When Tom Young asked me to recap my presentation at the Radius of Influence, I thought that he might have been kidding. My presentation came at the end of a series of great presentations made by some of the most creative attorneys, marketers and techno-geeks in the business and at the end of a week of hell for me as a lawyer.
It being about 4:00 PM on a Friday, most of the group was tired, but I was exhausted. Tom had asked me to share some of the non-traditional marketing techniques that I employ but none of which I consider to be advertisement.
But first, I had to get something off my chest. I had witnessed a sudden and catastrophic physical breakdown of a lawyer against whom I had spent several hours litigating the day before. I had thought at the time I made my speech he had already passed away. The experience, gave me pause and an opportunity to reflect on the enormous pressure we all put on ourselves to advertise, market, tweet, blog, Facebook and get high search engine optimization (SEO) placements on Google. It made it all seem just “less urgent” when, in the end, anyone of us can get in our car, drive to the office and just … die.
And if you are still reading this, I imagine you too are focused on how you can market without advertising. This blog post, like just everything I do in terms of “marketing,” is part catharsis, part pleasure and part pain. In other words, I try very hard to communicate everything I do from my heart. It will defy those things that true “marketing geniuses” will tell you about the latest “keywords” or the newest “social media trick.” It’s just to be me. It may or may not make a lick of sense to anyone–and it may not even work–but I suspect it does.
So I wrote a book, not because I imagined it would become an Amazon Best Seller, but because I wanted to inspire kids from my heart to become lawyers. I wrote “Sara Rose, Kid Lawyer” to express to my own kids and their friends what daddy does for a living. All they see each morning, if they are even awake when I leave, is a daddy gulping down coffee and running out the door in a loud suit and pink tie. Occasionally, they will see me on the evening news talking about this injustice or that — when I force them to watch, that is. But why, how and who becomes a lawyer is a thing that most kids don’t know.
I decided to donate the proceeds of the book to a charity, Lawyers to the Rescue. I created my own charity because I was not “feelin’” that any other group I belong to was doing what was needed: changing the general public’s perception that lawyers are ambulance chasing scoundrels. Lawyers to the Rescue is a not-for-profit. It operates a free legal clinic for the homeless inMiamiand helps provide relief to those around the world when catastrophe strikes. We work with local law schools and their students who participate in our clinics get credit as well as the opportunity to work with lawyers side-by-side. More importantly, we hope to inspire law students (soon-to-be lawyers) to consider public service as a payment back for the blessings of having a law license.
I wrote a second book, “Make It Your Own Law Firm,” to give hope and direction to the thousands of law students who are graduating from law schools without jobs or any hope of ever becoming a lawyer. Having worked with Lawyers to the Rescue’s efforts across the country I find it to be a sad irony that so many people cannot get access to lawyers with so many lawyers unemployed. How is this possible?
Many people are amazed at the amount of publicity my cases garner. The truth is that to most effectively use the media, it has to be done as a public service and in your client’s best interest. Nobody but you is probably going to be interested in an old lady slipping on a banana peel at Wal-Mart, but if there have been an unusual number of falls, at a particular place, or an effort to conceal a danger at a hospital or by a manufacturer the public will want to know. Be careful not to try the case in the media; don’t push your story but the danger to the public.
And be careful. Most defendants do not want to see their name in the papers or on TV. They will try to buy you and your client’s silence with confidentiality agreements and then later claim that the event never happened. The media is a weapon and a tool, but not a marketing advantage. It should be used cautiously and only for the greater good of the public.
Spencer Aronfeld is the founder of Aronfeld Trial Lawyers in Miami. For more information, visit www.aronfeld.com or check out his blog at www.floridainjurylawyer-blog.com.