If you’ve been practicing law for more than 20 minutes, you get calls from vendors selling leads. They tell you they’ve got potential clients in your market who need your services. They explain that their leads will quickly turn into revenue for your practice.
Of course, these lead sellers want you to pay them for the leads. Each seller has its own scheme, but basically, they all want you to pay them to direct these potential clients to your door.
I’ve been getting these calls for many years. Some of them come from shady companies. Some of them come from the big names in the legal marketing arena.
I’ve purchased the services offered by some of these vendors over the years. On occasion, we’ve purchased one of the small, short-term, introductory packages.
Can Lead Sellers Deliver the Goods?
Each of these services has had one thing in common.
The leads are crap.
Unfortunately, the people these vendors send you rarely—very rarely—turn into decent cases.
The prospective clients usually suffer from at least one, if not several, of the following flaws:
- They aren’t in our area.
- They have no money.
- They have a problem neither we, nor any other law firm, can solve.
- They’re crazy (crazier than our typical clients).
- They raise every red flag we’ve ever heard raised.
The leads are consistently useless. I’ve always wondered how the vendors stay in business. Some of them have been around for quite some time. I don’t really understand how these companies survive.
Maybe the leads work in other practice areas. Maybe they’re good for personal injury practices. All I know is that these folks aren’t worth the time it takes to return the calls. The leads are awful.
That’s my experience. Is it any different for you?
