The Law Firm Marketing Minute
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The Law Firm Marketing Minute
Best Of: Building Your Law Firm One Relationship at a Time feat. Lisandra Matos
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🚗 From translating for her family as a teen immigrant to building a thriving personal injury practice, Lisandra Matos shares how deep relationships—not fancy marketing—grew her law firm into a million-dollar success. In this inspiring episode, she opens up about her roots, her referral-driven strategy, and how creating a culturally connected client experience has made all the difference. If you’ve ever doubted the power of one client done right, this one’s for you.
đź“Ś Key Takeaways:
- Referral marketing can outperform advertising when trust and service are top-tier.
- Authentic, culturally aware client experiences build loyalty that lasts.
- Success often comes from consistency, not quick wins—relationships compound over time.
👉 8 Ways to Get Clients FAST
📆 Schedule Your Strategy Session
🔎 Find Lisandra Here
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If you do all those right things trust me, you're not just doing well by one client. That client will probably send you to any other clients. That's better than any commercial out there.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone, Welcome back to the Law Firm Marketing Minute. As always, I'm your host, Smyke, and I'm here with Lissandra Matos of Matos Law Firm, located out of Denver, Colorado. Very happy for you to be on the show with me today.
Speaker 1:Well, we're big fans of your page, so I am really excited to do this today.
Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate that, appreciate that For a little context for everyone out there listening. I had linked up with Matos Law Firm on social media a while back and, you know, really formed into a great social media connection. I mean, they have great content themselves on their pages, I should say, because there's, you know, a couple of them and it's just been such a great back and forth. So I'm very excited. I think, just based on the notes that I have from Matt, your marketing guy over there, I think that your story is really this episode is really going to inspire a lot of people. So very much looking forward to it and let's just get right into it. So, first and foremost, I would love to know how you became a lawyer, why you decided to become a lawyer, what's the background behind all of that?
Speaker 1:Well, when I was a little girl, my family members would say you talk too much, you should be a lawyer. But I didn't believe them. It wasn't until I moved to America. I'm from Cuba. My family and I moved to the United States when I was 14 years old and of course, I didn't speak English. My parents didn't speak English. We didn't know how to drive, we didn't understand the American system, how it worked. You know, just $7, that was our net worth back then and you know there's a lot of hustle and struggle that that comes with that experience.
Speaker 1:And my experience was not as bad as other immigrants experiences, but language was always an issue. So I would be the translator for my family. So anytime my mom was trying to sign a lease or whenever she went to the bank and she was trying to ask questions like what, what is this like 35 dollar fee or whatever, I ended up being the interpreter and I was like, wow, this shy 14 year old could barely speak English but somehow was better than my mom's English. So my mom, being the powerful Latina that she is, she would be like in the background just yelling and I'm like trying to translate all of that and and that's what inspired me to be a lawyer basically speak for on behalf of others oh, okay, yeah, so that that that aligns perfectly.
Speaker 2:I mean, I can't even imagine like, was it? Was it a much of a culture shock coming from Cuba to America at 14? Because obviously, you know, I know of some people who immigrated here but they were like very, very young so they couldn't even remember, you know, their life before immigrating. For you, was there much of a change that you saw?
Speaker 1:Well, the day that I moved to America was the happiest day of my life. It was something that I really feel like we manifested. I remember being a little girl, like just in Luyano, just like looking out the balcony and imagining I was in Disney World, like I would look up the clouds and think, oh, I'm in this, I'm at Disney World, like hanging out with Mickey Mouse or whatever. And then I looked the other way and then there is a big trash can with like overflowing trash and you know a place that was the opposite of Disney World. But I remember also thinking, oh, I'm going to be sitting in a pool with my nice orange juice. This is the image I had in my brain. And when my family got the opportunity to move to america and I, I just remember everything was amazing, like the. The streets were so clean, the minivan oh the minivan. It felt like a spaceship because, of course, in cuba I don't know if you've seen the pictures of the transportation in cuba- they were very old vehicles, weren't they for the longest time?
Speaker 1:yeah, or the bus that has like I don't know how many people 100 plus people like crammed together. So to me I was just so, so happy to be here, so that first day was really happy. And then reality struck. Hey, we can't speak the language. Where do you live? How do you get a job? Even to go to school I had to do like all these vaccines, all the paperwork, and I was just a very shy kid, I was just always hiding, I would not be doing this.
