Episode 04 | Referrals, Reputation, and the Reality of Legal Marketing

Dicky Abraham (00:02): Good day everyone, welcome to another episode of Spurling Insights. My name is Dicky Abraham, Principal Lawyer and Director of Spurling.

Dania Foo (00:17): Now I’m Dania Foo, a lawyer at Munro Doig and I’m also Dicky’s wife.

Dicky Abraham (00:21): Now just a bit of housekeeping as usual before we get on with the episode. Everything we say or do in this episode should not be construed as legal advice. It’s just two lawyers having a yarn about law, life and everything in between. Now in saying that, let’s get on with the episode. Today we have a very special guest. We’ve got Paul Evans from Toro Digital and Pillar & Scroll. Pillar & Scroll are my website designers, so they were incidentally the first business I engaged once I started Spurling Legal. Paul, welcome. Thank you for coming on the show.

Paul Evans (00:59): Thanks for having us. Yeah, really happy to be here.

Dicky Abraham (01:02): Well, good. Look, I know a bit about you but for the benefit of viewers, can you tell us your story, how you got into digital marketing and what you’re doing now?

Paul Evans (01:14): Well, I studied marketing and multimedia design at uni and I never thought coming out of a degree in marketing that I would join a law firm, but that was it — that was my first job. I got a job at, at the time, what was a pretty small firm. Well, I say pretty small — it was 200 people — but when I tell you the name of the firm, it’s a lot bigger now. It was HWL, which then became HWL Ebsworth, which I think is like the biggest partnership in Australia. But I joined them as a marketing person. I was the solo marketing person there at the time, and so I was there for a few years. After that, I joined another law firm — another mid-tier firm, predominantly Melbourne, though national, but very Melbourne-centric — and headed up the marketing team there. I then went and worked at a large firm and, look, working in a large firm wasn’t for me, and I went out and set up Toro Digital, which is a marketing agency. We work just with the legal industry — lawyers, barristers, legal tech companies, consultants, that type of thing. And about a year ago, we set up Pillar & Scroll, which is more like a productised offering, or kind of like fixed-fee, fixed-service offerings for smaller firms. That kind of happened organically after working with some smaller clients and we really like working with them.

Dania Foo (02:49): So what is it about smaller clients that you enjoy working with?

Paul Evans (02:53): From my side, a lot of it is that the decision-making is just quick and easy, but the impact that we can have on a firm that’s small — starting up, whether they’re starting up or they’re purposely small — you can just make such a bigger impact. You’re dealing with the owners. Everything we do kind of helps, whereas in a larger firm it’s a lot more incremental, if that makes sense.

Dicky Abraham (03:29): So you couldn’t do that with Toro Digital. You had to set up Pillar & Scroll separately. Why did that come about?

Paul Evans (03:37): Yeah, so a lot of our clients at Toro are that kind of mid-sized firm. We’re working with marketers — I think for probably a lot of them it’s the role that myself and my business partners were in. We all came from that kind of role of being in-house marketers. A lot of it’s really consultative, custom projects. You know, we’re building portals or we’re building online document generation tools. It’s a lot more consultative. That doesn’t really translate that well to smaller firms because it obviously becomes a lot more expensive, and we wanted to offer something that was a bit more accessible to smaller firms. So we decided to keep the brand separate. We have one arm which is that agency model, and then Pillar & Scroll, which is that fixed price, fixed scope, built specifically in mind — like the services are built specifically in mind for smaller firms.

Dania Foo (04:42): So what sort of services do you offer at Pillar & Scroll besides just website designing?

Paul Evans (04:47): Yes, I feel like I’m giving an ad here. Yeah, so we do — predominantly it started as websites. It’s kind of what we’ve been known for at Toro even. But we’re all marketers. So we offer a marketing desk service: social media, email marketing, content marketing — probably the big three. Then it’s graphic design: logos, document design, proposals, PowerPoints, that type of thing as well. They’re the main ones. It’s really around the execution of marketing for lawyers.

