What if you were missing out on thousands of dollars of revenue in client referrals because you did not have adequate knowledge of every practice area that could send you business? Many executive suites NYC lawyers may be doing this without even realizing it.
No matter the office arrangement, it is quite possible for an NYC law firm to overlook quality referrals from other practice disciplines.
At shared office providers like Law Firm Suites, a quality referral system is necessary for lawyers to have exchanges and do business. A good portion of our day here is spent on helping our clients find suitable recipients for many of these referrals.
After years of successful matching referrals with appropriate practice areas, we started to notice something strange. On a consistent basis, referrals were flowing between practice areas that you normally wouldn’t expect.
A few examples of unexpected practice area referral synergies.
It is easy to suggest that a corporate transactional attorney would refer a potential case to a commercial litigator. Their practices areas share so many similarities. But transaction attorneys may even be able to refer business to divorce lawyers. Apparently successful entrepreneurs are more married to their business than their spouses, resulting in a high volume of marital strife. Even immigration attorneys will see a need to refer trademark cases to intellectual property lawyers.
It occurred to us that if we were overlooking potential referral synergies, even with us being in the middle of thousands of referrals each year, then our clients may be too.
Mismatched attorneys generally do not travel in the same networking circles.
If we go back to the example of corporate attorney-divorce attorney, we can gauge the the corporate attorney will like be networking with business-to-business attorneys. These types of lawyers can refer to tax, M&A, IP, or patent law. In contrast, divorce layers are business-to consumer attorneys like T&E, consumer bankruptcy, and personal injury. Corporate attorneys send an average of three to five cases to divorce attorneys each year.
We believe this is the primary reason why attorneys tend to overlook these other practitioners as potential networking targets.
Develop referral relationships without much competition.
By taking a closer look at all the potential avenues for new clients referrals, you can strategically expand your networking activities to include these other professionals, thus expanding your base of referral partners.
These “uncommon” referral partners may not be able to send as many cases as you best referral sources, but because few attorneys in your practice area are not thinking “outside the box” when it comes to different sources of new business, you’ll likely find that there will be very little competition. So if you are that matrimonial lawyer, chances are there will be few, if any, other matrimonial lawyers actively courting transactional attorneys. All that business could be yours.
Find out what potential referral sources you are overlooking!
Get our eBook: “How Legal Referrals Flow”
