Lots of lawyers come to me asking if those referral groups were worth their time. I checked out one called LeTip a number of years ago and wasn’t really impressed with the opportunities. It felt too forced for my liking, and I’m not really into the glad-handing that goes on.

There’s a similar group called BNI. This group apparently forces group members to refer business to one another. In thinking about it, the scheme doesn’t sound like it’s really fit for lawyers. My suspicions were confirmed by reading an from Oregon (OSB Formal Ethics Op. No. 2004-175 concerning “Lawyer Membership in Business Referral Clubs”). The issue seems to be the mandatory referrals to group members.

“The question posed to the legal ethics committee was whether Lawyer A may participate in the activities of the association, and the committee concluded that the lawyer could not do so. The ethics committee found that participation in the association would violate DR 2-103(A) which prohibits a lawyer from compensating or giving anything of value to a person or organization to promote, recommend or secure employment by a client or as a reward for having made a recommendation resulting in employment by a client. The committee also concluded that participation in the association would violate DR 2-105 which prevents a lawyer from referring a client to a nonlawyer with the understanding that the lawyer will receive a fee, commission or anything of value in exchange for the referral.”

Read the entire formal ethics opinion. As far as I’m concerned, I think I’d leave these organizations to other professions.

Technorati Tags: BNI, letip, legal, marketing

What would you, a consumer bankruptcy lawyer, do if there were a way for you to spend five bucks, write a few ads and immediately reach millions of people?  And what if that system could not only make you a ton of money, but also let you test ads to see which one worked best?

Well, Google does just that and a whole lot more.  Google has a system that makes it possible, for the first time in the history of the world, to instantly get access to over 100 million people – in less than 10 minutes.  And all for less money than you’re spending on a day’s worth of a Yellow Pages ad or television spot.

It’s called Google AdWords and it’s incredible.  In fact it may be the first and best thing to do to get qualified traffic to your site.

But it’s not always as easy as I just made it sound – AdWords has some nuances, and most people have a rough time at first.  In fact, when I started using AdWords I was spending almost a thousand dollars a week and getting nothing for it.

Maybe you use it already, maybe not.  If you do, you definitely know what I’m talking about.  It seems so easy, so absolutely simple, to toss up an ad.  Google sells it as the easiest thing since sliced bread, right?  But then the charges roll in and you realize you’re spending thousands of dollars a month and not really getting all that much in return.

I discovered Perry Marshall, the Google AdWords guru.  He has written a very helpful e-course called “5 days to success with Google AdWords” and there’s no charge for it.

You can find out about it by clicking here.

Perry’s the smartest AdWords marketing guy out there, and the fact that this course is free just blows me away.  I did it about a year ago and now I’m spending less money than ever and getting better results with AdWords than I ever thought possible.

So go sign up for the course.  Let me know what you think.

And by the way, the link you click will have an affiliate code on it. Perry has agreed to let me know if any of my readers sign up for the course, which will help me to figure out how helpful this program is for consumer bankruptcy lawyers.