There are good reasons for this, mainly because the services are not well adapted to the particular situation of each individual. That is to say, an individual pays an amount of X euros per month and certain services are included, but then each case deserves a different development and follow up, so that in many cases, the lawyer does not find profitable the income received on these platforms vs. the actual working hours that they then incur. We are turning a service into a product and this often has a difficult fit in the field of legal services.
In this post, we will look at the process of how to design, market and sell productive legal services to help the law firm capitalize on this growing segment of the market.
Products vs. Services
A key difference between a product and a service is that a product can be produced and sold to scale, while services are usually delivered one at a time. For example, think of a common household product as laundry detergent versus paying someone to do the laundry. Detergent is a product.
It can be mass produced in a factory with minimal human intervention. It can be shipped to distributors around the world, thousands of units at a time, and sold in stores at a reasonable price while allowing the manufacturer to make a profit.
On the other hand, having your clothes cleaned and ironed by a professional is a service. It requires a real person to put the clothes in the machine, add the detergent, put it in the wash, and then take the clothes out and fold them later. This is not scalable in the same way because each load of laundry requires the work of one person.
What are “packaged” legal services?
Traditional legal services are at the opposite pole from the product that can be mass produced and sold in large quantities. Since legal problems can be complex and each situation is unique, services are often highly customized to suit each client’s specific situation. Obviously this means that we cannot produce them in thousands per day and the client cannot buy them at low cost as if they were a batch of pencils. A lawyer is a professional, not a machine that makes light bulbs.
Packaged legal services seek to close (where possible) the gap between products and traditional legal services. They are a new generation of legal services where processes are a little more standardized and where much of the work can be automated by software. They are not pure products and never will be, but they have more similar characteristics to products because they are more efficient to serve and therefore more affordable to clients.
Few law firms are taking advantage of this trend yet, but packaged legal services are beginning to sound like one of the biggest market opportunities in the law firm business development arena today. Although packaged legal services are not viable for every client or practice area, lawyers can begin to take advantage of this expanding market by leveraging the power of automation and offering more standardized and affordable solutions.
How to start selling productive legal services
Design phase
The first step of the process is the design phase. This is where the idea of the legal service in pack is conceived and the necessary processes to deliver it to a client begin. Identify a common problem to a representative niche. A packaged legal service is only useful if it is going to solve a very specific problem. Identifying the right problem to solve is one of the most challenging and important steps in the process. The problem you choose must be common enough that you can easily sell this solution to many clients.
For example, you can create a specific solution for amicable divorces, similar to what WeVorce has done. Or maybe you can create a simplified estate planning package for young families who have just had children. Situations common to thousands of people.
The possibilities are endless, but the important thing is to be specific about what the problem is, who’s facing it, and how your service will solve it.
Focus on a niche
It is best to go deeper and find a problem within a legal niche (here are some clues about that). Finding a legal niche makes it much easier to scale up a legal package because your marketing messages will speak directly to your target audience, and you will face much less competition.
Some examples of niche practice areas that are in vogue at the moment may include e-commerce, the cannabis industry or the crypto-currency industry to name a few. If you can find a common legal problem faced by entrepreneurs in these industries or sectors, you can produce a productive solution for them and quickly expand it as these industries continue to grow.
Take the time to find your niche. Don’t think it’s time wasted, don’t set a deadline… everything you have to do is worth it to find your niche. Finding a niche is more than half of the success of the packaged legal service.
Create a well-defined solution that is easy to serve
It is essential that the production and delivery of the service is efficient. This means that the solution should not be highly customized or complex. We look for a simple solution that is well defined and closely tailored to the problem. It is key that you can easily demonstrate to the client the benefit he gets, so that you get sales.
Therefore, the client must know exactly what he is paying for and how you will help him. Packing some simple services together could make it easier. For example, they might get a customized document (which can be written with automation), a 30-minute consultation and access to a video guide that they can watch again later.
Automate shooting and writing.
The most important part of designing a packaged legal service is taking advantage of automation. You are selling a solution, not your time. Your goal is to sell it on a larger scale. This is only possible if the production process is extremely efficient. Try to minimize data entry and eliminate the administrative processes that normally slow you down by using technology in every step of the process, from the moment a new potential customer (lead or prospect) is captured on the web until the service has been paid for and fulfilled. All via the web.