Most disability firms depend on referrals — but very few have a system for producing them consistently. On June 10, 2026, Chronicle hosted Rachel Carlson of PR Legal Marketing for a live workshop on exactly that problem, part of the Advancing Technology in Disability Law series. Rachel walked through a five-part framework for building a referral pipeline that compounds over time, including a concrete six-month plan attendees could start that week.
Catch the full replay here:
Speakers:
- Will Yang: Head of Growth & Partnerships, Chronicle. Host and moderator for the Advancing Technology in Disability Law series.
- Rachel Carlson: Principal, PR Legal Marketing; Founder, ReferAll. Rachel specializes in referral newsletter systems and community outreach campaigns built specifically for Social Security disability firms.
Key Takeaways
- Most SSD firms have no intentional referral system, they receive referrals but have no process for cultivating them, which means results are inconsistent and unpredictable.
- Referrals come from ecosystems, not demographics. The attorneys who grow fastest aren’t targeting the right claimant profiles, they’re embedded in the professional and community networks where claimants already live.
- Past clients are the easiest referral source to activate because the trust is already there. The challenge isn’t earning credibility, it’s staying visible.
- Professional referral sources (social workers, mental health providers, other attorneys) respond to education, not advertising. Positioning yourself as a resource creates stickier, longer-lasting relationships than any ad spend.
- Single touchpoints don’t build referral relationships. Consistency over time is what turns a one-time introduction into a reliable referral source.
- A realistic six-month plan, organized into identify, launch, reinforce, expand, strengthen, and review, gives firms a paced path to building visibility without overwhelming themselves.
Why Don’t Most SSD Firms Have a Referral System?
It’s not that attorneys don’t understand the value of referrals. Most do. But understanding value and having a system are different things.
Rachel opened the session by naming the real issue: when she asks disability attorneys where their cases come from, “referrals” is the most common answer. But when she follows up with “how are you actively cultivating those referrals?”, the conversation stops.
Most folks don’t quite have an answer for that. They assume referrals just happen and let them roll in, but they don’t have a system for developing them.
Rachel Carlson, PR Legal Marketing
The root cause is capacity. Running a disability firm means managing cases, preparing for hearings, handling staff, watching cash flow, and navigating SSA workflows. The operational demands are constant, and referral cultivation, which requires follow-through, consistency, and ongoing maintenance, gets deprioritized.
The result is a reactive referral posture. Firms wait for referrals to arrive instead of building the relationships that produce them. When someone does make an introduction, there’s often no follow-up system. Holiday cards go out one year, then not the next. A newsletter launches, runs for two months, and goes quiet. Visibility gaps form, and visibility gaps cost referrals.
The core principle Rachel returned to throughout the session: referral relationships are not passive. They require intentional, repeated action over time. Firms that treat referral development as a strategy, not an afterthought, build predictable pipelines.
Where Do SSD Referrals Actually Come From?
The session opened with a live poll: where do most of your referrals come from today? The answers from attendees included past clients, social workers, mental health case managers, other attorneys, and, notably, “not sure.” Several attendees mentioned that online and SEO were also meaningful channels.
Rachel’s observation on the “not sure” answer: it reflects a real tracking gap. Firms are receiving referrals without knowing exactly where they’re coming from, which makes it impossible to systematically strengthen those sources.
But the more important reframe in this section wasn’t about tracking, it was about where to look in the first place.
Most SSD marketing assumes that prospective clients start their journey by searching for an attorney. In practice, that’s rarely how it works. Disability claimants are already in conversation with people who know them: family members, neighbors, primary care providers, chiropractors, mental health professionals, social workers, workers’ comp or personal injury attorneys handling overlapping cases, and community organizations serving disabled individuals.
These individuals who are talking to disabled claimants are often the ones who influence who gets a referral, long before a claimant ever searches online.
Rachel Carlson, PR Legal Marketing
This is Rachel’s central insight: the question isn’t how to find claimants. It’s how to stay visible to the people who already know them.
She introduced the concept of referral ecosystems to reframe the goal. Rather than targeting claimant demographics, high-growth firms embed themselves in the professional and community networks where claimants already live. A nonprofit food bank is likely connected to the county health and human services department. Both organizations are serving the same population. If you’re known to one, you can become part of their ecosystem, and both eventually know your name as a disability resource.
The three variables that make professionals refer:
- Trust: they’ve had enough interaction with you to believe you’ll serve their clients well
- Familiarity: your name comes to mind when disability comes up in conversation
- Perceived competence: they associate you with expertise, not just availability
Competence alone doesn’t produce referrals. You can be the most skilled SSD attorney in a market and still lose referrals to a less skilled attorney who has stayed more consistently visible. The governing principle:
Referrals don’t come from being the best attorney, they come from being the most consistently visible option.
Rachel Carlson, PR Legal Marketing
How Do You Turn Past Clients Into a Referral Source?
Past clients represent the fastest path to referrals for most firms, and also the most underleveraged one.
