Larry Bodine’s Top Five Marketing Tips for Legal Professionals  • Pick two days every week when you are going to get out of the office and have a face-to-face meeting with a client, referral source or potential client. You won’t get any new assignments by working through lunch or joining your law firm colleagues for drinks. Instead, meet a client for coffee, meet a referral source for lunch or dinner, and meet prospective clients at a trade association meeting.  • All new business comes through relationships with other people. Meet with people, find out how their company makes money, and devise ways to help them with legal services. Now is a great time to start a client visitation program. If you’ve never met your client, it’s time to get in your car or climb on an airplane and visit them at their offices. If all you do is send emails, faxes and Fed-Ex boxes to each other – you don’t have a relationship. Most of the human brain is devoted to vision, so get out and let other people see you.   • The best way to sell is by asking intelligent questions. Spend most of your time listening to the other person talk about their business issues and challenges. You can listen your way to a lot of new business. Don’t “pitch” yourself or recite your credentials. Your clients and prospects have no interest in your firm history, its top-notch practices and the cum laude degree you earned years ago. • Build good word-of-mouth advertising by expressly asking your clients if they are (a) satisfied with your work and if so, will they (b) recommend you to their colleagues. You have to ask because clients have no idea how a lawyer builds a clientèle, and don’t know that they’re supposed to recommend you. Ask clients if you can use them as a reference, or summarize the good work you’ve done in a case history on your firm’s website. • Keep meticulous records about the people you meet. When you get a business card, write three things on the back: the date, where you were and what you talked about. Immediately when you return to the office, transfer this information plus the person’s contact information into an Outlook Contact or into your firm’s CRM system. This way you can search it, and quickly call up the record when you need it. Keep adding to the record. When you’ve got names and ages of the person’s children and pets, you’ve gone deep enough. Remember, you can’t search a wad of business cards with a rubber band around it that was tossed into a drawer.

MyLegal.com, an online social network for attorneys, designated Larry Bodine as one of the Top Five legal marketing experts in the field.

CEO Lisa Dimonte wrote: "Many legal professionals become paralyzed at the mention of business development, rainmaking or marketing themselves or their firm’s services."

"Larry Bodine is a business development advisor who helps law firms generate revenue and get new business. Larry conducts marketing assessments and devises strategies to help lawyers increase revenue. With an overall strategy in mind, Larry provides individual coaching, assessment, training, and follow up to ensure success."

"A former litigator, Larry knows how to communicate to lawyers. He brings 19 years of experience to business development projects – including 9 years as marketing director of mega firm Sidley Austin, and 10 years as a private business development advisor for dozens of law firms."

"Through his Apollo Business Development Programs, Larry and his team of experts help you develop your personal action plan, build professional relationships necessary to be successful, and provide you with the necessary advice and tools to expand and reinforce the training."

MyLegal.com recommended that lawyers and marketers subscribe to his blog at http://blog.larrybodine.com/, read his articles at www.LawMarketing.com, watch his videos and attend his webinars at www.pbdi.org and seminars at state associations and business development conferences.

"I think you’ll find each expert has a different approach and provides valuable insight and recommendations for successful marketing for legal professionals," Dimonte wrote.

To see a list of Bodine's representative projects and the testimonials of the partners he worked with, please visit http://bit.ly/cylnS9.

MyLegal.com is a networking resource exclusively for legal professionals to connect, collaborate and create business opportunities. The site aggregates information that is relevant to the legal community. Member-driven blogs and forums highlight industry trends, technology and business strategies. MyLegal.com’s fully searchable and web-accessible Professional Directory enables clients to find legal professionals around the globe and to be found by those in need of your services and expertise.