The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
I am more convinced than ever that nothing that traditional bar organizations are doing is going to move the needle on the sad stats on lawyer happiness ...
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Ep. 218 – Renegade Lawyer Marketing (Audio Book) – Chapter 22: How Hard Is This Really?
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How much do you really need to know to market your law firm effectively?
According to Ben Glass… a lot less than you think.
In this episode of The Renegade Lawyer Podcast, Ben delivers Chapter 22 of Renegade Lawyer Marketing—and breaks down one of the biggest myths in legal marketing: that you need to master every tool, platform, and tactic to succeed.
You don’t.
Most lawyers aren’t losing because they lack knowledge—
They’re losing because they’re wasting money, copying the crowd, and ignoring the fundamentals.
In this episode, Ben walks through the five essential marketing principles every lawyer must understand:
- How to create a message that actually attracts the right clients
- Why having a book instantly separates you from the competition
- What you really need to know about internet marketing (and what you don’t)
- How to build and use a marketing database the right way
- Why follow-up—not ads—is where most firms win or lose
You’ll also hear why:
- Most lawyer marketing is “drop dead boring”
- Spending more money is usually not the solution
- The biggest gains come from fixing what’s already broken
- The ultimate goal is to own your marketing—not rent it from agencies
If you’re a solo or small firm lawyer trying to grow without burning cash on “marketing vultures,” this episode is a must-listen.
Bottom line:
You don’t need to be a marketing genius.
You just need to be better than the average lawyer—and execute the basics well.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
Welcome And Show Mission
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glass, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practicing law. For over 40 years, Ben has built a law firm that stands for something bigger. He's helped thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money, do meaningful work, and still make it home for him. Each week, Ben brings you real conversations with guests who are challenging the tennis flow. Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place.
SPEAKER_00Let's dive in.
Chapter 22 And The Big Question
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. My name is Ben Glass, and today's episode is chapter 22 of the audio version of my book, The Renegade Lawyer Marketing. And the audio version is delivered to you for free via this podcast and contains commentary and additional material not included in the print version. Chapter 22, how hard is this really? How much do you need to know to effectively market your firm? Marketing strategies abound, and you'll find gurus on every corner. So how much do you need to know to make significant changes in your life? Relax. You don't need to become an Uber expert in the intricacies of SEO, blogging, pay-per-click advertising, or retargeting, or anything else for that matter. Since most lawyer advertising is sloppy, you just need to be better than your local competition. And you can develop a fun, successful, and profitable practice without spending all or even most of your time marketing. Now, Ben Glass Law, like I really love the marketing part, and that's what I spend a lot of my time on, along with coaching the team and helping to develop systems and helping to create big relationships with our referral sources. But I do get to spend a lot of time thinking about marketing, and I've got a terrific marketing director who works with me who helps us execute. So here's the thing: you do need to understand the essentials, and you must have a way to develop and deploy strategies, just as you need to understand your area of law and how to get the work done. Most lawyers who join GLM find that they spend almost no new marketing money in their first six months, but they get a significant return on their investment with great local marketing by reducing their spend on wasted marketing, plugging the holes in the bucket, so to speak. It's what we do best probably here. We help lawyers figure out the most efficient use of their next dollar or their next hour. And most of it isn't cleanup in the beginning, not new spending. You do need to be able to talk to the marketing vultures. Those are all the advertisers selling you their things.
A Marketing Message That Converts
SPEAKER_00At the very least, you should have a good understanding of five things. Number one, how to create a good marketing message that will provoke those who are ready to hire a lawyer and those who aren't quite ready to contact you. You can choose to use the same message everybody else does. Hey, free consultation, no fee of no recovery, lowest price. But that doesn't make a lot of sense. Doing what the crowd does won't get you far unless you can outspend them from most lawyers in America. That's just not you either. Our members learn how to create messages that help prospects know they're in the right place, and you have the knowledge and the experience to help them solve their problem. This is done not by bragging about yourself, but by planning enough trust clues in your marketing to have prospects arrive at their own conclusion that you are the only one.
Why A Book Builds Authority
SPEAKER_00Number two, how important it is to have a book. I'll talk in more detail about the importance of writing a book in chapter 25. Think about what's going on as you read this book. Hopefully you're thinking, Ben and Brian Glass know more about building a cool practice and making money than I do. I need to explore what they're doing. How can I get more involved? Now go back to the beginning of the book. We clearly defined exactly who the book was for and who it was not for. Next we planted clues as to how you could self-help your way to success. We want you to understand though that it is the tribe, the great legal marketing community that we have created that is the most important. If we've done our jobs by the time you finish this book, you'll be eager to step behind the curtain to see for yourself what the GLM tribe is doing to help each other. That's why a book is so important. Now think, what do I want my ideal client to be thinking?
Internet Marketing Basics You Must Know
SPEAKER_00Number three, how best to use internet marketing. You can improve the chances that potential clients will find you and stick around on your site long enough to find out that what you offer is interesting, but you need to understand the basics. Leaving internet marketing to the folks selling you the services is like not asking anything when your doctor says, let's go have a surgery. And we'll dig deeper into that on chapters 30 and 33.
Build A Marketing Database That Works
SPEAKER_00Number four, how to manage a marketing database. You need to have a database and know how to use it so you can stay in constant, interesting communication with prospects and clients alike. Let me just read that again. Constant and interesting. Most lawyer advertising, most lawyer communications are drop-dead boring. You need to be constant and interesting. There are many good products for this on the market today. Now here's a word of warning. Your general case management software for marketing won't work. Case management systems are designed for case management, not marketing. And certainly not complex follow-up marketing.
Follow Up And Track Every Result
SPEAKER_00Number five, how and why to follow up and track results? Most lawyers stop thinking once an ad is completed, but good marketers think about the next step. What do they want responders to do? What would be the irresistible call to action? How will they track it? What will be the secondary call to action? What happens to the people who almost picked up the phone or clicked but didn't?
Own Your Marketing Team
SPEAKER_00Here's your renegade pro tip. Marketing a law practice well isn't easy, but it can be learned. The better you get at managing your marketing, the more money you will make and keep. Next, you'll be able to pass your marketing tasks to a trusted team. And now you have a choice. You can, number one, hand over tens of thousands of dollars a month or more to the marketing vultures to try to keep up with your competitors. Or two, you can figure out how to do most or pretty much most of this on your own, as thousands of lawyers across the United States have already done. The ultimate goal is to build a marketing team that you own, not rent.
Abundance Thinking And Sharing What Works
SPEAKER_00Our Great Legal Marketing Tribe is the only organization structured to showing you just how to do that and to help you be part of a community that actually cares about and for each other, a community of successful lawyers who are happy to share what they have done, which is something, you know, sadly you don't find in most lawyer groups. Most lawyers are pretty closed-minded about the secrets to success. We tend to attract people who are like Ryan and I. And uh by that I mean we are abundance thinkers. We believe in capitalism, we believe in putting value into the world, and we believe that there are foreign enough cases in the world for you to have some and me to have some, and you and I together. We don't have a tiny fraction of the total cases in, for example, Northern Virginia. So you and I both grow a bit, it's going to be great. And that's why we've always invited even local competitors, local personal injury competitors into our mastermind groups to meet with us. And Brian and I show them every single thing that we do, and they show us what they do because that is how we ding the world.
Closing And How To Connect
SPEAKER_00Okay, that's it for today. My name is Ben Glass. This is the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. Reach out to Brian and I on LinkedIn if you have questions.
SPEAKER_01That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories from the trenches? Visit GreatLegalMarketing.com or connect with Ben Glass and the team on LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.
