Should Initial Client Consultations Be Free?

A great topic among law practitioners for a “Point-Counterpoint” debate is whether initial consultations with potential clients should be free or should a client pay for the first consultation.

The Scenario

Just to set the ground rules, free means absolutely free with no charge to the client. Typically, the client calls the office, making an inquiry as to whether you handle a certain type of work, either through a referral, or responding to one of your marketing efforts, and schedules an appointment. You then meet with them at no cost or obligation to the potential client and the potential client leaves the meeting with an option to either hire or not hire you.

In the alternative, when a potential client calls your office, you or your staff person taking the call lays the groundwork that there will be an initial consultation fee for a thirty minute or one hour consultation presumably a flat fee, and that will be expected to be paid on the day of the visit. Some law offices may even state that the fee paid on the initial visit can be applied to future work going forward, effectively making the first consultation free, if you are hired for the project.

Both of those scenarios make sense and speaking to any practitioner who believes deeply in one or the other system, he or she will argue that their system works the best. Now let us find the strengths and shortcomings of both systems.

The Free Consult

The free initial consultation may be a policy of your law firm simply because it meets the competition. If everyone else in your area is providing free consultations, it seems to make sense that, to meet the competition, you need to do the same. After all, if a potential client can meet with three other attorneys for free to learn about the merits of their case or the competency of the lawyers to handle their business transaction, free seems like the way to go. However, anyone who provides free initial consultations will tell you that their life can be overtaken with free initial consultations and not getting new, paying clients. There could be one of two problems going on in such case.

First, you are letting in low-grade leads into your office without a quick vetting system during the initial telephone call. If your assistants do all of your scheduling and you never talk to the potential client, you would never have the ability to vet the potential client and make a determination as to whether the potential client, the transaction, or the case is something that you would want to take on. As such, you need to have a very brief conversation with the potential client before you schedule a free consultation.

Secondly, you may have a conversion problem in your approach to face-to-face meetings with clients. Client conversions are a separate topic completely and the science of converting potential clients to fee-paying clients when they come into your office is very broad based and complex. However, once you meet with a potential client face to face, it is your moment to shine and your opportunity to let them know that you care about their case, you care about them, and that you are, based on your unique selling proposition, the best possible attorney to handle their legal matter. If you cannot convey that to them, your conversion ratio will be very low.

Charge for Consults

If you charge for initial consultations, you are missing the opportunity to be in front of many potential new clients. Remember, all your marketing efforts are intended to get the phone to ring. Once the phone rings, you have the highest potential ability to sign up the prospect as a fee-paying client if you meet with them face to face. If, by not understanding the competitive nature of your market, you charge for initial consultations and people choose not to come because of the fee, you are missing an opportunity to sign up a new client.

I know, the counter argument is that people who come in and pay for an initial consultation are better potential clients, and will see you as a confident, high-level practitioner who has the boldness to charge for all of your time including initial consultations. That fact may be true. But let me assure you that there is a very narrow group of potential clients that will come in for the first time, sight unseen, and be willing to pay for an initial consultation when your competitors are giving it away for free. A hybrid of the two structures would be to change the consult fee, but agree to credit such fee towards the retainer deposit. Under that structure, you have only given away a “free” initial consultation to someone who has actually hired you.

Flexibility

Remember, not all of the same rules apply to every type of practice group. Sophisticated business owners usually do not care if the initial consultation is free or if there is a fee. However, sophisticated business owners are usually going to a known lawyer for a review of their case or transaction. They would expect to be charged when their existing lawyer analyzed new legal issues whether it be a dispute, or a business transaction. A less sophisticated business owner i.e., a person getting into a new start-up business for the first time, may be very cost conscious and may very much be offended by an initial consultation fee. These types of clients can blossom into long term, sometimes life long, clients that a few hundred-dollar initial consultation fee may have scared away.

Similarly, all practice groups have to be viewed separately. Personal injury lawyers of course do not charge for initial consultations because their cases are taken on a contingency fee arrangement. They understand the competition in the marketplace, and would not dream of charging for an initial consultation when all of their competitors work on a contingency fee arrangement. They will do whatever they need to do ethically to sign up the new client. Divorce clients tend to use up quite a bit of lawyer’s time, meeting with multiple lawyers and being very price conscious. Estate planning clients tend to come to your office based on referrals, and are somewhat presold to your office and therefor there is a high probability that they will retain you after the first meeting so long as you demonstrate your competence to them to during the first meeting. Because many attorneys do estate planning work on a value billing system, the time and effort of the initial consultation is usually embedded into some value driven pricing for the estate planning documentation.

In summary, when analyzing the different practice groups, market conditions, and the potential client expectations, I advise attorneys to meet or beat the competition. There is no doubt that the highest probability of signing up a client is during a face to face meeting as you demonstrate your depth of knowledge, empathy for the client, and explain the way you propose to navigate through the transaction or legal dispute for which you are being interviewed. Get to meet the client face to face, and then begin to analyze your conversion skills.

For a full analysis on this topic and client conversions for you or your law firm, please reach out to Kerry Lavelle at klavelle@lavellelaw.com to schedule an appointment.

Kerry Lavelle is the author of "The Business Guide to Law: Creating and Operating a Successful Law Firm" published by the American Bar Association. It can be found on the ABA website at: http://bit.ly/1J1p0Aa. He grew his solo practice to a 26-attorney firm, accumulating numerous awards and commendations along the way for his legal work and community service. He is a frequent speaker at bar association seminars and conferences on law office management, and has served as an adjunct professor for business, economics and law school classes, and has served on boards for the Northwest Suburban, Illinois and American Bar Association.