Collaborative Divorce in Dallas: Robin Zegen on Family Law, Referrals, and Modern Legal Marketing

Robin Zegen: please welcome, Robin Zi to the show. Robin, you are a, family lawyer located in Dallas, Texas,I would love you to share what makes you unique in this industry.

Robin Zegen: I’ve been doing this for 32 years. I’m one of the very few that is collaboratively trained. that qualifies me to do a different kind of divorce. those are done out of court. More meetings of a team of professionals helping the couple have a more respectful divorce.

It creates better co-parenting afterwards. It keeps family relationships intact and doesn’t ever pair one spouse against the other spouse like litigation does. So it’s far less damaging. It’s relatively new. We’ve been doing it since 2002, there aren’t very many of us that are trained in it.

but it is a much better way to get divorced.

Viktoria Altman: when you say collaboratively trained, is there a separate certification in Texas, or how does it work in your state?

Robin Zegen: Yeah, so you take some additional certified training And then, they’ve now got credentialing. So most of us are working on our credentialing, as well. but yeah, that’s really all there is to it is some additional training, but it’s a different approach than litigation because instead of looking at what somebody just wants, out of a divorce, we look at why they want it. And that helps us to come up with much better solutions because a lot of times they both. Have the same why. They want the kids to have stability. They want the kids’ lives to not change much. And lots of times we can find a way to divide the assets or to, put a good parenting plan together that really helps both of them get exactly what they want instead of trying to, look at what’s fair.

We’re looking at. The whys behind things.

Viktoria Altman: So it sounds like this is a different way to approach divorce and you must have a different way to market yourself Can you talk to me about your, marketing channels and how you do that?

Robin Zegen: I market myself on a couple of different collaborative, Directories and listings. And link our, sites, in, in that respect. And then just recently, I actually did a, a animated video, but it’s, it’s extremely well done. It’s just, just showing how far some of these, programs have come, probably with the help of ai. they were able to put it together in a few days. it demonstrates what collaborative law is. it tells the story of spouse wants the house because they office there. The other spouse wants to keep the house because they wanna keep the children in their same schools and neighborhood with their same friends. And when you get to the wise behind. Why they both want the same thing. you start seeing some things that maybe they share. Maybe they both want the children’s lives to be as stable as possible and unchanged as much as possible. they start realizing, maybe there’s another solution here. I’m trying to do a lot more of that on my website. before it was Articles and blogs and I’m trying to go to that next dimension. More video, more animated, whiteboard type. Things I think it appeals to people. my typical client is researching late at night. they’re usually upset. They’re not gonna wanna dive into some deep article but being able to watch something that’s similar to what they’re going through helps a lot.

Viktoria Altman: There’s so much to dig in there. I would love to learn about who did your video specifically. Was it a vendor or how did you get this done? There are people out there looking for sources and I’m always glad to recommend good sources. if you wanna talk about that a little bit.

Robin Zegen: I had the people doing my website, put it together for me. I told them what I wanted in there. how I wanted it to look, but I didn’t say, I want a mom and two kids, I just said, I wanna show the same story that I just told

Viktoria Altman: they walked it through step by step and put it together. I’m not exactly sure who they used for it or if that’s something that they completely did inhouse. I kind of felt like they may have done it inhouse as quickly as they did 

it sounds like a great video. I’m gonna look it right on your website,

Robin Zegen: yeah,

Viktoria Altman: okay?

Robin Zegen: right on the front page 

Viktoria Altman: So a couple of things you mentioned there.

One thing you mentioned is your target client might be somebody who is researching things late at night and not necessarily looking to. Dive into the reading, and while that’s legitimate, remember when you are advertising or when you’re doing any kind of marketing, you’re actually talking to three entities.

Your first entity is going to be, your primary client, and there you want to satisfy their need for easy to access information. Relatable attorney, feeling comfortable. But there are two other entities that you should be talking to that I don’t know if they are addressing right now.

the first entity is the traditional search, The traditional Google searches. people go online and say, give me the best divorce lawyer near me, the entity where you write the really good articles. Because when people are searching for things.

