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- [00:02]
A
Hey, it's Sam Alai here, founder of my legal academy where we help lawyers scale and automate their law firms so they could send up more clients and reclaim their precious time. If you're looking to grow your practice while working less, click the link in the show notes to book a free call to discover a radically different way to grow your law firm. Enjoy the episode.
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B
Hey there fellow law entrepreneurs. Welcome to episode 432 of the Law Entrepreneur. I'm your east coast host Neil Tyra and joined by my friend and good buddy Sam Malai out on the west coast. How you doing out there today Sam?
- [00:36]
A
Very good, feeling good. Got a good two or three hours of learning today. So feeling great and feeling like sharp to share some good insights to our lawyers. Neil, today we have a pretty good topic for estate planning lawyers. You happen to be one for how many years? How long has it been?
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B
Let's say I switched over to estate planning in 2014, so 10 years now.
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A
Amazing.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And this the title is How I would to Ex in a State Planning law firm in 2025. It just happens to say I would but it's actually we would but just we just know that I would does better. That's the reason we made it that title. However, you know, I just don't want estate planning lawyers to just listen to this. The frameworks that we'll be sharing with you, a lot of it is things that are going to help you in your practice no matter the practice type. You'll see what that means as we go through them. So stick around and especially if you are a state planning lawyer or if you know an estate planning lawyer, definitely share this episode with them. There's a lot of good insights. All the right strategies literally for HUD and State planning Law firm. This is exactly the framework I will follow and also I'll lean on Neil's experience when it comes to this and it should be a pretty good value packed episode. And Neil, we're going to make this a series we're having. We're doing immigration next, personal injury, family law and possibly other ones. The very consecutive episodes right after this. So let's do it. Starting with number one, how I would 2x state planning law firm 2025 Neil, if somebody would put a gun to my head, as serious as that sounds, say you have to 2x your law firm, your estate planning law firm. How would I do it? Well, number one is I would go all in on social media ads. Social media ads. What are we talking about? Usually one of three sources Starting off with meta ads and I'll be today I'll be specifically talking about meta ads the most. That's probably the foremost. Number two, it's tech talk ads and number three is YouTube ads. First of all, before I even get into it, let me just share everything that we're about to share in this episode and future episodes is all done inside of our My Legal Academy program. This is exactly what we want are experts at when it comes to the marketing side, the automation side and the hiring side. Everything we'll be talking about is if you look into do all these things, you know, we just give you the game plan in this episode but if you want support to get these done. Mylegalacademy.com mentioned that you came from our podcast. So we know that it's worthwhile to do these episodes. That way we'll be able to support you. So social media ads, meta ads 4. State Planning first of all, uh, Neil, this is a blue ocean. It has been a blue ocean for state planning lawyers. A lot of people that are a lot of state planning lawyers. The dominant place where most people state planning lawyers invest their marketing budget and their efforts is on Google. But that also means they're leaving. They're ignoring one of the bigger platforms which is meta, which is basically Facebook and Instagram. There is an assortment of estate planning lawyers that have done it, that are doing it, currently doing it. Neil, I happen to have a list of 20 state planning lawyers. Most of them, 80% of them are active. And I check on these every couple months to see who's still doing it. Have they scaled it up? Are they consistently putting up ads? Well, if I see that there's at least a dozen estate planning law firms, they're smart ones that are doing it over a long duration of time, couple months, couple of years that I know it's working. And over time we pick up on the patterns of what's working, what's not. We pass over those frameworks and those formulas about what type of creatives ads work best, what type of funnels work best to be able to qualify your leads and capture those prospects to get clients signed up. So it's a call to action if you're looking to double your law firm. Number one, you need to be running ads on meta, on Facebook and Instagram to generate estate planning clients. There is a learning curve to doing this. It requires for you to know what type of creators to put up, how to attract your clients. But there's a framework that we have that's proven we Run those. We qualify our leads, bring the leads into our CRM. We have our intakers who calls up these leads and qualifies them and signs them up. It's a winning framework. It's something that's, that is kind of given in the works. Neil, any insights about the first point?