Speaker 2:I was always hiding in the back of the class. Do you think that's really what drove you to become a lawyer?
Speaker 1:It was that and also seeing that when you, when you don't know what's going on, you really need help. You need someone to guide you and explain things in your, in your language. It's so important to actually, um, you know, help people because for us, we just didn't know anything. We didn't even know about car insurance or very basic things that if you grow up here, you're like duh. You, you get a car, you get car insurance, of course to effectively market your law firm, you have to law firm.
Speaker 2:You have to know your audience. You have to know what irks them, what they like, what they don't like, what makes them react or take action or, better yet, trust you. And if you don't, well, we have a free resource to help you along. It is the ideal client checklist. You can find a link for it in the description of this podcast. Download it, fill it out, see who you really want to target, and then go from there. All right, let's get right back to it. So let's talk about becoming a lawyer for you. So what was that whole process like and like where did you go to law school and how was that for you?
Speaker 1:So I wanted to go to Harvard, something that and I credit my parents for this I had big dreams that they never told me no, you can't do that. So I remember one day I woke up, I guess I watched Legally Blonde and I was like I want to go to Harvard. And the next day I woke up and I said I want to be president of America.
Speaker 2:Wow, hey, hey.
Speaker 1:No one told me it was unconstitutional, which I appreciate. So my parents were like, ok, well, you just have to work really hard. If you work really hard, you can make it happen. Yeah, so I had this. I had this need to prove myself because, of course, when you come to America, you and you go through all that shock of leaving your family, your friends, your house, everything behind you, feel like you have to hustle and that your friends back home don't have the opportunities you have. So I'm not going to go to class and, you know, waste my time. So I ended up becoming a lawyer because I wanted to be a politician and again help people. I saw how politics really influenced my life, why Cuba is Cuba and why America is america. So I wanted to be more in charge of how the law was made and things like that, but ended up being a lawyer and I absolutely love it well, I, I mean, I I love the fact that you know, um, coming over here, obviously you face some adverse uh, adversity, um, but yet you didn't.
Speaker 2:You didn't let that. You know, you know, keep you down. You didn't let that. You were like you know what. Here I am. You know, mickey Mouse can wait now because I got big, I got bigger dreams than Walt Disney World. Now, that's awesome, that's awesome. So let's talk about you know, starting your own law firm. How, how long has Matos Law Firm been around?
Speaker 1:So we've been around for eight years. I worked at a prominent law firm here in colorado. I knew that's what I wanted to do from the moment I uh, from my first class in law school, it was torts and I I was like, wait a second so you can represent the poor people and you can get the money, and you can make money doing that. Oh, my goodness, this is a dream, tell me more. Tell me more Like holding people accountable for for being jerks I can totally do that.
Speaker 1:So I always wanted to go into the personal injury law space and that's what I did. That was my first legal job and, of course, you know, like an employee, I had a bad day. I was crying in the parking lot Once. I called my mom and my mom was like mija in her high-pitched Latina, powerful voice. I didn't come to this country so that you can be crying in some parking lot. You get it together. What do you want to do? And, of course, what I wanted to do was to start my own law firm and basically create Matos land and just create our own little world where, you know, we make up the rules.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you started your law firm and obviously you had to market it in some sort of way in order to grow. I mean that this is what the, the main topic of this, this podcast, is about. Um, you know the, the marketing and, and more particular marketing towards uh, spanish-speaking individuals, what? What was your philosophy for marketing your firm? Like, where did you first start in in that realm?
Speaker 1:first I was really bad at it, like really, really bad, but I had a few key concepts. I knew that if I didn't have any clients and again, I didn't have family who were lawyers I didn't have any family in colorado who said, hey, my friend crashed here, here's our number I had had zero help. I was a new lawyer, so I I knew hustle and I knew that if I was working 40, 60 hours a week for somebody else, now my new 40 hour a week job was going to be to get clients. So that was my full time job was to market.
Speaker 1:First time I went out is a very funny story. I went to work out and I heard. I heard. I knew that I was different because I was Latina. I spoke the language and I needed to meet more Latinos. I go work out. I hear some ladies speaking Spanish.
