Forget your credentials, your clients need you for your problem-solving skills. 

When the phone rings in your office, the person on the other side of the line is often going through the most traumatic experience of their recent life. Too often, as attorneys, we forget that. They are coming to you vulnerable and scared. You have to meet them in that place. Putting yourself in your potential client’s shoes takes a deliberate rewiring of the way we think. 

Let’s take personal injury attorneys for example. The personal injury attorney might assume people know what to do when they get in an accident. It’s what he does (and he advertises a lot to make sure people know!).

But if you’ve never been in a car accident, you actually have no clue what to do. The shock alone can make you forget everything you think you know. Am I injured? I don’t feel that injured. What are my options? Who’s going to pay for these medical bills? What do I say if they call me?

It’s the same thing for clients of attorneys dealing with immigration, divorce, DUIs– the client doesn’t know what to do. They are going through a traumatic event. We’ve discussed how you need to be the expert your clients are looking for. But you also need to remember, as that expert, they don’t need your credentials….they need your problem-solving skills. 

“What are we going to do? What are the next steps? What’s the timeline?” 

You are the person with the answer to the questions that have plagued them. 

From the client’s side of the table. 

As attorneys, when we sit across from someone, we’re often thinking “Can this person really pay me thousands of dollars? How much? Will I end up working for free?” It’s okay. That’s our job and we have to know that we’re going to be paid for our work.

As a client in need of an attorney, when sitting across from you, they’re thinking “How can I get my son out of jail? Do I need to secure housing before leaving my husband? Will I be able to afford to live? Am I going to be deported?”

They are full of thousands of questions, and they already know it’s going to cost a lot. They certainly weren’t planning on this. Clearly, both parties are coming to the table with vastly different interests. 

What if money wasn’t the issue?

Everyone believes that money buys justice or freedom or liberty. The point is – people know that money solves problems! People with money want an affordable way to pay an expert to help them with their case. This begs the question – How affordable are you?

For attorneys who use Fortify by iQualify Lending, the answer is – the most affordable. iQualify Lending is more than just legal retainer financing…it’s the easiest way to get hired, get paid, and get out of the collection business once and for all.

Using Fortify removes you from the financial transaction. And your clients will appreciate the simplicity of the payment options. It supports their belief that you are an expert. Now you get to be the problem solver. 

Now, sitting across from that new client, you can calm their fears and answer their questions, telling them, “With the dice we’ve been rolled…here’s the best-case scenario we can put you in….that is my goal as your attorney.” 

Start using Fortify powered by iQualify, and instantly become affordable to every client that wants to hire you. Now that money’s out of the way, it’s about being present and helping them through the most traumatic experience of their lives. 

Get out of the collections business once and for all. Your clients, your staff, your mental health, and your bank account will thank you!

Attorneys need a third party to make the difference.

In what situation does having a middleman make all the difference? As FastCompany explains, Middlemen “are more prevalent–and more important–than ever. Agents, brokers, dealers, and resellers get a bad rap, but they play a crucial role in almost every platform today— As a result, being an effective middleman has become an even more valuable skill than it was in the past.”

Middlemen are particularly useful for attorneys and retainer financing. As our last few blogs have pointed out, a lawyer’s psychology and mindset when entering into their pitch with a client are extremely important. Your belief system enters into any meeting before you do and, when playing a game of retainer-payment-chess with your client, it becomes an immovable force. While you need to focus on (or stubbornly cling to) all of your mental chess pieces, your middleman steps in to get the important work done. 

Think of your belief system as a ladder with five rungs. The bottom rung is your identity, which shapes your beliefs. The next rung is belief, which shapes the next rung, capability. That rung influences behavior and those behaviors shape your environment. This ladder is powerful and cannot easily be dismantled. You carry this ladder into all of your pitches and meetings with clients. It can be very hard to negotiate and work from a place of compromise when you’re hauling around a heavy ladder of belief. 

