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Legal Currents  0:00  

Ladies and gentlemen. Tonight’s spotlight shines on the rising stars of the legal world, where young firms, bold ideas, and smarter systems take center stage, standing tall at the intersection of law and leadership. He’s the digital strategist, the legal growth architect, the man with the mic. Make some noise for your host, Will McCreight. And today’s guest, proof that modern law isn’t about working more, it’s about working smarter. Welcome, Ron Latz. The game is changing. Let’s get you in it. This is Legal Currents with Will McCreight.

 

Will  0:39  

All right. Welcome back to another episode of the Legal Currents Podcast. Today, we have a very special guest, Ron Latz. Someone I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with, not just on the conference circuit, but some firms that we work with together as well. Ron’s the founder of Legal Phoenix, a legal marketing, advisory, consulting, and fractional CMO service. Before legal service, Ron spent a decade and, you know, built a decade’s worth of experience working in a variety of different roles and companies, learning the game from the inside out. I like to maybe describe him as the guy you go to when your check engine light turns on with your marketing process, or you’re just kind of looking to take things to the next level. There. Very, very lucky to have him on, and Ron, thanks for joining us.

 

Ron Latz  1:22  

I appreciate it, Will. I’ve been called like a mediator and a translator, but never brought to like the mechanic level with the check engine light. So I like the analogies.

 

Will  1:32  

I use a lot of car analogies. Funny enough, as someone who would not consider themselves a car guy, but like I said, Ron, really appreciate you joining us. You have a very fascinating story. So I want to start things off, you know, if you could kind of tell our listeners a little bit about your story in your own words.

 

Ron Latz  1:49  

You know, I’ve been in the space for about a decade and a half. Well, I started with Thomson Reuters within their legal division I did a handful of years there, really selling marketing and advertising to lawyers. So no, I think, similar to you, I really did care about my clients, and I saw just some of the challenges and struggles that they had faced working with marketing agencies and buying those types of products, really not understanding what they were buying or having the proper expectations about the results that they were supposed to achieve. And, you know, taking into account competitive landscape as well as how long some of these things might take to produce the outcomes that they had hoped for. I really stayed tied to the legal industry. Had my own consulting company, because after I had left, I still had clients that were just asking me, should I renew? Should I do this? Should I go with this agency, like, what? What’s the new and latest and greatest? So that’s why I stayed as close to it as I as I had over the past, you know, 10 years, 15 years. I then helped rebuild a smaller, boutique legal marketing agency. So I saw, like the operational side of the house, product development, handling, just customer success and sales, marketing, digital strategy, really just trying to put clients into the best products that they possibly could to achieve what they were trying to achieve. And I, you know, it’s funny, you talk about the check engine light. I still, I had a desire to kind of untether from the agency world, because it was hard to avoid the finger pointing where law firm is pointing the finger at the agency and vice versa about why performance was faltering or they weren’t hitting their growth objectives. So I fully took myself out of it, and now I consider myself more of a neutral third party that can put some accountability structure on both sides, because it’s not always the law firm’s fault and not always the agency’s fault. So if I can help bridge that gap and help put them into products and really put that accountability structure into place, you know, that’s what I’m trying to do at the end of the day with Legal Phoenix. 

 

Will  3:58  

Yeah, and we’ll talk quite a bit about that, because I think that really your presence within the firm should be viewed as a positive, obviously, not just for the firm itself, but for the agency, right? And so we’ll revisit that, but tell us a little bit about the different types of firms that you work with. I know that there’s quite a bit of range within some of those. 