That’s where you come up. There’s an even more important entity now, the artificial intelligence because most people no longer go online, give me the best divorce lawyer near me. They go and charge GBT and they send something like, I think I need a divorce.

My husband is making all the money. And I don’t know how to do this. I think that he’s gonna keep the kids, they might give Chad GPT an entire life story, which is of course a huge security issue. But people do this all the time. And so when people are doing this, what Chad, GPT, what all of the AI software does is it goes and says, who wrote about this specific topic?

Who has the reviews on this specific topic? Who did a podcast discussing this? Who has, maybe a conference that they spoke on? So. What it’s looking to is authority on that specific subtopic. Now, if you are not in a high competition area, if you’re located in, middle of Alabama somewhere and you’re doing business law, there’s not that many competitors.

But when you’re located in, Texas, in a major city like Dallas. If you don’t have those things addressed on your website, AI is not going to see you. while you might be the perfect lawyer for that client, they may never visit you because AI will say The good lawyer for high net worth divorce with two children could be X, Y, Z.

looking at some of your information on your website, I’m not seeing those in depth. articles that AI is going to cite. everybody can write anything these days using ai. If you’re writing very simple things, very simple blog topics, because everybody can do it, AI will ignore it.

they have to be very complex. They have to be very in depth, they have to have case law, Does that all make sense?

Robin Zegen: It does. And honestly, that’s more the way an attorney tends to approach things. so, that makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve been evaluating my website lately, so I’ve, just recently signed a contract with a new provider that will take over April 1st. And one of the things that I liked about theirs was that the writing was much, much

Viktoria Altman: Yeah.

Robin Zegen: Personally the better the writing, the better I look. because if somebody writes something and it’s very clear, they don’t understand it very well, it looks like I don’t understand it very

Viktoria Altman: Yes, 

Robin Zegen: they’re gonna use an interviewing technique to write, my. Blogs that come out each month. So there’ll be a question and answering, session, and then they’ll write something and then I’ll review it. And I do think that’ll hopefully produce better stuff. that was one of the things that I felt like was lacking, with my current provider.

Viktoria Altman: the interview could be helpful what happens is if you are speaking. and you are saying something unique that cannot be found elsewhere. For instance, I had a case where x, Y, Z happened and this is a real scenario. AI can’t generate that, right?

So that’s something that’s coming very unique from Robin, the lawyer who’s been doing this for decades. 

Robin Zegen: Mm-hmm.

Viktoria Altman: citing case law, linking to, different.gov sites. Those things, you guys are not gonna be able to do off the top of your head. So it’s very important that when we come in, we have all of that well researched data ahead of time, and then we add it’s almost like adding a little sprinkle on top of the ice cream, the lawyer specific opinion.

if you going to base the entire content on the interview. That could potentially not go as far as AI needs it to, but certainly you have a good piece of the puzzle there. 

Robin Zegen: Yeah, I haven’t done it yet, so I don’t know, 

exactly where they’re gonna go with it. But we also are gonna do some, like frequently asked questions, short answers to frequently asked questions, and we’re gonna do those in video.

Viktoria Altman: that could be helpful. there’s a way to run that that could be helpful as well. I also see You have client testimonials, video testimonials, those are huge.

Talk to me about how you decided to get those and if it was hard to get people to actually do those, because those are very hard to get.

Robin Zegen: So,

Viktoria Altman: Okay.

Robin Zegen: hard to get. I would’ve spent the whole day recording different ones if we. Could have gotten many to do it. it’s hard because divorce is so personal At the time that I know them, it’s still so fresh. years later, it might be easier, for them to talk about it because they’ve had time to recover and, change their life. it is difficult to get somebody who’s either going through the divorce process or just finished it. to do one of those videos. they’ll give you a Google review ’cause they can leave just a name or

Viktoria Altman: But this are up there forever, right?

 

Robin Zegen: to mention people don’t wanna be on video.

