© 2014 The Texas Lawbook.
By Sheila Sheley – (July 10) – If you value independence, want the freedom to be selective about clients and have an entrepreneur’s appetite for risk, you might be ready for your own solo practice. And now attorneys in Dallas who want to start a solo practice have a new resource to help their fledgling firm succeed.
One of the first big decisions to make as a sole practitioner is where to hang your shingle. It’s important to find a place where you can be focused, productive and project a professional image.
Some attorneys will start off working out of their houses to keep overhead low, but there are many obvious drawbacks to working from home. Aside from the many distractions competing for your attention in a home office, there is the bigger issue of appearing unprofessional. A client is unlikely to be impressed during a meeting in your dining room with kids coming in asking for help with homework or the dog barking at the mailman.
Executive suites provide a compromise of sorts – you get an office in a commercial setting with a receptionist, meeting rooms and access to a variety of other office amenities. The drawback is still about image – an executive suite almost always looks and feels like an executive suite with an air of impermanence about it. And there’s a missed opportunity for the synergy and referral opportunities that come from sharing space with other attorneys.
The bravest of the bunch are those new solos who find their own office space, negotiate a commercial lease, contract directly for all the needed services, then furnish, decorate and move in. This is a great option if your new venture is extremely well-funded and you’re willing to spend large chunks of time playing the role of office manager. It’s a heavy commitment, a big risk and a significant expense, and it may take years to recoup the investment.
The ideal solution for many solos might be a law firm incubator like the new Pearlstone Suites in Dallas. This unique space combines professional office space that is exclusively for attorneys with the law firm marketing and business development support needed to launch and grow a solo practice. Pearlstone Suites was designed to serve as a “launch pad for lawyers” by providing the right environment to help attorneys achieve success as a solo.
What makes Pearlstone Suites an ideal environment is the perfect combination of space and services. The offices are impressive, located in a recently renovated loft-style space with a professional law office reception area, stylish conference rooms and downtown skyline views from every office. The building is a historic landmark in the West End of downtown Dallas and walking distance from several of the local courthouses. The available services include everything an attorney needs to be productive: phone, internet access, copiers, secretarial services, IT support and more.
But even more importantly, attorneys who join the Pearlstone Suites community have access to a full array of law firm marketing services from Sheley Marketing LLC, a full-service legal marketing agency in Dallas. At Sheley Marketing, we know that an attorney’s ability to acquire clients is one of the most important factors that will impact the success of a new solo practice. The marketing professionals at the company have helped hundreds of Texas attorneys raise awareness of their practices, generate referrals and create new client relationships.
Without the revenue from consistent billable work, your practice could become a very expensive hobby. Business development is often an attorney’s least favorite activity but it’s vital to success. Every solo should have a written business plan that includes a detailed marketing strategy.
If you’re like most attorneys, the majority of your clients will come to you through referrals, either from other attorneys, clients or other professionals in your network. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to market yourself – it just means you don’t have to waste money on expensive tactics designed to reach consumers. Even attorneys with a completely business-focused law practice must market their services, either to prospective clients or to those referral sources and often to both.
Business-to-business marketing activities include branding, websites, brochures, press releases, newsletters, social media, events and a variety of other tactics. A great deal of law firm marketing now revolves around what we call “content marketing.” This means writing and distributing articles, blogs, e-books, newsletters and any other form of written communication that allows an attorney to display expertise in a practice area and establish thought leadership on the topic.
Most solo practice marketing consists of the basic, common sense staples: networking, writing and speaking. Professional marketing guidance can help steer attorneys in the right direction to ensure they pick the right mix of marketing activities to get the most benefit from their efforts.
It’s also nice to have help executing some of these projects – a well-written and thought-provoking article is a great marketing tool, but the key is distribution. With the law firm marketing experts on-hand at Pearlstone Suites, it’s like having your own marketing department. Let them invest the time to get your content distributed more widely so you get maximum mileage out of it.
If the article you authored is published in a trade publication or legal journal, republish it on your website, your blog or via your social media account. Another option is to turn it into an e-alert that you send directly to clients and referral sources. These tactics serve as “touch points” with your network to help you stay top-of-mind so you’re the first attorney they recall the next time they’re asked for a referral.
The technology industry spawned the original business incubators, which were designed to create an environment suited to taking an innovative idea and growing it into a business. The concept has spread to a wide variety of industries and helped countless start-up businesses grow into profitable companies.
Here in the Dallas area, there are incubators for technology starts-ups, new restaurants, consumer products companies and a host of other entrepreneurial endeavors. The power of expert insight, advice based on relevant experience and a support system of other people who are invested in the success of a startup cannot be underestimated, but this opportunity has not been available to attorneys in the Dallas area until now.
Pearlstone Suites is the first to provide this kind of incubator environment to the legal community in Dallas. The idea for Pearlstone Suites sprung from the legal marketing team at Sheley Marketing. It has been helping small and medium-sized law firms with client acquisition since the company was founded in 2009 by providing a full range of legal marketing and business development services.
We opened Pearlstone Suites to give attorneys the added value of a professional and supportive office environment combined with marketing – everything an attorney needs to start a successful solo practice. If you have been thinking about starting a solo practice, contact Sheila Sheley to find out how Pearlstone Suites can help you.
About Sheila Sheley
Sheley Marketing was founded in 2009 by Sheila Sheley. She is a results-oriented legal marketing consultant with a strong background in successfully promoting legal services, and she was the 2011 Chair of the Legal Marketing Association group in Dallas. Sheley Marketing LLC offers strategic marketing campaigns to law firms across Texas. The full array of marketing services provided by the team at Sheley Marketing includes advertising, public relations, branding and more. The team has served the marketing needs of hundreds of attorneys in Texas and they can be reached at 214-446-3905.
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