 

Ron Latz  4:19  

Yeah, we offer legal, marketing, consulting and advisory, and then also a full blown, outsourced, fractional Chief Marketing Officer services. So the consulting side, it runs the gamut. I’ve got solo firms. You’ve got larger firms that have, you know, a marketing ecosystem in place, all the people, the process and the technology that’s in order, and they leverage us as more of a sounding board again, that neutral third party, since we don’t sell ads or SEO or design or develop websites, we’ve got no course in that race, right? So they can come to us and just either ask us to audit some things, help them put together a strategy, tie it back to business goals and objectives. Hey, what are some of the. KPIs, and you know, the metrics that we should be monitoring, and that’s across pretty much every single practice area. We’re not working with a ton of defense firms, insurance defense firms. It’s all, you know, plaintiff, B to C, types of firms across family criminal, PI, immigration, estate planning, and then on the fractional side, it’s just usually we’ve got to have, you know, at least some sort of marketing investment in place. They’ve got vendors that need either oversight or just a little bit more management to keep those lines of communication open. A lot of the firms that we work with will have a marketing coordinator or marketing manager that needs a little bit of support because they’re operating, you know, on an island, expecting to carry a lot of responsibility, so we can alleviate some of that burden from them, so that they can get the projects and the campaigns and all the great stuff that they’re looking to achieve for the firm just done at a little bit of a faster pace.

 

Will  5:56  

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you hit on a bunch of very important pieces there, you know, in a general strategy, something that I’m very big on is that there’s not ever just one way to get from point A to point B, right? Whether it’s growth, it’s using marketing. Is that avenue for growth, and it’s really just carving out that path that fits best with what it is you’re looking to accomplish. Marketing in general, or even digital marketing, you know, is definitely something that is a very broad term, right? There’s a lot of different things that can go into it, and sometimes it can be used as a catch all where you’re saying, Hey, I’m doing SEO, but I’m not doing anything at all, right? So I’m curious, you know, where does that conversation start when you first come on with a firm and you’re looking at the different options that you have. You know, how do you talk through these options and try and figure out which ones might be worth looking at first versus which ones might not be a good fit?

 

Ron Latz  6:53  

I mean, I start with some very basic questions, like, “Will, how often in your sales process or discovery call is a firm able to articulate and share with you, this is my marketing strategy. This is the goal and the objective. Here’s my benchmark for either case, acquisition costs or what I pay per qualified lead across these specific marketing channels. And does that tie into the overall business goal that we’re trying to achieve over, you know, a quarter or the half for the year, right?” Like, even when I was in a very similar role to you, I never really got a lot of that information up front. It had to be extracted. We had to have a lot of discussions around like, what do we need to do in order to help you become the firm that you want to become? So what I try to do is get an understanding of that first, so I can determine whether or not I can even help them, and if I can’t point them in another direction. And then if they are evaluating either an alternative agency or even a new agency, because they’re looking to go into a new channel, what I really try to understand is, at the end of the day, how are we going to define success? And then, if I can bring that to someone like yourself or another marketing partner, it’s on them to tell us, Hey, if this is what you’re trying to achieve, this is our recommendation. Here’s our proposal. This is what it’s going to take to be successful. And I think that’s the layer that’s missing in a lot of these conversations, because that’s how you’re able to hold each side accountable.

 

Will  8:22  

Yeah, crucial, right? And speaking from someone on the agency side of things, that information is so incredibly valuable because in order to, you know, determine what is a successful relationship or not, some of that basic baseline info, and you know, not just where we’re at now, but what those goals are, you know, is really stuff that’s going to be beneficial to an agency, and you have that experience as well. What would you say are in your experience, the most common things that firm owners don’t often think about, that they really need to get an understanding of in order to set their agencies up for success?