Speaker 1:I ran to them with my brand new business cars. I said I'm Lisandra Matos. Here's my car, call me if you're about to crash. That is not the way to do it. But I learned. I took action. I learned that you can help people with their workout that way. That's a good training exercise. They ran away as fast as they could and then I went home and I said how can I do this better? So I picked up some marketing books, I educated myself and I ended up saying, ok, I can't talk to thousands of people, I don't have billboards, I don't have commercials. What can I do? Hmm, what if I meet one person, one Latina, and that Latina knows 500 people because she already has a business? If I talk to one Latina and I actually work on that relationship, now I have 500 people in my network and that's what I did. And then I did that over and over again and I made my little Latina army, where maybe I knew 10 people, but really those 10 people knew a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's it's you know, it's as they say, it's not about who you know, it's about who they know, right? Uh, I mean that's, that's, that's awesome, cause that's that's right up the alley of of what we preach all the time. Here is is, is you know, don't forget your current network.
Speaker 2:Don't forget, you know, uh, many times people have this, this idea that you know, marketing is all about just going out and getting new leads and lead gen this and lead gen that. Well, that's great, that's awesome, but at the same time, you still have a great network, most likely, that is willing to refer to you, is willing to help you get business and, to be honest, they're their best sales people. You know, they're the ones, if you help them and you do good things for them, they're the ones, that's, that are going to go out and and promote you and, and you know, refer to you.
Speaker 1:So that's awesome, that's awesome the conversion rate was at 100 back then. When it was my friends referring me cases, they were sold by the time that they called me.
Speaker 2:Awesome, so okay. So let's talk about you've. Obviously you have clients. I believe you have clients that are English speaking clients, correct? Is the focus more so on Spanish speaking individuals?
Speaker 1:So we've marketed a lot in English where I go on Fox. There are local shows here where I go on Fox TV and the Latinos are calling me and even if they don't speak Spanish, but they'll say things like you remind me of my mom, you remind me of my sister. Psychologically, people trust people who look like themselves. So that's probably it. I don't know. I really. You know, it doesn't make sense to niche down when you don't know anything about marketing. You think you need to talk to a lot of people and that's what I did for a while until I figure out my formula, my Latina army formula. But at some point you realize that it's that quality, that relationship, and for me it happens to be the Latinos, because in Colorado there are not many bilingual attorneys who do what I do.
Speaker 2:Real quick. This is a little off, a little tangent. Why did you choose personal injury to get into out of all the areas of law?
Speaker 1:It's that factor of I hate bullies and I, because I've always been a little person, I'm still a little person. I just love defending the people against big corporations and the fact that I could make money doing that like wait, I, that's like my dream job. I make money actually helping other people awesome that's awesome.
Speaker 2:And then, obviously, you, you have the ability to you know, um tap into something that your family went through, um, you know, not having you know the, the um coming over the from cuba and not necessarily knowing how everything worked. So that's you. So you're literally being that person that you guys needed back when you came.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's Matos Love World, and I hope you can visit us sometime.
Speaker 2:I would love to. I've never been to Denver, but I would love to get out to Denver, so sign me up.
Speaker 1:So we go coming over, we go all in. When people come over, I feel like they're coming to my house, to my mom's house. What's the first thing when they come to my mom's house? My mom's like hey, Âżquieres cafecito? Do you want some coffee? And you know we sit down with people, we talk to them, we make them feel at home. Latinos like myself, we always have a big family support system and when something goes wrong, you usually bring your family members with you. So we have a really big conference room out there where you know people are like oh, I brought my cousin and my and and I'm babysitting my grandkid and I'm like no problem, here are some toys for your grandkid. If you let them have candy, here's some candy for them. And it's more like when they come in, they don't feel like they don't belong here. They feel like this is where you belong, you're the boss here no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's really all about that personal experience. Would you say it's very much the cultural experience as well, in terms of that culture versus people who didn't immigrate here? Would you say that that's the idea behind having toys and candy and a big conference room and all that.
Speaker 1:It's like I expect it because that's exactly how my family is. I know that if somebody comes to my house, it would be so rude of me to not offer them some snacks and food. It's kind of bringing home to the office. We designed the lobby I almost called it a living room to look like a living room so that when you go in, you feel like you're at home and also you know, understanding, like my clients are not gonna come here by themselves.