• Environment
• Behavior
• Capability
• Belief
• Identity 

There’s something about having a middleman, someone who is NOT carrying your ladder around, someone who can be the responsible third party, that is essential to making the attorney/client relationship work. While you’re stuck in your mindset, the middleman is free to negotiate. There are very few attorneys who are getting their mindset right, are getting paid fully by their clients, and who aren’t suffering from this issue. Everyone knows it exists and that it sucks but no one wants to talk about the depth of the problem because we’re raised to win trophies. We, especially as attorneys, often believe we can do it (and win it) all ourselves. 

You may think you don’t need a middleman, but chances are you’re already using one. Attorneys push this stuff off on office managers and employees to get rid of that pain. But the one dealing with the pain didn’t create the cost, they’re just collecting. Betty’s job at the front office is not to collect your money! Betty’s job is to do 8 hours of work for your practice….not chase money around. You don’t have the time either. Betty is not the middleman. You cannot be your own middleman.

Fortify, powered by iQualify Lending, is ready to be your middleman. Start using the Fortify software and you’ll have an easy, modern way to get new clients signed up when they come to you, As the attorney, you get paid upfront with both cash and financing options and get paid over a period of time with an in-house payment option. iQualify attorneys get paid their full retainer on most of their cases without ever having to chase their clients for money or call them for payments.

Contact us today and let’s get started making Fortify your middleman, protecting your practice and letting your belief system do what it does best: win cases for your clients.

Want to find out more about the most famous American middlemen? Esquire has a fun article on seven key middlemen in U.S. history. 

How Attorneys Like You Easily Justify Their Value with iQualify

Lawyers are just like any other entrepreneur in one key way: they likely suffer from imposter syndrome. Simply defined, imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern in which one doubts one’s accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. Imposter syndrome reveals itself and plays out in a variety of ways within our professional lives. For lawyers, imposter syndrome often involves the mind obsessing over this “fear sequence”: Did I earn it? Am I worth it? Will my client pay me? 

Imposter syndrome speaks to the sub-conscience mind and, even though we all experience it, there’s a shame in admitting it. Why is that? Because it is a shame! Going over the fear sequence in your mind, feeling like you secretly don’t belong, or don’t add the value needed to a case, is a shameful feeling. 

We recently wrote about nailing your pitch. This goes right alongside defeating your imposter syndrome. Our brains chase what we want (in this case, a certain retainer fee) so it feels good to state that in our pitch, confidently. But as soon as a client points out all the problems with the pitch and starts playing a mental chess game with us, the other part of our brain takes over: What will they pay me? What am I willing to offer them to receive as much money as I can upfront (knowing that might be the only money I get because it’s money I don’t have to chase over time)? 

If you put your client on a payment plan, hopefully, everything goes well…but as soon as it’s off-plan, it’s off-plan. For many lawyers, the jig is up when you aren’t able to collect your fee from your client. Several months and many thousands of dollars later, it’s a hostage negotiation! This happens every day but lawyers forget about it and keep pushing on. You wake up and wipe the slate clean but the toxicity of not being paid is still in your body. Can you blame it on your imposter behavior? Basically, the less confident you feel as an attorney, the less likely you will be to collect most of your fee. How do your clients exploit this? You need to create a sense of authority and any resistance at all, any shame on your part, usually creates a block to that authority. 

This is the value of what Fortify, powered by iQualify, is doing for attorneys. We handle the financing of your cases for you. Once the price is set, you don’t have to justify the value of the work you’ve done. No one is going to admit they don’t think they’re worth what they’re being paid, but that’s the subconscious struggle. Let all of that play out only in your mind, not in front of your client. Start using the Fortify software and you’ll have an easy way to get new clients signed up when they come to you, As the attorney, you get paid upfront with both cash and financing options and get paid over time with an in-house payment option. iQualify attorneys get paid their full retainer on most of their cases without ever having to chase their clients for money or call them for payments.

