From Startup to Success: Family Law and Law Firm Marketing with Holly Sheridan

Viktoria Altman: Guys, welcome to the Law Firm Accelerator. Today we have Holly with us. A family law attorney in Pennsylvania. Holly, thank you so much for joining us.

Holly K. Sheridan: Thank you for having me today. I’m excited to speak to you about what’s going on in my industry as well as yours.

Viktoria Altman: So Holly, could you introduce yourself? Tell us about your practice and why you decided to go into the field of family law.

Holly K. Sheridan: Sure. My name is Holly Sheridan and I decided to become a lawyer a little bit late. I had already signed up for college at a state school to do finance or art or pretty much anything but law school. And one thing led to another.

Going to law school, I love the process. I love the system even though it’s extremely broken at times, and I’m a big believer in the competition, and everyone should have one. Now shooting forward many years. When I started out as a new attorney, I was working at a small law firm here in Pennsylvania, and my now husband at the time was finishing up law school in Florida, and it was a general practice.

I did all types of law, criminal, family, estate, contract disputes, personal injury claims, you name it, I would do it. As a young attorney, that is extremely intense and a lot of pressure because you’re still trying to learn how to practice law. When you’re thrown into different areas of law, you really have to know what you’re doing and be competent in each area.

About two years into practicing there, at this point, my now husband Hillary is living in Pennsylvania. He was a public defender, he’s always done really well with criminal law. I just had this moment. I thought, I can’t do this. I’m so stressed and unhappy. This is not gonna work out.

It’s not sustainable. I was 27. I had zero plan other than I knew I can’t keep doing what I’m doing. I turned in my notice. It did not go well. Now years later, this man is still my mentor, and we have a good relationship. He said, well, what are you gonna do? And I said. I don’t know.

He’s like, you don’t have a job. And I was like, no, I’m just going to go home. At the time, I was broke. A brand new lawyer living in a one bedroom apartment with my boyfriend. I had one client, one of the clients that, had a complex case was like, well, I gotta go with you. I just started with one client, one check, and from there it just slowly grew and the one bedroom became, you know, a two bedroom with a bonus room. Then, we moved back into my parents’ house, so we could have more space.

At the beginning, it was a lot of trying to get our ducks in a row, but also, not knowing how to do that. So a lot of research, a lot of reading, different material on management, recommendations, and also, becoming a business owner. That in and of itself is a big task. So, I look back at the early days, and they were fun. I miss those.

Viktoria Altman: You started kind of like a law firm in your garage, it sounds like.

Holly K. Sheridan: It kind of felt that way. To answer your first question completely, I had started my own firm, with no investments, no assets, no real money. I could afford the 9.99 GoDaddy website, a cell phone. My expenses were under a hundred dollars at that point, other than trying to figure out my living expenses.

Then as things progressed, I really thought I will never do family law again.

Out of all these areas of law I was doing at my old firm, I couldn’t stand family law. It was just something about the lack of concrete black and white rules in family law like bothered me. I like taxes, I’m a rule-based person. So when I started the firm 10 years ago, I said, I’ll do personal injury law.

That’s where I actually love and I have a passion for. But slowly over time, family law cases just kept coming to me, being referred to me, and I started taking them.

I really love family law now. It is an area that I do not intend to leave, and I look at it so differently than I did as a young attorney, where I needed the black and white roadmap so I could tell the client, this is gonna happen. If we do this, X is gonna happen.

But in family law, it’s not like that. And I think once you learn to embrace the fact that this is an ebb and a flow. How do you parent your kids or co-parent with your ex-spouse is going to shape what tomorrow looks like.

So now I only do family law. But I love it. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Viktoria Altman: It’s funny, I think sometimes our jobs pick us. If you told me 10 years ago I’d be working with lawyers and doing marketing for lawyers, I’d be like, what? You crazy? I was a travel blogger and it was great and I love this job.

This is actually my favorite job that I’ve ever had. Sometimes you just end up in life where you never thought you would, and you love it. You start your law firm basically in the basement. Now I’m a marketing person, so my question for you is, did you open a Google My Business listing or a Google business profile?

Because now you have to have an office to open it. But 10 years ago you could have done it from anywhere basically.

Holly K. Sheridan: This is a great question. One of the first things I did was go and get a PO box. I believe I could register it to the PO box at the time, which now, we’ve had to change to our physical locations.

But that’s a whole process. Setting up your Google location and maps. But yeah, I got in right before, they got really stringent on no PO boxes.

