One way to improve your client’s experience with your law practice and indirectly help with marketing is to Value Add determine how you can provide added value to the client in a way that doesn’t use the lawyer’s billable time. This does NOT mean a refrigerator magnet with the law firm’s phone number and website.

How to do this really depends on the kind of legal services rendered and the types of clients generally served.

The Value Add was the subject of my Practice Management Advice column in the March/April 2015 issue of Law Practice Magazine. I used an estate planning practice for some of my examples. But in any type of law practice, the question is whether there is something extra you can provide the client that is related to the legal services and is useful to the client. It does not mean something that has the lawyer’s contact information on it necessarily. It is 2015. You have a website and the client has work product with your contact information on it. They will be able to find you again if they want to do so.

For example, when I was in private practice I had a standard “getting your life back to normal” letter, we sent clients after their divorce case was concluded. It had a lengthy list of reminders of things that needed to be done post-divorce. Some of the items were mundane and I confess that part of the original motivation was clients wanting to do things themselves post-divorce instead of paying my firm to so, like changing the name on the car title. But the letter had a positive tone and I didn’t bill the client for it. (I wish I still had a copy of the text.)

There are many variations on this theme. But if you can surprise the client at the end of the representation with something useful that they didn’t expect, you increase the chances that they will use your firm again, refer others to your and pay their final billing. What unique value can you add to your client’s lives this year?