As an independent business working on marketing with solicitors around the country, we have to be careful to remain independent. This independence allows us to assess marketing and promotional opportunities for each firm, given their aims, objectives and resources available, choosing only those that will provide a return on the investment.

Having got my mitigation in first, I want to highlight the problem of web referral businesses attempting to sell either legal service listings or enquiries to solicitors. I’m not going to name any, but I think it is useful to share the collective experience of Marketlaw. There are some good services and some that are not so good. As part of the seminars Marketlaw delivers, we have a projector slide that is covered in website brands that present contacts for legal services to the public on the web. A solicitor that saw our presentation, contacted many of them and had a go with a few. Her experience backs up our usual view that often it’s not worth it. That’s not to say ‘don’t do it’ just be aware that you may not get the results you anticipated.

The problem is you can’t tell if they are any good unless you pay to have a go, which costs money. Even then you may get a few ‘pearlers’ in the first few weeks, then not much after that. It’s not much different from buying advertising space in print publications. Tracking the enquiries becomes important and is often a problem with firms that don’t do it rigorously enough to tell if the firm made any profit.

As an alternative I would suggest a much safer bet. Use the money to write to your existing and past clients, explaining the benefits of the services your firm offers. Then, every time you are contacted by another web enquiry service, use that as a prompt to write to your current and past clients again with another set of benefits. It does mean you have to do the work but it’ll be worth it.