Viktoria Altman: One of the questions that I get a lot from people who are brand new at setting up their law firm is, do I need an office? Can I use a virtual office? The answer used to be yes, because you used to be able to open a Google business profile, and Google business profile ,besides your website, is probably the second most important internet property you could have. It is part of Google Maps and is one of the best ways for people to find you.

Right now, you can no longer set up a GBP,short for Google business profile, without a physical office. So when I have folks come to me and say, I have a law firm, but we are doing virtual, usually I have to tell ’em, I can’t even work with you because I know that I would be just taking their money without delivering. I always say it like this, I don’t care where your office is but it has to have a legitimate USPS business address. It should be a separate suite, and then we can set you up a Google Business profile. That is the very first thing you should do.

Before you do any marketing at all, make sure you have a GBP and you can do it yourself. You don’t need to pay an agency to set it up. There’s plenty of tutorials online. I think I actually have one on my website on how to set it up.

So, you opened up your own law firm in your apartment and you work with your husband?

Holly K. Sheridan: Yes, probably the first year and a half. This is like 2014. He worked as a public defender for the next county over, part-time. That’s how we got our benefits and health insurance.

Then he worked at Samuel Law Firm, which was my maiden name, which we’ve now changed to Sheridan Lawyers. Eventually about a year and a half in, it became to the point where we could not sustain the public defender clients, the time it was taking because it became at the cost of our clients.

I still remember having this moment at a restaurant, and at this point our daughter was born. And us just deciding like, screw the benefits, we just have to do this. There’s no other way. That felt like a big jump for us. It was just losing that security blanket. Even though public defenders don’t get paid much, it’s still a steady paycheck.

That’s something as a law firm owner, you’re constantly thinking about. Then, you could probably relate once you start having employees. You know I’m no longer worried about my steady paycheck. I’m worried about making sure my employees have their steady paycheck before I even pay myself.

It’s interesting how your priorities stay the same, but it also shifts over time.

Viktoria Altman: It’s definitely a challenge being a small business owner. I would say health insurance is. I’ve joked with my friends, I’ll marry you as long as I can have your health insurance. It’s a joke, but in every joke there’s part joke.

Holly K. Sheridan: Well, to make you feel better. I incorporated, it was Samuel Law Firm, but Sheridan Lawyers in May of 2014 and I did not have benefits. Then my husband and I pretty much eloped in June of 2014, because I needed benefits, and we’re gonna get married anyway.

But the benefit was a large point of that conversation.

Viktoria Altman: It’s such an American conversation to have. It’s so easy to start a business in the States. I have employees all over. I know that there’s so many roadblocks in other places in the world when you want to start a business, and it’s so much easier for us.

But on the other hand, we have our own unique challenges. So you start your business, you’re clearly doing well. You have seven, eight employees besides you and your husband. Something like that, right?

Holly K. Sheridan: Including my husband and I, we have the three full-time attorneys, and then we did bring on a full-time HR.

This last year and a half, which has been awesome as a small business to bring in HR. She does operations and helps with payroll. We have a full-time marketing employee that we brought in about two years ago. We have paralegals, and multiple legal assistants. Altogether, it’s like 11, give or take.

Viktoria Altman: You have a pretty big law firm. Usually I start this question off by going, tell me what kind of marketing is working well for you. But I know you’ve had a less than ideal experience with a marketing agency.

And just to give our listeners some background, every single person I speak with, except for the few people who came straight to me from law school. They’ve had terrible experiences, and as much as I hope every person who listens decides to go with me, I may not be the right agency for everybody.

What I do want to do is talk about your experience, and in hindsight, what were the red flags? What can we avoid in the future? As well as what are the green flags and things that are working for you?

Holly K. Sheridan: Maybe it was two years ago. I don’t know if it’s just this company we ended up working with. It’s a lot of glamor. It’s like a big show, and why you should, hire these people to do your marketing.

They did business, management, professional coaching. At that time, my husband and I know we need to take the next step and get organized in our business practices. So we decided to sign on with the company, and it was a lot of money a month.

We did end up getting a professional video tape and we were assigned a business coach who work with us pretty much they say like as needed or at least once every other week. So I really thought, and my husband, I think would agree, the value in this for us was the coaching.

After a series of multiple coaches, people quitting, we could never actually establish a relationship with a coach where it felt like we’re getting anything done. And then the video came out, and it’s not the video they displayed at their big convention.