 

Ron Latz  8:57  

It’s not necessarily, I think, a misunderstanding. I think it’s lack of either historical and accurate data so that they can provide like, specific benchmarks without sharing any confidential information. We’ve got two, like, two very different shared clients. One was, you know, incredibly established, but their reporting infrastructure, the data, like the hygiene of that wasn’t in a place in which we could reliably use it in order to evaluate performance moving forward. So we bring in the correct partners. We dig underneath the hood and try to understand, like, whether it’s through call tracking, whether it’s through intake management and matter management, like on average, here’s how many organic or local, qualified or wanted opportunities we are delivering, and then we can provide your team with that information so that we can, you know, not constantly move the goal posts. We’ve got another situation where the incumbent wasn’t really delivering upon the promises in which they were telling the firm that they were going to deliver upon right. So that was a complete reset. And there’s, there’s costs associated with offboarding and an onboarding and bringing everybody up to speed as to what we’re trying to do here. So it’s not necessarily always the misunderstanding of the marketing approach or the philosophy or the methodology. Yes, they, you know, a lot of firms don’t necessarily have the subject matter expertise to have thoughtful or very strategic discussions and conversations about a particular marketing channel and the tactics that are associated with it. I think at the end of the day, they’ve got to make sure that they’re providing enough information to their marketing partners so that they can be put in a position to protect their investment and that those dollars can actually do what they wanted to do inside a particular channel.

 

Will  10:49  

Yeah, all, all fantastic points. And you know that draws inspiration. I know that you put up a post on LinkedIn recently, and for anybody who’s not connected with Ron on LinkedIn, I absolutely recommend you know, finding him on there, because you post very consistently, you post a lot of very valuable information, and it is or that your post was about the idea that, you know, firm A could be trying this from a marketing standpoint, getting great results. Firm B could say, Hey, I tried this, I got okay results. Firm C could say, I tried this, I got terrible results. And that doesn’t mean that any of them are wrong, right? It’s that unique experience. So I’m curious, you know, as someone who works with a lot of different agencies, what is that balance between, you know, drawing inspiration from things that you’ve seen historically work well, but also finding, you know, the time to cut ties if that’s not the right fit for a certain partner.

 

Ron Latz  11:38  

Sure, to that post, and I’ve repurposed that, I don’t know how many times, at this point. It’s a conversation that is always rearing its head whenever I’m talking with new firms and even even current clients. The gentle reminder, I believe, is appreciated. This might not be what some firms want to hear, but I think it is important for them to hear it. All of these channels work. It’s just whether or not they are going to work necessarily for you in your market, based off of the firm that you are trying to build and the goals that you want to achieve. So in some markets, there are firms that we work with where LSA is absolutely crush. In others, it’s incredibly volatile. It’s not a consistent source of lead gen. When you look at paid search and Google ads, if you’re in one of these major metros and you haven’t been investing in paid search, you’ve got players that are 5060, 76, figures plus a month that are absolutely dominating paid search because it.. If they’re spending that type of money for as long as they have been it’s likely working for them, right? Doesn’t mean that you should necessarily jump into the ads market, because the acquisition costs are the time that is going to take you to achieve that if you’re not capitalized properly, it’s going to be painful for the first handful of months, right? SEO very similar, if you’re trying to go up against other firms that have been investing for a decade plus, have been developing content, building backlinks, have very authoritative websites, or even firms that are heavily involved in their community, right? They’ve got that local trust. They’ve got a lot of brand awareness. They have ties back to smaller local businesses that can support them, right? You’ve got to be able to find your niche, your special thing, you know, your unique differentiator, so that you’re not attempting to play right, the national player or the heavy hitter game. As far as each channel, it’s very dependent upon how long that they’ve, you know, been been marketing, how long they’ve been doing something in particular, what the competitive landscape is, what the local landscape is from, like, a review perspective, right? But if you’re just putting up a shingle, and you’re in a major metro, or, you know, market, like New York, LA, Miami, pretty much anywhere in Texas, Vegas, right? You’ve got to have that war chest in the back, if you want to play in some of these channels, if not, if you’ve got more time than money, it’s grassroots. It’s good old, sales, business development, creating relationships, nurturing those relationships, and then the good quality service that you are offering, you’ve got to make sure you’re staying top of mind with your previous and current clients so that you can generate as many referrals as possible, because that’s how you’re going to keep your acquisition costs significantly lower than playing in some of these more aggressive, more aggressive channels that these firms are have been well established.

