Law Firm Marketing on a Shoestring: Giving back

What goes around comes around in building new clients! Contact your local community college and find out the cost of one semester of education (or one year). Depending on what state you live in this can be as cheap as $300 per semester or $750 for the college year. Create a firm scholarship that supports one student.

Notify the school of the scholarship program. Our personal opinion is the goal is to get people to commit to one semester of college no matter what their financial situation. Create a scholarship application and request that they write a essay on why they should be given the scholarship. Make it easy. Don’t insist on the best grades. Our greatest leaders were terrible students. Let the public pick the winner.

Put in this marketing guide:

  1. School is notified of scholarship at beginning of school year for all seniors
  2. Contact all newspapers within your county and have them write article called “Helping others help themselves.
  3. In January write a letter to all seniors reminding them to apply and send it to their homes.
  4. In March ask the newspaper to give publicity by publishing the 3 best essays and letting the community decide who gets the free semester.
  5. In April announce the winner.
  6. At graduation ask if someone from the firm can appear to give the scholarship.

And we always believe the scholarship is paid directly to the college. What becomes somewhat more interesting is if your firm will personally help the student with cost of books or other needs. Staff enjoy pitching in to get someone successful.

Finally, measure the results by putting in a statistical code that sees if any new clients are generated. At the most you made your firm look good and if you get new clients as a result all the better.