The Sokolove PI Marketing Machine

Personal injury attorney James Sokolove of Newton, Mass. is featured in a recent edition of the Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly.

Recognized by many as one of the best legal marketers in the country, The Law Offices of James Sokolove, LLC is reported to have an ad running somewhere in the country every eight seconds. The multi-million ad budget (reportedly $20 million in 2007) generates hundreds of thousands of phone calls each year. Cases resulting from this intense marketing blitz are referred to other lawyers on a referral fee basis.

The referral fee arrangement is said in the article to mirror the co-counsel's contingency fee. For example, if the co-counsel take in a case is 30% then Sokolove's share is 30%. Of course, the true details are between the contracting parties and splits will vary on a number of factors.

The Boston firm of Lubin & Meyer is one of the few publicly identified "affiliates" or "co-counsel" in the Sokolove firm's reported 15,000 open cases. Other law firms in the Sokolove network are not identified, but it sounds like the firm is always looking for new co-counsel.

Sokolove is of course well known as one of the first U.S. attorneys to aggressively market his law practice, back in the days when advertising was considered a non-lawyerly activity.

According to the firm's site, they operate as a limited liability company in all states except Virginia, California, Michigan, and Tennessee, where the firm operates as a limited liability partnership. Read more at http://www.jimsokolove.com/.

If you are a PI firm looking for a fresh source of case leads, check it out. At a minimum, take some pointers from one of the legal industry's best practitioners.