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Yeah, I would say one of the things that I've seen with folks in the estate planning space who are doing social media ads, a lot of them are using canned or public domain images. I would be a little careful of that. I've seen multiple law firms offer up the same image of the same loving family. I'm guilty of it as well. And so we're getting ready to, to redo our website and update all those graphic images because they become ubiquitous amongst estate planning attorneys. And so you want to set yourself apart. If I had a recommendation, and I'm interested, Sam, and how you feel about this. If you're going to include pictures, graphics in your social media ads, make it of you and your family.
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Okay.
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B
The highest reference I get when I ask people what attracted you to our law firm, Aside from Google reviews, which we'll talk about in a minute, it's always that picture of your wife with the dog. It's not some canned picture, you know, opposed family that's offered through all these photo listing services. It was just a candid photo taken of my wife with the dog, looking at her. And it's a spectacular photo. And people connect with you on a personal level when they see something that. So yes, social media, absolutely. It's the only way to go, frankly, because the clients that you're looking for in the estate planning space, that's the only place they're going to see you is on social media. They're not going to re their direct mail campaigns, they're not going to do it. Print advertising, they're not going to do it. All the other opportunities for you to market your firm, they don't reach the same people and the number of people. So you're right, Sam, social media ad, the only way to go, double down and when you feel like you're spending too much, spend some more.
- [07:19]
A
And I'll give some hints about what type of ads on creatives are working right now. Number one is as Neil, as you mentioned, there is a trend towards authentic and realness. So no more stock photos. Stock photos do not work. Just pull out a Google image about state planning. Forget about it. You're just burning money. A lot of times people fall for that and then they just blame Facebook, Facebook Ads doesn't work. What is this guy talking about? So that doesn't work. Number two, image ads don't nearly work as well as video ads. So usually video format, there's very particular formats of video that works best and then there's usually certain hooks, certain lengths, certain styles, certain language, all that stuff. There's a whole method to the madness that we share with our members about what works. And we have those again, we have the SWAT files, we have the winning ads. We also see things that work in other practice types that we bring into estate planning and we kind of package it up and say this is what works, go ahead and let's launch these. But those are the kinds of things you want to avoid against stock. And just general images are not going to cut it in 2025 and beyond. Let's go to point number two. We want to keep this going. By the way, we are live on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. If you are here and you're watching us, please just give us a like and just say hi in the comments so we know you're there. And obviously we have our law entrepreneur podcast if you're listening on there. Uh, it's amazing to have you. Our audience is growing. It's amazing, feels amazing and we appreciate you. Uh, Neil, go ahead with point number two. What is the second thing we would do to double a estate Planning Law Firm? 2025.
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B
And so this is something of a new thing in the estate planning space and that's creating an estate planning membership program. And there's a number of different advantages to this coming from the client's perspective. It gives them a, a peace of mind and comfort in knowing that the estate planner is just not a one off experience with them. That they don't just, you know, get their estate planning documents and have a big celebration. Hey, we signed those. Thanks a lot. And then they disappear. If they have a subscription service where they know they're going to be part of your contact scenario, your contact schedule on an annual basis and sometimes more frequently than that, and that they know that they can be assured that you're going to check in with them to make sure that your estate planning documents are up to date given what is going on in your life, if there's any major changes. So why or what are some of the features of membership service? Well one, you know, as I said, annual document reviews, but you also get them pretty admission to your live Q A sessions. You do those on a regular basis. That helps them to recognize. Oh well, I hadn't thought about that, maybe I want to make a change to my estate plan based on what was talked about in Q and A session. We just did one today, frankly, having to do with changes in the law with respect to irrevocable trusts and how properties are handled in irrevocable trusts. You will also see membership options that allow for priority access. And so like for instance right now I was telling Sam December is to estate planning attorneys, as April is to tax attorneys. And so everybody wants to get this stuff done by the end of the year. Well, if you're part of the membership program then you get bumped up in the queue and so there's a better chance that you're going to be seen and your needs addressed before the end of the year. So these are very popular with I would say clients that are in middle class to upper middle class, certainly for high net worth clients. If you're doing high net worth clients, they want to know that they have their estate planning attorney essentially on retainer. But it has value even for, like I said, you know, clients of modest means, you know, middle class, upper middle class. And the way to approach this is to make it a personal invitation.