The trust is already built. You won their case. They believe in you. But most attorneys stop communicating once the case closes, which means that trust goes dormant. The question Rachel posed: if the person who knows and trusts you most is also the most disconnected from you, what are you leaving on the table?
Past clients remain embedded in communities. They have family, neighbors, church communities, and social networks. The next person in their circle who needs disability benefits is often only one conversation away. The challenge is staying present enough to be the name that comes up.
Rachel outlined a set of touchpoints that create ongoing visibility without feeling like advertising:
Birthday postcards and holiday mailers. A birthday postcard is personal in a way that email can’t replicate. It signals that you’re thinking of the person specifically, that you care about their wellbeing, and that you’re available if they or anyone they know needs help. Holiday mailers don’t have to be December-specific, 4th of July, community events, local seasonal themes all work and stand out because they’re less expected.
Disability news and benefit updates. A quarterly or monthly newsletter covering COLA increases, SSA policy changes, new firm staff, or other relevant updates keeps former clients informed and keeps your name visible. It positions you as a continued resource, not just a closed chapter.
The case anniversary check-in. One year after winning a case, reach out. A brief note, email, card, or even a quick call, reinforces that the relationship didn’t end when the fee was collected. It’s one of the most personal touchpoints available and one of the least commonly used.
Community event invitations. If you’re sponsoring a fun run, community fair, or similar event, invite past clients. It’s an engagement touchpoint that creates goodwill and gives former clients a reason to think of you in a social context, not just a legal one.
Throughout all of these touchpoints, Rachel’s framing matters: you’re not asking for referrals directly. You’re staying present with people who already believe in you.
Your past clients are one of the few audiences who already believe in you, you just have to stay present.
Rachel Carlson, PR Legal Marketing
One additional note Rachel flagged for firms that practice multiple areas: make sure those touchpoints include the full scope of what you do. If you handle workers’ comp or personal injury in addition to SSD, past disability clients may be exactly the referral source you need for those cases, but only if they know.
The practical example she shared: Grundy Disability produced a run of birthday postcards, simple, one-sided, printed in volume and organized chronologically by birthdate. A summer intern can stamp, address, and deploy them on schedule. Low cost, high personal impact.
How Do You Build Authority With Professional Referral Sources?
The second major referral ecosystem is professional, social workers, mental health providers, medical professionals, other attorneys, and nonprofit organizations. These relationships require a different approach than past clients, but they can be just as durable.
The key distinction Rachel draws: professionals aren’t looking for another advertisement. They’re looking for resources they can trust and refer to with confidence.
Professionals appreciate useful information. They respond to familiarity and helpful expertise.
Rachel Carlson, PR Legal Marketing
That observation shapes the entire strategy for professional outreach. Educational content, not advertising, is what earns professional referrals. When you present at a social worker’s lunch-and-learn, write a newsletter on how to document mental health impairments for SSA, or help a pain clinic understand how to write strong medical evidence, you become a resource, not a vendor. That distinction is meaningful.
Professional referral categories and tactics:
Social workers. This group serves a broad range of potential claimants and is one of the most valuable professional referral sources for disability attorneys. Effective touchpoints include lunch-and-learn presentations, educational newsletters tailored to their work, and check-in emails that ask whether there are cases they need help with. Social workers often operate within county systems and community networks, which creates natural access points to entire organizations.
Medical providers. More specific outreach can be highly effective here. A training session for a pain clinic on how to document medical evidence for disability cases accomplishes two things at once: it helps their patients get better representation, and it builds a direct relationship with a provider who sees disabled claimants regularly. Similar approaches work with chiropractors, neurologists, and other specialists depending on the focus of your practice.
Mental health professionals. Mental health claims are notoriously difficult to document well for SSA purposes. Professionals in this space, therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, often appreciate education about how to write effective mental health evidence. Support groups are another underutilized channel. NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness) has local chapters in most communities and regularly hosts guest speakers. Getting on a NAMI chapter’s speaker rotation is both a community service and a direct line to a population that frequently needs SSD representation.
Nonprofits and community organizations. Counties and municipalities run resource fairs, disability services programs, and community outreach events constantly, and they do the marketing themselves. You can sign up to present a disability seminar, staff a table at a resource fair, or co-sponsor a community event. Rachel highlighted Clackamas County’s Developmental Disabilities Resource Fair as a concrete example of the kind of event that exists in most communities and actively welcomes legal resource providers.
Other attorneys. Workers’ comp, personal injury, and family law attorneys regularly encounter clients with overlapping disability needs. Building relationships with these attorneys, through happy hours, co-presentations, or professional networks, creates a reciprocal referral ecosystem. If a PI attorney knows you specialize in SSD, they have someone to refer their client to when the disability piece emerges. You can return the favor in the other direction.
The message that works. Across all of these professional touchpoints, Rachel emphasized keeping the message simple: “We’re happy to help serve as a resource for you.” Not “we’re the best,” not “call us for a free consultation.” Just: here’s useful information, here’s what we do, and here’s how we can help the people you’re already serving.