Dania Foo (05:29): So you’ve obviously been working with lawyers for a very long time — well maybe not very, very, but a very long time — and have you found that marketing in the legal space specifically has changed a lot since you started?

Paul Evans (05:37): Yeah. The fundamentals I don’t think have changed, but obviously how you do them has. You know, when I started at HWL, they had a website — that was it. There was no social media. Like, I don’t think it even existed. Email was — we would BCC our email list rather than using a tool to actually do it properly. But fundamentally it’s relationship-driven. The way that most law firms, most lawyers get their work — especially when they’re working with businesses or high-value private clients — it’s all relationship-driven. It’s referrals. And I don’t think that’s changed at all.

Dicky Abraham (06:44): That’s a great segue because all my work is relationship-driven. In fact, the majority of my work is from referrers, and the first protocol for them is my website. Now, when I was trying to set up Spurling Legal, like everyone else, I considered doing the website on my own because there’s plenty of tools out there where you can do it. Why is that perhaps not the best idea, in the context of referrers, to design the website yourself? Why is it better to engage someone like Pillar & Scroll or Toro Digital to come in and do the website?

Paul Evans (07:23): I think the short answer to that is just professionalism. I think, as you said, Dicky, the first thing that people do when they’ve received a referral is look that lawyer up online. There’s plenty of research on this — it’s like 80, 90% of work will come from referrals, and then 90-plus percent will then go online, Google that, and go to their website. I think having that first impression, it does matter. It matters to the referrers, it matters to the prospects, it matters to people joining your firm. It matters for a whole bunch of reasons, but to go back to why it matters to that referral piece: doing it properly is a signal of credibility. It’s showing from the outset you’re not a fly-by-night operation, you’re here to stay — because no one wants to refer work to someone who’s not going to be around in six months. And it just doesn’t look the part. I mean, Dicky, what’s your experience with it so far?

Dicky Abraham (08:40): I think you guys did a great job with my website. While I was preparing for this episode, I was speaking to Dania and she pointed out how inspired I was by the work you guys did. Even the first drafts — because we had that initial brainstorming session — I explained my vision of what I wanted Spurling Legal to be and what it should look like. The fact that Pillar & Scroll was able to nail that vision from the start and develop that with me inspired me to get this going and do the best I can. I was thinking about it and my view was that if it felt like work to begin with and I had to work to get you guys there, it sort of sucks the fun out of it. I’m not inspired by it. Whereas it felt organic. It didn’t feel like work. I was very excited about it. Dania can attest to that. When each of your drafts came in and you’d nailed the colour schemes, the vision and what I explained, it was really good to see. And that spurred me on to try and get back to you and give as much information as you needed so you could continue to develop that vision. I think it’s incredibly important to nail that first impression because first impressions matter in our business a lot. Like you mentioned, they always go to your website, and if it is not professional or if it is not what they expect — because if it doesn’t match up with the person that they think they’re referring to — then all of a sudden that creates doubt, and a sliver of doubt is enough for them to move on to someone else.

Paul Evans (10:28): Great. Can I just add something? Often the process of writing the content for the website, picking the colours, that type of stuff is important, but a lot of it is around the content and what you’re going to say. And that’s so much more than just putting a website together. It’s actually thinking about how you communicate your business to people. So it’s articulating your value proposition — what value do you give, why are people coming to you, and why you. Your positioning: what you do, who you do it for, those types of things. Going through the process of creating a website forces you to think about what this business is going to be, especially when you’re starting up. What services should I be offering? Who is the target market? Those sorts of things. And putting it in public — having to do it where it’s out in the public — makes you get crystal clear about what the business is going to be. Because before that it might be a business plan or it might just be in your head, but it’s not until you write it down that you go, okay, this is what the business is about.

Dania Foo (11:47): I was curious about what makes a website a good one. Do you think that having that clarity — when you go to a website and you go, “Yeah, I know exactly what this business is about” — is that what makes a good website?

