Component 1: The Business Model

1. THE MINDSET: The first step in digitizing your Virtual Law Firm is the mental strategy and belief that you can make money online

2. YOUR NICHE: Next, decide on the niche that you want to get involved in - business law, estate law, immigration law, personal injury, or something that you are interested in

3. BARRIERS TO ENTRY: Some practice areas are easier to operate online than others, especially where it's transactional work that involves minimal or no court appearances - but even if you are in a practice area that involves court appearances, you can contract that out to other lawyers who'll be happy to take that off your plate.

4. FINDING YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS ONLINE: Many lawyers find it challenging to find customers online because they are not sure where their clients are "hanging out". In other words, what platforms are your ideal clients using on a day-to-day basis? Where are they getting their information from? Who are they following online? It's a good idea to get granular with this step, because the more you know about your ideal client, the easier it will be to find them, connect with them, and attract them to your Virtual Law Firm.

Component 2: Digitizing Your Knowledge

1. DIGITIZATION OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE: Lawyers have specialized knowledge that they have acquired through law school as well as through their work experience. The information, insights, and expertise that they possess is highly valuable and need to be "digitized" into a format that can be consumed by prospects online. So, think about what information you can extract from your mind, and how you can digitize that knowledge in the form of blogs, courses, content, videos, or other ways that enable you to share this with your customers and prospective customers online.

2. CREATION OF LEGAL COURSES: We live in an era where people are searching and consuming content online, and are likely looking for information online before they even make a purchase. The average client looks at several sites even before calling your firm or wanting to speak to you about their problem. This is about your own online behavior - do you call or sign up for the first site that you come across in your online search, or do you visit multiple sites before you decide to make a decision to book a call with a professional that can help you. We live in an era where information is one click away, so don't be afraid to create courses, guides, blogs, mini-crash courses on a legal topic that offer so your ideal customer can come across your content in their online search.

3. YOUR VIRTUAL LAW FIRM'S WEBSITE: Should you invest thousands of dollars on a professional website that is fancy, has nice pictures, has a ton of pages, and is "very robust" - maybe. Some argue that the days of spending a fortune of a website are gone. Customers online no longer care about fancy websites - they want information that's relevant to them right now. Yes, you need a law firm website if you want to build your brand, but we're noticed that simpler, one-page "funnels" convert higher because the topic on that page is more focused and it doesn't distract your client from the outcome that you'd like them to make - scheduling a call with you.

4. LAWYER FUNNELS™: That brings me to the next point - should you use a funnel, and what is a Lawyer Funnel™ anyway. Well - simply put, a lawyer funnel or legal funnel is a way to compress your legal offer in a simple step-by-step process that gets your client closer to the action you'd like them to perform. It offers page 1 with information, page 2 with a booking calendar, and if necessary page 3 to join your online community or group or get immersed into your network.

5. USING SOCIAL MEDIA: Another piece that's relevant to the digitization of your knowledge relates to social media - are you using your social media to its fullest potential? Your ideal clients are on social media - there's no doubt about it. So, are you using your personal or business profiles to constantly advertise what you do, publicize your brand and raise more awareness about your services?

Component 3: Attracting Clients Online

1. THE RIGHT PLATFORMS: Visiting one of the points above again - where are your ideal clients "hanging out" or consuming their information from, and how can you get your message in front of them in the platform of their choice. Let's explore that concept in more depth.

2. THE RIGHT MESSAGE: Your message has to be contextually congruent. That means that if you are advertising on social media (Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn) - you need to think about the manner in which these platforms are used by your ideal clients. People normally do not go on Facebook to buy something or look for information that can solve a problem, they do so to engage with friends, chat with others, and even interact in groups and communities with other like-minded people.

So, if you are planning to advertise on these platforms, it has to be a "soft pitch". It has to be a subtle way of enticing them to follow you or get into your network and database by offering valuable information that is attractive, disruptive, and engaging.

3. THE RIGHT HOOKS: That brings me to the next point - your hooks. You need a good hook to get people from social media to click on your ads or read your post before they engage with you. Unless you offer something that hooks them, you'll lose them. You may have a good message to share or have some valuable content, but, you need to hook your customers so they are going to pursue you.

Offering a guide, an educational video, a detailed step-by-step process, a digital course, a workshop, or even a virtual summit can be a good way to hook your ideal clients so they can take the next step in following your content online and/or book a call to speak with you.

