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Throughout the legal profession, the pressure to win new clients and increase visibility in the marketplace has skyrocketed in the past decade. With nearly 15% more lawyers in the country than ten years ago, this pressure is especially felt by independent law firms who struggle to get known, gain clients and be financially viable while concurrently building a reputation in their community that drives new business.

In a saturated legal market, getting new clients is incredibly difficult to do. Traditional advertising is dead. Standing out on price alone will almost always be a race to the bottom.

But there's another way: legal tech. The 21st century has seen the rise of a connected world and streamlined everyday services—think Facebook, Uber and Amazon—legal tech too is creating a new frontier of services for independent lawyers that can truly transform their business into a successful practice.

Facebook connected the world with an easy-to-use platform, and Uber took the pain out of hailing a car, new services are connecting consumers directly with attorneys right on their mobile phones—no more wasted time playing phone tag.

In an industry that moves at glacial speeds, attitudes toward technology are starting to improve. Independent attorneys and small law firms are realizing they can fix their business development issues through low-cost, highly effective technology that will increase business and build a strong digital reputation.

According to Thomson Reuters' 2017 State of U.S. Small Law Firms study, 17% of lawyers surveyed thought of DIY (do-it-yourself) legal websites as competition, up from 11% in 2016. This number was even higher for solo attorneys, 28% of which identified DIY providers as competitors.

The truth is, DIY sites are competition for one-offs like wills and contracts. However, there will always be a strong market for quality, trustworthy legal advisory.

According to the same report, 71% of respondents who indicate they have a challenge acquiring new business say they are not addressing it.

Furthermore, Brian Leiter's Law School Reports show that extrapolated IRS data indicate that solo practitioners make an average of $64,422, which doesn't include those who didn't make a profit.

There are many legal tech tools dealing with the actual nature of legal work—from using artificial intelligence and automation tools to track documents and complete tasks—there are now tools to help solo practitioners and smaller-staffed firms with business development and brand exposure as well.

Solo attorneys and small practices can greatly benefit from today's legal tech tools. They should examine their current marketing strategies, discontinue often costly marketing tactics that are not yielding results, and divert that investment toward legal tech—often saving substantially in the process.

The same way people like to scroll through options on food delivery sites like Seamless, dating apps like Tinder and product sites like Amazon, they too will want to connect with attorneys in a digital manner.

Gone are the days of cold calling, waiting for referrals and direct response advertising. Today's solo practitioners and small law firms should embrace the new technologies that consumers are using to find new attorneys—and be among the first to increase clients, exposure and revenue.

 

Felix Shipkevich is the CEO of Hotspot Law, a platform connecting consumers to attorneys. He has also been a New York City-based attorney for over 16 years.