Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
Why Clients Choose You: Unique Selling Propositions for Lawyers
Your unique selling proposition isn't about legal brilliance or technical skill—it's about understanding why clients choose you over everyone else, including doing nothing at all.
Most lawyers recoil at the concept of creating a unique selling proposition. "We're all the same," they say, pointing to identical services across their practice area. But as this episode reveals, standing out doesn't require reinventing legal services—it's about claiming and communicating what you already do in ways competitors haven't.
Through compelling examples from both inside and outside the legal industry, we explore how companies like Domino's Pizza, Zappos, and Coors built market dominance not by being fundamentally different, but by being the first to make aspects of their service explicit promises to customers. Similarly, law firms can differentiate by focusing on client experience, post-retainer engagement, and consistently communicating their process in client-friendly language.
The most powerful insight? Your unique selling proposition is simply the "because" when someone asks your client why they chose your firm. It's not about being unique—it's about giving clients clarity on what matters most to them. By examining the services you're already providing and identifying which ones speak directly to your ideal clients' needs, you can craft marketing that resonates without changing anything about your practice. Whether it's making the process "drop-dead simple" for busy professionals or promising exceptional responsiveness, the opportunity to stand out exists for every law firm willing to claim it.
Ready to develop your own standout marketing? Check out Renegade Lawyer Marketing at renegadelawyermarketing.com and join us at the Great Legal Marketing Summit this October to transform how potential clients see your practice.
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
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Hello, my friends, and welcome back into another Friday solo episode of Life Beyond the Briefs, the number one podcast for lawyers choosing to live lives of their own, design and build the kind of practices that they actually want to show off to. On Monday, I'm your host, brian Glass, and today we're diving into one of the most important and most misunderstood concepts in law firm marketing and, frankly, marketing in general, and that's your unique selling proposition. Now, I know that there are a lot of lawyers who just heard that and said I'm a personal injury lawyer, or I'm a tax lawyer, or I'm a criminal defense lawyer and we're all the same, or I can never communicate to my prospective clients in any reasonable period of time before they pick up the phone and call me. What it is that makes me different? And if you look at most lawyer marketing and specifically most personal injury lawyer marketing, yeah, like there's nothing different about any of it. It's all free consultation, only get paid if you win in a wreck, get a check kind of bullshit.
Speaker 1:And so what we need to think about in our marketing is how we can talk about how we're different, and my challenge to you is we don't actually have to be all that different. We just have to market a little bit differently, and sometimes it can be difficult to actually differentiate yourself in your ads, because bar authorities don't actually want the consumer to be able to tell the difference between lawyers, as if that would be like some kind of bad thing politically or financially, if only a few of us were successful and if you've ever been in a courtroom courthouse, you know that many of us are not successful or are not very good at what we do and even if we were allowed to say I'm better than the rest, consumers probably wouldn't believe it anyway. And this is largely why we are here at Great Legal Marketing to help you with your messaging and your marketing, because you can differentiate based on things like changing the conversation from me shouting at you about myself to talking instead about the conversation that's already gone on inside the prospective client's head. That means talking about the things that they're afraid of, their hopes, their dreams and their fears when they were in this crash, right. How do we get this data? Well, you can talk to your current clients. Talk to your current best set of clients and find out what kinds of things they were hoping for when they hired you. Find out what kind of things they were trying to avoid when they hired you and find out why they hired you instead of anybody else in your local market.
Speaker 1:Second part of differentiating yourself is showing up in a way that nobody else does. So. In the world of immediate phone consultations sometimes with lawyers, but more and more often with intake and sales teams and in the world of immediate DocuSign or HelloSign or VineSign or whatever it is that you use retainer agreements that are going out to clients by email or by text there is an incredible amount of buyer's remorse. I think that happens after clients have signed your retainer agreement, because it can seem to the client as though all of this activity happened on the front end and then they signed the retainer agreement and then nothing happened. And so you can differentiate yourself by, immediately after the retainer agreement is signed, making sure that something else happens. We used to send this shock and awe package out to clients in between the time that they called us and the time they signed a retainer agreement, so that we would show up differently, with educational books, with the Banglass Law Teddy Bear, with how to talk to the insurance company or why not to talk to the insurance company, educational materials and that opportunity still exists, but now it exists after the fact right, and so we're making sure that within 48 hours of the time that somebody has signed a retainer agreement, they're getting a big ass package on their doorstep that provides them all the information that they need in order to be a great client for us and in order to maximize the return in their case. Last thing you can do to differentiate yourself is deliver Amazon-like customer service experience when they call right. We have become accustomed to placing the order and then relying on the fact that the order is going to show up within 48 hours on our doorstep and your law firm can be the same high level customer service reliability that Amazon does. It's funny.