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A
Okay.
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B
You don't want the client to think that everybody gets this opportunity. You want them to feel special. So I don't, I've seen folks now, I don't do it membership program right now for a number of different reasons having to do with me personally and the fact that I'm getting ready to celebrate a very big birthday here shortly. So I don't know how long I'm going to be able to offer that service. But I know people who do. And one of the things that attracts it to their client base is that they know that you're always going to be there for them. So that's a change in the paradigm for estate planners that I think is going to be more the norm than the exception. And if I wanted to grow my firm 2x next year, I would certainly commit to doing that more. One other thing, it creates a steady revenue stream. Right. So it's something you can count on. You can look at how many people are in your membership program, you know what type of membership fee they're paying and, and there's a constant revenue stream. So right there it has value.
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Totally. Neil. It's very hard to be in a business that's like has a one offs as your main service because you're consistently have to produce sales and it's a rat race of a business to be in that kind of business. And I know a lot of your businesses are like that and it's okay, but you want to take the initiatives to be able to build a reoccurring subscription based on an ongoing service that is a service and also part of identity of some kind of community that you continue to provide value and education. Even beyond the things that we talked about. The typical stuff with the. Neil, you mentioned they could also. You could host events or parties or send gifts. That could be a big part of that. And I know a lot of people think like, well, maybe my clients can't afford it, all that stuff. Well, you're not looking for 100% conversion rate. You know, even if you get 20 to 30% of your clients to roll into ongoing basis, that could be a game changer for you. And there's a lot more to what could this could include. I'll just try to give some ideas, you know, unlimited minor updates for me, Neil, you know, my things, my accounts and stuff is changing all the time. If I can at least on a quarterly basis update my, you know, my portfolio and my trust, you know, that's very crucial for me. Having access to a dedicated estate planning advisor, having access to a tax planner, exclusive member events, discounted rates on additional services, access to different vendors, different things, tax optimization updates, you know, also including potentially bringing on guests that could also talk about crypto and you know, other types of assets, the real estate seminars, all that stuff. You know, if you put your mind to it and you put together like a comprehensive package and you think about, you know, what would I want as one of my own clients and that I could provide the value. You'd be so surprised how many people will actually be interested in it and will actually take up on your offer. Let's go to point number three is if you haven't already, 20, 25 might be the year for you to bring on virtual more. Either bring in your first or more virtual assistants in your practice. Neil, as I talk to my members and I ask what's going on? Give me some updates. Give me some good updates. One of the first things that I was here is, you know, Sam, you introduced me to virtual assistants. I'm so grateful that I now have three or four virtual assistants. And usually the quantity of the virtual assistant is something that I think a lot of law firm owners are very proud of, which is commendable. But you know, if you're not already incorporating and supplementing your law firm with virtual assistants, I always say it's one of the highest return on your investments. You could possibly make. And I also see a trend over time, more virtual assistants and less dependence on in house staff. But that's the way to go. Especially when it comes to this very administrative work such as setting up your clients, collecting documents, collecting information, doing a lot of the filings, doing case reviews, case updates, collecting Google reviews, doing assortment of marketing stuff. A lot of the stuff could be done via VAs instead of you having to depend on your in house team. One person who just does four or five different things, their attention and their focus isn't really there because they're doing so many different things. The way to go is to break it down that rule into four or five different VAs who are dedicated to that one specific role and they do it better than anybody else.
