The Firm Playbook: Lifetime clients are like winning the law firm lottery

By Nermin Jasani

A lifetime client is a client who hires your firm multiple times over the period of their life. Getting lifetime clients for your law firm can be the heart of your business, cash flow, and help you avoid down months. 

Here are a few examples of a lifetime client:

• If your client is a doctor who’s hired you to help them with their divorce, and they’ve also got children, and they are going to be getting married again. Those are three different ways that you can support that one client. In 2023, you do the divorce. In 2024, you do a child custody modification. In 2025, you do a prenup. That is pretty much the perfect lifetime client for a family law office.
• If your client is a business owner, they have hired your firm to represent all of their legal/business interests. Drafting employment contract agreements. Being able to call you to say, “Hey, we had this situation happen. Is this harassment? What should my next steps be here?” You are essentially acting as their outside general counsel. You are  there to help them with the everyday challenges of being a business owner.

Having a lifetime client is like winning the lottery for a law firm. The lifetime client can be worth three to five times more than someone retained for a “one-and-done” type of transaction.

The one-time client is, by definition, almost certainly only going to work with you once. They’re going to hire you for their divorce. They’re going to hire you for their T visa or review of their employment agreement, and probably never again. They are also unlikely to ever refer any new clients to you.

The hamster wheel

When you look at the buckets of clients that you have, if 100% of your clients are one-time clients, that is a problem, because you’re going to constantly be on a new client hamster wheel, spending thousands on marketing to bring in new business.

That is not to say that all of a lawyer’s clients need to be of the lifetime variety. But some need to be of the continuing kind, because they provide the stability to your practice that allows you to pay for your team, your office, everything that is necessary to run a law firm in 2026. Then one-time clients become the cherry on top of everything that’s already been established by your continuing clientele. 

The ratio of new clients versus lifetime clients will be different for every firm and is highly dependent on your practice area. For example, business law firms will generally have more lifetime clients than a personal injury firm. And while a business law firm may have a higher potential for lifetime clients, a personal injury firm (and others like it) have a higher potential for lifetime referrers. These are the people who were a client, and have since referred cases to you. Both lifetime clients and lifetime referrers should be treated with the highest value and care in your firm. 

Nurturing valued clients

You nurture loyal, lifetime clients through trust, communication, and consistent quality. Consistency is a vitally important aspect of client relations. When your client reaches out to you and sometimes you respond within 24 hours while other times after a week, that’s not consistent service. If you’re training new staff in your office, and each time they come to your office they interact with someone different, there’s not enough consistency to build trust with you or your firm. 

I want you to put yourself in your clients shoes and imagine your favorite restaurant. It doesn’t have to be a fancy restaurant, though it can be. Why do you keep going back? Location? Convenience? Service? Food quality? 

Maybe your favorite restaurant is a pizza shop which makes the best personal-sized pizza that you can order before you leave the office. Plus it’s ready for pickup by the time you’re close to home. 

Maybe your favorite restaurant is a Michelin Star restaurant. You don’t visit it multiple times each year, but it’s your go-to for special occasions like anniversaries, birthdays, and graduations.  That restaurant knows it is building lifetime value each time you visit, and the restaurant is creating an experience that makes you want to come back.

What are you doing and what experience are you creating for your clients that makes them want to come back multiple times? What is your team doing that makes your clients feel like they got a Michelin Star experience at your office? Are you making your lifetime clients and lifetime referrers feel appreciated? Do you send an onboarding gift or a year-end gift? Do you have client appreciation events? Do you call them and check in on them? 

Mistakes

You want to keep your potential lifetime clients and avoid making mistakes that I often see law firms make in their handling of them. 

At some point you’re going to try to hand this client off to your associate or another attorney in your firm. Do not do this without a proper transition. That client thought they were going to work with you. You should take the time to be part of the initial calls with any new attorney and continue to review the work being done on their behalf. The last thing you want is to have spent five years with this client, only to have them leave after five weeks with someone new. 

The next common mistake is with the fee attorneys charge to lifetime clients. Once they become reliable, repeat clients, lawyers often feel guilty and are scared to increase their prices. You can be generous with your lifetime clients and still maintain your fee increases. You can let your client know that your rate is increasing across the board, but because they’ve been a longtime client, you’re only going to increase them starting in Q2, or you’ll bill the first five hours at the initial rate and after that it will be at the new rate.

Remember, They didn’t become a lifetime client at a lifetime price. They became a lifetime client of your firm and will grow with you as your firm grows. And if anyone leaves you over a couple hundred dollars in higher charges, they’re probably not the lifetime client you want to grow with.

Finally, I see firms getting “too busy” for their lifetime clients. They’ll often say they don’t have time for a $50,000 client, but they’ll make time for a $200 consult, that may or may not hire them. That sounds absurd, doesn’t it?

Precious commodities

Lifetime clients can take time to acquire. But, once you have them, they can become reliable sources of revenue for your firm. And once you do acquire them, you want to keep them. What are you doing right now to bring in more lifetime clients? And what are you doing to keep the ones you already have?

 

Nermin Jasani, Esq., is a Chief Performance Officer for law firms who want to grow with strategy, structure, and smarter decision-making. After starting her career as a lawyer on Wall Street advising hedge funds, Nermin transitioned into consulting in 2017 to help lawyers solve the business problems law school never prepared them for. Today, Nermin is known for her direct, data-driven approach that turns ambitious firms into predictable, profitable, and well run businesses. She can be reached at [email protected].