Speaker 1:If you read Jeff Bezos' collection of writings, which Walter Isaacson has put together in a book called Invent and Wander, you'll see that the sole focus of the Amazon shareholder letter in the early years was on the client experience. Like Bezos says over and over and over again, it's not going to be profit, it's not going to be revenue, it's not going to be systems, it's going to be focus, relentless focus on the client customer service experience. That was the thing that struck me as I read that, and many law firms don't pay any attention at all to the client customer service experience, which is guess what an opportunity for you to differentiate your firm from everybody else in the market. All right, so having coached and mentored lawyers for years now, I've found that this phrase unique selling proposition scares lawyers because we think we have to go out and invent something entirely different, and my promise to you is that actually you don't.
Speaker 1:As business building genius Dan Kennedy says, your unique selling proposition really is only the reason why somebody would choose to do business with you over all of the other choices in the market, including the choice to do nothing or, in the case of lawyers, including the choice to either settle the case on their own or go to LegalZoom and get some forms or ask ChatGPT right, why are they coming to you and paying you to do something that they could have paid somebody else to do, or done on their own, or elected to do nothing? And in most law firms, this answer is going to boil down to two words, and those two words are why and because. Your why is what leads you straight to your ideal client, and the answer to your why is going to inform why you do your best work every day and it's the reason that you keep doing what you're doing, right. It's the only reason that we take all of the entrepreneurial risk that we do to hire people, pay rent and run our law firms. And your answer is the reason. You're even in the business of law and understanding the why really is absolutely critical to your success. So understanding who your why is is going to tell you your who, which is who your perfect client is. And understanding who your perfect client is enables you to create the marketing message that are just for that person, because most lawyer marketing message shout that we are for everyone and everyone's for us and that's just just not very differentiating, right, but that why and what it really means is not a slogan or tagline. It's the answer to the question what would your community lose if your practice ceased to exist? And the answer is nothing or not much or you're not sure. Then you have to give some serious thought to that before you can do anything in terms of creating great marketing.
Speaker 1:Because the unique selling proposition is the because for your client. When somebody asks the client, why did you choose Ben Glass Law, the unique selling proposition has given the client a ready-made because? Because blank. This is the reason why, and that's what led them right to your door. But the concept of the unique selling proposition really doesn't have to be all that unique, and if you're struggling to figure out what your unique selling proposition is, the first thing you can do is write down a list of all the things that you do in a case or on a matter that the general public just doesn't even realize that you do, and this is what we begin to start thinking and talking about.
Speaker 1:So back in the day, when clients came into the office, we used to have a pamphlet and a portfolio that said on the back of it here's the I don't know 39 or so things we're going to do in every single case, and there was almost nothing unique about what our law firm was doing that you wouldn't get if you'd gone into another law firm. We're going to request a police report. We're going to get all your medical bills and records. We're going to analyze all the medical bills and records. We're going to draft the demand letter for the insurance company. We're going to negotiate with the insurance company. We're going to collect your lien information. We're going to negotiate the bills. We're going to settle your case, and if we can't settle the case, we're going to trial, right? You make a list of all these things that are going on in your law firm and you will find in there plenty of examples that you can set up as your unique selling proposition, where you're telling the public something that you do, that's an integral part of your work, that they don't know that you do, and it might be helpful if we go outside of the industry of law to think about some concepts like this.
Speaker 1:So throughout history, beer has been brewed with clean water, or actually, before we had clean water, beer was brewed because the water wasn't clean and the alcohol killed off the bacteria, right? But in the 21st century, every beer maker in the world uses clean water. Well, coors was the first one to capitalize on this particular uniqueness and tell clients that they use pure, clean water, like pure. Every beer is made out of this stuff. But nobody was saying it, right? And so Coors' unique selling proposition became Clearwater, and that's how you came to know them as the Rocky Mountain and the Clear Mountain Spring Water. And actually, is there anything unique about this at all? No, there's nothing unique, and Coors is not even a very good beer. But the uniqueness was that they were the first one to tell the clients that this is part of our process and to claim it as uniquely theirs.
