The Art of Authentic Marketing for Law Firms with Shekar Jayaraman

Viktoria Altman: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Law Firm Accelerator. Today with me, I have, and I hope I pronounced this correctly, Shekar Jayaraman.

Shekar Jayaraman: Yep, that’s perfect.

Viktoria Altman: Shekar is a lawyer from Chicago and you work with family, immigration, estate planning, as well as business,. That’s quite a few things.Talk to me about your practice.

Shekar Jayaraman: So I don’t do any immigration. I don’t do family law, I do estate planning and probate. I do civil litigation and estate litigation. And then we do some real estate work as well. So those are basically the five areas that it boils down to.

Viktoria Altman: Got it.

So tell me, how did you come to this field? There’s so many things you’re doing. How come these specific fields of the law?

Shekar Jayaraman: Yeah, if you really boil it down, I always tell people, especially when it comes to estate planning, business planning, business litigation, and estate litigation. You could either look at that as two practice areas or four. We handle the proactive side and the reactive side. I think it’s important to have both lenses in those areas.

As an estate or business litigator, it’s really [00:01:00] important to know the transactional side. When you’re putting together business documents or estate planning documents, it is absolutely crucial to know how would these documents fail? And the best way to really know it is if you are a skilled litigator in those areas because for me, I come at any sort of estate or business planning with the lens of a litigator. So I’m able to identify pitfalls in the documents and advise my clients. We can forecast what might happen in the event that we don’t include certain verbiage or language.

I think it’s important to be well versed in the proactive transactional and the reactive litigation side of both. That’s why I always tell people it’s either two practice areas or for however you look at it.

Viktoria Altman: Interesting. So, is your ideal client profile somebody who is a small business owner and who comes to you for both estate and business, or are you working with all kinds of folks on the estate planning side?

Shekar Jayaraman: So on the estate planning side, we do tend to do more trust-based estate plans. We don’t really do high net worth estate plans. If you come to us [00:02:00] with a 50 or $70 million estate, I will likely refer you to a trusted colleague of mine. You’re getting into very nuanced territory.

In Illinois, once you surpass $4 million in your estate, you’re actually going into a little bit of the higher net worth estate plan. It depends from state to state. I’m only speaking on Illinois and South Dakota where I’m licensed currently. But Illinois has an estate tax. The estate tax in Illinois starts at $4 million. Federally, it’s around 13 million and if you’re a married couple, it’s 26 million. And so when you’re getting into those higher net worth estates, it’s really important to go to an estate planning attorney who has tax experience or has that collaborative experience where they can help you with those higher net worth asset protection planning. I have a vast network of attorneys that I work well with across the country. So I’m able to, for my clients, have a pulse on their estate planning even after I’ve referred it out. So once I’ve referred it out, it’s not like I’m not [00:03:00] monitoring it or I’m not in touch with the client. I make sure they’re in good hands.

Viktoria Altman: Okay. So on your website you mentioned your firm combines small town intimacy with big city efficiency.

It’s an interesting marketing approach. What does that mean?

Shekar Jayaraman: Yeah. I get asked that question a lot and that’s the reason I put that on there is because I’ve worked in a town of 800 people in South Dakota, and now work in a town of the metropolitan area is nearly 10 million people. Now, in Chicago, everyone needs things to be done yesterday. It’s a very fast-paced and efficient environment. Chicago has this reputation for being a rough and tough town. But what I do appreciate about Chicago is things get done efficiently. The one thing that Chicago might lack is the customer experience, especially when it comes to law firms and one thing that I’ve seen that Chicago lacks is the compassion towards each individualized client. That’s one thing that I was trained, having been born and raised in Ohio, lived in South Dakota and spent most of my adulthood across small towns in the Midwest. That small town [00:04:00] intimacy when it comes to getting to know your neighbor, your client, their family, their needs, that’s so important when it comes to law practice. That’s sometimes something that big cities don’t really pay as much attention to.

They’re about getting the deal done and getting things moving. But they forget about that human touch, that human relationship. When people come to you with their problems, they’re coming to you. When you’re an attorney and you have a client come to your office, people never come to you under the best circumstances.