4. BUILDING AUTHORITY: The above strategy ties into this one - offering a good hook and presenting valuable information to your ideal clients can enable you to build more authority and build trustworthiness in your marketplace. By offering these digital consumable pieces of information, you are establishing yourself as an authority in your space, which will help you become top-of-mind to your customers.

People may not want your services right now, but, by giving them the opportunity to follow your content, you give them the opportunity to think of you and when the time's right - you're the first person that comes to their mind.

5. GOOGLE ADVERTISING: Google Ads has been around for nearly 20 years. It dominates the search world. Every single second, 40,000 searches are done online. That means Google is amassing massive amounts of data on all of us. They know who we are, what we're searching for, what sites we visit, and what we do online. This also means that Google Ads, their advertising platform has a ton of information about your ideal customer. Their interests, what they are in the market for, what their goals are, where they live, their income, their job roles, and other information that is valuable to you as a lawyer.

If you are not using Google Ads to generate clients online, it's a good time to start. It's also a platform that is based on search intent - which means that your ideal customers are looking for a specific solution or specific information online when they go to Google.com. By creating the digital guides, courses, or information pieces, you are placing yourself in a unique place where you can get your ideal clients to land on your content, absorb your knowledge, and reach out to your law firm to solve their problems or issues.

6. YOUTUBE ADVERTISING: Youtube, owned by Google, is another platform that offers your Virtual Law Firm the opportunity to get in front of tens of thousands, if not millions of people, within a few clicks. But, the strategy here is slightly different, it is a subtle "sell".

People go on Youtube to learn more, to get more information, to research how to do things, like "how to file a trademark" or "how does the Immigration process work in America". They are absorbing content, so if you choose to create online videos to showcase your expertise- Youtube is a great resource for you.

7. FACEBOOK ADVERTISING: Facebook is the world's largest social media platform, but you already knew that. So, are you using your Facebook account to get more clients to your law firm? Okay, that's a pretty open-ended question, so let's get a little more granular. Do you have a Facebook Business Manager Account for your law firm? Do you have a group where you are sending the right customers and prospects? Do you have a business page to showcase your virtual law firm? Are you posting videos, content, articles, tips, resources that your ideal customers can gain value from? Are you publicizing what you do on Facebook so people know you're in the market offering solutions to their needs? Are you using Facebook Ads to gain more customers? How many of these questions triggered a big, fat "yes"?

Well - Facebook Ads has a lot of information on each person that uses the platform and is an incredible resource for your Virtual Law Firm. With ads starting at $5 a day, that's roughly $150/month - it's a no-brainer for you to use Facebook Ads to reach and convert your dream clients. You can advertise videos, content, pictures, long-form posts, short-form posts, or a variety of other tools. The strategy differs from Google Ads as it's more of a social platform, people are not sitting around waiting to purchase something. So, it's an information-based, education-based sale that happens on Facebook.

8. INSTAGRAM ADVERTISING: Instagram, owned by Facebook, is a video and picture-based platform. It's a visual platform, so if you have videos, or have awesome graphics or visual pictures, you may want to consider using Instagram or Instagram Ads to reach your ideal customers. Once again, it's a subtle sale, as people are scrolling through their feed to connect to others, and they are not in "buying mode" - but, it's an awesome way to get more leads, more followers, and more ideal clients in your database who can be nurtured before a sale takes place.

Component 4: Using Technology To Your Advantage

1. RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT: Are you using the billion-dollar tools that you already have access to to your advantage? For example, Google search, Google Trends, Google Ads Keywords Search, Facebook, Instagram, or Youtube can be incredibly powerful tools that you should use consistently in your law firm to customize your data, create new content, or find the topics that your ideal clients are searching for.

2. FINDING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS: When you can identify the right keywords or topics that your ideal clients are searching for online and prepare your law firm's content based on those topics, your Virtual Law Firm's ideal customers will be more intentional and accurate. The closer you get to bridging the gap between what they are looking for and what you are selling/offering, the easier it will be to make an online sale.

3. PUBLICIZING YOUR BRAND: As mentioned in the section above, there are a plethora of platforms that you can use to publicize your Virtual Law Firm™, from social media platforms to Youtube, to Google Search, among others.

The key to publicizing your content and attracting the right customer is "marketing and innovation", as Peter Drucker coined it. Without marketing, no one will know who you are and what you offer. Without constant innovation, your law firm will face a slow decline in clients and profits. It's the "survival of the fittest" model, applied to the legal industry.

The firms that choose to constantly evolve and meet the needs of the market, will thrive. The ones that decide they want to do things the way they have always been done, will perish. It's the way life and even business work. In order to thrive as a lawyer today, you need a Virtual Law Firm that is tech-fused and uses technology to enhance its capabilities.

