Law Firm Growth Tips: Diane's Marketing Tactics on a Budget

Struggling to stand out in a competitive market while keeping costs low? 

Join host Tyler Dolph and special guest Diane of Budget Divorce Center as they reveal how a fixed-fee model and lean operations can attract middle-class clients seeking non-contested divorces. 

By the end of this video, you’ll learn efficient marketing tactics, overhead-cutting strategies, and the keys to running a streamlined family law firm on a budget.

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CHECK OUT THESE RELATED VIDEOS:

• The 7 GROWTH Secrets Albert Used to Start a Law Firm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gOrsPt_ql4 
• How ONE Conversation Launched Jacqueline's 30-Attorney Firm: https://youtu.be/xKdsooojqYA?feature=shared 
• How Joshua Fueled His Full-Service Law Firm in Texas: https://youtu.be/ztZzCOSVjLw 

📄 CHAPTERS

• 00:00 - The Vision Behind Budget Divorce Center
• 02:23 - Leaving Traditional Practice to Go Solo
• 05:22 - Simplifying Overhead for Middle-Class Clients
• 08:18 - Streamlining Divorces with a Flat-Fee Model
• 11:02 - Juggling Business and Lawyering
• 15:46 - Next Steps for Growing Your Fixed-Fee Firm

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Vision Behind Budget Divorce Center
• 2:23 Leaving Traditional Practice to Go Solo
• 5:22 Simplifying Overhead for Middle-Class Clients
• 8:18 Streamlining Divorces with a Flat-Fee Model
• 11:02 Juggling Business and Lawyering
• 15:46 Next Steps for Growing Your Fixed-Fee Firm