- [15:55]
B
Yeah. And I would say specific to the estate planning attorney. There has historically been a hesitancy to use VAs for intake purposes because the argument is that, well, we need to understand what their particular issues are with respect to their estate planning needs so that we can make sure we tailor are offering to that client. And I would say that you can accomplish that really quite easily. If you have a series of videos, short videos that you send to prospective clients. Once they come in, you put them in an email campaign, you start sending them these short videos kind of thing that you would typically go over an initial consultation explaining what the process is and what the features that you offer and how you work. And all that can be done on video. If you're doing that, if you're telling the same story to multiple consultations per week, it's a prime example of how you can set it up for video. And then when the virtual assistant is ready and they contact or they contact the potential client and they do so on a zoom call. I'm very happy now using the AI component to zoom to record that consultation and create a summary that's then sent to the potential client. Also comes to me as the attorney. So I can ensure that the quality of this intake process remains as high as I need it to be. Okay. And that's what convinced me. That whole kind of system of using video and a VA to do my intake, that's really made a tremendous difference this last half this year. And it's really because of you, Sam, you over the head with that.
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So your VAS increased the touch points while you also incorporate your own personal touch.
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Yeah, that was the key.
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Yeah. Which is both you get hit both the quantity and the quality at the same time. Amazing. The KLT that we always talk about, the if you're not signing up clients, it's usually a KLT issue. That means your prospects don't know you or they don't like you enough, or they don't trust you enough. Until you do the things that Neil's mentioning. Increase those touch points. Incorporate your own story, your own face, your own video and your own voice into your messaging. You bring that know, like and trust into your funnel and that's where your conversion rates gets boosted and that's where you start doing well with your prospects. Number four, all about Google Reviews, right Neil?
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All about Google Reviews, all about it.
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And one of the lowest hanging fruit. You don't. You could fire your SEO company and just go get more Google reviews. There'll be higher ROI than your SEO company. So go take a look. How many Google Reviews do you have? That is the question. If you're listening to the podcast, go ahead, pull it up. Go Google your own law firm name and see how many Google reviews you have. If you don't know, you should know it. Like back your hands on a weekly basis. I'm at, you know, we're at 74, we're at 26, 268. You should know the specific number and you should level up and create your goal for 2025. And Neil, when one of our module five inside of law Firm Mastery program, which is all about collecting a lot of Google Reviews, the very first thing, after I explained the whys of why Google Reviews, one of the first things we do is to create a goal because I know if we want to get somewhere, if we just write down a goal that may probably makes it like three or four times more likely for it to come true. So let's figure out where you currently are and let's create a goal for how many Google Read reviews you'll be at by December 31, 2025. So if you're the way that I think I'm going to think about it is if you're double digits then you want to make a triple digit goal. If you're a triple digit, let's just say you're between 100 to 250. Let's make 250 the goal. We're between 250 to 500. See if you can double that. And always look to level up whatever level that is that makes sense for you at the scale that makes sense for you. And you know, you don't want to just come up with a random number. Just say 150. If you can actually try to do some math while I usually get about 10 clients per month. If I can push it up to 50, 15 reviews per month, then that comes out to for the next 12 months this number. Well I'm at this number so that should be at that number by the end of the year. Create that goal, write it on paper, put up on your wall, share with your team, incentivize your team and go after it. And if you do that, that will, that does a lot to help you get more local clients. People that are looking for stamping law firm, they Google you and if they see your law firm has a high review count and has good reviews, usually 4, 7 and up. If you're 4.6 or not, you probably usually need to post it up to be about 4.7 or up. If you fall within there, you're way very likely to get them to get a call from them and very likely to get them signed up as a client pz, you just have to go to get it. Neil, what are your thoughts?