4. CLIENT BOOKINGS: Let's get more specific now. You need clients to book calls with you online after watching your videos, enrolling in courses, or consuming your content. Well - there are a few tools out there that I used to use in my own Virtual Law Firm. I have used to use Calendly, an online booking platform. I've also tried AcuitySchedule.

Finally - if you harness the power of Google, you can use Google Calendar. When we set out to create Virtual Law Firm (our software company), we decided to integrate and migrate Google Calendar into it - which has an unlimited amount of users, unlimited appointment slots, unlimited appointment types, and all backed by one of the largest tech giants.

5. EMAIL AUTOMATION: Your prospects need to be nurtured with information before a sale happens. You already know that. And your existing clients need more value-added so they keep buying from you or keep you top-of-mind for any of their needs, or when a friend or family member needs your service. Well, that's where email automation comes in. Every law firm owner needs to have a system that automatically sends their leads and clients automated emails, regardless of when they sign-up. It's a good way to send newsletters and up-to-date information on the changes in the law or anything else that may add value to them. There are many options in the market offering email automation, such as MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, or AWeber, which are charged based on the number of contacts that you use in their systems.

6. CLIENT DATABASE MANAGEMENT: Sometimes also called a CRM system - Customer relationship management. Simply put, you need a platform that can house all of your leads and clients with the relevant information that you need in one place. I used to use Hubspot, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and even InfusionSoft to manage this data. Some law firms still use manual ways of tracking leads and clients and store this data on Excel sheets.

If you are serious about scaling your firm, you need to get serious about housing and retrieval or data on the fly. We have built this feature in our software, Virtual Law Firm, so you can access and use lead or customer data as your want. We have even used Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to set up triggers that do some of the thinking for you, so you can have the technology doing the moving around and the heavy lifting based on the actions or inactions your leads and customers take.

7. CLIENT PROCESS MANAGEMENT: To manage a successful virtual law firm, you need to think about the manner in which your client processes are managed. For new leads, what stage of the pipeline are they in, and where do they get moved when they call you or take an action. For existing clients, what happens when they sign-up? Are there intake forms, do they send you documents, do you need something from them, what are the next stages that need to be done in order for their file to be completed. Think about this in your current law firm as it exists. How much of it is automated and how much is managed manually?

In order to thrive as a Virtual Law Firm™, you need to think about automating as much of this process as possible. Throughout my career, I've tested and perfected many ways to automate as much of this process as possible to ensure there is no case or process that is missed. I train virtual staff and virtual paralegals to ensure that there is a smooth system that enables the process to continue and every person working on the case has clear deadlines and processes that involve their piece. More on that in the section below that talks about Virtual Staff.

8. INTERNAL TASKS AND DELEGATION: If you are operating virtually, you need to get comfortable assigning tasks to team members virtually. I used to use software products like Slack, Monday, and Basecamp.

That's also a component that we've integrated into our proprietary software, Virtual Law Firm™ so that tasks and delegations are assigned automatically without manual input.

9. GETTING REVIEWS AUTOMATICALLY: Another piece of the Virtual Law Firm puzzle is the manner in which you can secure client reviews and testimonials. It's important to have that "social proof" that you're clients feel secure when they hire your services. It's important in today's digital age to have that component. Over the years, I've used different tools and software widgets to secure reviews and testimonials, but in my experience, the script and manner in which you obtain that is more important than the actual tools or software widgets that you use.

Component 5: Working With Virtual Staff

1. HIRING VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS: Now, let's dive into this piece. Can you operate a Virtual Law Firm with a virtual team, and simply put - YES, you can. There are a lot of companies out there that offer virtual staff who understand how to manage backend tasks. Think about it this way - how much further can you get and how much can you grow can you experience if all you were doing was to work on your business instead of in your business...a LOT!

Here's another way to put this - the more you can delegate, and the more you can outsource, the closer you can get to making the big decisions that move your business forward by leaps and bounds. Would you rather make $100 decisions or $10,000 or $1,000,000 decisions in your business?

2. HIRING VIRTUAL CLOSERS: Another strategy that has helped me grow my Virtual Law Firm by leaps and bounds is hiring virtual sales closers. In other words, staff members who are ready to get trained, jump on calls with prospective clients and close the sale. This is important especially if you want to grow and scale quickly, as your time is valuable, and there's only a limited amount of it. You cannot be writing your blogs, attending new leads closings, answering questions, filing the documents, conducting court work, managing the files, and doing everything by yourself. It's about working smart, not hard. That does not mean this is easy, it just means that you need to be very mindful of your time and very intentional with your time. The more you can delegate, the more you can do.

