How to Raise Your Fee and Have Your Clients Love You for Doing It

• Author: David V. Lorenzo
• Pages: 24-25

§14. Client Attraction Secrets for Lawyers

24

§14.

HOW TO RAI SE YOUR FE E AND HAVE YOUR

CLIENTS LOV E YO U F OR DO IN G IT

One of the ways I work with attorneys to improve their income is by helping them implement

value-based pricing. Whenever I survey my clients, this topic is identified as the most valuable thing

they discover in working with me. After all, if you can get your clients to see your services as incred-

ibly valuable, you can make more money per client. This means you need to see fewer clients and do

less work to make more money.

Here are two stories that illustrate my point (the names have been changed to protect the

newly-reformed):

Intellectual Property Lawyer Triples his Income Overnight

Pat is an intellectual property attorney who came to me complaining about the number of hours he

worked. His biggest complaint was that he was working on too many small matters. Since there are

no small matters, only small fees, I delved into his client list and we made some adjustments.

It seems Pat was filing about five trademark applications per month for his clients and charg-

ing $1,500 each. His justification for this fee was: This is what everyone else charges.

The first adjustment we made was to Pat’s mindset. When a business owner owns a trademark

he owns an asset. This is a thing of value to his business. It helps build equity. This means filing a

trademark application and having it approved is making a sound investment (not unlike investing

in Real Estate).

But that is not all Pat’s clients are investing in. They are also investing in a relationship WITH

HIM. (This was a new philosophy for Pat). This investment in the relationship means that all the

work done on this matter would be covered by one fee (less the government filing charges). If it

took 20 revisions to get the mark approved, Pat would resubmit the paperwork 20 times. Once the

client invested in Pat, he would not need to spend another penny on this matter.

Finally, we added the glue that cemented the relationship between Pat and his clients. We

offered three years of monitoring to protect the trademark from infringement and we offered

LIFETIME consultations on this trademark INCLUDED in the fee. This means ten years from

now, if someone has a question about this particular trademark, they can call Pat and he will

answer their question for free.

The outcome: Pat was able to move from charging $1,500 for filing a trademark application

to charging $4,997 for a trademark application.