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The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
I am more convinced than ever that nothing that traditional bar organizations are doing is going to move the needle on the sad stats on lawyer happiness ...
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
Renegade Lawyer Marketing (Audio Book) – Chapter 12: What Would Your Community Lose If You Closed Your Doors?
This is Chapter 12 of the free audio edition of Renegade Lawyer Marketing (Second Edition)—only on the Renegade Lawyer Podcast.
In this chapter, Ben Glass breaks down the real meaning of a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)—and why most law firm taglines completely miss the point.
Forget clichés like “aggressive representation” or “we fight for you.” Your USP isn’t a slogan. It’s the reason someone chooses your firm over every other option, including doing nothing at all.
You’ll learn:
- What your real USP is (and why it’s probably not what you think)
- How Coors Beer can teach you a killer marketing lesson
- Why “we’ll make it drop-dead simple” is more powerful than “we’ll win big”
- How to explain your value in a way that matters to real clients
- Why your internal culture is just as important as your marketing
Shout-out: Thanks to our friends at Case Status, the #1 mobile client engagement tool for law firms—and a Premier Sponsor of the Great Legal Marketing Summit.
Download their free 2025 Client Experience Report at casestatus.com
📘 Get the book + bonuses at RenegadeLawyerMarketing.com
🎟️ Join us live this October at GLMSummit.com
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
What would your community lose if your practice ceased to exist? If your answer is not much, or even I'm not sure, or worse, nothing, you have to give serious thought to changing that thinking in your mind and in your community's mind. This is Ben Glass and this is the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, and today's episode is chapter 12 of the free audio version of my book Renegade Lawyer Marketing, and in this chapter we talk about your unique selling proposition, or what would your community lose if your firm ceased to exist? And as we get to dive into the chapter, I just want to give a shout out to the premier sponsor, one of our premier sponsors for the Great Legal Marketing Summit held this October out near Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington DC.
Speaker 1:I want to talk to you for a moment about CaseStatus. Casestatus is the number one mobile client engagement software for law firms. It integrates to your case management software. They've built integrations for just about every platform out there and one of the things we've been able to do at Ben Glass Law is to build systems and people that proactively reach out to clients to tell them what's going on with their case, so hardly anyone ever calls us to say, hey, what's going on with my case? It is part technology, it is part people, it is part a culture of providing the very best customer experience or client experience of any law firm that we compete with here in the Northern Virginia area. Now I want you to go over to casestatuscom. They have a free report for you, just released the 2025 Legal Client Experience Report why 80% of law firm clients feel uncared for and what you can do to improve that. If that is your firm and I would say that if we were to call your clients and ask them do you feel cared for by this law firm, ask yourself seriously what kind of response would you get? So go over to case statuscom, download a copy of the free report. They'll get on the phone with you and they'll show you how their systems can help you deliver the very best client service, the very best client experience of anyone in your market area.
Speaker 1:Hey, this is Ben, just butting in here in case, for some reason, you have not already registered for this year's Great Legal Marketing Summit. It's October 23 to 25. It's out in Northern Virginia, right near Dulles Airport, and we've just updated the summit page. So glmsummitcom, with some really cool new bonuses when you come to this year's summit, you're actually going to get three events. The first, of course you come live to the summit and rub shoulders with some of the most entrepreneurial lawyers in the country. I can practically guarantee you you're going to find someone in your practice area who's farther along the path to the successful practice than you are. He or she has already unlocked some knots and your job is to track them down and ask them curious questions. But more than that, when you sign up for the summit, you're going to get the replays of the 2024 summit. So, even if you were there, you're going to get all of the replays. So all of the talks from the summit are available to you, really through a podcast app. Second, we've got two additional trainings one, the perfect law firm training and second, the virtual bootcamp access.
Speaker 1:So, look, there is no reason in the world for any lawyer living in America today, running a solo and small firm, to lack access to the information of what it actually takes to be successful. Look, we don't sell you websites. We don't sell pay-per-click. We don't sell digital marketing. We don't sell Facebook None of that stuff. We teach lawyers how to go out and put together the practice building program that is perfect, first for their life, then for the practice that serves that life, then to market to the client that walks in the door to the practice that is serving your life. We are pretty much technology agnostic. We will help you make the best decision on where and how to spend your next hour and your next dollar in the continued growth of your practice. So hop on over to GLMSummitcom. As always, the prices will increase shortly and they'll continue to increase as we approach the event where either we are sold out or you're getting on a plane the next day, which is also very expensive, to come to Virginia. All right, talk to you later. Okay, now on to chapter 12, your unique selling proposition. Or what would your community lose if your firm ceased to exist?