On the tangible side: if you’re showing up to community events, branded materials matter. Rachel gave a shout-out to 4imprint for promotional samples, stress balls, water bottles, first aid kits. Branded tchotchkes at events serve a real memory function. Community members see your name, pick up something useful, and carry it home. It’s not sophisticated marketing, it’s just staying in front of people.
How Do You Create Ongoing Visibility When You’re Busy Running a Law Firm?
If there’s a single failure mode in SSD referral marketing, it’s this: good intentions that don’t survive contact with a full caseload.
Rachel was direct about why most outreach efforts fail: they’re isolated events rather than ongoing systems. One newsletter goes out. One lunch-and-learn happens. One email campaign launches. And then the workflow demands of actually running a law firm take over, the initiative loses momentum, and the referral source sees nothing for six months.
Relationships don’t survive that pattern. Single touchpoints create awareness; consistency creates trust and familiarity. The firms that build reliable referral pipelines are the ones that show up repeatedly, not just once.
Whether it’s newsletters, email, or digital, what matters is consistency and relevance.
Rachel Carlson, PR Legal Marketing
The tools for creating that consistency:
Referral newsletters sent by mail. Physical mail stands out in a way that digital simply doesn’t anymore. Rachel noted an anecdote from a personal injury attorney she later worked with: he received disability firm newsletters in his mail and was struck by how unusual it was to receive anything physical. He called it memorable precisely because it was rare. One-page educational newsletters, easy to read, relevant to the recipient, not transactional, create durable visibility with professional audiences.
Coordinated digital outreach. Email campaigns work well for past clients, who are more likely to open messages from an attorney they already know. For professional audiences, email is less reliable (crowded inboxes, spam filters, low open rates) but can reinforce physical mail campaigns. LinkedIn is another useful digital channel for professional referral sources, if you’ve met a social worker at a presentation and connected on LinkedIn, your name stays visible in their feed over time.
Repeated professional visibility. If you sponsor a community event once, sponsor it again next year. If you present at a nonprofit, ask to come back annually. Recurring presence creates the kind of familiarity that makes referrals feel natural rather than transactional. People refer attorneys they’ve seen multiple times in contexts they trust.
The underlying principle: don’t let the perfect system be the enemy of the consistent one. Rachel explicitly said she’s less concerned about which method a firm chooses than about whether they stick with it. A modest monthly email that goes out every month for a year outperforms an elaborate campaign that runs for six weeks and stops.
What Does a 6-Month Referral Visibility Plan Look Like?
The most practical portion of the session was Rachel’s month-by-month framework, a paced plan for building referral visibility from scratch. She walked through it using past clients as the example, but the structure translates to professional outreach as well.
Month 1: Identify and Organize
Before any outreach happens, you need a list you trust. For past clients, Rachel recommends looking back two to five years at cases you won. (Deliberately won, you want happy referrers.) Once that list exists, clean it: verify addresses, update emails, remove outdated contacts. This is the kind of work that’s easy to hand to a summer intern or part-time administrative help. Once the list is clean, decide on your first outreach format. Rachel suggests starting with email for past clients, since it’s low-cost and easy to test.
Month 2: Launch
Get the first outreach out the door. The goal in month two isn’t referrals, it’s launching a system. Start watching open rates and responses. Note who engages. Don’t overthink the content; useful, readable, and consistent matters more than polished.
Month 3: Continue and Expand
Continue the monthly communication. In month three, start planning a second touchpoint. If you’ve been running email, consider adding a community event invitation for past clients, something that gives them a reason to engage in person and reinforces the relationship beyond digital.
Month 4: Expand Community Presence
The event or touchpoint you planned in month three goes live. Invite past clients. Participate in a professional event if you’re targeting that audience in parallel. The goal is starting to build recognition through multiple channels, not just one.
Month 5: Strengthen Relationships
This is follow-up month. When Joe emails to say his brother might need disability help, following up with Joe’s brother isn’t optional, it’s the whole point. Referrals that go unanswered are wasted. Month five is the moment when the system starts converting visibility into cases.
Month 6: Review and Refine
What worked? What response did the email campaign generate? How did the community event go? What should you double down on, and what should you add or cut? This is also the natural moment to consider expanding your referral ecosystem, if month six was focused on past clients, is the plan now to add a professional outreach track?
Rachel’s note on staying on track: write the plan down before you start. Informal commitments fade. A documented six-month plan that assigns tasks, even roughly, is far more likely to survive the demands of an active caseload. Bring other people in the firm into ownership of specific pieces, whoever is most creative, whoever has capacity. It reduces the chance that any single distraction takes the whole initiative down.
The math on why this works. Rachel referenced a foundational marketing principle: most people need to see a name seven times before they respond. Firms that drop off at month two aren’t failing because their content was bad. They’re failing because they stopped before they reached the threshold. Staying consistent is the edge.
The Referral Visibility Loop
Rachel named the framework connecting all five elements: the Referral Visibility Loop.
Three interlocking components:
Sources. Identify the people and organizations most likely to refer cases to your firm, past clients, social workers, medical providers, other attorneys, community organizations. Build that list deliberately.