 

Will  11:39  

Yeah, it’s definitely a very difficult thing to answer, right to your point, originally, note, it’s not a one-size-fits-all all situation of. If we have anyone listening here, let’s say that they are very early on, right? They don’t necessarily have the resources to compete, you know, dollars wise, in their market. And they say, all right, based on what you’re saying, sounds like time is the right way for me to approach this, right? Using my time more effectively building these relationships, so community things along those lines. You know, what are two or three things that you would recommend people start with? You know, as far as how they can use their time to build that network and build that presence.

 

Ron Latz  12:45  

First and foremost, you have to offer a world-class service so that you can leverage those results that you’ve gotten for your clients, so that they can tell all their friends, family and colleagues about the incredible job that you did to increase inbound referrals. And if those people will shout your name and become evangelists and very loyal to you, right, parlay that into your Google Business Profile. Start generating reviews so that you can, even if you want, consider something like a local services ad, it very again, depends on your practice area. Personal Injury like you’re going to need to start getting, depending upon your market, a lot more reviews than you’re going to have to to run LSAs. If you’re an estate planning shop, or maybe even not even immigration these days, given the political climate. So, you know, those are things in order to ensure that you are getting more referrals, keeping your acquisition costs low, outside of generating that across other platforms, on social. So again, you’ve got more people leaving you positive reviews, very bullish on building personal brands as well, like obviously you already talked about, you know, my activity on LinkedIn. It is an opportunity for you develop relationships with other lawyers that can, again, maybe not in the same practice area, but if you’re, you know, practicing personal injury, develop relationships, engage with the family, the criminal, the estate planning lawyer, so that they think of you when they have a client that they can’t service. You can lean into newsletters, right? If you’re producing content on one platform, repurpose it, right? Kill two birds with one stone there. Try to have at least a weekly drop so that you could stay top of mind. And then try to, you know, create and use all of these different pieces to complement one another. And then when you get to a point where your revenue can allow you to invest in a particular channel, just a have realistic expectations and try to take a thoughtful and strategic approach about it, because things like SEO are going to be a little bit long term, and things like paid search are going to require at least your ability to sustain a reasonable investment for six to nine months before you’re starting to be profitable?

 

Will  14:54  

Yeah, I think newsletters is something that is, you know, an absolutely great place to start with. One of our previous episodes, we had Charley Mann on, who I know is a mutual friend of ours, who recently founded Red Kraken. Really looking to highlight you know that, but I want to talk specifically about LSAS for a second, because that is something that has certainly become top of mind for a lot of firms. Obviously, when it first was starting out, it was definitely something that was underutilized. I think now it’s it’s become much and much more saturated. If someone is looking at LSAs, you know, what would you say is a reasonable period of time to track success from LSAs, and if it’s working well, is there an ROI that comes to mind that you feel like is a metric of, hey, this is working versus Hey? Maybe we take these resources and put them elsewhere.

 