Paul Evans (12:04): I think it’s the biggest thing, because if you don’t know what your business is about, how can you expect people to refer you or buy from you? That’s a big stretch. So yes, I think it’s critical.

Dicky Abraham (12:25): It’s interesting you say that, because from our experience when I started Spurling Legal, I set out to start Spurling Legal. While I knew which area I wanted to practise in, I was also considering potentially expanding those areas because I’m not a marketer, so naturally my mind went to: right, if I can advertise more areas, then maybe I’ll get more work. Again, I was cautioned about that approach by you, which didn’t really compute with me, but I trusted your guidance and expertise. We set about setting up the website and the areas that I practise in. I see the value in it now, because I have colleagues who practise in a specific area of law, but then they’ve gone on to start their own practice and they’re worried about not getting enough work. So they’ve advertised other areas, and the feedback from them has been that it muddled their vision or message because they weren’t advertised as the expert in that particular area. If you’re not in the marketing industry, it doesn’t seem right that when you go out on your own, you don’t advertise for all areas related to your work. You narrow it down to specific areas. Especially for lawyers coming out from top tier, mid tier, boutique firms — those firms practise across a wide area. It’s usually a full-service firm. They often get work from other teams and departments, and they’re trying to mimic that workflow: “If I advertise other areas, I might get that work.” But it doesn’t seem to be as effective. The fact you’ve raised that now makes it clear why, but it’s not evident when you start out.

Paul Evans (14:35): No, it’s scary to specialise. It doesn’t mean you have to decline other work, but if you think about it from the perspective of referrers or clients: if you say, “I’m an employment lawyer, I also do IP, wills and estates, a bit of family law, and I dabble in property,” no one can remember that. It’s unmemorable.

Dania Foo (15:14): It seems so obvious when you say it, but it’s not something I would have thought of.

Paul Evans (15:23): To me the bare minimum is having a practice focus. The big firms — even mid tiers — offer lots of services, but they have lots of different people. From the client perspective, no one wants someone who can do all five things personally. It’s like going to a surgeon who can work on your eye, but also fix your knee. No one wants that. It’s unhelpful.

Dicky Abraham (15:57): Yes — and quite scary.

Paul Evans (16:02): Yeah. People who do relationship-driven work — where you have clients with ongoing matters — might want someone with broader capability, but it’s rarely the reason someone comes to you in the first instance. Referrals are harder if you do everything. I wouldn’t advise picking a super specific niche that’s too limiting, but trying to do everything for everyone — in a one-person business, even a five-person firm — isn’t believable. The only shortcut I’ve ever seen in marketing is focus. People can recall it, talk about it easily, and they get it. Clients love it because they think, “I’m dealing with a specialist.” Another important thing is lawyer-to-lawyer referrals. When you claim to do everything, that can dry up because now you’re a competitor. If you’re a wills and estates lawyer and you start offering family law, or vice versa, you can lose referrals. We’ve seen that a lot, and you see it in commercial firms as well when they tack on family law.

Dicky Abraham (17:51): I’m quite lucky in the sense that when I finished uni I did rotations through various areas and settled in commercial litigation, and organically that was my practice. I never really practised in other areas. A lot of lawyers are not so lucky. They rotate through a few areas and might have a general practice at a boutique firm — family, criminal, wills and estates. Their experience is varied. If someone like that wants to start their own practice, how do you refine that vision or message to make sure it’s clear what their practice areas are? My website and message was simple: litigation. I narrowed it down to specific areas within litigation and worked from there. But what happens if a lawyer has experience across a wide area and hasn’t specialised by the time they open their practice? That does happen. Often people don’t specialise until five to six years in. You see it with country lawyers as well. How do they navigate that issue?