Trust. Build credibility with those sources through education, not advertising. Provide useful information. Show up as a resource. Position your firm as the attorney they can send clients to with confidence.
Consistency. Maintain visibility over time through repeated, relevant touchpoints. Not a single campaign, but an ongoing presence that compounds.
When these three elements work together, referrals become more predictable. Relationships deepen. The firm becomes the obvious choice when someone in the ecosystem needs to help a disability claimant find representation.
Rachel’s closing framing:
Treat referral development as a vital part of your firm’s growth strategy, not something you do when you have time left over. By investing in referral relationships today, you’re building a pipeline of trust and visibility that can generate cases for years to come.
Rachel Carlson, PR Legal Marketing
This also connects to the operational side of growth. As referral pipelines build, managing increasing case volume becomes the next challenge, making sure the firm’s case status tracking and ERE monitoring keep pace with the pipeline you’re building.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: For a firm starting from scratch on referrals, what’s the very first thing to do?
Rachel: Past clients are the best starting point if you have an existing list. The trust is already established, you just need to reactivate it. If you’re truly starting from scratch without a large past-client list, then build a professional referral list first. Start with whichever professional category is most aligned with your case mix. If you handle a lot of mental health cases, start with psychiatrists, psychologists, and nonprofits serving the mentally disabled. Keep the first segment manageable, don’t try to reach every professional category at once.
Q: What separates firms that stick with the six-month plan from the ones that drop off after month two?
Rachel: The firms that drop off are usually the ones that started without writing anything down. Marketing 101 says people need to see a name seven times before they respond, if you’re gone by month two, you’re invisible before the threshold. Writing a plan, assigning ownership to specific people in the firm, and building accountability into the process is the differentiator. It also helps to spread the work: even a creative staff member who takes ownership of one newsletter per quarter reduces the pressure on any single person.
Q: How do you handle outreach when you’ve tried it before and got no response?
Rachel: Silence doesn’t always mean failure, it often means the wrong format for the audience. Email works significantly better with past clients than with professionals. For professional audiences, physical mail is more effective because it gets read rather than filtered. If digital outreach to professionals isn’t working, switch to a mailed newsletter and follow it with a LinkedIn connection or a phone call. If you’re using email tools like MailChimp, check your open rates before concluding the content isn’t landing, sometimes the issue is deliverability, not content. Will added: if you’re hearing nothing back at all, it’s worth examining the framing and positioning of what you’re offering, not just the channel.
Q: Does this approach work for solo practitioners, or is there a minimum firm size?
Rachel: Any size. Solo practitioners often have a natural community-embedded presence that larger firms don’t, which can be a genuine advantage. The outreach doesn’t require a marketing team or a large budget, it requires time and consistency. For a solo practitioner, one referral from a social worker you’ve built a relationship with over six months can be transformative. The scale of the program adjusts to firm size; the principles don’t.
Q: What’s the difference between physical mail and email for building referrals?
Rachel: Physical mail outperforms for professional audiences, it’s rare enough to land on a desk and stay there, which email can’t do. Email outperforms for past clients, where the prior relationship makes opens and responses more likely. Lob, a direct mail research company, publishes data showing physical mail is roughly three times more effective than cold email for certain audiences. The right answer for most firms is both: mailed newsletters for professional referral sources, email campaigns for past clients, with each reinforcing the other.
Watch the Full Replay
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About This Series
This session is part of Advancing Technology in Disability Law, Chronicle’s practitioner-focused event series. Each session brings in a practitioner, partner, or subject matter expert to address a specific challenge facing SSD firms, hearing prep, operations, marketing, technology adoption, and more.
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Full Session Transcript
The following is a cleaned and lightly edited transcript of the full session. Speaker voice is preserved; filler words and false starts have been removed for readability.
Welcome + Session Overview
Will Yang: Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today’s session, which is going to be on 5 ways to build a consistent referral engine for SSD cases. This is part of Chronicle’s Advancing Technology and Disability Law series, where we bring in practitioners as well as partners that are helping disability firms work smarter, whether that’s in hearing prep, case management, or, like today, building a steadier stream of new cases.
As a heads up, in case it is your first time with us: we are recording this, so if you missed a different section, don’t worry, we will be sharing recaps with some key takeaways within the next few days. This will be roughly a 45-minute session with Q&A as well. If you have any questions along the way, all we ask is that you throw two hashtags in front of that question so it’s easier to spot, and we’ll tackle the questions one by one in the Q&A section.
Also, if you stay until the end, we have a nice two-page document, a worksheet you can take away from the 6-month referral plan that Rachel is going to teach you all today. Be sure to stick until the end for that freebie.
Just to cover what we’re going to learn today: we’re going to cover where SSD referrals actually originate from and why most firms misread their own pipeline; how to engage past clients as a referral source that most attorneys leave untouched; how to build authority with social workers, case managers, and healthcare providers; a framework for staying visible online constantly without a dedicated marketing team; and most importantly, that 6-month plan you can put into place to start implementing these strategies at your own firm.
