Law Firm Marketing:
Context Marketing™
SUMMARY
OF THIS ARTICLE:
Service must take into account client personal
details and circumstances.
- Context Marketing is a process in which service is defined
and implemented within the context of client needs.
- Defining marketing in this way requires lawyers to
acknowledge the client’s role in the relationship.
- Clients don’t expect lawyers to fix all their problems,
but simply want their pain and concerns acknowledged and understood.
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Providing service means nothing without
understanding context. Context is the full dimension of the life events and surrounding
circumstances that gave rise to a client’s need to see a lawyer in the first place.
Understanding the context of a client’s problem requires a broad understanding of
clients and their circumstances as well as recognition of the importance of both the
subjective and objective side of any client problem.
Context Marketing is a process in
which service is defined and implemented within the context of the specific needs and
desires of the client.
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Lawyers are most useful when they help
clients to uncover the full scope of their interests. Sometimes this requires that lawyers
assist clients in separating the facts and logic of a problem from its emotional side.
Proactively helping clients to discover the
full range of their options can help them to identify possible solutions they would not
previously have -considered. Today there are a host of online legal help-centers like
www.GotTrouble.com which use context based legal marketing to the full dgree.
For those who think that lawyers are
entering the domain of psychologists and family counselors by giving this kind of
emotional attention, consider this: By encouraging the client to work with you in thinking
proactively and creatively, opportunities not visible before can lead to new pathways of
problem solving. More often than not, this type of thinking will help clients find
resolution to both their legal and nonlegal troubles.
Defining marketing in this way requires us
to first acknowledge the client’s role in the relationship. As obvious as this first
step might seem, most firms overlook it.
Life Context
Clients come to a lawyer for legal help,
but many other concerns appear just as significant as the legal ones—concerns that
have very real and emotional consequences that often cannot be solved with a solely
"legal" solution.
Lawyers often ignore their clients’
life concerns by focusing solely on their legal questions. When this happens, lawyers miss
a golden opportunity to build clients’ confidence and trust in the firm. Clients
don’t expect us to fix all their problems, but they do want us to at least
acknowledge their pain and understand their major concerns.
LEGAL CONCERNS
- What if I get a divorce?
- Am I entitled to permanent disability?
- Can my company terminate my -employment?
- What if our product was -defective?
- What if the partnership dissolves?
- What if I am accused of -malpractice?
- What if I go bankrupt?
- What if a competitor steals our client?
- What if we hire our competitor’s top employee?
- What if the contract is one-sided?
- What if our advertising wasn’t accurate?
- What if we go through probate?
- What if I was sexually harassed?
- What if I lose my driver’s license
LIFE CONTEXT CONCERNS
- What will my children think?
- How will I educate my children?
- Where do I go to find a job?
- How will the board react?
- What will my competition think?
- Will it ruin my reputation?
- Will my new employer find out?
- Will other clients lose -confidence?
- Will it show weakness?
- Will they question my integrity?
- Will we lose our customer -confidence?
- Will I have to deal with my brother?
- Will I be labeled a troublemaker?
- Will I lose my business?
This article is an excerpt from Marketing the
Legal Mind (LMG Press) by Henry Dahut. Henry Dahut is the founder of www.GotTrouble.com,
a law and financial trouble portal. He can be reached at henry@henrydahut.com and www.henrydahut.com.
This article is reproduced here by Divorce
Marketing Group with their full permission. Copyright - 2007 All Rights Reserved www.HenryDahut.com.This
material is copyrighted and is NOT in the public domain. You may not reproduce or
otherwise publish this material or any part thereof, in any form or manner without prior
written consent of the author.
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