A couple of the red flags were the revolving people. My husband and I come in, we’re asking specific questions to make sure we can get the most out of this experience. It’s almost like a therapy session.

They start asking the question back to you and they gotta talk to somebody else before answering the question. It started to feel like we’re just going through this cycle, but we’re not actually gaining anything from it. In hindsight though, we did learn from this entire, very expensive experience with that company I wouldn’t recommend. Finding someone that’s more like in your situation. You’re a small business, you likely work with everyone directly. Whereas this case, it was a lot of just the glamor, and, wining and dining people to stay.

The most important piece we took with us is carving out the time that we were giving this company to get stuff done. We didn’t need to work with that company. We just had to carve out the time in our personal and professional lives to sit down and start having conversations about marketing expenses, what’s our 10 year plan, what’s our vision?

And on the business development side, how are our procedures and processes, and how we can better support our employees. I do believe that the light at the end of the tunnel is,we value carving out time to work on business and marketing tasks now, which we didn’t before.

Viktoria Altman: Your experience is very typical. Just from hearing so many folks talk, I’m hearing some red flags there for sure. I’m gonna use myself as an example, not because I’m the only good agency out there, but because I know my business best. When I speak to people, I always clarify that while I have a big team behind me, I am the person who owns the company, final responsibilities with me, you talk to me, and should there be a problem, you come to me directly.

One thing I’ve noticed with a lot of agencies that may not do as high quality work as I’d like to see in this industry, is that there is really nobody responsible, and if they are responsible, they’re responsible for portion.

They’re not really there. They don’t understand the technical stuff. Something feels a little bit off. So the first thing you need to do is when you’re talking to the marketing agency is, who am I gonna deal with? Who is the person who is going to be there to answer my questions?

If they’re just a salesperson who doesn’t seem to have a lot of knowledge, then I would say that’s a red flag. A salesperson is gonna have a very hard time understanding. Now, if you are assigned an SEO and that SEO happens to be very good, you should talk to their clients.

You should ask them for referrals. Have you been speaking with Mr. Jack? How long have you been with him? How is your experience with that? Ask for references for that specific person, not for an agency. Because when you have a big agency and you have 12 specialists, one of them might be good, the other six may not be.

Salespeople don’t have enough understanding. It’s a very complex business. I would definitely say make sure you’re assigned a good technical person. In my agency, I am the technical person. I’m the strategist. Another thing, dining generally means they have a very large budget. And if they have a very large budget, then why is that budget not being put towards their clients?

Holly K. Sheridan: I think in those big corporate law firms, you have people going and they’re not necessarily bringing back the results my husband and I need and we’re looking for.

Just to speak to what you just said, about asking. That should have been my first red flag. So we go back for this workshop and everyone’s having lunch, and my husband said to someone oh, who are you working with? And they said the person’s name.

It happened to be our first person assigned to us, who my husband and I had already decided, and really did not have the knowledge that we’re looking for. And I said, how’s it going? He was like, oh, it’s great. She really helps me work on my goals. I’m thinking to myself, to my husband, we gotta get outta here. If that is the standard of doing great and people are happy with that, this is not for us personally.

Viktoria Altman: Another good point is there are agencies that do small companies really well and that do larger companies really well. Now, I will actually not take on a larger law firm, because I don’t have the process for them.

They need a lot more handholding. I’m not set up for this. My systems not set up for it. So look for somebody who specializes in your size law firms, whether that be small, big, medium, whatever. What you want is clients who are in the same practice area as you, and who also have a similar number of lawyers, similar number of associates, and similar number of office staff.

Another thing, if you ask for references, and they’re only able to give you a reference of somebody who’s outside of your practice area or different size, that’s a red flag.

Another one, and that might not be the one you’ve thought about. I should be careful about this. The best guys and girls I know do not require any long-term commitments. I don’t have a contract at all. I have an agreement month to month. You can cancel. The reason why is because I don’t need it. Nobody leaves if you do great work. And if they do leave, what am I gonna do? Sue a lawyer?

Holly K. Sheridan: And that was how this company was operating. Like, you’re in two year contract. I kind of went back and said, okay, to resolve this, I’m leaving. This is not gonna work out.

In consideration, I will not go on social media and blast you. But you’re right, that’s a red flag, and that’s same thing with employees or clients. If it’s not working well and jiving, you don’t wanna keep that relationship moving forward.