Speaker 1:Some of them do. But I gave a settlement check to someone the other day and there were like five people in the room and you would think, hey, you want all your family members to know how much money you're getting. And I kept repeating myself, just so you know this is a confidential meeting. If you want, if you want your family members to, to wait outside, so that, so that I could be the bad guy, so I could be the one kicking people out. And my client was like no, no, no, we're in this together. And I was like, okay, well, let's it. I guess you guys get some free lunch today.
Speaker 1:But, the difference is that in other law firms people be like perhaps I don't know, but it will be like oh, little kids can be here with us. Oh, you want to really make a Latina man say that their kids are not welcome. Right, for me it's like great, I have a two-year-old coming over, no worries, we got some toys for them. Oh, your kid is starting to draw on the wall at some point. Yeah, I may be a little nervous, but I'm like whatever I have more pain, we'll paint over that. Don't worry about it, because I know our culture is all about family and if you disrespect someone's family, then forget it. They don't trust me anymore.
Speaker 2:I got you, I got you, so that makes absolutely 110% sense that you know you have those features of the office. I love it that you call it. Was it Matos World? It is Matos World. That's awesome. You were dreaming of Disney World and you got your own Even better.
Speaker 1:Manifesting Manifesting.
Speaker 2:That's right. So obviously, let's, let's talk about obviously that content has a role to play in in marketing. You guys, like I said at the beginning of this podcast, you guys put out fantastic social media content, um, so you know the importance of it. So let's talk about that, because I know you guys have your Matos law firm accounts and then you have the Matos Español, correct? Yes, yeah, so you have the two separate accounts. Have you seen any kind of differences in terms of doing content for one versus doing content for the other?
Speaker 1:I see that people engage a lot more with my spanish content because it's more authentic. It's more I sound more like myself in english. I sound like I'm trying to be from here in spanish. I just sound as loud as I actually am in real life.
Speaker 2:Uh well, to be fair. To be fair, you're sounding good on this podcast. I couldn't tell, so you're doing a good. You're sounding good on this podcast. I couldn't tell, so you're doing a good job. You're doing a good job.
Speaker 1:It's just in Spanish I'm just like a very like novella-like. In English I'm more professional. So I guess the difference is like the topics can be a little bit different. We may talk more about people's rights, reminding people you have rights. Just because you're an immigrant doesn't mean that you don't have the same rights as other people living here. So it's more catered towards you know the topics that we know they want to hear about.
Speaker 2:When it comes to translating the content over so real quick. Let me preface this with half of our team here at Spotlight Branding. They work remotely from Mexico and twice a year they get to come up here and do quarterlies with us. So it's great, it's a good time having the whole team together and it's funny because sometimes some things I'll try to say because I think I'm like oh, like it's, you know, I know how to say this right in Spanish, and then I'll say it and then they'll like, just laugh me off stage, basically because the translation, the direct translation, doesn't necessarily correlate, you know totally. So so for anybody, any law firms out there that are doing content for both English speaking and Spanish speaking, I mean, google Translate's probably not the way to go, I would imagine.
Speaker 1:I mean it's pretty good we use Google Translate, but then we edit heavily after that.
Speaker 2:That's the key right there. Edit heavily. There's a key right there key right there, edit heavily.
Speaker 1:There's a key right there. Ai is getting better and better. Um, it's just being authentic and you just have to, if you say your office looks this way, make sure that when the client shows up, that they're getting that same experience that you're selling them online. And the cool thing about the hispanic market, the reason why my law firm has done so well is because Latinos, we are so loyal. If you like this person, like for me, like my clients, call me my lawyer.
Speaker 1:Years after the case closed, they say, oh, you should call my lawyer. And they're like hold on, she's going to answer me. Hey, hey, I got a friend here who got involved in a crash. Can you help them? Because if you actually take the time to understand the culture, mark it the right way and then actually do the things you say you are going to do, you set up your office to not just be like Google Translate, to actually talk to them as people. If you take the time to let people vent and Latino culture is incredibly rude to cut people off. Somebody's mad, they're going. Don't say, ok, I have another appointment, that's it. You lost that client forever. If you do all those right things, trust me, you're not just doing well by one client. That client will probably send you to any other clients.