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B
Yeah, I think as estate planners we have to get over the hesitancy to ask for reviews. I know that was my concern when I first started. You know, I thought it was kind of cheesy to ask for reviews and, and based that in part on so many other businesses that we come in contact with. They you know, plaster you with requests for reviews and it's not done in a way that illustrates that you're a professional and that something that is the lifeblood of how businesses operate today. There is a way to ask and if you're not sure about that going into lawyers club, there's plenty of scripts there, there's plenty of email templates that illustrate proven methodologies for asking for Google reviews with integrity and with honesty. And you know, for me I send the email out to my clients and I tell them look, this is the way of the world. People operate based on the opinions of others like them and what their experiences were. And like it or not, the top dog in the review world is Google. And so I simply tell them if you find value in what we did, we'd be so honored if you would leave us a Google review. And then you have to make it easy for them, give them the link that they click on and it takes them right to the spot where views are entered.
- [22:45]
A
And if you don't know how to find that link, by the way, just make sure to go to business.google.com make sure you're logged in. Then just Google your name, click on your reviews and you will see a get more reviews. Button. You click on that and you will see a link, a very short link. That link is the link that you want to share. Basically, as soon as your prospects or your clients receive that, the pop up comes for people to leave a star and to leave a review. And then the other thing is to respond back to every single review that you have. If you haven't already. Probably be a good time before the year starts to go answer every single review. You can use ChatGPT to be able to respond back to these reviews. Or if you want to take a more personal approach, by all means, you could do that. Definitely do that before the year starts. Neil, I'm going to do an audible for number five.
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B
Okay.
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A
It is 2025. So we do have to talk about AI. Of course, 2024 was definitely the year of AI, but even more so going into 2025. What would be the best way for estate planning lawyers to incorporate AI into their practice? Well, let's start using AI to draft your legal documents. Neil, you're the experts, you'll be, you know, walking me through this. But let me give you the framework or how this works, the backend, how this works. So everybody who's an estate planning lawyer, when you sign up a client, right, when somebody signs a DocuSign or whatever, usually you need to collect information, right, Neil? Yep, that's the first step. So usually for that I hope that we're not using the paper and pen kind of method because it's very slow and also requires a lot of work from your team and a lot of back and forth. Ideally, the best thing to do is to create a online form that captures those answers that you need answered in one shot. There's a lot of tools that do this. I know there are also some estate planning specific tools that do this. Those are, you know, I heard great things about those, Neil. Do you know about which ones those are? I'm going to also try to pull it up.
- [24:43]
B
Yeah. So a lot of the estate planning document generation tools, such as Wealth Counsel or Integrated Legal Services, which is what I use, they have the questionnaires that collect the information from your new client. All the names, address, phone numbers, contact information, and then the top level distribution patterns, how you want your estate plan to your estate to be distributed pursuant to the plan. And what happens is, is those forms get sent to the client and when they fill them out and send them back in, they automatically populate the estate planning document creation tool that you're using, whether it be Wealth Counsel or as I said, Integrated Legal services. So it reduces data entry time, it reduces the opportunity for error. And what I think what you're going to see more and more is that AI is going to be built into that part of the tool to have that conversation and to make sure that the exact correct information is collected that's tailored to the needs of that specific type of client. So we're going to see that more and more for sure, for sure.