They’re coming to you ’cause they’re scared or when it’s estate planning they’re coming to you and they’re divulging very vulnerable information to you. When I say the small town feel, it’s because in my law firm, we don’t view you as just another file. We view you as a human with very personalized and specialized needs.

And so every family, every client that comes through our door is treated with the utmost personalized care. We do it in a big city fashion. So we do it with a very fast-paced and [00:05:00] high attention to detail.

Viktoria Altman: So for you, it’s important to provide that quality service, and how do you balance that with a pretty growing law firm, right?

You are, how many one two, okay. You have a lot of people.

So how do you manage to balance that? How do you build that atmosphere in your firm?

Shekar Jayaraman: I hire people that are smarter than me, and people that I really trust that are passionate about what they do, and that I can learn from. I don’t want to create an echo chamber. I want to create an atmosphere of people that are client-centric, passionate about the law, about people, and embody that spirit that I bring forth to my law firm, that small town mentality. Treat everybody with the utmost respect and integrity while giving them fast-paced, efficient service.

Viktoria Altman: I always say the same thing. My trick to success is just to hire people who are smarter than me and then learn from them. Not get out of the way necessarily ’cause I still wanna know what they’re doing, but learn from them. I certainly agree with you that it’s a good thing to do for a boss.

So, [00:06:00] I have a question, and this is very interesting to me. I work with Google every day. And I have opinions. You took Google on in court.

Tell me about this. What did you do? How did you do it? I have so many questions.

Shekar Jayaraman: I’m happy to spend an entire hour just talking about that case alone. It was a very important case and I’m really happy we took it on and it was very difficult.

Google is a trillion dollar company. It was represented by the biggest law firm in the country. It was definitely an uphill battle. I learned a lot from it, about myself, about Google, and about big law. The crux of that case was we had a small business and the small business was losing their ability to advertise on Google, and there was no reason, there was no rhyme, there was no real explanation behind it. We needed to get to the bottom of it. Not just with my client, but generally speaking, Google does this to a lot of small businesses and not just Google, a lot of these big corporations, see little small businesses and they like what those small businesses are [00:07:00] doing. And instead of nurturing those small businesses, what do they do? They take the business model, maybe undercut the small business. With Google especially having 90% of the pay-per-click advertising market share, if Google doesn’t allow you to advertise on their platform, you are just not gonna do business. It is not the 1970s anymore. Nobody’s really looking at newspaper ads. No one’s advertising at the local soccer game. Everybody’s going to Google. Everyone’s looking at Google reviews. Everyone’s looking at SEO.

Everyone’s looking at pay-per-click, advertisements. And Google knows that. And so what do they do? They can pull the cord from you. In my opinion, sometimes act in an anti-competitive manner, and that’s what our case was about.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah. I agree with your opinion as somebody who works with Google and other major advertisers, they certainly do get away with a lot. It’s good to know that there’s lawyers, especially a lawyer who is maybe not the biggest law firm in the world.

And you took them on and you won that case, is that right?

Shekar Jayaraman: We did. It was in arbitration and it was a clear win for our client.

Viktoria Altman: [00:08:00] I’m surprised you didn’t get a hundred other small businesses reaching out to you after you got all the PR for this. Is this something that you don’t wanna necessarily pursue?

Shekar Jayaraman: It’s something that I do wanna pursue. It’s just one of those things where, no real class action here. Everyone has to take on the cases individually. It just depends on the damages amount. Every case is really unique, so I have to be careful with the cases that I take as well because it prevailed for my client in this one case, doesn’t mean every case is going to work that way. As a small business, you have to be prepared to fight this for three to five years. I’m very realistic with my clients. I set very clear expectations and from the fee structure standpoint, it depends. We might be able to do contingency, we might be able to do it hourly, but I have to also be realistic about that as well.

And I have to be able to run my law firm and make sure that I’m running it efficiently. The client that I had was ready and willing to take this case on because he really believed in his business, I believed in his business. And they’re back up and running and they’re doing great.

Viktoria Altman: If you can disclose, what kind of business is it? Is it a small, local business?

Shekar Jayaraman: [00:09:00] It was a small local business. It was an e-commerce company.