Viktoria Altman: Very hard to do and very valuable as part of that sales process. Not even necessarily for I Google, but for humans. I talk to computers and humans. but when you’re talking to humans, very few things that are, more valuable than that. So it sounds like up until now you haven’t had a whole lot done to your side.

I also took a quick look at it and not seeing a whole on here, but you have a very successful practice, so there must be something else you were doing that’s been driving all that success to you. So would you be willing to share that as well?

Robin Zegen: Yeah.

Viktoria Altman: I.

Robin Zegen: I was partners with, now Congresswoman Julie Johnson. we had a law firm 15 years. that website got taken down. when we closed the firm, when she became a congresswoman, you can’t own a law firm. we closed the firm two years ago, almost two and a half years ago now. this is a relatively new site 

Viktoria Altman: so that’s part of why you’re not seeing a really deep website yet, is it’s only about two and a half.

did you, use the power from that old website towards your new website? Was it properly redirected?

Robin Zegen: Years. Well, she actually owned the website

Viktoria Altman: the offer to me was outrageously expensive. So I said, no thank you. I’ll build my own. in the end, nobody bought the website. so she redirected traffic to mine for the first year, and I think it’s. Defunct now. I don’t think it even exists now.

I’d be curious, maybe you could tell me the name of the site here. I’m always interested in unique edge cases, I’d love to take a look at it. So you were getting clients because people knew of her, or how were you promoting that partnership?

 

Robin Zegen: No. I think just on the, website, it was really just me. she did personal injury, totally different area of practice. She had a separate website for that part

Viktoria Altman: so now it was just me that was on the website, which, is why it would’ve made good sense for me to be able to purchase it.

Got it.

Robin Zegen: but the purchase price was, you

Viktoria Altman: Yeah.

Robin Zegen: than whiskey.com is

 

Viktoria Altman: you think this is a rare scenario, but I walk in all the time where the agency owns the domain and I’m going, okay guys. You can’t do that. you cannot put a domain under your own name if you’re an agency. And the client half the time, doesn’t know it. you’d think the client is a lawyer and they would read things.

But the thing is the client is reading things for their client, not for themselves. It’s the ultimate.

Robin Zegen: I think clients aren’t exactly sure how that website thing works because they go on something like GoDaddy to get the name, they’re not really sure So if somebody wants to come in, for instance, I know Scorpion does this, scorpion will take over the website.

They’re one of them that won’t let you keep your website. And I don’t think they understand there’s a difference between that and hosting your.

Viktoria Altman: I am an expert in certain things. If I had to do my own business contracts, I would be in big trouble. you guys are regulated and so there’s only certain things you can tell me and if you tell me something incorrect, there is places for me to go and complain.

Unfortunately, my industry doesn’t work that way. So there’s actually a whole chapter of my book of how you can prescreen a marketing agency. one of the things is they should not be taking your website, and they should not be putting you a proprietary platform. They should not be making you sign any kind of contracts, because a good agency has no need for a contract at all.

if you wanna go, go. since you didn’t, it sounds like you didn’t do a lot with the website. How did you promote yourself? Did you do real world events? Did you do newsletters? What did you do?

Robin Zegen: I have a lot of past clients that refer me business. I have a lot of, lawyers that practice in other counties and don’t practice in, in Dallas. is a very, very specific court system. It’s very different than the surrounding counties, Dallas is huge, Dallas County itself is big, but you have Collin County, Denton County, Rockwell County, Tarrant County. There’s lots of counties that are still part of the Dallas Metroplex. those are, a little friendlier to practice in the smaller ones. So a lot of those attorneys will refer to me because they don’t wanna step foot in the Dallas. courtroom. ’cause it’s a two judge tier system and it’s, very different. if you don’t practice there all the time, people kind of stay away from it. And so I get a lot of referrals.

honestly, my last tally was all but three clients have come from referral.

Viktoria Altman: Let’s say you are a new person who’s getting just started. How would you approach getting those referrals? ’cause you’re right, those are always going to be the best sources of your clients.