Give Fortify, powered by iQualify, the power to negotiate on your behalf. You’re already not getting paid! What else do you have to lose? We will get their payment via collections, garnishing, or renegotiating a payment plan. The pressure we can apply —the leverage we have—you don’t have anyone in your law office that can do that. We have a power you don’t and can’t have. You’re too close to it! 

Conquer your imposter syndrome by having a third party that can go to bat for you. Let iQualify protect your pride and relieve your shame, getting you back to the confident attorney you need to be for your clients. Removing yourself from the equation and getting that bank between you and your clients is the fastest way to Fortify your law practice.  Are you ready to get started?

Legal Retainer Financing Makes it Easier for Lawyers to Get the Work Done.

Everyone knows it’s true: with age comes wisdom. You expect that, as you mature through adulthood, you’ll just keep getting smarter, earning more, and increasing your levels of confidence and not giving a f**k. 

So why are young attorneys outworking and outpacing the older ones? In a job that values experience and intelligence, how are the new kids picking up so much momentum? Young attorneys are outworking old attorneys by using technology like Fortify to get paid by all their clients and doing all the work. This leads to great results, referrals, and a good reputation. These attorneys can take most of their cases to completion because they use Fortify, enabling them to sign more cases than others because of the flexible payment options. 

Why Can’t the Old Guys Keep Up?

iQualify’s revolutionary style of legal retainer financing, Fortify, presents a whole new way of thinking about legal lending. Fortify was only recently given the seal of approval by the ABA, making it a time for early adopters to jump on board. 

Older law firms are struggling to keep up because they’re not adapting to these new systems and ways of thinking about practicing law. Older lawyers have maybe even tried adapting to other new systems in the past but, left to their own devices and without help, they had a bad experience. It made them feel small. Meanwhile, young attorneys are currently in their hopeful, entrepreneurial phase of life. They are looking for systems to make life and work easier and make the money they want. They want to feel large. They’re ready for a system like Fortify.

Fortify, powered by iQualify Lending, offers your clients payment options that work for them and that they can easily understand. As the attorney, you get paid upfront with both cash and financing options and get paid over a period of time with an in-house payment option that can generate recurring revenue that you don’t have to chase. iQualify attorneys get paid their full retainer on most of their cases without ever having to chase their clients for money or call them for payments. 

Don’t be jealous of how the young generation is finding their success! Join them and start instituting better business practices like iQualify and Fortify today. Develop a reputation as a cutting-edge, modern lawyer willing to embrace change and tackle new systems. Learn more and start living like you’re young today. 

Stop letting money walk out of your office door. 

We’re going to share a number with you….63%.

That’s the number of potential clients that have a consultation with a lawyer and leave feeling unsure about the cost and/or payment options. Think about that number. 6 out of 10 clients you speak with will leave a meeting feeling unsure about how to hire you, and what the next steps are to move forward.

In most cases when that happens, guess what happens next? The potential client reaches out to another attorney. 

Another attorney who signs them simply because they take the time to offer them better payment options. 

And I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself, I know this happens sometimes, but the numbers can’t be that high. 

Here’s another number…87% of those people who leave feeling unsure, do hire an attorney, just not you. 

If you’ve spent your ad revenue on getting people in the door, why let that many walk right out? 

With Fortify, powered by iQualify Lending, you can offer a cash option(get paid upfront), a financing option (get paid upfront) and an in-house payment option (get paid over time) that can generate recurring revenue that you don’t have to chase.

Imagine getting paid your full retainer, on most of your cases, without ever having to chase the client for money or call them for payments. 

Too many attorneys get into the habit of taking half down and then dropping cases when their clients don’t end up paying them. Wouldn’t it be a radical idea if you took more clients AND worked on each case, with the certainty of your recurring income each month? 

Fortify does all of the work for you, with none of the hassle. And with our system, attorneys are signing, helping and most importantly, getting paid by more clients than ever before. 

Stop letting other attorneys poach your clients. Offer more payment options and keep potential clients saying yes more often. Work with iQualify Lending and, before you know it, you’ll develop that reputation as the lawyer that actually does the work.