Viktoria Altman: Got it. Yeah, e-commerce, it makes a huge difference being able to be on Google shopping. Very interested in how you market yourself. You have a podcast Everyday Law, it looks like you doing some press stuff.

Talk to me about the marketing that you do for your growing firm.

Shekar Jayaraman: I don’t really do much marketing. What I do is stuff like this. I do podcasts. I love educating. That’s just something I’m passionate about. I educate because I truly love what I’m doing and I really wanna spread the word.

I think everybody should have an estate plan. I love helping people grow their businesses. And on the reactive side, I like helping people who are in times of need. If there’s an estate where there’s any sort of dispute happening or if there’s a business dispute amongst partners, I really enjoy helping solve the problem. I think that’s why many of us went into law to not only help solve problems from the litigation, but also help people build from the transactional proactive angle. I love [00:10:00] putting together startup packages, operating agreements, helping people brainstorm how to not only build their business, but nurture their team. Estate planning. I love to help families organize their life, their assets and make sure their families are protected. I’m not the type of law firm where you come and we give you your documents and send you out the door. I like to grow with my clients.

It is a privilege for me when people have a vested interest in what they’re doing because of how I’ve enlightened them.

Viktoria Altman: That’s awesome, but you must do some kind of marketing because you can’t grow without marketing your firm.

Shekar Jayaraman: So I’m everywhere all the time. I talk to anyone that wants to talk to me. my version of marketing is not doing Facebook ads or Google ads. My version of marketing is doing a podcast, going as a guest to people’s podcast. Giving guest lectures at various institutions, going to various associations and talking to them about the importance of estate planning and business planning, talking to Chambers of [00:11:00] Commerce. I was doing little bits on TikTok. But I’m not doing this to advertise. This is also a creative outlet for me. It’s something that I enjoy and I like connecting with people. If that’s what you consider marketing, then yes, I do a lot of it. But I don’t do it from the traditional sense.

Viktoria Altman: Okay, that’s perfect. What I found while hosting this podcast, I talk to dozens of lawyers per year, and everybody has their own thing, right?

And a lot of folks will tell me I don’t market, but then it turns out they’re at every event, talking to every person. Maybe giving out free advice.

They’ve been on radio shows. The best kind of marketing is natural, right?

It doesn’t feel weird. As a marketer, if your marketing feels weird, you’re doing it wrong. It should be something that corresponds well with your personality. So it sounds like you’re doing it really well.

It sounds like you do a ton of in-person marketing, let’s not even call it marketing, call it like events and things like that. As a tip, is there any kind of events that you found more or less helpful, anything that people are listening to out there and they could say, yeah, I should be doing more of this and maybe not.

Shekar Jayaraman: It’s really hard for me to say, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s [00:12:00] trial and error because the moment you think you’ve got the secret sauce, you’re gonna come to an event and be like, yeah, that host was rude. Or that they were unwelcoming. Or I just didn’t feel like it felt right. It’s gonna happen and I don’t think there’s any secret sauce. That’s the whole thing about community outreach, business building and networking. There’s gonna be times where it feels fantastic and times where you walk out of a situation feeling drained or taken advantage of. But that’s life, right? Not just business marketing. All that to say, there’s really no circumstances where I feel like this works better than the other. I’ve gotten business from all over. I’ve gotten businesses back in the day from those uber pools where you share an Uber with people.I’ve gotten business all over the place, but it’s not because I’m out there saying, Hey, I’m an attorney. If you need an attorney, call me. I strike up conversation everywhere I go because that’s just my personality and because of that, the business kind of follows.

Viktoria Altman: I love those Uber pools. That was a good time.

Okay. So talk to me a [00:13:00] little bit about, you have a free resource on the power of being proactive with estate planning.

What inspired you to create it and how does it work with your potential clients? Are you looking at it as a way to get yourself acquainted with them? Or as part of your sales process, what do you do with it?

Shekar Jayaraman: So the free resource is truly for education. It’s for people who have no idea who I am, may have found me from Google, or maybe for people who do know who I am, they get my newsletter and they’re more interested and they wanna start that conversation, but a little intimidated by the process and are not ready to give my office a phone call yet. They take a look at this free resource and they can educate themselves on certain aspects and we changed it up here and there, but, what’s a trust? What’s a will? What’s a pour-over will? What’s a living will? What’s a difference between a living will and a last will and testament?