Speaker 1:I'm going to give you two more examples from outside the legal industry and then I'm going to come back and tell you what our three selling uniques are in the Benglas Law firm. So number one Domino's right. Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less. Domino's stopped trying to compete on we are the best pizza and competed on something that they could control and something that was objective. We're going to get it to you in 30 minutes or less or it's going to be free. And other pizza chains sure could deliver you a pizza in 30 minutes or less, and probably were. But Domino's was the first one to say and claim speed as a unique selling proposition.
Speaker 1:Second one Zappos right. Zappos shoes, several years ago, started offering a free return policy, no questions asked. You could order as many pairs of shoes as you wanted. They would show up at your door and try on as many as you want and return all the ones that either didn't fit or didn't look good on you or weren't comfortable or whatever right when they were marketing in a completely commoditized business. You can buy shoes anywhere, right? We're not going to compete on price, we're going to compete on complete and total lack of friction. You don't have to go to a store, you don't have to worry about paying to return this if you don't like it, and so people would order more pairs of shoes and guess what? They also then kept and paid for more of the pairs of shoes. So if you just look outside your industry, you can find all of these examples of people that are doing the same thing, often that many other companies are doing, even in commoditized industries, and are finding unique selling propositions.
Speaker 1:All right, now, coming back into the law, I'll tell you what the three unique selling propositions in the personal injury side of Ben Glass Law are. Number one I'm going to help clients find all the insurance money that's available to them and extract as much of that money as possible out of the insurance company's coffers. Number two I'm going to help them hold on to as much of that money as possible by negotiating liens, by negotiating outstanding medical costs. And number three I'm going to make it drop dead stupid simple for them along the way, so that really the client's only responsibility is to tell us where they've gotten medical care and if they're still in medical care and if they forget to do that, we're even going to call them every 30 days and follow up and make sure that we know all the doctors that they've seen and check in on their medical status. Right, and guess what? Most law firms are doing? All three of those things.
Speaker 1:Most good personal injury law firms are identifying all of the sources of coverage and also extracting as much money out of insurance companies as possible. Most good law firms who know what they're doing are evaluating health insurance liens to make sure that they're valid liens, are negotiating those liens where possible and are negotiating outstanding medical costs where possible. And, lastly, most law firms are trying to follow up with their clientele and make sure they do in fact know all of the doctors that the client has seen and that they do in fact know when the client finishes treatment. Right, but most law firms aren't talking about it and you will see that I talk about that everywhere. You will see those three things on our website. You will hear them in our sales process. You will see them in our follow-up scripts that come in emails and texts. I don't think they're in our retainer agreement, but you will see them in the new client letter that goes out to our clients. You'll see them on our YouTube channel. You'll see them on our Instagram channel. They're everywhere, right? Because I want that to be embedded in clients.
Speaker 1:And that last one is really important because it speaks to my ideal client. My ideal client is a family in Northern Virginia where both parents work, have good health insurance and are busy with their kids going to sports and band activities and everything else, and really they just want to get better. They just want to get medical care, pay for it with their health insurance and get back to their lives and let us handle absolutely everything else, right. And so that third piece that we're going to make it drop dead stupid, simple. You don't have to know the first thing about insurance coverage. We're going to handle all this for you and we're going to talk to you like a normal human being and not like lawyers. That's really important to my avatar client, and your avatar client may be different, and so my suggestion to you is you take all of the little steps of the things that you're doing, and whatever your practice is estate planning, criminal law, taxes, immigration, like whatever it is take all of the steps that you do and identify the ones that speak most to your best set of clients, because that is what will help you attract more of your best set of clients, if this stuff in this episode resonates with you.
Speaker 1:You got to check out our book Renegade Lawyer Marketing, which you can pick up on Amazon, but I would rather you buy it from renegadelawyermarketingcom. Would rather you buy it from renegadelawyermarketingcom. And if you do buy it from renegadelawyermarketingcom, it's going to be half the price of Amazon and we're going to include a whole bunch of free goodies for you, including some intake scripts and my ultimate sales letter referral, ultimate chiropractor referral letter and one or two other cool things. It's only $9.95, free plus shipping. The shipping is $9.95 and you can grab that at renegadeloreanmarketingcom.
Speaker 1:If you love concepts like this, the other place you gotta come to is our great legal marketing summit. It's gonna be October 23rd through 25th in the DC area. Depending on when you listen to this, the deal will be different. We're cycling through a number of deals as we ramp up ticket sales. It's gonna going to be an amazing event. You can check out and get your ticket. Reserve your spot at glmsummitcom. That's glmsummitcom. Good luck spending this weekend creating your unique selling proposition and figuring out why the hell anybody would call your law firm instead of anybody else. Have a great weekend.
