Why Forensic Accountants Are Horrible at Marketing to Lawyers

The Forensic Accounting Deskbook by Miles Mason, Sr. JD, CPA, published by the ABA Family Law Section

Getting hired by divorce lawyers may not be as hard as you think. Divorce attorney Mason shares with forensic accountants tips and traps of marketing and networking with lawyers in targeted legal fields.

For a much more detailed discussion, see The Forensic Accounting Deskbook: A Practical Guide to Financial Investigation and Analysis for Family Lawyers, Second Edition, authored by Miles Mason, Sr. and published by the ABA Family Law Section.  This updated edition of one the ABA’s most popular resources explains the practice of forensic accounting and business valuation and how to apply it in family law cases. It provides a practice-focused introduction to the core financial concepts in divorce, such as asset identification, classification, and valuation, income determination, expenses, and more.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Tracy Coenen:             How have some of the expert witnesses you know and you’ve used, marketed their services to attorneys?

Miles Mason:              I get marketed services to me all the time, and I know how many forensic accountants are out there. I can tell you, they do a horrible job. Many people misunderstand who an attorney is and how they get along, get through the day. The answer is most attorneys have a difficult time getting through the day. They’re focused on the case where it getting what needs to be done that day done. They don’t think of in terms of, all right, I know I’m going to need a forensic accountant. I need to go do three lunches with three different forensic accountants and have one lined up in advance. They just don’t think that way, right or wrong. When I speak to lawyers, I tell them, go take out forensic accountants to lunch before you need them. Take business valuation experts out to lunch before you need them.

They don’t listen. All right, so what does that mean? Let’s figure out what it is that a CPA sells and a forensic accountant sells. In the courtroom, and they sell trust, credibility, independence, that sort of thing, and competence, no question. Everybody trusts a CPA right off the bat, no question. Because of the nature of the information they take in and the services that provide, everybody knows CPA’s are smart people. What does that mean? That means a CPA in marketing services as a forensic accountant needs to communicate two things. Who you are and what you do.

The biggest mistake I see out there is that forensic accountants assume lawyers know what they do for a living. They don’t. They don’t. My biggest advice to forensic accountants is tell lawyers what you do. Tell them what type of cases you work on and go meet those lawyers that handle those cases. You want to do bankruptcy cases, hang out with the bankruptcy lawyers. Where did the bankruptcy lawyers hang out? They have a separate section of the BAR that would include debtors lawyers and creditors lawyers, and sometimes they segregate there.

They’re going to have groups within the American Bar Association and the State Bar Association called sections that they can go and meet and speak to and interact with. That’s really one of the first things. You want to communicate who you are and once you do, the next thing is understand that lawyers forget. They just don’t retain information.

From a marketing standpoint, what I tell forensic accountants is think about Coke and Pepsi. We’ve all had Coke. We’ve all had Pepsi. Well, why in the heck does Coke and Pepsi advertise as much as they do if we already know what it tastes like? The answer is real simple. Top of mind, awareness and marketing. It’s very important for the person to whom you’re marketing to have heard your name recently. Well, how does a forensic accountant do top of mind awareness? Very simple. Email, mail, some other type of touching. Get in front of these people. Even if it’s something as simple as a thank you note or a card, “Hey, don’t forget about me.” I really don’t care what it is.

One of my favorite top of mind awareness tools that a forensic accountant used on me many years ago is hand out a calculator with his name and phone number on it and web address. I think it was brilliant. We pass that around. My staff uses it. We use that. Why should I go out and buy a calculator if I’ve got one handed to me by a forensic accountant? I think that’s real simple. The best tip I’ve ever had. I know a forensic accountant that told me he joined the Bar Association, the City and State Bar Association.

Joined the Bar Association and that way he get notified of every cocktail party that is going on and he says, “Every time I go to a cocktail party, I walk away with three files. People come up to me, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to give you a call. I’ve got this case.” Get especially from the personal injury lawyers for the lost earnings calculations picks up quite a few business files that way, because the lawyers meant to call him and just hadn’t gotten around to it. There’s a lot of creative ways to do the mailing or do print ads and all that, but they pale in comparison to just have in face to face time with the lawyers.

If you don’t know them already at a cocktail party, how do you get in front of them? Speak. Speaking is very simple. That’s why you see a lot of the top forensic accountants across the country have detailed curriculum vitae. And who are they speaking to? Sure, they’re speaking to some forensic accountants at some conferences, but they’re speaking at Bar association meetings.

I’ll give you another great tip. The number one topic to speak on in front of lawyers in a seminar is very simple. Tax returns. What do you look at in a tax return and dissect it? 90% of it’s just going through the basic schedules, and the other 10% is explaining to a lawyer what a tax return is, because the tax return’s much more than the first two pages of the 1040. It includes schedules and attachments that are submitted to the IRS in a series of worksheets and attachments that don’t go to the IRS and schedules. All of that is in a CPA’s tax file back at the drawer, plus potentially original documents.

Lawyers don’t have a clue with that. They think the tax return is the two pages or the one page if it’s an EZ. I’m not kidding when I say that. Lawyers just don’t know what goes into the tax return much less how does a corporate tax return get formed. How does it get, whether it starts with a general ledger or a trial balance or whatever you want to call it, they don’t have a clue. Teaching them those basics adds value to the lawyer’s practice, helps them learn, and lets the forensic accountant be an expert on what is very, very simple and basic to most accountants.

Thank you to Tracy Coenen, CPA, CFF for inviting me to join her in this video series. Tracy is a nationally recognized forensic accountant practicing in Milwaukee and Chicago.