Anybody familiar with Findlaw?

John Durham has sold against Findlaw. In some of his posts he mentions the prices the lawyers he dealt with were paying, for absolutely no value. Do a search on WF.

Remember, Google is your friend, do a search -- 'findlaw website prices' and you'll see lots of info about how overpriced it is. I just Googled it to see for myself.

You're going up against business owners that don't want to take time to listen to your pitch, and that have a contract that they don't want to get out of, don't think they can get out of early, or don't care to change.

Also, most of those that use Findlaw use it for much more than just website management, they have the database/library of case law, and lots of aids for legal use. So if you aren't going to provide everything FL does, you aren't likely to get many defectors. They aren't with FL for the websites I assure you.

There's also the likelihood that if they don't fall into one of the categories above and don't use Findlaw, they use LexisNexis, which is Findlaw's main competition.

In my opinion, you are barking up a big tree if you are a small one man type operation...there are other niches that would be much easier to break into. Or, you can just hit up lawyers after researching their website to find that they either don't have one, or that they aren't hosted by FL or LN (it usually says "powered by" on the bottom, or something like that).

Chances are, if they don't have a website already, there is a good reason, because I assure you, LN and FL have already contacted them.

I'm not familiar with Findlaw, but most lawyers I suspect are disappointed with the amount of clients they attract from the internet (or at the very least want more).

Instead of going head-to-head with the big law firm site developers, offer lawyers something nobody does and that is pay-for-results. Find firms with lousy SEO who pay for PPC. Ensure they don't have too many negative reviews. Approach them and offer them a deal where they pay you for leads/new clients on a lead fee or commission basis. The commission basis is an easier sell because leads don't guarantee anything.

Lawyers earn huge fees from one client, so one sale can net you a big commission. Many lawyers pay $20 + average CPC. Assuming a 1% conversion rate, that means lawyers are willing to pay $2K for one client. That means there's tons of profit potential for you and the lawyers ... say $500 commissions.

This is what I do and it works like a charm.

If you try this, get one site ranked and getting traffic in a particular town for a particular type of law. Use this as your sales vehicle. Provide traffic screenshots for buyer keywords.

You can easily profit with PPC using this model if you know anything about PPC. Most PPC outfits lawyers hire aren't very good at all.

I have some experience with FindLaw. About a year ago Chris Winters did a WSO on ranking YouTube videos. Great course and after learning from Chris, I sent out some emails to a few local attorneys. One got back to me and took me up on my free offer.

He already had a FindLaw guy that he worked with and he sounded him out to see if I was nuts or for real. His FindLaw guy told him to humor me to see what I could do.

To make a long story short, I ranked this guy's video to the top of Google for a relatively broad local search term within a few weeks. The attorney's FindLaw guy then took me out to lunch basically to pick my brain on how I did it (he didn't say that, but that's what he wanted to learn). I told him everything he wanted to know.

What I learned from this experience was that this attorney was paying FindLaw $500 per month for a video that had a handful of views and didn't rank at all. I come along and rank the video at the top for nothing. I did this as a test, and to have some credibility for the next business owner I approached.

The fact is that FindLaw has contracts with their clients and there is not much you can do until those contracts expire. My experience proves that even smart attorneys can be ripped off due to their ignorance of internet marketing. Happens every day.

One of my attorney clients is listed with them now, she says that she doesn't really see any leads from it, but most of her competitors are listed with them too. I personally don't see it doing her any good, and have told her that but she wants to play in the sandbox as the rest of her competitors.

My old attorney used findlaw (as digichick pointed out) and was (still is) paying almost $1,100 bucks per month for his listing, which was supposed to be deep linked to different pages of his website, and wasnt, as the links all lead to the wrong places on his site.

Still, he had no intentions of ever stopping the service, and said it was infact bringing him an roi.

I think also with attorneys findlaw is kind of a "clique" thing, its kind of like a prestige deal that they all have to be on to be cool.

The interesting thing is that he is also a part of other directories and has a website... and even open to doing more things with it, and wanting to expand his web presence even more, without giving up his findlaw listing.

Another option--use your expertise and show them how to be better. They are looking for marketers, developers, business development people:
FindLaw Careers at Thomson Reuters

Put together a proposal and offer your services as a vendor. Could lead to more business at Thomson Reuters' other divisions.
Thomson Reuters | Home

I'm working with someone right now gunning against Findlaw. She's picked up clients when the attorney has been upset about Findlaw, or isn't using any online leadgen system. Those with Findlaw tend to stick with it, saying that it's bringing them results--even when we have evidence that it is not! That human need to be perceived as consistent in our behavior, regardless of the evidence or logic, strikes again.

Here's a question: why can't the lawyers run two inbound lead generation systems at once? If they're both effective and generating profit, why wouldn't you want to run both? To me, it's like saying "Nahh, I won't run Adwords...I already have Facebook Ads." Duh.

Now here's the surprising reality: lawyers are generally poor at selling. They know how to do free consultations, and then they literally HOPE the prospect calls them back! I have heard this in many, many conversations with attorneys.

Also, lawyers frequently do not answer their phone. As the person I'm working with said, "If you were in jail, would you leave a message for an attorney and hope they called you back?!" Nope. You'd move on. The lawyers as a group have not learned "First In Wins"...

...and the takeaway from this is that Even If They Get More Leads, They Won't Know What To Do With Them.

Working this niche, you're prospecting, you're really honing in to find "Your guy or gal"...most are not going to be a fit, and that's OK. The project sizes are quite decent when you do find the right prospect.

Do your homework, ask them why they are looking. It will be very revealing and the most helpful research.

The majority of my family is in law and I have had a great opportunity to learn about what really works for them and what doesn't. Findlaw is a company that actually does provide a great return for people. A LOT of law firms do not actively advertise their services because they don't need to. The longer you are in law, the more your name matters. Referrals are the greatest form of marketing for them.

The exception is an attorney that starts their own practice, usually in personal injury, and sometimes criminal defense. They are the ones looking to attract more people. The major law firms have all their clients paying retainers anyway or get a ton of referrals. You can easily target the bankruptcy lawyers, they need to make more money and in my experience 1 out of every 2 that defects from findlaw is a bankruptcy attorney that simply can't afford it.

There are countless attorneys that will buy multiple full page ads in the yellowpages simply to show they can. I have talked to a few that don't care if there is a return on them, because it shows stature among their colleagues. They don't care if they take a loss on them because it creates more notoriety and when someone comes to them, they believe that referrals will happen for years to come and they're right.

FindLaw, is a specialty company. To compete against them successfully you will need to specialize in websites and marketing for lawyers. Most attorneys are happy with them, simply because they don't really care, they don't have time for this stuff. The ones that fall away from findlaw are the ones that usually have some problems as a potential client.

The problems include:
1.) They have too much time, which brings us to..
2.) They aren't making much money from clients
3.) They see findlaw as a big expense
4.) They are needy and findlaw wasn't giving them the attention they need.

Many attorneys and law firms will have more success with a small offline consultant. You have to find an in though. If someone is looking for something "BETTER" than findlaw, then you might want to figure out the root problem.

For the guy that said most attorneys hate findlaw, that is absolutely incorrect. The majority of the good potential clients you can go after, don't have time to hate it. You can always position yourself to compete, but in my opinion, findlaw has a lock on the niche. I go after attorneys every now and then, but once you do it long enough, you know which types of law practices to avoid, and you have to really question them on why they decided not to go with findlaw?

Awesome discussion. Didn't realize there were so many people here that worked with attorneys.