A quick introduction from me: I’m Will, I lead growth and partnerships at Chronicle. I’ll be moderating today in the Q&A. We just try to find the best practitioners when it comes to different subject areas for disability firms and build events and community around that.
I’m really excited to bring Rachel to our stage. Rachel Carlson is the principal at PR Legal Marketing, where she runs ReferAll, a turnkey referral newsletter service built specifically for disability firms. She works with disability attorneys across the country on exactly this problem. Rachel, thank you so much for being here. Why don’t you take it away?
Where SSD Referrals Actually Come From
Rachel Carlson: Thank you so much, Will. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I’m super excited to be presenting this. I’ve been doing this for many, many years, helping disability attorneys around the country, and regardless of firm size or location, one challenge comes up again and again: how do you stay visible to the people most likely to refer cases to your firm? Today I’ll share a few ideas and strategies that I’ve seen work well.
To start, we know most law firms depend on referrals, but very few have a system for consistently nurturing those relationships. One thing I’ve noticed after working with SSD firms is that most attorneys understand the value of referrals, but very few have a process for cultivating them. When we ask the question, “Where do your cases come from?” and the answer is referrals, my next question is, “How are you cultivating those referrals?” Most folks don’t quite have an answer for that. They assume referrals just happen and let them roll in, but they don’t have a system for developing them.
The most obvious reason is that you’re running a law firm. You’re managing cases, meeting with clients, preparing for hearings. Not to mention you’re running a small business, managing staff, working on cash flow, taxes, and the list goes on. There’s a lot on your plate. And cultivating referral sources takes time too: following up, staying visible, maintaining those relationships. The challenge isn’t that attorneys don’t value referrals, it’s that it takes time, and it becomes deprioritized in the day-to-day management of a law firm. That’s where the core problem begins.
Referral relationships are often reactive instead of intentional. Most law firms wait for referrals to happen instead of actively pursuing them. That leads to inconsistent outreach and a loss of visibility over time. You may have someone who receives a Christmas card one year, it gets lost in the chaos of the holidays, and then there’s nothing the next year. That creates a visibility gap. Folks start a project or a way to reach out, but it drops off.
Keep in mind, referrals are people talking to other people. So if referrals aren’t coming from Google searches, where are they actually coming from?
One of the biggest misconceptions in SSD marketing is that prospective clients wake up one day and start searching for an attorney. In reality, most disability claimants are already talking to someone. They’re talking with their family and friends. They’re speaking with social workers. They’re probably seeing a provider, a mental health provider, a doctor, a chiropractor. They may be speaking with other attorneys, perhaps someone working on a workers’ comp or PI case where a disability comes out of that. And they’re also part of community organizations.
These individuals who are talking to disabled claimants are often the ones who influence who gets a referral, long before a claimant ever searches online. The question isn’t simply how to find claimants; it’s how to stay visible to the people who already know them.
Let’s do a quick poll. Where do most of your referrals currently come from? You can put in A for past clients, B for social workers, C for medical case managers, D for mental health case managers, E for other attorneys, or F for not sure.
Will Yang: I’m seeing Cassie sharing past clients, social workers, and other attorneys. Jolene sharing mental health case managers and other attorneys. Got a couple other folks coming in as well. What patterns are you seeing, Rachel?
Rachel Carlson: I’m seeing past clients leading the pack, which is great to see. Social workers are up there too. And that “not sure” is also a good answer, you’re aware you’re receiving referrals, just not sure exactly where from or who. I think tracking is genuinely hard for attorneys.
Will Yang: The other interesting thing is Tony and Brock also mentioning emphasis on the online SEO side of things.
Rachel Carlson: Yes. So that tells me there isn’t really a tracking plan in place for referrals, whether past client or professional. Regardless of the answers everyone has for their referrals, the next principle remains the same.
Point one: referral ecosystems, not demographics. Firms that grow aren’t targeting the right claimants, they’re embedded in the world where claimants already live. Successful firms become part of a referral ecosystem. They’re connected to the professionals and organizations serving disabled individuals every day. Think about a nonprofit food bank, it’s probably connected to the county’s health and human services department. Those folks know each other, they’re working together to support community members. If you’re reaching out to one, you can become part of their ecosystem, and then both the county and the food bank know your name as a resource. The goal isn’t simply finding more claimants; it’s becoming known within the community surrounding those claimants.
Point two: trust, familiarity, and competence, why professionals refer. Competence matters, but competence alone doesn’t generate referrals. People refer attorneys they know. People refer attorneys they trust. People refer attorneys they remember. One of the best ways to build trust, familiarity, and competence is to educate, not advertise. We’ll go over that in more detail a little later.
Point three: the visibility gap. Many attorneys are doing solid work, putting their name out there, but they’re not creating that ongoing relationship. Consistency is what builds familiarity.
Which brings us to perhaps the most important idea here: referrals don’t come from being the best attorney, they come from being the most consistently visible option. I’ve seen firms spend thousands of dollars trying to be the best-known attorney in a market. But referrals don’t come from the best attorney; they come from being the most consistently visible and credible option.