What’s a power of attorney document? What types of power of attorney documents are there? And the importance of being proactive with that, right? What happens if you don’t have an estate plan? What happens if you don’t [00:14:00] have power of attorney documents? It’s truly to get people started thinking about these things. It’s a safe space, right? We like to think that we nurture and create a safe space at our office, even when you call in or when you step into the office. Some people may not know that about us. And this is to show them that this is a safe space.

If you feel that you want us to be your trusted advisors. Feel free to give us a call and we can continue that conversation.

Viktoria Altman: With your estate business, do you do any webinars, any in-person events? I have some estate clients who do webinars and others who do in-person presentations and those work really well for them.

Shekar Jayaraman: Yes, we do LinkedIn lives, we do webinars. We do tons of in-person events. We do all of that.

Viktoria Altman: Do you have any tips on how to get people in? What kind of things to offer? I know we have a lot of estate lawyer listeners.

Shekar Jayaraman: Yeah. My thing is there’s a difference in opinion amongst attorneys, for me, you can never be too professional and you can never be too clean. What I see very regularly is estate planning attorneys that’ll show up to meetings in like a t-shirt which is all good, but if you want a [00:15:00] certain clientele and you want a certain level of working relationship. What do I mean by certain level of clientele and certain level of working relationship. I don’t mean socioeconomic status, I don’t mean ability to pay. I mean ability to clearly decide for what the client needs. Be able to provide them exactly what they’re communicating. To do that, you have to be clean, direct, straightforward, and presentable. My advice to people who are out there trying to get themselves in front of audiences is to be clean, come up with a package and show that, if you’re gonna talk to a church group or a mom’s group or a PTA or Chamber of Commerce, make sure you go to them with a clear message. I’m an estate planning attorney. Here are my various packages, here’s how I can help. But first, let me educate you on the process and then you make the decision whether you want me to talk to your group and whether I can be of benefit from you. I think if you come at it from the angle that I want to help you rather than how can you help me grow my business, you’ll prevail in, being able to get in front of audiences. I think [00:16:00] where a lot of attorneys miss the mark is they’re focusing on the business development, which is fine, but it’s the education that really drives the business development.

Viktoria Altman: It makes a lot of sense. I think people can see through it when you are there for the wrong purpose. It doesn’t matter their socioeconomic status. It’s really important to be as authentic as you can.

Of all the people I talk to, they’re very successful lawyers. You guys are all very different in so many ways, but you have one thing in common. It’s about being authentically you in the most natural way possible.

Shekar Jayaraman: I always joke with people, I’m sure there’s less stressful ways to make money. We do this because we genuinely wanna help people and I think that shows when you’re talking about your subject matter, whether it be estate planning or immigration that you’re educating people on. People can see straight through you if you’re reading a bunch of bullet points or if you’re talking from the heart.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah, you’re right. so in the past you have spoken a panel. The invisibility of hate crimes against Asian Americans. Can you share a little bit about that experience and, your thoughts on this issue?

Shekar Jayaraman: Yeah. And unfortunately it seems to only be rising. You see that in [00:17:00] Instagram, TikTok, you see it all over the place. Asian Americans have always been looked at as this model minority, doesn’t really face racism, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a lot of Asian hate. Asian Americans of all backgrounds in the United States just goes unreported or underreported. And that’s what I was talking about. And I’ve been subject to a lot of unfair treatment myself. It’s bringing light that Asian Americans, despite having done well in this country from an objectivity standpoint, still suffer from racism and hate crimes, and it doesn’t go reported. And so that’s what this was about. I think it’s an important topic. It’s definitely on the rise and you can see it

Viktoria Altman: Yeah, definitely in New York City it’s become more apparent and I’ve had my boyfriend is Korean and he is a Vet Air Force and now FDNY and somebody from that time, tough background. There’s still issues and people are certainly weird.

So now I have to bring this up. Indian Matchmaking.

Shekar Jayaraman: Yeah.

