The Lawyer Branches Out

[Caminsky]

I posted on here a while back about branching out a little. I have been practicing business law for 10+ years and feel a little burned out, especially concerning the billable hour grind. I have a game plan of sorts for my office that I need to put into action. In that regard, I have let the chaos of family/life/work slow me down.

However, one productive thing I have done was start a new website. Long story short, a web developer got on my nerves after over-promising and under-delivering on a plan for my office. I got annoyed and decided to teach myself how to build a website. I already know some SEO tricks from doing some content writing on the side last year (I quit after they asked me to sign a non-compete). So I bought a domain, researched keywords, and launched a website unrelated to my practice. The site looks good, I publish articles about twice a week, sometimes more, and it's slowly but surely starting to rank on some good keywords. I am not making a dime yet, but I see the potential for affiliate and ad revenue if it grows.

The point of this post is:

1. To document my journey for fun and accountability. I hope to talk a little more about my marketing efforts with my brick-and-mortar business and the website's progress; and
2. To engage with y'all as I continue my Fastlane journey, hopefully learning some things as I go.

I am happy to share some of the lessons I've been learning along the way, if anyone is interested.

 

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[Griml0ck]

Congrats man on taking action! I appreciated your post.

 

[WJK]

I posted on here a while back about branching out a little. I have been practicing business law for 10+ years and feel a little burned out, especially concerning the billable hour grind. I have a game plan of sorts for my office that I need to put into action. In that regard, I have let the chaos of family/life/work slow me down.

However, one productive thing I have done was start a new website. Long story short, a web developer got on my nerves after over-promising and under-delivering on a plan for my office. I got annoyed and decided to teach myself how to build a website. I already know some SEO tricks from doing some content writing on the side last year (I quit after they asked me to sign a non-compete). So I bought a domain, researched keywords, and launched a website unrelated to my practice. The site looks good, I publish articles about twice a week, sometimes more, and it's slowly but surely starting to rank on some good keywords. I am not making a dime yet, but I see the potential for affiliate and ad revenue if it grows.

The point of this post is:

1. To document my journey for fun and accountability. I hope to talk a little more about my marketing efforts with my brick-and-mortar business and the website's progress; and
2. To engage with y'all as I continue my Fastlane journey, hopefully learning some things as I go.

I am happy to share some of the lessons I've been learning along the way, if anyone is interested.

So where are you going with your changes? What is your goal? Do you want to continue with your law practice? To pin it down, are you trying to replace your income or just supplement it? Are you trying to pivot into another use for your J.D.? Are you trying to give business/legal advice through your new website articles and monetize it?

I too have a J.D. that I used in my RE expert witness and litigation support practice before I retired. So, I'm curious about your change of direction.

 

[Caminsky]

So where are you going with your changes? What is your goal? Do you want to continue with your law practice? To pin it down, are you trying to replace your income or just supplement it? Are you trying to pivot into another use for your J.D.? Are you trying to give business/legal advice through your new website articles and monetize it?

I too have a J.D. that I used in my RE expert witness and litigation support practice before I retired. So, I'm curious about your change of direction.

The website is unrelated to my career. It's a sandbox that I'm using to experiment with SEO and web design. I am not planning to shut down the law offices by any means, but I need to change things up. I am creating some presentations and materials to start doing continuing legal education (CLE) credits. This has two key benefits 1) I can make a little profit from putting on the CLEs, and 2) it should lead to high-quality referrals from other lawyers.

I am also using some lessons from the side project to improve our marketing efforts. I played around with making TikToks for the site, and they did surprisingly well with little effort on my part. I've got a list of topics to start making TikToks and Youtube videos over my practice area (no dancing, I swear). My endgame for the practice area is to drum up enough business to bring on more attorneys eventually (I currently have one working for me) and switch to a primarily supervisory/marketing role.

I enjoy marketing more than I enjoy the actual legal work. I do not hate the work itself, mind you, but tracking time does not coalesce well with my brain. I take on most of our flat fee work myself for this reason.

 

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[WJK]

The website is unrelated to my career. It's a sandbox that I'm using to experiment with SEO and web design. I am not planning to shut down the law offices by any means, but I need to change things up. I am creating some presentations and materials to start doing continuing legal education (CLE) credits. This has two key benefits 1) I can make a little profit from putting on the CLEs, and 2) it should lead to high-quality referrals from other lawyers.

I am also using some lessons from the side project to improve our marketing efforts. I played around with making TikToks for the site, and they did surprisingly well with little effort on my part. I've got a list of topics to start making TikToks and Youtube videos over my practice area (no dancing, I swear). My endgame for the practice area is to drum up enough business to bring on more attorneys eventually (I currently have one working for me) and switch to a primarily supervisory/marketing role.

I enjoy marketing more than I enjoy the actual legal work. I do not hate the work itself, mind you, but tracking time does not coalesce well with my brain. I take on most of our flat fee work myself for this reason.

Sounds good. It's a smart business decision.

I've always had a few side gigs that also interest me. I call them my "dribble incomes". None of them make a lot of money on their own. But they help support my main RE rental business.

Here's an example. I built and own a small self-service Laundromat that is located on my property. It's the only one in our community and it's a meeting place for a lot of people. And I use the whiteboard there to list my available rentals. Between posting there, on the community board at the post office, and putting them on the local Facebook page, I paid $0 last year for advertising. My vacancies get filled within days.