Unlocking Past Client Referrals
One of the easiest places to start building that consistency is with the people who already know and trust you: your past clients.
I’d say it’s about 50/50, attorneys say they get referrals from past clients, but they don’t necessarily have a system in place to cultivate those and continue them on an ongoing basis. Past clients are the easiest referrals because they already trust you. They believe in you. You won their case successfully. And they stay connected with people. Former clients have family, they have neighbors, they belong to churches, they participate in community organizations. The next person who needs disability benefits is often only one conversation away.
Strategies that work here are periodic communication and helpful information, staying visible to past clients is the goal. It’s not asking for referrals point blank; it’s staying memorable.
Here are a few examples of touchpoints to stay in contact with past clients. Birthday postcards and holiday cards or mailers are great for staying in touch once a year. Birthday postcards are a very personal way to remind folks that you’re thinking of them, you’re available if they have questions, and you care about their health. Same with holiday mailers, and it doesn’t have to be December. It could be 4th of July, it could highlight farmers markets in your area. It can be creative based on your community.
Another great touchpoint is disability news and benefit updates. A quarterly or monthly email or mail newsletter could be about COLA increases, changes with SSA, new staff at your firm, a new location, or just a simple reminder that you’re there for referrals if anyone they know needs help.
The case anniversary check-in is a lovely touchpoint. A year after you win the case, check in. How are you doing? That could be email, mail, or a card, just another relationship builder.
And community event invitations: if you’re sponsoring a fun run or some other community event, invite your past clients. It’s a nice way to encourage engagement and they appreciate that outreach.
Bottom line, your referrals, and your messaging with those touchpoints, remind people that referrals are the greatest compliment you can receive. You’re not asking for referrals directly; you’re simply maintaining the relationship.
One extra tip: if you practice other areas of law, also put that in your touchpoints. If you do workers’ comp, PI, and disability, make sure you’re including that in your messaging so you capture those referrals as well.
For a couple of real examples: one is a birthday postcard we did for Grundy Disability, simple, easy, printed about a thousand of them, ready to roll. If anyone has a summer intern, that’s a great job for them: get labels, addresses, stamps ready to go and chronologically order them. The other example is an educational newsletter. One page, friendly, health tips, summer events in your area, a staff spotlight, lots of ideas you can select as educational or helpful content for those past clients.
This may be the easiest referral source to activate because trust is already established. Your past clients are one of the few audiences who already believe in you, you just have to stay present. The challenge with past clients isn’t earning trust; it’s remaining visible.
Building Authority with Professional Referral Sources
Now let’s talk about building trust with professionals who refer cases to you.
Most professional referral sources aren’t looking for another advertisement, they’re looking for resources, expertise, and support. This is what sets you apart from other firms that only advertise: you provide educational content about disability law.
The difference between educational outreach and traditional advertising: educational outreach builds relationships and trust and creates long-term visibility. Traditional advertising is transactional and short-lived. It’s also broad targeting versus educational outreach, where you are identifying specific referral sources and targeting them directly. The educational component positions you as a resource, adds value, and most importantly, it’s appreciated.
Let’s look at a few groups of professionals and some actual touchpoints that work well.
Social workers. This group serves a wide range of possible claimants, so you can be creative with outreach. A lunch-and-learn presentation, educational newsletters, check-in emails, you can have ongoing communication set up automatically where you’re asking: “Are there any cases you need help with?”
Medical providers. This group can be more specific. For example, maybe you offer training to a pain clinic on how to create strong medical evidence to help their patients. Those materials and office visits really build the relationship. You can choose different groups within your community or do broader outreach to chiropractors or other specialists.
Mental health professionals. These professionals really appreciate educational insights about mental health claims, which can be challenging. Support groups in the mental health arena are also wonderful resources to tap into. One great example is NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Most communities have a NAMI chapter and they love having guest speakers. They could also be on a mailing list.
For nonprofits and community organizations generally, outreach could look like workshops, a library talk, or a resource fair. There are many groups helping folks who are mentally or physically disabled. Finding those organizations is the first step; finding creative ways to reach that group and help them is the second step.
And then other attorneys. Some of you mentioned other attorneys as a referral source, that’s a great opportunity to develop partnerships. You could even organize a happy hour professional network, or co-present an educational presentation with other attorneys.
Just keep in mind your messaging to these professionals: “We’re happy to help serve as a resource for you.” That’s how you communicate that you are a resource, and that’s how you build trust.
For a couple of real examples: the educational newsletter, one page, simple, on-topic information targeted to the specific group you’re reaching. An attorney, Jeff Raven, mentioned that during a talk when he asked people to sign up for his newsletter, one person said how useful they are and that she curates them because they cover the little nuances of SS law. A lovely reminder that social workers really do appreciate the information.
Here’s another example, community events. I went to a county website, and counties are a wonderful resource. Under social services I found a Clackamas County Developmental Disabilities Resource Fair. Counties and cities all have outreach programs and educational events, and they’re already doing the marketing. You can sign up to present a disability seminar for the general population.