Ron Latz  15:15  

Going to be again, very market and practice area dependent here. I mean, initially it was like the gold rush, and the firms that really jumped on it, they were able to accelerate and expand their budget to start generating a lot of qualified opportunities. And if they were good at what they did and were able to convert those, they had some very healthy months of revenue there. More and more firms kind of jump in. And that heyday, I don’t think, is really here. I think that one of the challenges with LSAS is that you’ve got a lot of firms that are attempting to manage it in house. You’ve got a lot of firms that are having an agency, that are managing it, and might give up if you know they have, like, a low couple of weeks or a low couple of months. So you’ve constantly got people coming in and out of that market, which is why in many markets they they’re not as reliable or consistent. That. That being said, there are many other agencies that you know will deploy the strategies on behalf of our clients, but we have found that, you know, you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the infrastructure in place to respond to these leads very quickly. You’ve got to answer your phone calls, answer your messages, you’ve got to update the back end to even put yourself in a position to be successful with those types of ad units. So if you can’t do that, I likely wouldn’t be investing in it. As far as timeframe, listen, you can get LSAS to run pretty quickly with a decent sized budget, or, you know, again, depending upon your practice area, you don’t have to be throwing huge dollar amounts at it, and it might work for you within the first you know, four six weeks, six to eight weeks for an estate planning firm. You know, that’s something where I where I’ve seen results be generated pretty quickly for personal injury, like in a lot of those markets, because there’s some firms that are very aggressive, and have, you know, have had success, it’s going to take a little bit harder to break into it, and you kind of have to have your show budget versus what Google or LSAS are actually going to spend. It’s a little bit of a game there that you’ve that you’ve got to play. But even still, you know, I’ve worked with firms that, you know, we’ve dialed it in. Within the first two to three months, we’re starting to generate qualified and wanted leads. And you know, if you, if you get some, you know, high value cases there, that allows you to do more testing, adjust your your focus and your targeting. If you’ve got more Google Business Profiles, you can even expand it and try to occupy as much market share as possible. You know, anytime that I’m looking at some sort of return on paid search, like everyone is going to throw out, oh, I got to get 10x on this. I mean, listen, in some markets where acquisition costs for MBAs are as high as five or 6000 bucks, like if you are generating anywhere between three to 5x on that investment. I mean, I’m probably telling my clients to stay in the game there, because I don’t know where else you’re going to necessarily get that type of return in that short order, right? But again, very dependent, and it’s going to be highly driven by, you know, your risk threshold and how much you’re able to to invest over that, over that period of time.

 

Will  21:35  

Yeah, you talk about the idea of a gold rush, right? I think a lot of people look towards AI search, or AI in general, as maybe what this next gold rush will be. Something that I, you know, always go back and forth with, is the idea of trying to predict where AI is going to be six months from now, right? It ss a very difficult thing to do at the rate in which it’s evolving, you know, to what sense do you look at AI search as a future method, or even a current method of bringing clients through. And you know, what advice might you give someone who’s looking to utilize that, whether it’s now or down the line?

 

Ron Latz  22:15  

Over the past 15 16, years, Will like the search landscape and the way that those search results, you know, they look drastically different over that period of time, where you just had the blue links, and then you had local and then you had the introduction of paid ads, plus LSAs, then AI overviews. Now with AI mode, you know, there’s a lot of different places that consumers are going to be able to discover you and do research. And the challenging part, especially about whether it’s the LLMs or AI mode is how not only personalized that search is, but it’s it’s very conversational. And what’s happening is that the ones that are showing up, at least for the time being, it seems to be tied to those firms that mostly have had sound just best practices done from an SEO and a content perspective. Now, if you want to attempt to intercept that and not necessarily rely upon that non branded type of search, the way to do that is to continue to build in brand, right? You’ve got to have people that know who you are, what you do, where you do it, so that they are searching for you and the lawyers at your firm and your firm name, so that when they are doing those searches, as long as the results are professional and distinguished and they represent who you are as professionally as you possibly can, you know, you can hopefully bypass the one that is doing car accident lawyer in New York City instead. You know, now they’re just searching for the firm name instead, and they’re doing due diligence, still checking out your social, all of those profiles, if you’ve got video content, right, all that stuff is starting to appear. You’ve also now seen kind of the resurgence of a lot of the legal directories, because they’re using those as sources. Because when people put in like, who are the best attorneys, the top attorneys, that is what they are relying upon. So, you know, you’re seeing more and more firms, you know, invest there, but, but I think that the firms that are very actively involved in community, right? They’re engaged with the local businesses, and they are focusing on letting people know, like the actual brand and the person behind those firms, I think that those are the ones initially that are going to be able to win out, but we’ll see. It’s super interesting time right now.