Virtual closers have been amazing in my business, and only message me if there is a question that is so technically or legally complex that requires my attention. Other than that, they get trained with a question and answer manual, get on the client calls, and close the deals.

3. TRAINING STAFF VIRTUALLY: Once you have hired virtual staff and virtual closers, it's a good idea to focus on virtually training them. I use a variety of tools and systems to host training videos and conduct training sessions with my staff, so even if one person leaves, the hiring and training process is easy and can be done with anyone new. This allows me to scale up and hire more staff and still expect them to perform quality work for me.

Here's my logic: If I need to do something a first time, and if there's a chance that I'd have to repeat that again - I shoot a training video and host it internally in Google Drive folders that only staff has access to.

4. MANAGING DEADLINES: So, you have some clients or a ton of clients that have hired you in your Virtual Law Firm. What's next - the delivery and management of their case. if you drop the ball, there may be some ethical or other repercussions. Well - this is something that I've had to solve in my own Law Firm as well. We started using a very meticulous and methodical process to ensure that no account was left behind.

5. CREATING PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS: The above point brings me to my next point - creating simple pipelines and stages for your client's journey through their case. I developed a set of processes and stages for each client. Think about this example.

A client hired you to file their trademark application. First, you need them to fill out an intake form. So, that's step one. Next, you need them to send you images, logos, information that you can use to file their documents and create an account with the trademark office. So that's step 2. Next, you have a staff member who has been trained for this particular filing, create an account for them under your trademark docket. That's step 3. Then, you need to fill out the actual application. That's step 4. Then there may be a notification that the client file has been assigned to an examiner. You want to notify your client of that. That's step 5. Then, the publication. That's step 6. It may be opposed or accepted after a certain length of time, say 3-6 months. That's step 7. If opposed, you have an extra step, that's 8. If accepted, they move to the closing stage, step 9.

A simple trademark filing has been broken down into this framework. It can be done with almost any other type of practice as well. But, that gives you control. That gives your staff transparency. That gives your clients the assurance they need. It's a smooth, well-oiled machine that can be scaled to 100s of clients, without anyone dropping through the cracks. Creating processes and structure is very important in your law firm and that's what has enabled me to build a multiple 6-figure per month Virtual Law Firm using Virtual Staff.

Component 6: Delivery Systems

1. HANDLING CLIENT INTAKES: So, this must be a recap at this point: You have virtual staff who are trained on the process and you have automated intake forms. Once a client pays, you redirect them to an "onboarding call" where your virtual staff or intake specialist can take the necessary information that you need by walking through the form with the client. You can redirect a payment page to a calendar appointment, and set up triggers to send the client these intake forms as well. That's what we do. Once a form is inputted, we create a folder in our case management tool and assign put all the documents into that folder. This can also be done with Google Drive very efficiently, and you can give your clients access to their documentation as well, so they can download what they need, whenever they want.

2. MANAGING CLIENT EXPECTATIONS: The more granular you get with your process, the easier it is to set the right expectations with clients from the start. The more transparency they have, the less they will rely on you. In my firm, I create introductory videos that breaks down the process for them so they know exactly what to expect. Remember, if you have to pitch the same thing twice to a client, you can do it through a simple video. That's exactly how we do it. Every client has the opportunity to know where they are and what's next in their case.

3. MANAGING CLIENT FILES: As mentioned above, we have an in-built case management tool and task assignment tool that we built for this purpose, but also use Google Drive to ensure that clients have access to what they need - all protected and secured. I trust Google to be a secure system, in addition to the actual case management systems that we've in-built. No reason to get super fancy here and it beats having any printed copies of files. I've been there too - it can get complex and you may end up needing large storage space to house all the files.

4. INVOICING AND PAYMENTS: As a Virtual Law Firm - you can bill your clients online. That's the beauty of present-day technology. 14 years ago when I started, I had to wait for clients to mail me a check or wire me money, which took 5-days. Today, running a Virtual Law Firm is a lot simpler. Using payment processors like Stripe or Paypal, you can actually integrate your different services into a landing page or a funnel page and have clients signup by themselves.

We even take it one step further, and get the necessary information that we need from them, and get them to fill out the forms that we need, and get their payment, send them to an onboarding video to watch the video that explains "What's Next", and then get them to book an appointment on the calendar. Once they book a time, a note is sent to the Virtual Paralegal who is going to work with them and handle their file.