At least that’s how we look at employees. We have a really amazing culture here. It’s fun, but also hardworking, and honest. I really don’t like a lot of negativity and I’m very much a teacher. I wanna teach employees how to do something, so next time they can do it. The first flag that we see that this probably isn’t gonna work out, we no longer keep that person. It’s the same thing I would imagine with marketing.

Viktoria Altman: And it works the same way for clients. Sometimes people come to me and I sign them up, and I just see it’s not gonna work.

Why am I gonna waste my time? Why am I gonna waste your time? I would rather give you a refund and wish you the best of luck. Nobody’s ever mad at you on social because you gave them a refund.

Holly K. Sheridan: Because you look at it more compassionately. It’s not working. Best of luck both ways.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah. If I can’t sleep because the client is stressing me out, it’s not worth it. So as an agency owner, and again, I know an agency who works with very large law firms, and they don’t do contracts either. Because they just don’t need to. I will be clear and explicit we’re not gonna get your results in three weeks. That’s not how marketing works. You gotta give us at least three to six months. Depending on your area, but you will see results in three to six months.

There are basically two types of agencies out there. The ones who focus on promoting themselves, and the ones who focus on promoting their clients. If your resources are going heavily into promoting yourself, then chances are they’re not going as heavily into promoting the clients.

I don’t even, not sure why it’s that way, because it doesn’t need to be. Because you could run a really good ad campaign for yourself and your client. But for some reason, that’s what I noticed over and over again.

Holly K. Sheridan: I’ve never thought about that, but it seems accurate from my experience.

Viktoria Altman: I’m sorry about this bad experience. Unfortunately my industry is unregulated. Anybody could do anything. Which means when you have a good business model, you have wonderful clients, and you don’t feel like you need to put anybody on the sales special.

I’ll follow up with my sales of course, but I’m not here to like, sign, sign, sign. On the other hand, it also leaves a room for people who may not be as conscientious. I apologize for my industry, the fact that you’ve encountered this, but it sounds like you’ve figured out a lot, and you’re doing marketing in-house now. Are you doing social media marketing in-house?

Holly K. Sheridan: Social media. She does manages the website. I’m also an event coordinator, and works with our local community who set up events where we can market.

One of our offices is in a town called Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. It’s famous for the mushroom capital of the world, and there is a mushroom festival every September.

Thousand plus people get drawn to this little town, and our office is right on one of the main streets.

That is one of our biggest marketing events of the year. In the past we’ve given away a MacBook Pro if people signed up for our raffle, signed up for our newsletter. It’s just a really fun way to meet members of the community, and it’s an annual thing. She coordinates all of that.

She gets pretty much everything done. She also does a newsletter on the Uptown Express. The goal is to have quarterly ones that are a little bit longer, but the monthly one is just a blurb.

We want our clients to see us. Hey, we’re still here, we’re still doing stuff. In family law. I like to give like a pro tip. For example, we have a lot of families and clients come to us, fighting over school or summer camps.

It’s really just trying to focus on Hey, right now the hot topic’s this. Here’s a little advice on how to best deal with it and co-parent, and really just for encouragement too. I do think people read it because it’s from a law office, it’s free. It’s something that’s like, I hope to bring people in, just to read what’s going on.

Viktoria Altman: Couple of great points there.

So, The newsletters. You have an interesting situation in your office because you have somebody who has a long sale cycle, and somebody who has a short sales cycle, right? Family law is a longer sales cycle because people take a while to make that decision. They will do a little extra research, they may read a newsletter before they make a move.

With criminal law, on the other hand, it is a very short sale cycle. I need a criminal lawyer right now. A lot of people are simply embarrassed to ask people they know. So what they’ll do is they’ll type it on Google and they’ll get whoever has the most reviews or whoever they feel like has the best connection from socials.

The newsletter is a great idea for your family law, and brilliant idea to advertise at this festival. I bet you get good PR, and it’s just great. For your criminal law, on the other hand, if you try to do a criminal law newsletter, you probably wouldn’t get a lot of bang for the buck because those people have to make decisions quickly. Hopefully no repeat clients in criminal law. Right?

Holly K. Sheridan: In reality, but that is the hope.

Viktoria Altman: So, many of my clients will talk to a person and, hopefully they never hear from them again. I actually hope the same thing for your divorce clients, too. I hope you don’t get a lot of repeat business there, although I’m sure there’s some, probably more than what criminal. So it does call for different type of marketing. Now I’m an SEO person. I’m an online Google person. That’s my specialty, that’s what I do. I look at it from the viewpoint of what is the best return investment. Still to this day, the best return investment, assuming you have a great agency, of course, and you have a good experience, is going to be search engine optimization.