Viktoria Altman: I didn’t see the show. I wanna know what [00:18:00] happened. And, how did you wind up on this and did you find a wife?

Shekar Jayaraman: So I didn’t find a partner through the show, but I’m with someone wonderful now. She and I met outside of the show, but she came to know about me through the show, ’cause she had watched it. It was just one of those things where I happened to be the right place, right time, and applied. My friend in Los Angeles had showed me this flyer to apply and I applied. And, tens of thousands of people had applied to the same show, but they picked a handful of us. It’s nothing that I felt entitled to, nothing that I felt, I needed to be on. But I put my name in the hat, the dating apps weren’t working and I was single. So I was just like, let me give this a shot. I kept going from round to round. And, they ended up casting me after many rounds of interviews it worked out well, in terms of me being on the show. It didn’t work out well in terms of finding somebody, but eventually I found someone wonderful andit’s been great.

Viktoria Altman: It sounds like you met her because of the show, so maybe it worked out in the end.

Shekar Jayaraman: Not on the show, but because of the show, yes.

Viktoria Altman: What a fun experience. I would totally do something like that too.

‘Cause I would think I would actually end up with somebody, but what a unique thing to talk about.

Shekar Jayaraman: Absolutely.

Viktoria Altman: Okay, so talk to me [00:19:00] about where you’re going. It looks like your firm is growing very quickly. Are you looking to expand into other areas, hire more lawyers?

What kind of marketing you’re looking to do?

Shekar Jayaraman: So we’re not looking to expand into other areas. The four slash five areas that we do, we just wanna keep refining from a systems and processes standpoint. I really pride ourselves on our systems and processes. We have phenomenal tech. We have a really good flow between everybody that works at the law firm. Everyone communicates really well. We have team meetings, and we do a really good job of getting things done quickly and efficiently and getting it done well. We just wanna keep refining that and keep growing that. So we’re not looking to add more practice areas, but we are expanding to other jurisdictions. We just decided we’re gonna open up an office in Rapid City, South Dakota. So we will be officially opening up that office in June. We’re looking at other states, perhaps even Ohio. We are looking to expand geographically, but not from practice areas standpoint. We just wanna keep getting better and better at what we do.

Viktoria Altman: I love it. So that was supposed to be [00:20:00] my last question, but now I have a follow up.

Talk to me about the systems, the processes. I know so many folks struggle with this. Please share some tips on how to set these up, what technology you’re using?

Shekar Jayaraman: We use a whole bunch of technology that talk to each other. Microsoft Teams is great. Zoom is great. We use MyCase. Clio is also really good. We rely heavily on our CRM systems. MailChimp is good for a newsletter. We have a newsletter that we send out monthly. We have a whole bunch of systems and processes that really we hope that the client experience is smooth and seamless. And that the client feels that despite their legal matter being challenging, they feel that they’re in the best hands possible.

Nobody wants an attorney or a law firm team that’s frantic, disorganized or scatterbrained. When people come to you and they are scared or vulnerable, or they’re feeling nervous. They wanna make sure that their attorneys and law firm is balanced and organized and on top of things on their behalf.

That’s what we strive to provide

Viktoria Altman: Awesome. How do you use the CRM? Are you using [00:21:00] HubSpot or something else?

Shekar Jayaraman: We use MyCase for our client management and MailChimp for our newsletters.

Viktoria Altman: Got it. Do you have that incorporated into your website as well?

Shekar Jayaraman: Yes.

Viktoria Altman: That makes a lot of sense especially if you can follow up with those leads and figure out if it’s a good lead or a bad lead. If you ever decide to do things like Google Ads, by having your CRM already set up, you can link it to Google Ads and you should be able to

refine your ad strategy based on good lead versus bad lead. So those are all great things. I appreciate you coming today and speaking with me and sharing some of your wisdom.

Do you have any words of wisdom for our listeners?

Shekar Jayaraman: My words of wisdom if anybody ever wants it, is, just be true and genuine to your calling and authentic about what you do. Success will come on its own if you stick to that North star.

Viktoria Altman: Be authentic. That is certainly a running theme throughout these shows. Thank you so much again, Shekar.