Robin Zegen: I think you join every Bar Association 

Viktoria Altman: it will take a ton of your. evening hours to do so. But you’ve got to, you’ve gotta go to the luncheons and you’ve gotta go to all of those things and meet all of these people because that’s how they’re going to learn to trust you.

Robin Zegen: That’s how they’re going to learn that you are, somebody they want to refer someone to because they’re putting their stamp of approval on it when they do so. So that’s important. The second thing is, when you have opposing counsel is treating them professionally, this isn’t a. MMA fight. you can be professional while still representing your client’s position. And I think that doing so lawyers have great respect for other lawyers that do that. I think that makes a big difference. additionally, I am in best attorney’s directory. I’m in super lawyers, and when they have events, I go to those as well. I think those are. Super helpful. something else I like to do is, going out to lunch with clients, because, you can check back in with them a year later and just go out to lunch with ’em for a little bit a year later. They’re gonna be so much more positive about how everything went. putting your name back out in front of them, whenever they have somebody who is in need, they’re more likely to refer them to you.

Viktoria Altman: Very good suggestion. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that. I love it when I hear something I haven’t heard before because, I speak to a lot of lawyers. Go out to lunch with your old clients, have a conversation and you never know when that might lead. 

Robin Zegen: Yeah. I mean, it’s an hour and a half, you know, 

Viktoria Altman: and you gotta eat right?

Robin Zegen: Yeah. It’s not a huge commitment. It does mean a lot to them.

Viktoria Altman: lots of events going out with clients. What else? Tell me What else are you doing? what else did you do in the beginning that you think other people may not be doing?

Robin Zegen: I think it’s important that you immerse yourself in the whole community. if you’re, an avid church goer, get involved in some of the groups in your church, maybe even volunteering. some of your time. I just got through doing Divorce with Respect Week.

It was a nationwide push, for collaborative law where we did 30 minute free consults, so that we could explain to people a different way. To get divorced. I think sometimes it’s donating your time

Viktoria Altman: there’s lots of different things that are available, whether they’re bar association or, otherwise, lots of things available that you can get yourself involved in.

Robin Zegen: And the more people you meet.

Viktoria Altman: it looks like you’re the kind of person that says yes a lot. I saw a couple of podcasts that you did and you responded to me as well. You are, looking to network in all kinds of ways.

Robin Zegen: I think it really does help. every business has its little cycles where maybe you have a little bit slower period of time. that’s when I try to really concentrate on doing those things so that whenever I hit high season and we’re really. in as fast as we can go, and I don’t have a minute to spare.

That’s not the time when I’m doing those things. So, I try really hard to hit those, slower periods, 

Viktoria Altman: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. those are some great tips. Is there anything else that could be helpful how about some things that didn’t work out so well, people learned from your experience Is there anything you feel like, you invested money into or time into and it just wasn’t a good fit and why?

Robin Zegen: I’ve certainly had that with people doing my website.

Viktoria Altman: you have an initial really great interview and you think, they understand. And then it’s very clear that they either don’t understand it or they don’t care.

Robin Zegen: I don’t know which, but it’s completely night and day different. it’s like they’ve passed the ball to

Viktoria Altman: Yeah.

Robin Zegen: yeah, that can be difficult because it’s hard to tell what they’re gonna do until they do it. It’s kind of performance based. Business. the other thing is I’ve jumped in to, Facebook type, social media things but I’ve not been consistent.

And so that’s one thing that I’m getting ready to do on a very consistent basis. And I’m not sure whether that’s. my typical client or not, but I’m gonna try it

Viktoria Altman: lots for me to dig in there. when it comes to website, There is the big agencies and the small agencies. what happens with the big agencies that have a sales staff and you are speaking to the sales staff a hundred percent of the time.

Right? And they will tell you, and they may genuinely believe it, but they will tell you that they’re the best. Right? this is a sales staff. They’re supposed to think they’re the best. And then you get passed over to the technical people, right? And those technical people may or may not know what they’re doing when you look at a small agency.