- [26:04]
A
Wealth Council is the most popular one that we heard from. The ones that just use ChatGPT to come up with the other popular ones, Interactive Legal Elder Council or and also Law Yaw. First thing I would do if I was, you know, if you're using any of these tools is go see if they have any AI features. If they don't, email them and ask them are they, do they have anything in their pipeline in the roadmap to build 2025. If they don't or it's not really concrete enough, I would highly consider ditching and moving on to some a tool and estate planning platform that does. Because, you know, one of those will probably jump the gun and do it. That's where you want to be. What I would do, Neil, is one of these tools to be able to collect the information. Either one of these or I would use a general form builder like Jotform to build out those forms and then I will integrate Jotform or whatever tool that integrates with Zapier. Zapier. The action will be ChatGPT. ChatGPT instead of Zapier will be given a prompt that basically says, hey, every time this answer comes in, you are an expert who knows how to draft this legal document. And I want you to personalize this legal document, whatever legal document that is based on this information that came from our client who just filled out the form. I will map that out and whatever frameworks I'm going to give it on top, I do that. And when you run the Zapier integration again, it will go from job form to Zapier to ChatGPT. ChatGPT will go produce the AI result. Now you get an output and now this output could be sent to a Google Doc, to your CRM, to some kind of, usually some kind of drafting software. At the very least, the simplest version would be just a Google Doc where you basically have a template already made with a couple of brackets and placeholders in there where ChatGPT could fill in this hole. This, what I just explained is like the simplest form of incorporating AI into your drafting. Hopefully there'll be Some tools that just does this so you don't have to go, you know, figure what I just explained for you. But what you want to do is to get used to this AI enabled draft writer in your practice and start using it. What that does is will be will make your team a lot more efficient, be able to get through your clients faster, more accurately, better results. It'll be more optimized the more you train your own AI with your own templates and it gets better and better. And over time you can have a lean, very accurate estate planning drafter who's way better than anybody else on your team. It's a very good time. Again, 2025 Q1, start building this out. Get used to this practice. The market will be there the most depending lawyers will eventually need to set this up. So let's go set it up and you know, let's go do it.
- [28:48]
B
Yeah. And look your estate planning clients, frequently after you've given or they've given you, you know the parameters of their family and their ages and their incomes and the general schema of what they want done with their assets, frequently there are choices then to be made. And so you can and I have created, you know, an expert within ChatGPT that when I then take that data and I feed it in and I ask it what are some of the options with respect to drafting a will that need to be considered given this scenario, this set of facts and it it will return a top level summary of. You might want to consider doing it this way, you might want to consider doing it that way. And then you have a documented set of options that you can present to the client. And once you get concurrence with that, that then makes your drafting much cleaner and much more efficient. To the point that I'm going to suggest to you that next year, Sam, we're going to be talking about using VAs to do the initial draft because the content and the information that we're going to get from the clients is going to be so clean and so specific that we can trust the VA to use your document drafting tool to generate the first cut. And so it may be that really the attorney, the first time they actually get to do some real interactive legal work is reviewing the draft.
- [30:30]
A
That's the way to go. So to summarize, four are state planning lawyers go all in on ads. If you're not running ads, especially meta ads, then 2025 is the year to do it. Number two, launch a reoccurring subscription based estate planning membership program. Number three, bring on more VAs. The more VAs is the better. Number four, make your Google reviews goal. You know, get to the next level. And number five, incorporate AI into drafting your state planning documents and start learning how that works. And again, everything that we just shared in this episode, if you're looking for support and you should be to get these implemented in your practice, this is what exactly one mind Legal Academy does. We help you launch ads, we help you set up automations for you. We help you hire vas. We help you get more Google reviews. All the stuff, everything we talk about. This is exactly what my Legal Academy does. So definitely go book a call and just mention that you came from our podcast so we can continue doing these podcasts. Neil we're going to be clearly recording the next episode as well, which is going to be how I would 2x an immigration law firm 2025 if you know an estate planning lawyer, please share this episode with them. And if you're an immigration lawyer or personal injury lawyer or family lawyer, just be on the lookout for the next episodes about the same kind of frameworks about how we would 2x these types of law firms. We appreciate you. We'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Law Entrepreneur. If you found value in the show, please rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you're listening. And don't forget to share the episode with a friend. It could help transform their life. To get access to a treasure trove of exclusive free resources for Lawyers, go to joinlawyerclub.com Again, that's joinlawyerclub.com we'll see you on the next episode.