Speaker 1:I once saw a lawyer stand up at a regular, continuing legal education conference, you know, one held by, like the Bar Association or the State Trial Lawyer Association. The conference was about marketing and the lawyer stood up and he said but I'm a personal injury lawyer, I'm no different from anyone else. I cringed. I was sitting in the back room and I cringed. How sad I thought. Upon further reflection, I thought, dude, you need to leave the business right now, if that's the way you truly feel.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it can be difficult to differentiate yourself in your advertising. Bar authorities don't want the consumer to be able to tell the difference between us lawyers, because it would be bad politically and financially if only a few of the lawyers were successful. So even if we were allowed to say, but wait, I'm telling you the truth, I am the best, consumers wouldn't believe it. This is largely why we help you with messaging and marketing. You can differentiate, and it'll be based on the following Number one, changing the conversation from me shouting at you to me entering the conversation that is already going on in your head. Number two, showing up like no one else For example, a shock and awe package or book and our friend Kia Arian at Zyne Z-I-N-E. She can really help you with that. Number three, relentlessly following up. Again, case status is a great product for this, but you need to have a culture and systems in place that are able to help you with that. That'll allow you to follow up with clients who have reached out to you but have not signed a fee contract yet. And now, number four delivering an Amazon-like experience once they call or arrive at the front door.
Speaker 1:When I first started learning about marketing, I discovered the concept of the unique selling proposition, or the USP, as my friend and marketing and business building genius, dan Kennedy, says. And Dan and I have, of course, co-authored the no BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs book. But Dan says a USP is the reason why someone would choose to do business with you over all of the other choices, including the choice to do nothing. As I develop marketing programs for my law firm, I modified the USP concept a bit. I asked myself why would a potential client begin a conversation with me rather than all the other choices he has, including the choice to do nothing or even attempt to handle the legal situation on his own? The most advanced lawyer marketers know that coming up with a USP for a law firm is difficult. It cannot be reduced to a pithy slogan or a catchy tagline although that's what a lot of the marketing vultures want to sell you and convince you that that's real and it must cause action on the part of the prospect.
Speaker 1:Why and because? Let's break down this discussion into two words why and because. The why is what leads you straight to your ideal client. The answer to why informs your best work every day. It's your reason for doing what you do. Your answer is the reason. You're even in the business of law. Understanding your why is critical to your success. Understanding your why leads you to understand the who, or who your perfect client is. Understanding who your perfect client is enables you to create marketing messages for that person. Most lawyer marketing messages shout we're for everyone and everyone's for us. That's not too differentiating, is it? But what is this why and what does it mean? Again, it's not a slogan or a tagline. It's the answer to the question what would your community lose if your practice ceased to exist? If your answer is not much, or even I'm not sure, or worse, nothing, you have to give serious thought to changing that thinking in your mind and in your community's mind.
Speaker 1:The USP is the because for your client. When someone asks your client why they chose a particular law firm, the USP has given the client a ready-made answer that leads right to your door because blank. Yet the concept of a USP is. The first thing to do is to write down a list of all the things you do in the case or on a matter that the general public doesn't realize you do, and you just start talking about that We'll show you ours for our personal injury and disability verticals in just a minute. There are plenty of examples of this type of USP, where you tell the public something that's an integral part of your work but they don't know that you do it.
Speaker 1:Let's go to a different industry to understand the USP. Let's look at beer beer to understand how simple a USP can be. Throughout history, beer has been brewed with clean water. In fact, every beer maker uses clean water. Coors, however, was the only one to capitalize on it as their particular uniqueness. They told consumers they used pure clean water. What other beer maker had ever done that? That is the telling None. The Coors Clean Water ad is about how their beer is made with clean mountain spring water. Is it a true uniqueness? Of course not. The uniqueness is being the first one to tell your customers that you do this because they didn't realize it.
