What's your price?
It's more than you think
I’ve had many a discussion with law firms about how they price their services, and when they last reviewed prices, many haven’t done it for years, they are scared of losing business.
Reality check - you won’t lose business!!!
If you haven’t increased prices in the last few years your business is going backwards, everybody else increases their prices, but for some reason, law firms are scared of it.
Have you done any competitor price checking recently, you might be surprised. Conveyancing is always a good start, get the price of the average house in your area (Google search) and then get quotes from all your local firms, most of which you can get a quote online.
I worked with a firm that hadn’t increased prices for a while and we were working on the profitability of the private client department. At the time of the project, a single will was £150 and £200 for a mirror and LPA’s were £200 each. I proposed new pricing, which made them one of the most expensive in the local area, but we determined ours was a better product, with more in-depth reviews, another change we made was making sure that LPAs were discussed at every client appointment.
After weeks of umming and erring, I asked them to just try the pricing and see what happened and guess what not a single objection (well maybe 1 or 2, but they were clients you didn’t want because they moaned about everything), the fee earners were just in fear of losing business. A single simple will increased to £200, a double to £350 and LPA’s to £400 each with a slight discount for married couples. Together with pitching LPA’s in every meeting (why wouldn’t you, you’re negligent if you don’t), the average value client increased from £200 to £650. That’s a massive 325% increase in an average client and it’s straight to the bottom line for a little extra effort.
We did the same in conveyancing over 12 months by increasing the price by £50 every 6 months, so 3 times in total across the board. They did circa 2,400 instructions over 12 months, we added £360,000 to the bottom line in the second year and we changed nothing else and not a peep from clients about being expensive. We backed this up with brilliant client reviews (I can help here as well).
What are your hourly rates for litigation, check them - I have a spreadsheet that calculates inflation-based hourly rates from the last time you increased them. If you’d like a copy drop me an email and I’ll send you by return.
What I’m trying to say is don’t be scared of losing business, as a profession you are all underpricing yourselves. Be confident in what you do, get your client reviews sorted to back up your pricing and you won’t have any problems.
Go through every department and look at what you think you could price to and then add an extra 10%, don’t forget if it doesn’t work you can always come down a little which would still be more than where you started.
ACTION
Start with one department, probably your worst performing, assess the pricing and get an idea of what your competition is doing, and model on a spreadsheet what the different prices look like to the bottom line.
3 TIPS
Request my inflation-based pricing tool
Get your reviews sorted to back up your pricing
Look for opportunities to sell extra services/products at the same time
Happy growing
See you next week
Chris
P.S. I can help your law firm grow, want to know more drop me an email to hello@love-growth.com
We manage client reviews, advise on marketing, help with business development, and supply leads for your law firm.
P.P.S. I’m on a mission to help 100 high-street law firms grow by 20% in 2025, but we’re starting now. Please drop me a line if you’re interested in being one of the 100.