Paul Evans (19:30): If we call it a city practice — because regional can be different — my advice would be: pick one. Lead with one, maybe two if they’re closely related. The classic example is an employment lawyer mixed with a tax lawyer mixed with a property lawyer — they’re not close. The best way to pick is to go with what you actually enjoy most, not what seems most lucrative, because you need to follow it through. This isn’t something you should be changing every six months. It’s not a tattoo, but you do want to stick with it. You don’t need to knock back other work either. Bringing it back to the website: the least important pages on your website are your service pages. Lawyers think they need to list five services so that if someone sees the list, they know you do it.

Dicky Abraham (21:04): That’s interesting.

Paul Evans (21:05): They are never looked at. To say never is overstating it, but when you look at analytics — we manage about 100 sites with Google Analytics — service pages are far less visited than people think.

Dania Foo (21:07): Really?

Paul Evans (21:29): The profile page is by far the most important page. By far — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Then the homepage.

Dania Foo (21:42): So I guess it goes back to the relationship with the person.

Paul Evans (21:46): Yes. The referrer gives the name — “Go use Dicky.” Someone goes online, types in Dicky Abraham, goes to that page, and then it’s what do they read? That’s by far the deciding point — then they call or they don’t.

Dania Foo (22:04): Yeah, that’s it. Okay, so we’ve got to work a bit harder on our profile pages. I know I do.

Paul Evans (22:09): I probably do too — everything.

Dicky Abraham (22:12): Again, I would have thought it’s the experience pages, the areas you practise in, that referrers would be looking at because they already know who I am. I always thought it’s the areas of practice that referrers or potential clients would be most interested in because it gives them an idea of my expertise.

Paul Evans (22:43): But you need to have them — I’m not saying don’t have them. It’s just the content there matters far less than you think. The content on the profile page matters more. Typical lawyer profiles are like a history lesson: where I worked, 20 years’ experience, what I practise. But when someone comes to a lawyer, it’s often one of the most important things happening in their life or business. They’ve got a dispute — it’s serious. They don’t care that you list five services. They want to know: can you help me solve the problem I have? What they look for is experience — what kinds of matters you’ve worked on, the kinds of clients you work with, the problems you solve. You have that on your profile. I looked it up — because we built your site about nine months ago — and that’s what they’re looking for: have you done this before, have you solved problems like this for people like me before?

Dania Foo (24:17): Now do they care about what you get up to on your weekends?

Paul Evans (24:23): It depends. If you’re in an area where personality and background matters — say regional, or you grew up in the area — that might be worth pointing out. But if you’re a commercial litigator in a major city in Australia, it’s less relevant. Most of the time I’d say no.

Dicky Abraham (25:11): So it’s probably wise to make sure the social media aspect of your practice is also optimised and in line with the brand and the message. Is that what you’re saying?

Paul Evans (25:24): Yeah, it’s about consistency — how you want to present yourself. With litigation, people aren’t necessarily looking for warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they want someone who can negotiate sensibly; sometimes they want a bulldog. Which one do you want to convey? Can you convey both? That translates to social, how you write, how you present yourself. There’s no right or wrong answer — it depends.

Dicky Abraham (26:10): Sorry, I’ve just got to… that takes me back to a story. You probably don’t know this, but I never used to drink coffee. When I started practice, I moved to Melbourne and we had a client meeting. I went with the partner and the senior associate to a coffee shop and they asked me what I wanted. I said, “I’ll just have a hot chocolate because I don’t drink coffee.” The senior associate told me, “We’re not ordering that in front of the client.”

Paul Evans (26:26): Yeah, that’s bold — not drinking coffee at all.

Dania Foo (26:53): Yeah.

Dicky Abraham (26:54): They said, “Why don’t you drink a latte or a chai latte?” At that point, I was in my first year of practice. Now I can see why. In commercial litigation, they’re not expecting warm and fuzzy — that doesn’t necessarily instil confidence. Even something as simple as ordering hot chocolate perhaps isn’t the right message. Particularly in Melbourne.

Dania Foo (27:23): Particularly not in Melbourne.

Dicky Abraham (27:24): Exactly. At the time, I thought it was absurd that I couldn’t drink hot chocolate, but now I get the point.