Speaker 2:That's better than any commercial out there yeah, and honestly, I think that that marketing makes sense to anybody out there who's marketing that. Hey, if, if, if you want to appear some way on on the internet, you better, you better appear that way in person. I can't tell you how many times where you know some sort of uh, um family, like um activity place and they're like only smiling employees here and you go there and everyone's grumpy and you're like all right, well, I guess you guys lied.
Speaker 2:No, I'm just kidding, but still, you've got to be authentic. Like you said. You've got to be authentic through and through. There's no time for BS. People don't have time for BS and plus, people tend to have a BS meter. They can kind of see through when you're being fake and stuff like that. So you got any? Um, you got any particular success stories that you'd like to? Uh, that you like to bring up that that just make you super proud of your work yes, I always tell my team members every case is a $1 million case.
Speaker 1:And here's the reason. I had a client and of course I can't say her name let's pretend her name is Maria and she was referred from another attorney's office and it was a bad case, really bad case. I ended up making $2,000 on that case. Small case, took me forever. Client was super, super grateful and I'm beating myself up that was the first year in business. I'm a terrible business woman. I spent all this time, all this effort, and I made $2,000, blah, blah, blah, all that.
Speaker 1:Well, then she had a co-worker and her co-worker was walking to work and got hit by a commercial vehicle and the driver was drunk or or intoxicated, I would say, but he was high and guess what? That case settled for eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And then she also sent me her sister-in-law, another co-worker. So when you add up the math, it ended up being a million dollars Out of my case, my one case that another law firm didn't want. I took it on because I had nothing else to do, I had no clients and but I did my best. I follow those rules. I treated her like them, like I would treat my mom, I did everything I would as if she was my mom, and and it turned into a quote-unquote million dollar case how long ago was that within your, your um eight years?
Speaker 1:well, well the the first referral came to me eight years ago. It was she was probably like client number two or number three, to be honest oh, wow, wow.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of of cool that you get to reflect on that case, which turned out to be a great case for you and helping your client, and then looking at where you're at today, I mean just to see the connection there. Personally, I would love to hear you know more about, like, your mindset of you know, just grinding, grinding out, you know, hustling, as you said, and just like, even though, even though you might be in a place that's, you know, very feels like the bottom of the barrel, like what's the mindset? What? What do you? What do you? What do you have to think about and do?
Speaker 1:for everyone out there who's starting to do marketing for their law firms don't get discouraged is really the compound effect. When I started out again, I had that time block. I said I'm going to spend 40 hours a week and guess what? Nobody called me. It took months before I could actually get good cases and what I would do, because it's very discouraging when you're working so hard and no one's calling and it's easy to give up and go get a quote unquote real job. That's what I could have said. Oh, I'll get a real job with a real paycheck. But what I would do during that time and I still do this today is just, I would write down every single marketing action I did and I still do this today is just, I would write down every single marketing action I did and I would have goals on what I was doing not the results I was getting, but what I was doing. I would have the goal to go to four events this week and talk to 100 people this month and I had a spreadsheet and I would just write down everything I was doing because I knew those were seeds that I was planting and the more seeds I planted, the more trees I was going to get and just because the phone is not ringing, give it time.
Speaker 1:It doesn't work. Like I learn really fast. It doesn't work like you give somebody a business card and they'll trust you and call you. You have to see that person. I don't know how many times you have to build relationships and even today, when the phones are slow, I go back to my list of referral sources and I go one by one. That's how I got another million dollar case. I went one by one. I called somebody I hadn't talked to in eight years. Hi, how are you doing? And then she said you know what? My friend's kid just got involved in a crash. Can they call you? Sure, don't underestimate the power of relationships and doing it the right way. Don't expect quick results. Work hard and don't give up.
Speaker 2:Don't give up. There you go. You folks heard it. Don't give up. That's awesome. What a great story. Really appreciate you taking the time to share it with us. This has been an awesome episode and I'm very excited for the people to hear it with us. This has been an awesome episode and I'm very excited for the people to hear it, so appreciate you taking the time to spend with me.
Speaker 1:Appreciate you guys and can't wait to see the next batch of content out there for you guys.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. All right, everyone listening. Thank you for listening and have a great weekend. We will see you next week.