On average, law firms spend between $50 and $300 just to acquire one new client—and sometimes even more than that. Ensuring you have an efficient process to recapture missed opportunities and retain clients you’ve already won over can not only drastically cut your client acquisition costs. It can deliver a reliable stream of leads and paying clients that position your small local law firm for growth, new partners, and great possibilities.
In this guide, we’ll provide simple and effective strategies (including implementation methods) that smaller, local law firms like yours are using to do just that.
Retention Strategy 1: Feedback Loop
A feedback loop ensures that you’re hearing from clients how they experience your legal services, website, and services. Regular feedback provides reassurance that the office systems you have in place are working. But it also gives you an opportunity to address concerns directly and broadly with a client.
You may strengthen your bond with a client who was considering leaving you for a competitor, completely changing their mind. And when feedback is public—as it is on a review site—your attentiveness to client needs becomes a powerful tool to convince potential clients who are on the fence that you’re the best law firm in town.
How to Implement
- Fill out review site profiles completely. Your optimized Google Business Profile is a great place to start.
- Automate the review request process using an email or SMS (text message)-based system.
- Respond professionally to all reviews. This allows you to address any concerns quickly and remind happy clients that you value their business.
- Track overall review sentiment and identify any common concerns or praise to improve your processes.
- Consider AI-powered reputation management software to automate requests, generate draft review responses, and help you analyze your reputation.
Retention Strategy 2: Automate Personalization
Form letters are easy and fast. But a more personalized response demonstrates that you’re listening and value clients. Is it possible to develop a time-efficient way to provide a more individualized experience to clients? Yes.
How to Automate Personalization
- Leverage Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to manage and automate personalized communications.
- Check out the segmentation of clients based on recent actions, time with the firm, and other factors to deliver more relevant communications and content.
- Look for an AI-powered platform that can help your team build personalized first drafts of communications.
- Use SMS and email to keep clients informed and involved with the process through perfectly timed automated submission deadline reminders, important dates, and progress.
Retention Strategy 3: Value-Added Services
If a client has to go to a different law firm for a service or information you could be providing, that competitor has an opportunity to steal the client completely. So, it’s essential to evaluate your services and those of competitors to ensure you’re providing comprehensive solutions that meet clients’ needs.
One of the easiest ways another firm can filch a client is by providing them with free information you’re not. While you probably don’t offer free legal advice, some information should be freely given as a courtesy to attract and retain legal clients.
How to Leverage Value-Added Services
- Provide clients with informative resources such as newsletters, webinars, or legal updates.
- Explore content management software that makes it fast and easy to plan, create, manage, and repurpose content all in one place.
- Keep clients up-to-date about new services, resources, and special events through your website, Google updates, social media, email, and SMS as appropriate.
- Communicate with clients during introductions and consults. Let them know you’ve created these added services to enhance their experience and you appreciate their honest feedback.
Retention Strategy 4: Written Client-Retention Plan
Want to learn how to retain legal clients? Get your plan in writing. Like so many things in our lives, a law firm and the need for legal services and reviews can become out of sight, out of mind. You need a clear plan you can execute consistently to bring people back.
How to Create a Written Law Firm Client Retention Strategy
- Use data analytics to pinpoint clients who haven’t engaged recently.
- Create targeted campaigns to reconnect with these clients, offering incentives or updates on new services.
- Consider using retargeting ads using your contact list to get back on the radar of past clients.
- Establish a loyalty program for long-time clients.
Retention Strategy 5: Streamline Client Services
It’s not just about the legal service you provide. Clients today are looking for accessbility, ease-of-use, and exceptional communication. Testing and optimizing client tools can go a long way toward keeping high-value clients and bringing in new ones through stellar online reviews.
How to Streamline Client Services
- Ensure your website is fast and user-friendly. Ensure you have easy online booking, rescheduling, payment processing, and communications preferences.
- Publish well-organized and helpful local legal content to both attract and re-engage leads and clients. Consider adding relevant calculators (e.g., alimony calculator for a divorce lawyer) and explainer videos that help people understand and feel at ease about the process.
- Automate communications to keep clients updated and feeling that their needs are being attended to.
Retention Strategy 6: Localize Your Online Presence
Localizing your online presence allows you to focus on building visibility in your local community, where people are most likely to become your clients. It also ensures that strangers, leads, and clients in your community see your law firm more often in various local online and in real-life contexts: Google, social media, review sites, directories, voice search, Maps, paid advertising, physical signage, media mentions, and direct communications.
Each of these casual encounters may be quick, almost indetectible to the conscious mind. But they work together to become gentle reminders for clients to reconnect and lead to finally schedule that consultation.
They can add up to a powerful local presence and tremendous visibility in your local community that helps you compete in your area.
How to Localize Your Online Presence
- Invest in local SEO and other strategies to get into the top 3 on Google Maps.
- Identify key local directories and professional directories and fill these profiles out completely with consistent information.
- Update your Google Business profile regularly
- Build visual and written content around your local community, festivals, events, teams, and landmarks to communicate your localness.
- Collaborate with local businesses to host events that help both of you reach new people.
- Get involved in your community with local charities and organizations and share your experiences on social media, etc.
- Geotag your photos and videos to identify where you are
- Explore local marketing software designed to help lawyers streamline and automate these tasks.
Retention Strategy 7: Review and Adjust Retention Strategies
It’s vital to take a step back and reevaluate your retention strategies periodically. Are you attracting the best clients for your practice? Are you keeping them engaged so they stay with you long-term? Can you effectively re-engage leads that drop off before becoming clients?
Do you need better tools to get the job done?
Retention tools and strategies are constantly evolving and becoming more accessible and cost-efficient for small local businesses like yours. It’s important to reassess how you can use these tools to streamline operations and position your firm for growth.
How to Implement
- Identify KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) you can track over time to know when your strategies are working. KPIs like retention rate, lead-to-client conversion rate, customer acquisition cost, local online visibility, and revenue growth as just some ways you can track this.
- Integrate client feedback into your evaluation. Do your clients appreciate your extra efforts for personalization, user-friendly website features, and value-added services? How can you use this knowledge to enhance your strategy?
- Look into marketing tools that can help you streamline and automate. When integrated properly into your workflow, they can help one person do the work of 10 to retain and re-engage clients like never before.
Building Lasting Client Relationships
In the legal profession, success isn’t solely measured by the number of new clients acquired but by the strength and longevity of existing client relationships. Your ability to retain clients and re-attract clients doesn’t just help you cut costs. They allow you to establish yourself as THE law firm in your field—at least locally where that label matters most.
By proactively engaging with clients, personalizing communications, offering value-added services, and continuously refining your approach based on feedback and performance metrics, your firm can foster trust and loyalty. These efforts not only enhance client satisfaction but also position your firm as a reliable and client-focused practice in a competitive market.
Remember, the goal is to create a client experience that encourages ongoing engagement and referrals. By prioritizing client retention, your law firm can build enduring relationships that contribute significantly to long-term success.
We want to help you grow your local law firm with an all-in-one local marketing platform designed with practices like yours in mind. To find out more about marketing automation, personalization, and yes, even how to use AI responsibly to save time, we encourage you to schedule your free demo.