Dania Foo (27:44): You know what I was going to ask — do you find that social media marketing is really helping people get to know a person?

Paul Evans (27:54): To a degree. Social media is a really interesting one. It’s far less effective than people think, but it can help. It can help you get in front of people at scale. The problem is the amount of noise — there’s so much content that people tune out. You can build a personal brand, but so many lawyers just don’t have time for that. LinkedIn is becoming more like Facebook — more personal stories. But if we’re talking hardcore “how do clients buy?”, people aren’t typically looking for a lawyer on social media. They might recall seeing you, but it’s not the main driver. It’s a scalable way of staying in front of referrers — showing deals, cases you’ve won, that type of thing. That’s where it’s strong.

Dania Foo (29:23): More like sound bites, I suppose.

Paul Evans (29:26): Yeah, sound bites. It’s the type of thing you wouldn’t interrupt someone to tell them. If you’re preparing a white paper or a blog that’s genuinely helpful for a referrer or existing client, social isn’t really the place you put it. You might distribute it there, but it’s not the goal. Email is the one that actually gets work. People respond to emails — it works. Social is more broad brush: people know what you do and you’re reminding them.

Dicky Abraham (30:31): I also think social media is more effective for certain practice areas than others — family law, criminal law, maybe wills and estates, and employment law if you’re acting for employees. Social media appears to be quite effective, at least the feedback I get, because the type of clients they service are quite prevalent on social media. Whereas if you’re an M&A lawyer, a litigator, an environmental lawyer, or administrative lawyer, it’s far less effective. Your clients aren’t necessarily as prevalent. They come through referrals — trusted advisers — before they come to you. Initially, we ran a Google Ads campaign for the first two months just to see what would happen, and I didn’t expect much because that’s not how my clients come to me. They don’t look up “litigation lawyer” on Google. They go to their accountant, their financial planner, their trusted adviser, and then they’re referred to me, look at my website, and come to me. So my view is social media is effective, but only for certain practice areas, and if you’re in those practice areas, you have to tailor and curate the message carefully. But if you’re dealing with businesses, it’s far less effective.

Paul Evans (32:58): Yeah. To reiterate, you can use it to stay in front of referrers. I use a framework: if you have $100 to allocate to marketing, social media gets maybe $2 or $5. It’s not the thing that’s going to move the needle unless you’re hardcore committed to it, and that’s doing it on hard mode — trying to build a practice just off LinkedIn posts. Most lawyers we work with are too busy for the time commitment required to do that well. It’s a tool in the toolkit. The bigger question is: how do you build referral relationships?

Dania Foo (33:59): If someone was starting out and they’re looking at their marketing budget, where would you suggest they focus their efforts?

Paul Evans (34:10): Efforts or budget?

Dania Foo (34:12): Both.

Paul Evans (34:39): Efforts — if they’re starting out and don’t have a strong client base yet — I would be writing down everyone they know. That’s where to spend time: write down everyone you know, create a priority list of people you need to reach out to. That doesn’t necessarily mean grabbing a coffee with everyone, but in terms of effort, that’s where I’d focus most day-to-day time. Budget — obviously I’m biased — but having a good logo and visual identity upfront, and a good website. You don’t need bells and whistles like portals and payment links — those can be added — but that’s not what you need at the start. You need something that shows who you are, who you work for, and proof — I call it evidence — evidence of your experience. If you get your referrers sending work your way and you have a website that converts them, that’s the battle. Everything else is more advanced, nice-to-have — throwing fuel on a fire.

Dicky Abraham (36:03): Have you, through Toro and Pillar & Scroll, come across websites where they haven’t nailed the vision and you’ve had to come in and fix it, and then later they see the results? Have you come across that?

Paul Evans (36:22): That’s half our work.

Dania Foo (36:24): Yeah.

Dicky Abraham (36:25): See, I forget because I engaged you from the start.

Paul Evans (36:29): Especially with slightly bigger firms — 20, 30, maybe 50 people — that’s often the project: fixing and improving those things. It’s a lot.