 

Will  24:30  

Yeah, very much. So, you know, I think we’re, we’re both on the same page. You know that authentic reputation in the community is something that, as search becomes smarter and smarter is more and more difficult to fake, right? I think on my end, something that I see people leave out is they get 90% of the way there. They do all the hard work. They have these local events, they do this community engagement, but they fail to translate that to some digital perspective, and that’s something I would encourage everyone. To think about as well. Take the things that you’re already doing and just make sure that it’s in a digital format, so that search engines can understand that it’s out there, and you can take advantage of press mentions or things like that in your community to really capitalize on that something else you posted that I found very interesting. I think you use the words a marketing plan or a cheap marketing plan without a, you know, functional intake system is, is like a pouring water into a into a leaky bucket, something along those lines. And the idea of intake is something that’s also very nuanced, but very, very important, right? And so I’m curious if you have any experiences where that sort of played out, where you said, hey, look, we’re doing all these things the right way, but maybe it is an internal conversation of, is our intake actually capturing on that ROI? And in those situations, you know, what are your recommendations usually?

 

Ron Latz  25:54  

If you have gaps in intake or a leaky funnel, and your intention is to then go out and make a significant investment into any marketing channel. What I typically describe that is, is you investing in first core impressions at scale, because those individuals that then go to have an experience with your firm, if you can’t answer the phone, if you can’t return their email, if intake is taking their bad day out on prospect John Doe. If you’re not setting the correct expectations or following through on commitments, like sending the engagement letter or booking the meeting, that’s what they’re going to remember. They’re going to go back and tell their friends, or they’re going to tell their colleagues about how this law firm didn’t respond, or they didn’t call me back, or they said that they were going to do something, or I never heard back from the partner or the lawyer that was supposed to let me know if I had the case or what I’ve got to keep doing regarding medical treatment, whatever the case may be. There are plenty of firms that have come to us and they say, Listen, we want to we want to invest. And there’s nothing more as a marketer that I love hearing than we want to invest dollars to try to generate visibility. But then when I go and I look at call tracking, and if we’re missing, you know, 10, 15, 20% of phone calls, or I look into a CRM, and we identify things that are broken with the overall infrastructure, there it would be. It’s malpractice for me to then go and spend those dollars in channels, because they’re going to be wasted, or they’re not going to generate what they’re hoping for, because they’re getting the at bats and they’re just swinging and missing. So if you don’t have all of that really set up and locked down, I would say it’s much better than to keep those hard earned dollars in your pocket, instead of wasting them to an agency that you’re ultimately going to blame for the for the failure anyway. 

 

Will  27:42  

Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think, in my experience, a great agency is is oftentimes going to be weary to work with a firm that doesn’t have some of these simple processes at least in place, because that is an important part of collecting that ROI and making best use out of things, and that kind of segues us into that idea of, you know, something I think we’re both very familiar with, which is setting proper expectations. Something that we see very commonly, I’m sure you could attest to, is you have unrealistic expectations on both ends, right? You may have someone who has unrealistic expectations, where they’re looking for an agency to move mountains unrealistically, and you may also have firms that have unrealistically low expectations, where they may qualify somebody that they’re working with is doing a great job. But you know, in reality, they’re losing out on a ton because it should be better. So, you know, I’m curious, you know, how, what is that balance between holding vendors accountable while setting those realistic expectations? And do you have any experiences one way or another there?

 