Speaker 1:When we were determining what the USP is for the injury side of the law firm, we first looked at what everybody else was doing. You can look at what others are doing that is loved and that you're not doing, and what others are doing that clients dislike. That you would never do. When we looked at other law firms' reviews. For example, we saw that one and two-star Google reviews were written by lots of people complaining about their lawyers not about the legal result, but about communications with the staff In general. When people were complaining about their lawyers, it was that the process wasn't communicated to them Again back to the little commercial read I did at the beginning of this podcast or they didn't get the value that they thought they would. Also, especially in the injury context, you hear, no one ever told me I had a crappy case until the end of the case and it was time to settle it. In short, the clients complained about a poor experience with the firm. So how do we solve for that? How do we pitch that? If you come here, you're going to have a great customer service experience.
Speaker 1:We chose three unique qualities on the injury side that we pitched to new clients. Number one we're going to find all of the available pools of insurance money and pull all the money out of those pools that we can, which I think you would expect from a car accident. Two we're going to help you hold on to as much of that money as possible by negotiating liens and negotiating outstanding medical balances. This is something the consumer never thinks about because they don't even know this exists. Number three we're going to make this and here's our true USP as drop dead, stupid and simple as it can be for you. This third one is unique because the only thing that you have to do after you hire us is tell us where you've gone to get medical care. We're going to handle all the paperwork with the insurance company. We'll get the police report, we'll get your medical bills and records, we'll put them in a package that the insurance company will understand and we'll negotiate the case. Even if you forget to tell us where you've gone for medical care, the team is going to follow up with you every 30 days and make sure that we know whether you're still in care, whether you've seen any new doctors, whether you've undergone any procedures that we don't know about, and we're going to collect all of that information.
Speaker 1:People in Northern Virginia and, I suspect, people in your part of the country, are busy. Having to go to 40 medical appointments in the span of three months after an auto accident derails their life. What we're solving for isn't I'm going to put more dollars in your pocket. It's I'm going to get you back to living your life, get you back to your kids' sporting events and get you back to work. You don't have to become an expert in insurance law. It's not what people think that they're buying. Nobody looks for a lawyer who makes their life easier. You want to hire the injury lawyer who's putting the most dollars in your pocket. That's why the third USP of making things drop dead stupid and simple is really important. People say I'm pretty busy. I don't know anything about insurance law. I haven't been trained in negotiation. I probably shouldn't be going against an adjuster on my own.
Speaker 1:Developing your USP starts with listing what you do that people don't realize and telling them you do it just like the Coors Beers people did, because as lawyers we do a lot of work that nobody ever hears about. But that's really important to the case and we have to tell people this ourselves. Developing your USP is looking at what everybody else in your industry is doing, that people hate, and solving for that. This is what the USP should be letting the public know that you solve for one thing. That's a sticking point for them. But there's something even deeper as to the why of Ben Glass' law.
Speaker 1:Helping people make great decisions about their legal situation is how we do what we do. Why do we do that? Because we wanted to build a firm where people would thrive. We started at the talk with this. Building a business is hard work. Thus, it must be made valuable for the owners and their families. Next, your team must feel that they are thriving by working here. We promise people we will make this the best law business they ever worked for. If the owners are thriving and the team is thriving, their clients will be well-served. Their legal problems are far more likely to be solved if you have your priorities right Now.
Speaker 1:Here's how we do this in a long-term disability practice. Number one experience we handle more cases than anyone else in our region and we tell them. This is objectively verifiable. At PACER the Public Access to Court Document Records and leadership we once held a two-day $8,000 ERISA disability benefit seminar for lawyers. No other law firm can say that, and we make a big deal about. We are the place where other lawyers come to learn our playbook, so I hope that's been helpful.
Speaker 1:Next time will be chapter 13,. Are your Clients Thunderstruck? And until next time, this is Ben. This is the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, and I hope all your days are great. This is the Renegade Lawyer Podcast and I hope all your days are great days. Reach out, hit me up on LinkedIn if you've got a question. I'd love to talk to lawyers. I'd be happy to do a short consult with you if you're stuck someplace. All right, thanks for listening. That's a wrap for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. If you found this episode valuable, do me a favor subscribe, leave a review and share this with a fellow lawyer who needs to hear it For more powerful strategies on marketing, practice growth and taking control of your legal career. Head over to greatlegalmarketingcom. You can also find us on LinkedIn Search for Great Legal Marketing and Benjamin Glass to connect. Stay tuned.
