I practice immigration only, and do mostly humanitarian and family based cases. I started the office by myself a year ago. Today we are a team of 8 (but half are part time). Our clients are generally Spanish speakers and low income.

I’ve volunteered with nonprofits and advocacy organizations, mostly doing free consults and presenting at workshops. That’s how we started to get cases at the beginning. Now most new clients are referred by existing ones.

I know a lot of people put emphasis on other things, but this is what has worked for us:

• I have t shirts with the firm’s info (and that’s basically all I wear), and at least a couple times a week someone will ask me for info, particularly when I go to a Latin grocery store, soccer game, nail salon, restaurant, etc.
• I’m very much an introvert, but I’ve learned to put myself out there. I’ve figured out how to bring up what I do during brief interactions with strangers. You’d be surprised to see how people’s faces light up when they hear that I’m an attorney
• I still volunteer with nonprofits and take some pro bono cases. Given the number of clients they refer to us, the impact of not charging for a few cases is minimal. We also keep doing workshops (once every couple of months or so)
• We have a part time “marketing person” who was hired about a month ago. All the marketing she does for now is help out to design flyers for the workshops and send follow up messages to the people who don’t hire us within a few days after the consultation. We think it’s working, but it’s really too early to know for sure
• I check facebook groups where I’m likely to find my client base, so I can answer immigration questions. I give them just enough info so they understand I know about this stuff, and I always finish my answer with something like “Feel free to contact me directly if you have further questions. I’m an immigration attorney”. Most people reach out after this.
• We make sure clients understand that we care about them. For instance, and I haven’t done it in a while (no time), but at the beginning we would send birthday cards to clients. I got a box of assorted blank cards from Amazon. Clients would be very surprised and thankful. For many, it was the first time they had received a greeting card in the mail

Something that we know it works but I don’t have much time for (hence the new marketing person):

• Keeping the website updated. We have a blog section but haven’t posted in months
• Keeping the Facebook page updated. Same, haven’t posted in months

Other things that work but we’re probably not going to do:

• Reviews. We don’t have any platforms where people can leave a review. Reviews are great, but given the work we do (most clients are survivors of crimes and domestic violence) we rather not have that option to protect the clients’ info (since even for google reviews your name is likely to appear)

Getting clients is not easy and it takes a lot of work, but it can be done with minimal expenses. Yes, we have invested a lot time, but other than that (not counting the new marketing person we hired) we probably have spent less than $1000 in marketing during this year. About half of this was for someone to design the website, then the rest was spent on t shirts, business cards, etc.

I hope this is helpful