Ron Latz  28:49  

Yeah, I’ve got a ton of experience and a lot of hard lessons learned just throughout the past, you know, decade and a half that I’ve that I’ve been in the space, and I just had a post, whether it was yesterday or the day before, and it was very professional and respectful discourse, if you will. But I had commented to somebody about how I basically thought that the agency was at fault for not walking away from the opportunity because they they were placing blame, initially, on the law firm for like, not providing the data or the target in which they were expected to hit. And my comment was, well, there’s, I understand that there’s frustration and disappointment here, but there’s shared accountability. It’s not all on the firm here, and I’ve been in your shoes, and I know there are plenty of other people that are trying to also make a living, and they are offering these products and services to the law firm, and it’s hard. I don’t like walking away from revenue and opportunities either, but if I know going into it at that firm that their tech stack is a complete mess, that they constantly miss phone calls. I could see on all of their reviews that they’re getting one two stars for being non responsive. They’re not getting the results. They’re over promising and under delivering, right. And then they come to the agency, and you’re the fifth or sixth agency in as many years. Like those are the red flags that I just wish more of the agencies would then say, You know what? I gotta walk away from this opportunity as much as I would love to work with the firm. And you know, I felt like, man, I could be the one that can save them. I can turn this around for them, right? Like, I’ve just found that, like, it is not worth the frustration, the mental anguish, and just how much of your capacity that they are occupying, because it’s going to be very difficult to please. So on the same side, if the law firm sees red flags with some of the agencies that they promised the world and that they can do absolutely everything underneath the sun, right, and there’s really no pushback, and they’re essentially just relegated to order taker status, and they’re okay with that. And I think the firm’s got a responsibility to say, Listen, I don’t know if this is going to be for us, right? It’s got to go both ways man.

 

Will  31:08  

Yeah, it requires definitely some, some internal, introspective thinking on both ends. It’s a lesson that, you know, I’ve certainly learned the hard way as well, where it’s very easy to take that, hey, this other agency did a terrible job at face value, but you almost need to look a step further and say, were they not put in a position to be successful, or vice versa? And that’s it’s a tough conversation to have. Are there any things that you know our listeners should run through an internal checklist of if they’re kind of thinking, Hey, am I? Have I been a bad fit for our agency? Like, what things do I need to make sure we’re checking off internally to, you know, put ourselves in the best position possible to get results from people that we’re working with.

 

Ron Latz  31:49  

It’s a great, great question. And, you know, a little bit of a sneak peek here. I will be hosting this exact topic on one of the upcoming Legal Phoenix webinar series installments. It’s currently attentively scheduled for September, where I will have two agency owners that are going to share all of the red flags that they believe, that they see on the other side. Because we always talk about the red flags for the agencies with, you know, agencies to avoid. You’ve got these listservs out there of everyone bad mouthing them, and it’s like, listen, it’s it really isn’t always the agency, right? I truly believe that that accountability has got to be shared both ways. So I’m going to have them come and speak to say all the red flags that they see. You know, with the law firms. A lot of it we’ve kind of already discussed, right? There’s infrastructure issues, there’s reporting issues, there’s unrealistic expectations, right? There’s service complaints, like in a lot of reviews, you know, they expect the world, right? So without, you know, giving up a too much, too much there, like, and not repeating myself for what we’ve already shared, like. There are certainly things that law firms have to look out for when they are talking, you know, with an agency, because listen when I’m evaluating clients, like when I hear these red flags, like I’m letting them know professionally and respectfully that I just do not think that there would be a fit here, and that there are other options out in the market that might serve them better.

 

Will  33:24  

Yeah and we’ll leave everybody there to come join that webinar. That sounds like a fantastic topic. So if you want to hear Ron, you know, and a couple owners go into much more detail there, I’d encourage people to check that out. Two final questions for you. First one, right, over 15 years, you know legal experience. You’ve, we’ve talked about things here, you know, intake, directories, agency, relationships. You know, what would you say is the most wrong headed notion that still persists in the legal industry, as far as all of these different platforms are just one thing that you hear consistently, time and time again, that you want to challenge from a belief standpoint.