Transcript

0:00

Hear the story of a small law firm owner serving the middle class using fixed fee, non contested divorce. Today we learn about Diane and her late husband creating the Budget Divorce Center, aimed at serving their community through a fixed fee pricing model. Welcome back to the revenue roadmap, where we talk about driving revenue and increasing profits in family law firms. I am your host, Tyler. Dolf. And with me today is Diane Dram Co, the founder of Budget Divorce Center in Cape Coral, Florida. Now. Thank you. firm owners and their success in this space, building their own firms. Give us a little history lesson on, why you started the Budget Divorce Center and how things are going. Okay, so I actually went to law school thinking I was going to be a business corporate lawyer. I have a finance degree in undergrad, I went to Florida State law school. But I graduated back in 1988. I was 25, went straight all through school, then came down in this area, because my late husband got a job down in this area. We were both in law school together. So I came down in this area, which was Lee County, which all those years ago was pretty undeveloped. It was apple growing city in the state. But it was hard for me, being a 25 year old single female, to break through to go to old boy firms down here. So I ended up going to the public defender's office to do criminal work. Even though I didn't want to do any criminal work. But I ended up it ended up being a blessing in disguise because I ended up liking trial work, which I didn't think. You know, I thought I was going to be more of a transactional attorney, maybe in probate contracts and all that ended up being as a public defender. I really got into being in the courtroom. And realizing, I don't think I want to just be a transactional attorney. I would probably go crazy and bored. So I don't want to do that. But my late husband at the time was working, and he was doing real estate, probate, stuff like that. With other firms. Then he ended up went went with another firm. I was still the public defender's office, probably almost about three years. And then I said, no, I don't want to stay doing criminal work. It was hard. It was tough. And then our theory was that, you know, at this point we were married, that we were going to start to have a family. You got to have your own kind of firm, you know, nobody's going to let you keep leaving to do a kids event or not, if it's not your own firm. So we both left the place that we were. I left the public defender's office. He left the firm that he was in, and we decided, starting our own firm. But when you're starting up your own firm, as you know, you just take whatever you become a jack of all trades and make sure you get money coming in. I did a lot of, a lot of criminal work. So at that point, I also had contracts with the county, like to do court appointed work that the public defenders can't do. That rolls over just to get money coming in. And then we started realizing family law is another niche that you can get, that they didn't have a big niche in the areas, to do. After a couple of years of doing that, we decided and actually it's more of my late husband's idea, but I thought, okay, it's a good one. What we were hearing from the complaints of the judges and people that would call was that people are charging way too much money for divorces, for simple they're fighting and everything is getting spent on, you know, the attorneys are getting all the money versus and we just didn't have that kind of a mindset. And then a couple of judges were like, well, other than people that are for legal aid, we need to find, you know, if there was something that was more low cost, more efficient way to get it done, it would probably do better. So that's when we both came up with the idea of budget Divorce Center. It's marketed actually. My my law firm is the umbrella company now, so it's doing business as Budget Divorce Center. And it's just myself now because my husband passed away 2018. But we started that and our mindset was we could get you be more economical. We weren't marketing against the million dollar clients. We were more going against people like us. You know, your middle class? Yeah. Your middle class. People that are just in a bad situation need to get a divorce. They don't have tons of money. They don't want to spend tons of money. Let's see what we can do. But we will. And free I mean, we would a big challenge to people, you know, we were like legal aid and like, no, we still have to past, but we try to keep it as a, as economical. And we do offer mostly, a flat fee so people know what's going and, you know, there was criteria that if it hit a certain point, different areas, then it would kick into an hourly case. This is going more or anything like that, but we encouraged more of that. So that was the niche and why we developed the budget Divorce Center. I love it. And, obviously very sorry to hear about, your husband. Talk us through, where you're at today. You mentioned it's just you, running the firm today. And do you have any paralegals or, additional attorneys? No, I, I did I mean, throughout the course, I just found that the more the able that I could keep it, keep it running. And low cost is to keep the overhead low. I mean, I'm working for my house today, but I own my own office condo, so it's there. It was just us to us attorneys so that we could just. And we had, legal issues. And that was also a paralegal to do all the forms. But that was one way that we could keep the cost low and reasonable is that if we're not paying for the fancy offices and all the paralegals and everything, when you start doing uncontested, simplified divorces, it's mostly forms that you're regenerating on your computer. It was a lot easier for me, I found. I mean, I needed a legal assistant for, you know, different areas, things that we had to do and then phone calls and all that kind of stuff and make appointments. But once you do and generate enough of the on an uncontested divorce, we could just easily do it on our computer for ourselves. It's not like old school. We thought about expanding to other attorneys, but, you know, I would always hear the horror stories of different other attorneys. What do you pay them? What do you don't? Then you're expanding your liability. So we really never expand that between the two of us. And then, yeah, she passed away. I haven't added on another attorney. I had a little. I actually don't even have a legal assistant anymore because, Well, I'm getting older, so I'm looking to retire, so I'm trying to cut overheads and stuff, but, the last one I had was my daughter when she came home to do graduate school, because everything's online. So what? Covid that was bad in reference to the world. It turned out great in reference to a lot of attorneys or practices because I yeah, because the courts here, Lee County, still do zoom hearings. So yeah. So you can still do zoom hearings, uncontested divorces here. There is no court appearances. I still do some other court work in reference to I do have some contracts with the state that keep me in the courthouse and in there. But really, I you know, if you get a website that