For instance, in my agency, I do sales, but I also do all the strategy. I don’t execute the strategy. I have employees, but I do all the strategy, and so you’re speaking to me who is actually the same person who is going to be doing the big thinking for you. A lot of other time too, the agencies are more focused on longer term contracts, so once they have you on the contract, 

Maybe there’s a little less incentive to encourage you to stay there because they know you’re not going anywhere and then they may push something at you in the last couple of months, to make sure you re-sign. but, the way to do it with the agencies is honestly no contracts.

If you go to an agency and they say, I don’t need a contract, they know what they’re doing because they know he’s not going anywhere. and that’s a shortcut. The other thing to do. Is ask them to speak with another client that has the same budget as you 

they should be in a similar city, in a similar practice area, practicing the same things and ask them to speak with three of those clients. And if they cannot do that for you, either they’re handling clients who are very different from you or they don’t know how to do good work.

And lawyers, when you guys start talking, you will figure it out very quickly from the other lawyer if they’re happy or not. As a lawyer, you guys are very honest between each other. 

So, in terms of Facebook, are you looking to do ads? Are you looking to do natural social media? What are you looking to do on Facebook specifically?

Robin Zegen: So I think, my understanding is what we’re gonna do is just more regular posts and they’re going to coincide with my blogs. We’re gonna have a blog a week. Those are gonna go on there. we’re getting ready to do 10, videos.

Those videos are gonna go on there, they’re gonna be timed out. So that there’s really regular posts. I can’t really go on there and say, well, I just finished Mary’s divorce and Mary got the kids, and, I can’t give that kind of information. a lot of my clients are, high profile people. I can’t about their lives and their assets and their kids and things like that. So I think giving out. more or less information on, things that people are, researching So the same kinds of things that are in my blogs. that’s initially where we’re gonna start. Now, I understand that the ads can be a lot more focused than they were. Years ago when I first tried them. we might do that at some point, but, right now, I’m more interested since I’ve got such a great referral system coming in, I’m more interested in building this site for like, if there’s a lull in that referral system.

I’m gonna take some time to play with a few things and see what I can. Do. right now, my site, they get their friend or an attorney refers ’em to me. They go to my website and they check me out. they give me a call. I need it to look professional and be somewhat what they’re looking for, but they’re not necessarily having to find it organically right now.

Viktoria Altman: So with Facebook, there is so many lawyers out there, right, who are posting things. So there’s things you could do to make yourself stand out. the case of very famous person getting divorced, if you anonymize it and you make it More generalized, or maybe you combine a couple of different cases into one and you explain that this is a combined case of real cases, right?

That could be really, really helpful for other very high net worth divorce individuals. So I have a client and he told me, listen, I only want the very, high net worth individuals. What do I do? He goes, what kind of a SEO do? I said, no, a SEO is big, right?

we spread it big. So what are we gonna do instead is we make a super targeted landing page for him. It’s high network divorce, and then my folks are focusing on only people in very specific zip codes, very specific interests. Now this on Facebook, theoretically you could do it. In reality, not so much.

but on Google Ads you can do this very well. So we did this and he called me the other day ’cause I asked him to set up a phone person there, right? And he goes, oh no, they’ll just leave a message. He said, no, these people are not gonna leave you a message. They’re just gonna hang up and never call you back.

he calls me the other day, he goes, you are on. I was like, why was I wrong? He’s like, well, this guy called us back eight times and then he hired us for a very large figure and he names the figure and he goes, you are on. I said, yes, but how many other people who called you the first time and you guys didn’t pick up the phone?

these high net worth individuals, they expect this certain level of service They wanna see the case study. They wanna see that you’re hyper-focused on those people. So if those are people you’re looking for. That could potentially be something to explore, but you wanna be super, super hyper focused.

You wanna have a separate landing page for them, right? You never wanna send an ad to your website. Right. And the reason why you don’t do that is because you’re spending so much money on ads. You wanna make sure you have the best possible reason to convert those people. And you can watch them very closely.

