Why Do Most Attorneys Hide Their Stories?

Most legal services are sold on relationships. You call a lawyer because someone recommends them, or you met them. So why are most attorney’s web sites, and legal marketing in general, so impersonal? It’s as if showing us who they are as people is somehow unprofessional. Well, I was fortunate enough to have a law-firm client who understood that the more effectively the firm connects with prospects, the more likely they were to land the client.

We interviewed each principal of the firm and had them tell their stories in full-page profiles. Though present, their education and experience was de-emphasized. Rather, we had the attorney tell us what motivated them, and why they did what they did. Wolfgram & Associates is a personal injury firm. Personal injury law involves, as I learned, delving into people’s problems. Medical problems. Personal problems. Frankly, I found it really depressing. So if you’re going to do personal injury law, and be effective at it. You really have to want to help people. Because every day when the attorney picks up the phone, they welcome tragedy into their offices.

Like magnets for misery, personal injury attorneys attract regular folks in the worst of circumstances. By definition, personal injury clients have demonstrable, compensable losses. Moreover, personal injury clients have more often than not been wronged by arrogant insurance companies, disrespected or dismissed by indifferent hospital administrators, abandoned by friends and spouses. You meet crippled, brain-injured, suffering children. You comfort people in the cold face of losses so profound and untimely that I hope you and I will never know them. Yet, as a personal injury attorney you must rise to the occasion each and every day and be a comfort for humble people in such circumstances.

At the same instant you as an attorney must be a fighter to get respect from in-house council and insurance adjusters who see your client as an acceptable loss, as a data point in a numbers game. ‘Fight every claim no matter the merits or they will all come knocking,’ is opposing council’s attitude more often than not.

In the face of all this, personal injury attorneys simply must have a fire in their bellies for justice and something in their DNA that drives them to help people. Otherwise, they would become casualties themselves.

And all this became clearly evident in the stories the attorneys told, about themselves, their clients, their cases. This was done with sensitivity and without coming close to violating any standards of conduct. Attorneys are, after all, people with feelings and emotions. And when clients sense your humanity, they will be drawn to you. Because they know that you care, and that you will fight for them, they will hire you.

Check out the site Wolfgram & Associates, and decide for yourself if feelings, emotions and stories are consistent with professional communication.