they can either call and ask for a phone appointment or you go directly to my website and they can make their own phone appointment, eliminates that person. And then I find that people like the more personal time they're not paying the paralegal to pay for fees. Now, I guess if you expand bigger, you could. But. You. I love the the idea of focus. You know, in our firm, we, we developed a fixed fee pricing model, and, we're able to to really focus on creating efficiencies so that we could run it like a business. And it sounds like you guys have the same ideology, as it relates to being able to find those efficiencies and being able to focus whether we're in. Are there any, key lessons learned in developing that, that process and working with maybe a different set of clients than your normal kind of hope, high profile, divorce attorney works with. Well, that. I mean, that's why we we we always marketed towards uncontested to try to emphasize to people, even if they come in. Listen, you could contest it. We could fight to you. But your money is going to go to attorneys. You're not going to be happy in reference to it. And you're not going to be able to, you know, a judge will try their best to do what's best for the especially in children situation or the properties. But it's just like I say because I also mediate family court cases. So like I say in mediation, it's like if you have children, I mean to get them to do something and not fight you, you make them involved in the process or I mean, or when if you just tell them to do something, they fight it. And I try to emphasize that in my mediations it's just the same thing, okay? Not everybody's going to win everything, but if you could come to an agreement, you're more likely not to see any contested things later on versus a judge just telling what you have to do. So we can kind of keep it that way. And we and I did do plenty of my contested cases and we would break down the different these would do uncontested ones. They if they wanted contested. Like we're not filing an agreement and they're all the packet. It's one then we would do another for up to the first mediation because the courts in Lee, you can't get anywhere near a courtroom or case management. Do you go to mediation? And then at that point, if it still didn't show, then at that point we did try flashing through the trials. But then people we knew in our mind how expensive it would get. And once we would tell the people that they didn't want that flat fee. But, you know, as you know, the outreach is such a pain to keep up, keep up and you know how to explain to people, what do you mean, you do that? They don't understand all the vaccines that you do. You really need to be charging. So, right, right. We've we've talked to a lot of of attorney owners who have gone on, on their own and realized that running a business is not the same as just being an attorney. And sometimes you have to do both. What are you doing and what did you do in those early days to help you make sure that your business was running smoothly while you were being the the sole breadwinner and attorney for your firm? Well, I guess I was. Lucky because I had a buying finance degree. So I went to college to run businesses. So you know the money part of that and wanting that part, I took over. But I also wanted to show that I knew nothing about advertising. I knew nothing about web pages. So you have to understand what is what's good for you and what you need to form out. And over the course. I've been doing this now since 92 is when I went out on my own. So, I mean, over 30 years. 35 years. I don't even know how long that is now. It's gone from, you know, the yellow pages of the hard copy book to we advertise on benches and getting your names out that way to going pure internet with web pages and and nothing is paper. So we did you know, you just have to understand what what you're good at and what you're not good at. Then hire good people to help you, because you would spend so much more time trying to figure out how to do a web page. And we did. We tried to do a web page and do things yourselves, and it would spend so much more time doing it than we just hired people. know, you got to find good help. Especially when you're. When you're a small staff and you don't have, you know, lots of hours to spend learning something. You just need a done so you can move on to the next thing right? And it was like, you know, there's always, you know, as the time goes on, things change. We expanded our web pages. We used to have benches. We used to have 10 or 12 benches in the area and stuff. And then eventually you realize, okay, does that work? Does it not work? You know, there's a lot of billboards. We never went into billboards. I used to do, mailings a lot. Once the courthouse is more digital, you could just easily get on there. But when I started out, I, you know, I was always friendly to all the clerks. And that's always the best thing an attorney should know. You and I, bigger than anybody else. Just because you're the attorney, you better learn to like, kick ass. The judicial assistant to the clerks, to the bailiffs, to anybody that's there. Because if you kiss ass and treat them nice, they will treat you nice and your reputation goes well throughout the courthouse. So to be able to go and you know what I really like when I was developing, also at the beginning, I was doing criminal and family law. I mean, I'd go and the clerks would give me everybody who got arrested that day and give me all their names or addresses. We send out marshmallows, we could find out who got who. Filed the divorce case without an attorney who didn't have one on the other side. Send out marshmallows. Things are different now because everything's email or stuff like that, and I don't have to do that as much. I got it more with my reputation. But, yeah, we did all those in the past, but I guess that would be my best advice. You know, it's as you're nodding your head, you know, if you don't not be nice and polite to the judicial assistance, to the clerks, to the people that are actually the backbone of the courthouse. You're not going to get anywhere. And they can really kind of not be as cooperative. Yeah. involved in, the courthouse and the case and, all the above. So it's, it was funny that you had the Yeah. Yeah. There you go. yeah, thank you so much for sharing your story. We appreciate your time. I love your differentiation strategy around working with, you know, the, the everyday person who just needs to, to get this done. And, I'm happy that there's an outlet that, that you can provide for them. So we appreciate your time. We appreciate your story. Listeners, we appreciate you. Thank you for tuning in. And we will see you next time on the revenue roadmap. Okay. Thank you for having me. If you enjoyed this video and want to learn more about fixed fee pricing, make sure to check out this episode where we talk about our own fixed fee pricing model. Over at Sterling, LA. Finally, if you're interested in being featured and telling your story on revenue roadmap, feel free to email me at t. Dolf. That's Diaz and Dog Sol FX at the revenue roadmap.la. Thanks everyone. Have a great week!