Fishing for Clients...

 

 

Unless you live in a cave, or you practice in a larger law firm, chances are that you have had a telemarketer from LegalFish call you.

 

Well, guess what?  The VP of LegalFish (Randy Revoyr) called me, and I'm not even a practicing attorney!

 

Here's the scoop:

 

After sending out a press release for PremiumPractice.com a couple of weeks ago, this guy Randy called me.  I didn't pick up the phone.  Then he e-mailed me.  I sent him an e-mail telling him -- essentially -- to buzz off.

 

But, the persistent bugger e-mailed me back, and promised me that he's got something great for you, my dear readers.

 

Suspicious as heck, I called him back, but recorded the call.  You can hear it below (approx. 41 minutes):

 

(Note:  This is for small firm lawyers only... for larger law firms -- please read another review)

 

 

 

 

Mp3 Download Option

(Right Click and Select "Save Target As")

 

After speaking with Randy, I called up his references... and I asked my website visitors to give me feedback.

 

Based on the feedback that I received, I have decided to place LegalFish into the "Not Recommended" section of this website.

 

You can learn more about why I did this, by clicking on the link below:

 

Something Fishy with LegalFish

 

In case you're interested, here are the e-mails that were exchanged between me and Randy (slightly edited for clarity):

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Michael,

 

I read your PR release on OpenPR. I am interested in speaking with you; your unique background very much caught my attention.

 

If you’re not familiar with LegalFish, I invite you to visit our website at www.legalfish.com. We’re a nationwide service connecting clients with lawyers through our website and with the assistance of our experienced customer service staff. Firstly, we pre-screen all of our lawyers to make sure they have no record of discipline with their state bar to protect the consumer. Secondly, we limit the number of members to 3 to 5 per county and per legal category so there is limited competition between members. We also protect our members’ time by showing them case summaries which they can pursue if interested, rather than listing their name so they receive unwanted phone calls all day.

 

LegalFish advertises to clients where we have attorneys available to help them. And we recruit lawyers through direct sales.

 

You’re welcome to call me at your convenience.

 

Best,
 

Randy Revoyr

VP/Sales & Business Development

LegalFish, LLC

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Dear Randy,

 

Thank you for contacting me -- your company sounds like it has a very good business model.

 

However, I am not interested at this time in LegalFish.

 

I used to work at a similar company, and was not very pleased with what I saw. If you can tell me why you are different and/or better than
LegalMatch or Casepost, please let me know.
 

 

However -- if you e-mail me back, please note that our entire e-mail
correspondence thus far (and any future correspondance) may be published
in my newsletter and on my website. I reserve the right to publish a
negative review of LegalFish.
 

 

Please do not call.
 

 

Thank you,

Michael

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Michael,

 

Thank you for your response. I would be happy to share with you a few
comments on how we differ from our competitors as I am very familiar with a few of them.

 

I sincerely hope that your impression of the attorney/client matching space has not been sullied by your experiences with our competitors because we strongly believe in the viability of this space and that there is a definite trend away from listing services, especially the phone books, to more interactive services such as LegalFish, Casepost, LegalMatch, and LawQuote.

 

The service model was introduced with LegalMatch’s launch back in 2000, and now, well established listing services such as Lawyers.com and FindLaw have recently launched their own matching services, Martindale-Hubbell Attorney Match and FindLaw's LegalConnection.com. We are happy to see more
competitors entering this space since it is validation that this model works despite the mistakes made by some of our competitors.

 

(Editor's Note:  No, it's not a validation that this model works.  It just means that all of these companies have found that it's easy to suck money out of lawyers' wallets, because online legal advertising is hot right now.)

 

The faults I see with those competitors, namely the ones you referred to in you email, are (1) they are rather pricey for many solo practitioners and small firms; and (2) they are strictly automated which means that potential clients often have to wait around until a lawyer responds. In addition, the participating lawyers are left on their own to try to effectively market themselves to these clients through email. What generally ends up happening is that it works very well for a few attorneys (the ones know how to use the system and do so aggressively) but very poorly, or not at all, for most. In addition, some of our competitors have engaged in heavy handed sales tactics which have resulted in complaints by many attorneys. We have deliberately shunned such tactics and will only bring on an attorney we are confident will benefit from our service. We have turned down sales simply because we did not believe that the prospective member attorney would have found real benefit with our service.

 

We knew these challenges going in and developed our model accordingly.
LegalFish has an attorney-trained customer service staff calling clients
after they submit their case to give them a level of personal service right away, provided we have an attorney member in their area who handles their type of matter. This gives our attorney members enough time to get back from court, finish working with their current clients, manage the office, etc., before responding to this client by phone or email if interested. If a potential client submits a case with one of our competitors and gets no response whatsoever, they do not wait long before going to the phone book, a friend, or their local referral service and the attorney may lose the opportunity. By utilizing this hands-on personal service approach LegalFish is able to complete a higher percentage of client/attorney engagements per case submission -- which means more value for our attorneys and better success rate for our clients.

 

LegalFish also offers its service on a month-to-month basis. Furthermore, we commit to providing our members continuing service until they choose to retain at least one client through us. This significantly mitigates the inherent risks that attorneys and law firms take on in their traditional advertising initiatives where they are often confined to one-to-three year contracts with no guarantee of results.

 

We are confident that this entire industry will continue to grow quickly in the coming years since it is better way for parties seeking legal representation to find the right lawyer for them. Furthermore, we feel that as a company, we are well-positioned to provide the public with an increasingly necessary service.

 

Even if you remain uninterested in working with us, I hope I have managed to give you a more clear and more positive impression because we believe LegalFish and companies like us are more than just a good idea. And if nothing else, I am curious to learn more about the core of your business, premiumpractice.com, since I believe you have some excellent ideas. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Best,
 

Randy Revoyr