And don’t forget the tchotchkes. If you’re doing an event, bring something with you. Social workers love them. I’ll give a shout-out to 4imprint, they send you samples of anything. A stress ball, water bottles, first aid kits, lots of fun creative options. Community members love free stuff, and that’s a way to brand yourself and keep your name in front of people.
Professionals appreciate useful information. They respond to familiarity and helpful expertise. This is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned: professionals are busy. They’re not looking for advertising, they’re looking for resources they can trust.
Creating Ongoing Visibility
Which brings us to perhaps the most important part of all of this: consistency.
The problem is that most outreach stops at a single touchpoint. Referral relationships build through repeated exposure over time. Most marketing efforts fail because they’re isolated events. Developing a system means developing something ongoing.
Some of those tools include referral newsletters sent by mail, coordinated digital messaging via email on a quarterly or monthly or even annual schedule, and repeated professional visibility, if you’re sponsoring a fun run, keep showing up for that event. Keep showing up as a sponsor. That builds trust within the community and keeps your name in front of folks who’ve seen you once but need to see you again.
Relationships are rarely built through one interaction. Whether it’s newsletters, email, or digital, what matters is consistency and relevance. Don’t be too concerned about which method you choose, it’s about the consistency.
Your 6-Month Referral Visibility Plan
Let’s look at a 6-month referral visibility plan, using past clients as an example.
Month 1: identify and organize. Figure out which past clients you want to target. Most firms, depending on size, look back 2 to 5 years to build that past referral list. Make sure you’re targeting people whose cases you won, you want happy referrals. Once you develop that list, make sure it’s clean: addresses up to date, emails up to date. Again, summer interns are great for this work. Once you’ve got the list, decide on your outreach format, newsletters, emails, what sort of campaign you’d like to start with. Let’s say it’s an email campaign.
Month 2: launch. Make sure you’re ready to roll, get that email out the door, and start seeing what kind of responses come in.
Month 3: continue the email, maintaining that monthly communication. You might also want to start thinking about adding another touchpoint, say, a community outreach event for your past clients.
Month 4: the event is scheduled. Start putting the word out to those past clients that you’d like them to join for a community event.
Month 5: your fourth email campaign is going out. Most importantly, you’re following up with referral contacts. If Joe emails you and says, “Hey, my brother may want to talk to you,” make sure you’re following up with Joe’s brother. If you’re not following up, it’s just a wasted referral.
Month 6: review. Look at your campaign. What worked with your email campaign? How did the community event go? Could you have expanded your list? Could you have put more information in the emails? Sit down with whoever is helping with this, hopefully you do have help, and look at what’s working. It’s also a good time to figure out if you want to expand or add a different group to start cultivating, such as professionals.
Keep in mind throughout all of this: this is relationship building, and it takes time.
The Referral Visibility Loop
The referral visibility loop isn’t a marketing tactic, it’s a growth strategy. The firms that grow consistently invest in three things: identifying referral sources, building trust through education, and maintaining visibility over time.
When you do those things consistently, referrals become more predictable, relationships become stronger, and your firm becomes the obvious choice when someone needs help with a disability claim.
If there’s one takeaway from today, it’s this: treat referral development as a vital part of your firm’s growth strategy, not something you do when you have time left over. By investing in referral relationships today, you’re building a pipeline of trust and visibility that can generate cases for years to come.
Thank you so much for your time.
Q&A
Rachel Carlson: We’re now open for questions. If I can answer anything about referral sources, professional outreach, past clients, or any ideas you’d like me to go back over, please put them in the chat and I’d be happy to help.
Will Yang: Just to kick us off, Rachel, the first question is: for a firm that’s starting from scratch on referrals, what would be the very first thing you’d have them do?
Rachel Carlson: I’m a fan of past clients, to be honest. But if they’re starting from scratch and don’t have a large list of past clients, then I’d say develop a professional referral list. Start with mailed newsletters, and build that list depending on your focus. Some firms tend to have more mental health cases, so maybe you start with psychiatrists, psychologists, nonprofits that work with the mentally disabled. Focus on a manageable chunk and don’t overwhelm yourself, that’s probably the best place to start.
Will Yang: Another question: what separates firms that stick with the 6-month system from the ones that drop off after month two? Where are the meaningful drop-off points in this plan?
Rachel Carlson: Marketing 101, most people need to see a name seven times before they respond. If you’re dropping off at month two, it’s just not getting through. It’s really about consistency. When you sit down and develop a plan, you’re much more likely to stick with it versus just saying “we’re gonna start this campaign” informally. If you sketch out six months of building those relationships, that’s more apt to keep you on track. You can have interns, you can have people with other roles be part of the team to help stick with the plan. Some folks in your firm may be really creative, you might have them come up with ideas and build some ownership. This doesn’t take a lot of money, but it does take time. Coming up with a plan is probably the most important thing to keep the pipeline and the visibility going.
Will Yang: How do you handle newsletters or outreach when you’ve tried it before and didn’t hear anything back?
