I speak to tons of people on a regular basis who believe they are in need of a personal injury lawyer in Kalamazoo. The vast majority of these people I do not end up representing for a number of reasons. However, I always ask these folks how they found their way to me. Although unscientific, the data I have collected in my head is very important to me. In this post, I will share some of the things I have learned over the 23 years I have been doing this.
In the beginning…
No, not that book. The PHONE book. The old phone book would come out and you would see page after page after page of lawyer ads. Each law firm paid top dollar to get in there. The bigger the ad, the more you paid. The bigger the ad, the closer you were to the front of the book, or beginning of the attorney listings. If you wanted color photographs, you would pay extra. You want to be on the back cover? Get ready to pay thousands of dollars a month. Sound crazy? Lawyers did it and continued to do it year after year. These guys were not throwing away their money, it worked back then. THERE WAS NO INTERNET!
Then came Bill Gates and company…
As information became more and more widely available over the net, the unquestioned dominance of the telephone book began to slide. Do they even exist anymore? I am not sure. I do know that people of my generation and younger would not search for an automobile accident attorney with a phone book any more that they would look for a recipe for chicken noodle soup there. The old phone book which we would all keep next to our (land line) telephone machines was out. The cell phone, laptop, tablet had taken. I never did understand how people choose a lawyer from a phone book. Everyone was “aggressive” and “highly successful” and was a “proven winner.” This was not data. Just marketing fluff. Crap really. I think the consumer has a vastly better situation in this day and age of computers. You are not limited to 50 pages of print ads when searching for attorneys on line. You can review websites and (best of all) reviews on google of past clients. I would carefully read those reviews if I were looking for an attorney. I would also take stock into whether they were legitimate, of just written for marketing reasons.
What really matters…
Is WORD OF MOUTH. Yes, good, old fashioned human communications. Whenever I speak to a client (or potential client even) I have in the back of my head that they will almost certainly have the chance to speak well of me some day when a friend or family member needs a personal injury lawyer. These word of mouth referrals are always the most satisfying for me as I know I earned the referral from doing a good job in the past. It is very much my opinion that the best cases I have had throughout my career have come from former clients. Thank you for reading. Jim.