Missing out on referrals means you are missing out on thousands in potential revenue. Many executive suite NYC attorneys may not even realize it and that’s a problem.
Office arrangements can vary whether it is a standard commercial lease, a sublet office in a shared space, or a virtual office set-up. With any arrangement, it can be very easy for a law firm to overlook referrals from other areas of practice.
Shared office providers like Law Firm Suites understand that referral systems are not only a good way to keep business for attorneys flowing, but they are necessary. Law Firm Suites personnel spend a lot of time helping clients find viable recipients within the office to take on 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.
Some referral matches can be unexpected.
Some referrals are quite easy to suggest. For example, a divorce attorney could easily refer a case dealing with child custody to someone specializing in it because it falls under the umbrella of family law.
Although a divorce attorney can easily refer a child custody case, they may even be warranted to refer a case to a corporate transactional attorney, especially if a successful entrepreneur plans to protect his or her business from the perils of a dissolving marriage.
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.
Think about attorney networking like high school. In high school, the jocks, nerds, drama crowd, and so forth typically socialize in their own circles and can be very cliquey. Law is very similar in terms of networking and you typically network with those you can get the most for potential referrals.
Business-to-business attorneys typically stay with with their own crowd because it is the easiest, however, there are definitely occurrences where the need for the circles to cross happens and both sides can find themselves on the receiving end of a referral from an unexpected place.
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.
Unfamiliar referral sources should certainly not be your bread and butter or the strength in your law practice, but thinking beyond your own networking circle is good for future business because it helps to minimize the competition.
If you’re a corporate attorney, chances are that not many other corporate attorneys will be actively pursuing a divorce attorney because of their lack of knowledge in doing so. You may find yourself reaping all the benefits.
