If your law firm is seeing an increase in “no shows” for initial consultations, here are six easy-to-implement solutions that have helped other consumer law attorneys turn more leads into paying clients.  

1. Do automated appointment reminders

This is the easiest way to avoid missed appointments. Several online businesses offer this service for about $30 per month. Simply enter the prospect’s appointment time and contact information, and the system will automatically call, email and/or text the prospect to remind him of his upcoming consultation at whatever interval you set. 

2. Charge a nominal fee if a prospect misses his appointment

We’ve had attorneys that work with LeadQ to generate their law firm leads do this with good success. If a prospect sets an appointment for evening or weekend hours — requiring off-hours time from the attorney — then the law firm asks the prospect for a valid payment card to keep on file. If the prospect doesn’t show for the appointment, then a nominal fee, such as $49, is charged to the card for the attorney’s time. This strategy works nearly every time. If prospects cannot make a scheduled appointment, they’ll call your office to cancel or reschedule rather than incurring a charge.

3. Promote free parking

If your office is located in a downtown area, prospects may avoid showing up for their in-person appointments if they’ll have to pay for parking. If parking is free, promote that on your website. If not, offer to validate their parking for them. Or, better yet, offer to do a virtual consult.

4. Don’t ask a prospect to bring a completed questionnaire to his appointment

This is like asking a prospect to do homework prior to your first opportunity to sell him on hiring your firm. If he fails to do his homework, he’ll often avoid showing up unprepared. It’s better to complete a situation questionnaire together during the initial consult.

5. Don’t target your marketing to areas too far away from your office, or areas with extremely low income

Prospects sometimes do not realize how far away your office actually is from their location. After initially setting an appointment, they may decide the travel time — and effort — to be too much, even for a free consult. The closer a prospect lives to your office, the greater the chances are that he’ll show up. Additionally, we’ve seen a greater number of “no shows” from locations with very low income demographics. Therefore, we try to avoid generating law firm leads from the lowest-income zip codes. Of course, if your firm provides full attorney consultations via phone, this can solve the office proximity dilemma.

6. Don’t have your office staff answer all of the prospect’s questions prior to his first attorney consultation 

Your initial attorney consultation with a prospect is your opportunity to begin forming a relationship with him and sell him on hiring your firm. Make sure you get that face-to-face opportunity, if possible, to close your law firm leads. If your staff answers all of the prospect’s questions prior to the first meeting, you’re also increasing the odds that he may decide it’s not worth his time to meet with you for a full consultation.