 

Ron Latz  34:02  

I don’t know if I’m necessarily challenging it from a belief standpoint, but I think that a lot of firms think that they could just run the copycat playbook, like, Oh, if it worked for that firm, it’s going to work for me, which is usually not going to be the case. And one of the things that I think is a miss on the lawyers part, when they are getting referrals or they are asking about channel experience or results to expect, is that there’s always that just additional context that is missing. And what I mean by that is they might ask a firm about how paid search is working for them, and completely neglect the fact that they’ve been running TV, radio, billboard advertisements. They’re on bus wraps out there, and their brand is so strong, which is significantly going to complement their paid search efforts, they just look at it in a silo, right? I really look at the entire marketing function as an ecosystem. There’s a people portion, there’s a process portion, and then there’s the technology portion, right? And whenever you are talking with another firm, I think that the firm, the lawyer, should get as much information as they can about like, well, when you had that investment, like, how many intake resources do you have? What technology were using? How fast were you responding to them. Were there any other campaigns that you were necessarily running that could have improved those efforts? Right, so that you could just get the holistic view, instead of just being so singularly focused on just that one particular channel? Because all this stuff works together. It’s all got to be complemented. It’s all integrated, at least the ones that are the most successful. So that’s one of the things that I would at least I’m not necessarily challenged, but urge the listeners to do whenever they’re asking, like, how did this agency do? How did that agency do? What did this channel do for you so that you can make the best decision that you can for you, your firm and your goals.

 

Will  34:05  

Couldn’t agree more. Last question for you, you know, let’s say you put yourself in the shoes of a firm owner, right? You’re starting out from scratch here. Let’s say you have $20,000 to spend on marketing. Where’s Ron putting that $20,000?

 

Ron Latz  34:05  

I’m putting it into the infrastructure in the firm to ensure I’ve got a world class service. I’m going to go to either local bar associations or make sure that I’m having lunches, drinks, dinners, breakfast, coffees, whatever it is with individuals that I believe I can build out my referral network. I’m going to develop some sort of newsletter so I can stay top of mind with those individuals, and if I can afford, maybe a conference or something like that. Obviously, there’s a lot with travel logistics, you know, accommodations and things like that, but at least get myself out of my comfortable little nook and get out on the road and like network with individuals like yourself to see what the market has to offer, so I can put myself in the best position when I am ready to invest I’ve already got some some players in the space that I know I can talk to and I’ve developed a relationship with.

 

Will  34:05  

Are you more, you know, inclined to send somebody to a larger conference or to a smaller Mastermind? 

 

Ron Latz  34:05  

I think there’s benefits of both, right? It really depends on who’s going to necessarily be in that room, right? There are some Masterminds that you’ve got, some very mature and established firms that you know a lot of the advice that they’re going to offer might not be a fit for you. I’d still like to be a fly on the wall and understand like their journey and their path. But if you know you’re talking sub 5 million, or you’re, you know, at the six figure mark, and you want to break over a million, or something like that, or maybe you’re at seven or eight and you want to eclipse 10, right? You should just do your best to put yourself in a room where you’ve got the people there that have already done that so you can beg, borrow and steal and learn from those individuals who have already gone through it before.

 

Will  34:05  

Awesome. Really appreciate you joining Ron. Like I said, definitely encourage everybody to reach out and connect someone who I’ve had the pleasure of having a couple conversations with and absolutely thinks about things the right way. Go ahead and plug all your stuff. You know. How can people get in touch with you? Where can they connect with you? Where can people follow what you’re saying?

 

Ron Latz  34:05  

As you mentioned, I’ve been out posting on LinkedIn for the past four or five years. Ron Latz, I try to share a daily insight, or just something that’ll help lawyers avoid some frustration, heartbreak or financial despair. You can go to legal phoenix.com and on the website, you’ll find all information about my newsletter, as well as the Legal Phoenix webinar series that is hosted monthly with just other professionals across the industry, and hopefully you can learn something from it.

 

Will  34:05  

Awesome. Well, Ron, like I said, really, really appreciate you taking the time to jump on legal currents podcast. And you know, anything that you want to leave our audience with?

 

Ron Latz  34:23  

Just keep listening to this. I think you’re doing great job. Keep it up. Looking forward to listen to the rest of the guests you’ve already had some real, real great ones on it already, so I look forward to what you got in store. 

 

Will  39:06  

Awesome. Appreciate your time. Ron.

 

Ron Latz  39:08  

Thanks, Will.