Our firm is planning to host a seminar series. Should we make the seminars free, to increase the number of participants (and potential future clients) or should we charge a small fee to cover some of the costs (thereby possibly limiting the number of participants)?

We can’t decide which is the best way to go.  My thought is that a high-quality, well-marketed seminar will yield clients even if a small fee is charged.

A: That’s a tough one; there’s no right answer regarding whether to charge for a client seminar.  Few people know that Abe Lincoln actually gave client-development speeches for his law firm and charged 25 cents for them! 

For example, there’s a perception issue; people seem to feel that if it’s free it can’t be worth much, so the no-show rate is much higher. But most firms don’t charge for their programs, either considering them to be a way to get new prospects in the door, or not having the confidence to charge for them.

Further, if you don’t have significant name recognition, it’s harder to get people to pay for the program. I think the real issue with client seminars is follow-up. Keep in mind that a seminar is rarely a Sales tool.  It’s more typically simply one more way to form a first contact with a target audience of people, many of whom you can hopefully turn into clients down the road.

We’ve mostly moved beyond the 1990s ridiculous practice of hosting lavish parties where the firm’s goal seemed to be simply having lots of anonymous people you’ll never see again eating your food while you educated them over the loudspeaker from across a ballroom. 

Firms back then declared victory just because so many people came. Not any longer — you need to form personal, one-on-one relationships with every hot prospect to turn them into clients — which means you’ll need an ongoing program to stay in touch and gradually form these relationships.

And this follow-up strategy is created before the program is presented. This can be through follow-up handouts, additional programs, newsletters, email, etc. with the goal of generating a steady series of individual, face-to-face meetings — the kind that get you hired. Regardless of whether you charge or not, when the goal is bringing in clients, I prefer smaller programs, perhaps five or ten attendees at most.

This allows them to get to know you as a person, have you help answer their personal questions, and see you in action as a real lawyer. That’s a whole lot better than being that tiny figure up on a riser 50 yards away, hidden behind a microphone and podium. That’s not how people form relationships.

In other words, for generating business in a shorter time frame, hosting ten small 10-attendee roundtables is better than one big 100-attendee conference.