Legal Marketing to Potential Clients | Michael Hackard

A few friends and colleagues have expressed interest in having me talk about legal marketing - a subject that I both enjoy and regularly participate in. We should start with a little history. I became a lawyer in December 1976. At that time lawyers were generally prohibited from publicizing themselves or their law firms in newspapers, magazines, radio or television. It was expected that a lawyers reputation could only grow with experience and community involvement - an obvious advantage to those who had been in the legal profession for many years. Advertising rules began to change in June 1977 with the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision of Bates v. State Bar of Arizona. I've followed the effects of Bates since my very first year of law practice.
Now, some 41 years later, I'll share my thoughts on legal marketing. Bates aside, this for the most part is not a video about the law - it is rather on my general approach to the subject of legal marketing.
So, I'll start with some basic principles - the first of them being Dr. Frank Luntz's admonition that "It's not what you say, it's what people hear." We want to get our message across. It's difficult at times to know whether what we think we're conveying is what people are hearing. It helps that I take several calls every week from potential clients who express in their own words what they've taken from our blogs, videos or book.
Our message, whatever it is, must be truthful. Even if truthful, if it is self-serving, it can be easily discarded. This can be a challenge - we want people to know our legal focus, but we don't want to falsely convey that we're the greatest lawyers since Abe Lincoln left the law for the presidency. Part of truth is the recognition that we have both strengths and weaknesses. Hiring us is not magic - an assured path to success. We don't win them all. We do work daily to keep our commitment to legal excellence and ethics.
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