Law firms take advantage of Craigslist’s free ads

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You can get good help these days. For free, with Craigslist.org.

Craigslist is online classified advertising. It’s free in most cities, including Wisconsin’s 11 most highly populated areas.

Brenda A. Majewski, the firm administrator at the Kohn Law Firm in Milwaukee, says they’ve been successfully using Craigslist to find staff for about a year now.

They additionally subscribe to (meaning they pay money to post openings on) services such as JobNoggin.com, Careerbuilder.com and Milwaukeejobs.com. A difficulty with using these services, says Majewski, is that they often were inundated with responses, some of which clearly weren’t qualified. Among the qualified applicants, they found it time-consuming to wade through them and weed out the prospective interviewees.

With Craigslist, however, they tend to receive only quality applicants as respondees.
Typically what the firm desires is tech-savvy individuals, and those who are familiar with Craigslist tend to fit that description, she says.

Craigslist is easy to use. Best of all, Majewski says, “What’s better than free?”

When perusing the Craigslist job openings, you’ll notice that many ads are blind. The Kohn Law Firm’s ads are not. Majewski explains that it’s a creditors’ collection firm. They want prospects to know that up front. Not everyone’s suited for that work, and by communicating that early on, no one’s time is wasted. Plus, the Craigslist ad cautions against making unsolicited calls, especially from those who aren’t seeking the job (read: vendors. But newspaper columnists are OK.)

Perhaps the only limitation with Craigslist is for firms outside the 11 Wisconsin locations.

Jennifer Klinker, a legal assistant at Spears & Carlson in Washburn, says they recently posted a job opening at Craigslist in the Duluth/Superior area, contemporaneous to buying a classified ad in the local newspaper, closer to home. There was one application that clearly was a product of the Craigslist ad, but there were many more from the old-school ad.

Klinker, herself a Craiglist fan, says that even though it didn’t yield an abundance of results this time, they’ll keep using it for future openings because as more people learn of Craigslist, more people will be looking there first for employment opportunities. They hope to nix the ad in the local paper eventually.

She adds that another free option for online job posting, and one that small-town firms who aren’t near a Craigslist locale might consider, is the Department of Workforce Development’s Job Center of Wisconsin.

Advertising Your Services

Khaja M. Din, of KMD & Associates in Madison, has advertised on Craigslist for about a year now. He says a few clients have told him that they learned about him on Craigslist. It hasn’t been his most effective marketing tool, he notes. But it has helped keep the phone ringing; it requires a minimal time investment; and did we mention it’s free?

Eric P. Pitsch, of the Pitsch Law Office LLC in Appleton, echoes those sentiments. He has one ad targeted at potential OWI clients, while another targets family law clients. He could probably run more ads, for the same cost — nothing — if he had more areas of concentration.

“Like any other media, our attorney ethics rules still apply,” he says. “The cost is Craigslist’s most attractive feature. You could spend $20,000 for a TV spot, or nothing for Craigslist. Maybe your dad or your grandma won’t see the Craigslist ad. But your friends and your kids might, and I think eventually it will pick up in popularity.”

Finally, Pitsch says that he wouldn’t rule out using Craigslist for finding deals on office furnishings or technology — yet another potential use for lawyers. To date, however, he’s found more deals on eBay, and likes that that service has a means for shipping the items bought and sold built into the process, whereas with Craigslist, getting the items transferred is left to the discretion of the buyer and seller.

Thanks!

On a completely unrelated note, May marks the one-year anniversary of this column. It’s been fun and exciting to talk to many solo and small-firm lawyers and their staff, while learning about new technologies and trends for saving law office management dollars, and sharing that information. Keep those penny-wise tips coming my way.