Do you want to:
- Streamline your intake process?
- Provide valuable information to your clients?
- Pre-qualify clients and avoid spending time with problem clients?
- Create marketing materials for your website, prospective clients, etc.?
Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQs can help with all of the above issues, and more.
Why FAQs?
There's a lot to discuss with a client at an initial consultation, and much of the information you provide to clients is provided over and over, to every client. Sometimes once you've had the initial consultation and educated the client about the process and the legal issues involved, the client decides that they can't afford you, or even that your services aren't right for them. You know that being helpful and providing information to potential clients promotes goodwill and may result in referrals at a later time. FAQs can help by providing the potential client with the information they need and freeing you up to meet only with those clients that are serious about retaining your services.
Many clients are reluctant to speak with an attorney and need some other way to determine who to call. Providing FAQs helps clients get to know you and your services in a less frightening way.
How do you create FAQs?
Most clients in your practice area probably have the same questions and concerns when they come to see you for the first time. What are the 10 most popular questions that clients ask during your initial consultations? What are the most important aspects of your service that need to be explained to every client at the time of the first engagement? What legal issues must clients be aware of? What common misconceptions or misperceptions about lawyers, the law, the legal process or your services have you encountered? Write out those questions and your answers, and you'll be well on your way.
- Remember to write the FAQs in the language that your clients use when they speak with you, and to provide information in terms that they can understand.
- Use the FAQs as a way to sell your services by explaining in your FAQs why you're the right lawyer/law firm to handle their matter.
- Write your FAQs in such a way as to educate clients up front about how you work and to begin defining their expectations for the engagement.
How can you use FAQs?
- Send a copy of your FAQs to potential clients after they first inquire about your services, but before they come to your office for the initial consultation. This will provide clients with valuable information and help them to decide whether your services are right for them.
- Post the FAQs on your website. If you don't yet have a website or are working on your website and marketing materials, FAQs are a good place to start, because they help you get 'into the heads' of your clients and focus on the clients' wants and needs and how your services benefit the client
- Give new clients an additional copy of the FAQs to refer to throughout the engagement
- Add FAQs to informational packages that are sent to vendors, strategic alliances, potential clients, seminar attendees, etc.
- Include FAQs in your regular firm newsletter
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