This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.

When you are in the marketplace, it pays a great deal to make it better for your end-users. Even if by a small, minuscule but perceivable margin. 

Most people do not get it. They just try to drop prices to attract clients. It is a shitty strategy, this way you will only get the worst clients and reduce the value of your offerings and ruin your brand. It is a rookie mistake. Let me give you an alternative today.

Out-compete your competition by offering more value.

For example, Dominos became the most profitable pizza business by offering 30 minutes delivery and money-back guarantee for failure to deliver in 30 minutes. It wasn’t the cheapest, it was not even the best pizza, but growing up, for us, it was the quickest to get a Dominos pizza delivered. 

Did you know that Dominos shareholders made more money than Google shareholders in the last 20 years? Dominos grew faster than even Apple! 

Just a little bit more convenient than all the other food options. Others delivered in 45 mins to an hour. Dominos did in 30, and guaranteed it. Pizza Hut is a small non-entity, but Dominos is a giant, worldwide. That’s how.

That reminds me of Zomato. I heard this story from Sanjeev Bhikchandani, founder of InfoEdge and one of the early investors in Zomato. 

Deepinder Goyal, the founder of Zomato was then working at Bain & co. in Gurgaon as a management consultant after graduating from IIT Delhi. In the office, there was a folder of menus of local restaurants, which you could use to order dinner if you had to stay in the office late. 

This is how it is in good law firms also, and your dinner gets billed to the clients. 

Can’t tell you how many nights I stayed back in the office to order from top restaurants in Lower Parel when I worked for a law firm 😉

Anyway, Deepinder had a tough time getting the folder because people always fought over it come dinner time. So he one day he got frustrated and scanned the menus and put up on the office intranet so people could just see the menus online. Then he got a visit from office IT managers due to suspicious traffic surge within the office intranet. 

Then he realized how popular and powerful this scanning menu and putting them up online thing is. His was not the only office in Gurgaon. What if many, many others wanted the same thing? 

Around 2008, he quit his job to start a company called Foodiebay. He scanned menus of restaurants across India and put them up online. And that got him started on building a billion-dollar company called Zomato. 

A small thing led to massive traffic, investor interest, and other opportunities later. A global enterprise was born from a tiny, small convenience.

It kills me to think of how many things lawyers can do to make things a little easier for their clients and they just refuse to do so. By offering small benefits, you could build massive legal enterprises too.

I have tried it, and I vouch that it works. 

Forget iPleaders or LawSikho, these are fairly complicated businesses.

A few years back, I started a company called ClikLawyer. I offered clients a clear written roadmap as to what I would be doing for them over the next few months and offered a step by step payment plan. I educated them extensively on how a legal matter can proceed through the court system. Then hired lawyers and managed them to get the work done. In the first month, our revenue was 1.5 lakhs. In the 7th month when I closed it down for personal reasons, revenue was at 8 lakhs. It was very, very profitable, and was growing super fast. 

It was growing so fast that it was scary for me. I realized that I can’t run 3 businesses at once, and chose to shut down one. Also, I moved to Goa to recover from some serious health issues. Also, a partner in that business quit, making it hard for me to continue. 

But I saw first hand how ridiculous it is to say that there is not enough work for lawyers in the market. Nonsense. You just don’t know how to get the work.

Why can’t we do more than what the market already does? 

What if you offered more transparency?

What if you offered a payment plan?

What if you made it more convenient?

What if you made it easier for the client?

What if you could make it faster and more efficient?

What are the transaction costs for your clients? What if you can reduce them somehow?

What if you could reduce the difficulty of trusting you?

What can you do to make them more comfortable, more secure, more assured, more confident about the services they need?

How can you reduce the upfront cost and get more when the work is done?

Every time you do something for your clients that is different from what is available in the market, you have a massive competitive advantage.

Why do you think we give a money-back guarantee at LawSikho for our premium courses? Just check out this insane refund policy, which we have always respected. 4 times in the last 1 year.

Click Above

We do it because it reverses the risk from the buyer of a course to us. We assume the risk, and nobody who offers legal courses other than us will dare to do this. It shows the confidence we have in our course about how we will generate value for you, and what lack of confidence our competitors have comparatively! 

Why cant they offer a money-back guarantee as we do? The contrast is stark. The signal to buyers is evident.

That small gesture convinces many lawyers to take the plunge with us, and when they become a fan, they buy many more courses. 

It also keeps my team on its toes. They can’t screw up.

This is what a Vakilsearch or Indiafilings did too. They reduced prices and made it super easy to get a trademark registration or company registration. Compared to that, working with a law firm to get any services is a pain in the ass. 

And that’s why they do multiple crores of revenue a year!

A recent law graduate came up with an idea that his startup will give money upfront for legal expenses, and take money from litigants in EMIs. Wow. 

Such a simple thing, but so powerful. Banks won’t give money for financing a lawsuit. But his startup will. It is a fintech startup, with a legal twist. Really hot space! I am sure this startup will go places. Simply because it is so simple and yet so needed! 

What are you going to do?

Join our legal practice management course. We are always ideating on how to gain competitive advantages over other lawyers. It’s incredible how much value lawyers are already generating from the course. Try out risk-free. See the refund policy. 

There are a bunch of other courses where we teach practical legal skills within a few months that you will otherwise take years to learn, and we are taking enrollments. Start the year with a bang:

DIPLOMA 

Diploma in Business Laws for In House Counsels

Diploma in Companies Act, Corporate Governance and SEBI Regulations

EXECUTIVE CERTIFICATE COURSES

Certificate Course in Advanced Corporate Taxation

Certificate Course in Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code

Certificate Course in Advanced Civil Litigation: Practice, Procedure and Drafting

Certificate Course in National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) Litigation

Certificate Course in Arbitration: Strategy, Procedure and Drafting

Students of Lawsikho courses regularly produce writing assignments and work on practical exercises as a part of their coursework and develop themselves in real-life practical skill.