And you can always remodel the ad page a little bit to make sure that it’s converting. it has to be very, very careful. Facebook is not so expensive, but when it comes to Google ads, those can add up very quickly. 

Robin Zegen: Right. anybody can click and

Viktoria Altman: yes,

Robin Zegen: have

Viktoria Altman: yes, 

Robin Zegen: you have to make sure that you’re not just getting clicked on like crazy or.

Viktoria Altman: One of the ways we do that is called a call out. you might see this all the time and it might say are you a divorce lawyer in Texas? We have a great situation for you. And so it’s called a call out because that way anybody who’s not divorced lawyer in Texas, chances are they not gonna click on it, 

you’ve seen those before. you can do similar thing with a Facebook ad, but you have to be very careful about how you do it. there’s some tips. what would you say would be your advice to folks out there who may be considering going out on their own and are worried about how to market themselves?

what would be your best advice for them?

Robin Zegen: it’s always surprising to me how many attorneys don’t have a website, or they have a website that’s literally like a page. you’ve gotta look the part everywhere you go. you don’t wanna see your doctor driving a price car in the parking lot.

you want a successful doctor, Attorneys need to look like they’re officially in business. you need to have a nice office. You need to have a nice website. You need to have class. All around you that looks lawyerly. You know, I, I, I just think that, know, if I go to, florist, I expect to see lots of colors and creativity 

different industries have different images and it surprises me how many times, I see them not people are evaluating you all the

so what’s next for you? What’s next for your firm? Where are you excited to go?

we’re getting ready to have our big conference for collaborative law. It’s next week. I’m excited, because there’s so many new and interesting things that we’re doing. collaborative’s a worldwide push. It’s big across Europe, Canada, even in New Zealand.

it’s a really interesting time, think we will see a big shift towards the collaborative model because it’s gonna take a lot of pressure off of courts. over 50% of cases filed are family related.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah.

Robin Zegen: They’re not breach of contract, they’re not criminal. it’s the family courts that are bogging down the system,

because families don’t belong in court.

just don’t.

Viktoria Altman: I think you have a lot of people who walk into a divorce with an incorrect mindset when I was getting divorced, me and my ex-husband were fine. There were other parties in the picture that didn’t necessarily benefit from the collaborative process. spins outta control very quickly.

when you have one person who doesn’t want the collaborative, it gets spun outta control. Actually, how do you deal with that? When one person wants something collaborative and the other one person doesn’t, or another party who’s interested?

Robin Zegen: they have to agree. if they can’t agree it’s a standard litigation divorce, and I do those

Viktoria Altman: Hmm.

Robin Zegen: I just find them more destructive. I can’t get you up there and have you say every bad thing you can about your spouse and then ask you guys to go off and co-parent for the next 15 years and expect that to go well.

Viktoria Altman: It’s true.

Robin Zegen: to,

Viktoria Altman: Certainly true. maybe if as a society we start accepting the fact that some of these things will be better handled in a nicer way, maybe then people.

Robin Zegen: when somebody tells me the facts of their case, I can tell you within probably 5% of exactly what’s gonna happen. If it goes all the way to trial.

Viktoria Altman: And I hear that.

Robin Zegen: Hundred thousand dollars. But you have to listen. 

Viktoria Altman: I hear that.

Robin Zegen: mystery. I mean, these judges sit there five days a week hearing cases.

Viktoria Altman: Yeah.

Robin Zegen: a good attorney knows that. what I always tell my opposing counsel is if we end up in a hearing, it’s because either you didn’t do your job or I didn’t do mine,

Viktoria Altman: Hmm,

Robin Zegen: because it’s our job to help clients understand what’s gonna happen.

Viktoria Altman: I hear that loud and clear. Thank you so much Robin, for taking some time. that is some great tips there and hopefully, some transformational advice for anybody out there who may be considering a divorce. Stick around while we do the upload. And guys, thanks so much for joining us today.

Robin Zegen: Thank you.