But, having those newsletters in the long run can be very helpful to help you nurture those leads. You are doing a lot of social media, but that’s also a longer sales cycle. What do you do for your husband’s portion of the business, the criminal law. How do you advertise that?

Holly K. Sheridan: A couple different ways. I’ll tell you a way that didn’t really help first.

There’s business networking groups or national, there’s small chapters. For a while he was involved in our local one, and he went in as a criminal attorney, and nothing’s coming out of this.

We’re like, why would we go under the criminal law category in this setting? When I’m with business owners. I’m with people that know someone who might need a guardianship of an elderly.

So we switch the category, to a business attorney ’cause he does do business law as well. Then all of a sudden things start to click. But if any of those people needs a criminal attorney, they do send it over. There’s also free advertising in a lot of ways. For example, the daily local news for our area just came out with the best lawyers or top lawyers of Chester County, which is like a voting reader choice.

We were listed in multiple categories, and my husband was under DUI, landlord-tenant, and trial. So I think just, the more people that you engage with, you’ll receive some of that word of mouth.

As well as he just one day started leaving court because like he comes back with pretty fun stories from court.

He has been filming himself, walking back to the office, just a little blurb about, “Hey, what did he just deal with in court?” and try and give some of the viewers a little bit of the law that day. One thing with criminal defense, it’s a short turnaround. Getting clients in right away when they call today, not two weeks from now. Jumping on a call, talking to a new client, also sending out letters because where we’re at, it’s published who’s been charged with a crime.

So I think globally, we try and do a lot of little things. He would love talking to you because he’s our Google guy.

Viktoria Altman: That makes sense. Usually the best social media is done from in-house. Because social media is so unique, and you have to truly understand the person.

I actually just recently spoke with another criminal lawyer in Arizona who’s doing very well on social media. What he does is something very similar, where he explains things he’s passionate about and does a lot of pro bono work. If you love it, it’ll come through on social media.

I can talk about digital marketing, 26 hours a day. I think when you love it, it comes through, and it’s genuine and very hard to outsource. So having a social media house in person is often a good idea. You can start with somebody who is relatively inexperienced because even if they’re inexperienced, they probably know a lot about social media. A lot of times it’s not even a very expensive hire, because you might be getting somebody right out of college, but they will come in with good expertise in that. So good for you on maximizing that, and it sounds like you’re doing really well with this.

So before we go, I would love to ask you for your favorite client story.

Holly K. Sheridan: That’s so hard. I don’t know if there’s a favorite or most memorable.

If I’m being very honest, a lot of my cases are sad. I try and look at it in a positive light, but you have these families that are going through a transition and a separation, especially with children. Maybe my favorite story was from years ago. It was when I got my first suite office, so probably like eight years or seven years ago. He came in, and his wife had taken the two littles and moved to a different state, almost three hours away. He had substantial custody, meaning like he didn’t have shared custody 50/50, but he was like a good 42%, 45%.

That’s a lot. Under Pennsylvania law, a relocation is defined as any move that would impair the non-custodial parent.

So in this situation, dad, his ability to exercise his custody or substantially interfere with it, and I was just remember being shock that the mother said it doesn’t interfere. He’s just gonna lose one overnight a week, and it’s not that big of a deal. So we ended up fighting it. That was at the beginning of the school year. By Christmas, we’re at a full blown trial. She has already moved back because we got into court pretty fast and the judge said, you better get your tail back as fast as possible.

We did the full trial, but looking back, now he is 50/50 of his children. They’re at the school that he really wanted them at, and they’re doing good. So I think it’s hard to look at a case as a favorite, but I love to see cases a few years later and see, that they’re doing well.

Viktoria Altman: It’s a hard job, but when you do it well, all these kids, they’re probably so much better off for having their dad close to them.

Holly K. Sheridan: He was so involved too. He was like the sports coaches.

But, you know, some cases it’s really sad.

I see parents that don’t wanna be involved. Then you have parents that need the help. Navigating each case, you take little wins when you can.

Viktoria Altman: It’s a job that requires a lot of empathy. That’s how you get through the not so good moments. By knowing that you are helping.

It’s a sweet story, and I hope that the children are doing well. I bet they’re grateful for having their father in their life.

Holly K. Sheridan: Thank you for having me on this podcast. This was a lot of fun.

Viktoria Altman: Thank you for joining. Holly.