People have wondered why it is that lately I have been pounding my blog and pounding Facebook with various posts about tax preparation. People say to me ‘Louis, you are the accident lawyer, what is with all this tax preparation stuff?’. They are concerned that I am giving up my bread and butter practice in favor of something else. Fortunately, they are quite incorrect.
I have been well known as an accident lawyer for over twenty-five years. I may have ten thousand current or former car accident cases. I am not sure how many clients that is because so many people have been clients two or three times. I have one client I have represented in five different accidents. My accident clients walk in by themselves. I have never had a significant accident ad campaign. If anybody has an old Yellowpages laying around, you can look in there and see that I advertised myself as a bankruptcy lawyer. On the accident side, I live strictly by word of mouth. And even while I have been blogging like crazy on the subject of taxes, the accident cases have been walking through the door at a greater rate than average. That may have something to do with people texting while driving on snowy roads.
While I have been known in the community in which I practice as “the accident lawyer” for roughly a quarter century, I am not yet as well known as “the tax guy”. Even many of my accident clients, and my other law clients, do not realize that I am also a tax preparer. This is why I have started a haphazard program of giving tax coupons to existing accident clients of mine. That, however, is starting to change. I have had a number of people come in who are law clients of mine to do taxes. They have apologized that they had not been in before, but told me that they did not realize that I did taxes. One who I have recently spoken with has sent me his entire family for car accidents. In the last two years, I have represented two of his siblings in two completely unrelated accidents. He likes me as a lawyer, but has never before used me as a tax preparer. He tells me he did not know. However, he “likes” my law office Facebook page and he has been pounded with blogs about taxes. He tells me now that he will be sending his whole family and as many of his friends as he can to me. I have had a number of people come in to do taxes for the first time with us this year, who are friends and family of law clients who have themselves become tax clients. The tax side of my practice is starting to behave like the rest of my practice, referrals from friends and family of existing clients.
As a result, the plan is working. I have a great staff. In fact, I have the best accident staff I have ever had. Cases are flowing through the office faster than they ever did and settlements are higher than they used to be. Because I am in the office seven days a week during tax season, I actually pay more, not less, attention to my accident files. My accident cases, which have always come in by word of mouth, are continuing to come in by word of mouth. People more and more are starting to realize that I also do taxes and are coming in for that as well. Coming to work is a lot of fun now.