly, even if they are delivered in real-time. Clients are likely to keep searching for attorneys — make sure you act on any leads you receive as soon as possible.


If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Reach out at any time via our website to get started immediately.


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