Dicky Abraham (36:45): Is that a difficult process? Their visual identity and branding has already been set up, so now you’re trying to change that or adjust it. Is it difficult to maintain branding while changing the visual identity? I feel like I’m getting lost in the question.

Paul Evans (37:33): There are a few things here. You want to get it right at the start because changing it later is a pain. If someone has an existing website and wants to change, we can work with most visual identities. Changing the visual identity is a pain because there are lots of touchpoints — logo, messaging, colours, and so on. It’s a bigger task than doing it right from the outset. Changing your name is another level again. The investment upfront is worth it. The hardest thing is often getting lots of partners to agree to a shared vision, and that’s why larger firms can be more challenging. If you look at larger firms’ positioning, they can be quite generic — they don’t say a lot. Often the partners or teams carry the reputation.

Dicky Abraham (39:04): What I was trying to understand was whether there’s scope to change things if you get it wrong to begin with. There is, but it’s obviously difficult. It’s much better to get it right at the start. The reason I asked was I wanted to make sure I got it right from the beginning. I didn’t want to take a chance and try to fix it later — maybe reduce costs by doing it myself — and then have to bring someone professional in later to change it. I was conscious that could impact relationships I’d built. So I invested upfront to get it done properly rather than taking a punt on myself.

Dania Foo (40:14): I’m curious — what makes a good logo? Is there such a thing?

Paul Evans (40:20): Really good question. It depends on the practice. I’ve seen a lot of firms with text-based logos and that’s absolutely fine. The logo itself — as long as it’s professional and matches the audience — that’s enough. It’s all the supporting stuff that matters more: photography, colours, fonts, and then subtler things like how you communicate, the writing, the use of icons, illustrations, video. The logo itself, I’m going to put it out there, isn’t that important — as long as it’s professional and it fits. The supporting system matters more. And people have told me I’m wrong, but big firms change their name and logo every few years, usually due to mergers. Whatever they change it to, it probably won’t affect them much — but you know it’ll be professional.

Dicky Abraham (41:50): For example, King Edward Mallisons just went back to Mallisons. I didn’t know that until it popped up on one of my articles and I asked Dania and she didn’t really know either.

Paul Evans (42:07): Exactly. It’s going to be professional.

Dania Foo (42:20): As people change, I feel like the look of websites has changed over the years — what people are drawn to, how information is presented. Would you suggest refreshing as things move on?

Paul Evans (42:38): I like classic. If it’s designed well, a website can last a long time — five to ten years. It shouldn’t be something you need to redo every year or two. Trends change, but timeless is good. I did a rebrand project years ago at a firm and they’re still using it 20 years later. That’s what you want — not picking colours that will go out of fashion quickly. The bigger thing is making sure it always looks professional and timeless. But the content evolves. Spurling will probably be different in five years because you’ll pick up clients, grow, hire new people, develop new skills. Often when we build a second or third website for a firm, the branding might stay the same but the content changes — it’s the next iteration of the business.

Dicky Abraham (44:03): Right — the website itself can’t get stagnant, but the messaging can on the website. Is that a good way to articulate it?

Paul Evans (44:04): A design can get stagnant, but you want to pick something that lasts. The language and content — especially your profile page — updating that reasonably regularly with matters, links to articles you’ve written, whatever it is, keeping it up to date is really important. That’s the 80/20 of the website. That’s where everyone’s going.

Dicky Abraham (44:44): Yeah, look, I think we’ve covered a lot — although I feel like we haven’t. We sent you a brief, but we’ve touched on different areas. Thank you, Paul, for coming on. That was really informative. There are quite a few things I took away from it and learned from it, and I’m sure Dania would say the same. Thank you for coming along.

Paul Evans (45:05): My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Dicky Abraham (45:06): Alright, well, thank you for tuning into another episode of Spurling Insights. My name is Dicky Abraham, Principal Lawyer and Director at Spurling Legal.

Dania Foo (45:16): And I’m Dania Foo, and thank you for listening.