Do you know how many potential clients you are losing because their e-mails are returned undelivered? I believe lawyers don’t really need new clients because eliminating spam e-mail seems to be more important.

I do TV advertising for personal injury lawyers and marketing for criminal lawyers. I often send e-mails to lawyers who request information or with attached files, such as an agreement. My e-mails are frequently returned as suspected spam or virus content.

Many legal practice consultants advise attorneys to cross sell legal services to their existing clients. For example, I, as a personal injury lawyer, could let my clients know that my law firm also represents clients for immigration, divorce and bankruptcy. It sounds like a good way to generate new business. Even if you don’t practice in those fields, you can refer these clients to other lawyers and get paid without doing any work. But it’s actually counterproductive.

The first rule of both marketing and advertising is to make it as easy as possible for your customers, or clients, to contact you, yet some law offices are actually turning away new clients.

Last week a large personal injury law firm, interested in advertising on TV, found my other website and sent me an e-mail requesting that I call with more information about 1-800-HURT-911. I called them from my private phone line, instead of my office phone line. Because my private line has caller ID blocked, I heard “Your call has been properly delivered but the party you are trying to reach is not accepting calls from callers who do not allow delivery of their telephone number.”