Rachel Carlson: If you’re using email tools like MailChimp, you can see stats on who’s opening things and who’s not. Emails to past clients work much better than emails to professionals, professionals have crowded inboxes and things can go to junk. I’d be more apt to send physical newsletters to professionals. And then follow those up with phone calls. Another great tip: if you have a LinkedIn page and you have social workers on your list or you’ve met them at a presentation, reach out and connect with them on LinkedIn. Once you’re linked in with one social worker, you’re part of that referral source ecosystem. They’re seeing your name on LinkedIn, they’re getting a physical newsletter, they’re seeing that you’re providing educational content, they’ll appreciate that.
Will Yang: The other note from my own marketing experience: if you’re hearing literally nothing back, it’s often a positioning issue, the titling, the framing of what you’re offering. That’s a whole other presentation topic, but worth flagging.
Rachel Carlson: That’s a good point.
Will Yang: Jake is asking: what differences have you seen between email versus physical mailing for building referrals?
Rachel Carlson: Emails get more response from past clients. Physical mail, people don’t receive much in the mail anymore, so it actually sits on a desk and is more likely to stick around than email. It really depends on the audience, but physical does seem to hang around a lot more. I had an attorney, a personal injury attorney, not a disability attorney, who loved receiving the disability newsletters so much that he said, “I don’t receive anything in the mail anymore, these really caught my attention. Can you do some for me for my past clients?” It’s unique, and that’s what makes it stand out.
Will Yang: Do you have any data from past campaigns on the relative success of email versus physical?
Rachel Carlson: Those email campaigns for past clients are usually run internally by the law firms, so I’ve received anecdotal feedback but not formal stats. I know they’re a great way to get follow-ups, an email to a past client is more likely to prompt a response email that you can then follow up on.
Will Yang: For folks looking for more formal statistics, there’s a company called Lob that publishes research on physical mail. The high level is that physical is typically around three times more effective than a cold email approach, though those trends change by season.
Another question: for past clients, is sending a monthly newsletter too often? What have you found in terms of cadence?
Rachel Carlson: I think past clients quarterly works well. Monthly emails don’t cost anything, and that’s fine. But if you’re doing something physical, a holiday mailer or birthday card, then quarterly physical plus monthly email is a really effective positioning. Monthly physical mail for past clients might be too much. I’d say mail quarterly or annually for past clients.
Will Yang: I’ll add one trend I’ve noticed: more and more disability attorneys are sharing expertise and answering claimant questions on a regular YouTube livestream schedule. It’s a trend I’ve seen in the last 6 to 12 months across different folks in different markets, another way to stay visible without it being a traditional newsletter.
Rachel Carlson: That’s a great idea.
Will Yang: Another question: does this overall plan scale down for solo practitioners, or is there a minimum firm size where it really starts working?
Rachel Carlson: Any size. If you’re a solo practitioner, this is your bread and butter. If you’re in a community and your name is out there, that’s a wonderful opportunity to get involved with professionals, social workers, and nonprofits. If you’re a large firm, you have a larger marketing budget and can have a much larger presence, you could sponsor an entire diabetes fun run, for example. But it depends on your budget. You just need that one referral, and that one referral could come from a past client or a professional. The size isn’t as important as the outreach, the consistency, and building that trust.
Will Yang: On that point about building consistency, how does PR Legal Marketing fit into this framework day-to-day?
Rachel Carlson: PR Legal Marketing does referral source newsletters for past clients and professionals. We do one-page, simple educational pieces, and we actually develop the professional referral source list for you. We also incorporate any referrals you already have into the campaign. We do all the work of developing the list, looking at your community, and we only work with one attorney per area, so you won’t have the same social worker receiving two newsletters from competing firms. Once we get the list, we develop the content for you and put it on a monthly schedule so you don’t have to think about it. We just do all the work. We can also include coordinated digital campaigns alongside the monthly newsletter to keep your name in front of the folks we’re specifically targeting in your community.
Will Yang: Awesome. If there are any other questions, feel free to drop them in the chat.
A couple of final announcements: Rachel, thank you so much for today’s workshop, really useful and valuable framework for folks. The recording will be shared with everybody, so if you joined halfway, you’ll be able to check out the full recording for the key takeaways.
If you submit the feedback form, the link is in the Zoom chat right now, you’ll get a nice two-page downloadable with the 6-month plan and a worksheet to help answer the questions Rachel went over month by month.
Also, we have our second Disability Peers in Practice coming up, our virtual community for disability practitioners between conferences where you can talk water cooler topics with peers. One session is fully filled, the other is at 75% capacity, so if you haven’t RSVPd, check the chat for the link. And we have our events calendar with a number of upcoming events, including one tomorrow featuring a session on the disability firm playbook and what you’re missing when you log into the ERE, AARPS, and awards systems.
If you want to get in touch with Rachel, check out pralegalmarketing.com. I’ve also included Rachel’s email in the freebie document.
Any final questions? I don’t see any. Alright, well, thanks so much, everybody.
Rachel Carlson: Thank you so much, everyone.
Will Yang: Have a great rest of your day, everybody.