
To Attract Clients, You Need to Distinguish Yourself from Other Lawyers
As far as the general public is concerned, one lawyer is pretty much like the next—which makes it unlikely that a prospective client will choose your firm over the one down the block according to any metric other than sheer chance. That’s why differentiation is the key to your marketing campaign: you have to throw potential clients a “hook” that will lodge your firm in their minds and set you apart from every other interchangeable attorney out there!
What Makes for a Good Advertising Hook?
Great lawyer marketing hooks are made, not born: There has to be something that sets you apart from your fellow attorneys, even if it doesn’t seem like all that big of a deal to you. For example:
- Were you the attorney in a lawsuit that generated major media attention (win or lose, it doesn’t really matter)?
- Have you “changed sides” in the course of your career? If you were a former DA, and are now a defense lawyer, that’s the kind of thing that clients love.
- Do you specialize in one, extremely focused area of the law? Clients will want to know, say, that you’re the most experienced maritime injury lawyer in San Diego!
- Do you have a compelling story about your life before you entered the law? (Your parents met in the military, you were raised in an orphanage, etc.)
- Do you have a talent for explaining the law in non-technical jargon, and not overwhelming clients with legalese and obscure Latin phrases?
You Need to Give Potential Clients a Reason to Choose You, Rather Than the Other Guy
You may balk at the need to differentiate yourself from other attorneys: after all, aren’t the most important things that you have a firm grasp of the law, and that you have a good track record with clients? In an ideal world, they would be—but in the world we live in, most people can’t tell one lawyer from the next.
Starting over can be scary, but it can also be exciting, revitalizing, and motivating. That’s why many people daydream about what they would do if they could “start over.”
In fact, that’s one of the (few) things I enjoyed about golf! You start from zero at each hole and have a fresh opportunity to excel.
This was my mindset when I wrote the report, 10-Step Program for Marketing Success. I set out to answer the question, “what are the steps I would take if I were rebuilding my practice from the ground up.
Inside this report, you will discover everything I’ve learned since opening the doors to my law firm and all the big-picture tactics I teach the attorney members at Great Legal Marketing.

Most attorneys start their firms assuming that being a really, really good attorney should, in and of itself, be a marketing advantage. Those attorneys believe that joining a whole bunch of committees and putting their name in lawyer directories is “marketing,” and they never bother to ask if there is a better way.
Attorneys are catching on, however, and those who succeed learn to leverage their current resources to create effective (and ethical) marketing. What they discover isn’t a magic pill or silver bullet but a different approach to marketing that your competitors haven’t considered.
If you want a peek at what successful attorneys use to market their practice, the HERO Starter Kit is your logical next step.
We’ve put together a FREE (and potentially life-changing) kit for solo and small firm attorneys that will show you a better way to reach potential clients and get them excited to call your firm. Request your HERO Starter Kit from Great Legal Marketing!
by Ben Glass
Ben is a nationally recognized expert in attorney marketing and the owner of Great Legal Marketing.