Does Yellow Pages still work for lawyers?

My usual answer, "It depends!"

Recently I posted a reminder to lawyers not to dump any particular advertising spend without carefully analysing return on Investment...

A firm kindly responded with details of their ROI from YP and in so far as I can without breaching their confidentiality I will share it with you as it makes a strong point...


The firm is very happy in early 2012 with it's continuing ROI...despite all the totally uninformed "yapping" that hard copy YP doesn't provide a good return anymore.

Remember too that in my own experience lawyers have been bagging YP for a quarter of a century in Australia...mainly because they had poorly designed ads and didn't really track their returns...

It should be remembered that almost universally, clients from Yellow Pages (it's easy enough to put separate phone numbers in each ad) are new clients...so you need to be tracking the legal spend on the initial matter(s) and also have your database set up so you can determine subsequent spend and also the spend of clients referred by people who became your clients as a result of Yellow Pages.

Is it for everyone...not at all!

Not a lot of Commercial work flows or substantial Commercial litigation even if you advertise well...the people needing those services are much less inclined to turn to YP for a lawyer.

Here is an excerpt from the recent email...

"Hi Rob,

We are still getting a good ROI from our print.

We billed $769,300 in the last financial year from matters derived from XXXX YP book, which included...

Family Provisions -$ 363,114

Criminal - $40,308

PI - $131,069

Family - $167,987

Property - $26,500

Employment - $8,055

Commercial Debt - $4,868

Comm Lit - $1,832

Six months into this financial year we have already billed $366,000"

Readers should note that the figures above are for matters opened as a result of an enquiry from YP...they do not include repeat work from clients introduced that way in earlier years, or from work from clients referred as discussed above.

Electronic versions of YP are gaining more and more traction...of that there is little doubt...tracking proves it, and the web is a great source of work in many areas of law, but hard copy YP is certainly not dead and buried.

The bottom-line...there is a phenomenal amount of garbage talked about advertising in the legal profession...and often advice is given to spend money on advertising that will produce little or nothing, while blind ignorance denies firms the opportunity to get clients and fees from proven sources.