Many of your best clients already come through a financial advisor, a CPA, a therapist, or another lawyer. We turn those relationships into a system, built on useful things made for each partner and a clear record of who sends you what.
I'm Joshua David Little. I've run my own consulting firm since 2004, I've helped attorneys prepare complex cases for trial, and I ran the first family-law ad on ChatGPT, before the platform allowed legal-services ads.
Law-firm surveys keep putting referrals first as the source of new business.¹ Yet for many firms, the plan behind them is still to get out there and have lunch or coffee with people and hope something comes of it.
A partner still has to remember you at the moment a client needs a lawyer, and then find a way to bring you up. Most of the time all they can hand over is a name and a phone number. And if you never gave much thought to what an accountant could send you when you opened your firm, you're far from the only one.
In estate planning the worry runs both ways. Attorneys worry the advisor will give legal advice, and advisors worry the attorney will take the client. From the advisor's side, it can feel like a one-way street. That much caution doesn't send many clients in either direction.
Without a record, you can't thank the right people, see which relationships are growing, or notice the ones that have gone quiet. The firms that do this well treat the source of every referral as the first thing they need to know about a new client.
Callout: Of 23 business-law homepages we checked, none named a CPA, banker, or advisor as a partner, and none of 14 estate-planning homepages linked to a page for advisors or CPAs. Yet when people ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google's AI how to plan an estate or protect a business, the answers often send them to their CPA or financial advisor, or name those advisors alongside the lawyer. A firm that names its partners and writes for them gives those answers something to connect to.
An advisor whose client is in the middle of a divorce, or a CPA whose client is selling a business, will mention a lawyer. Whose name comes to mind depends on who has been useful to them lately. Without a system, that's left to chance, and the coffee meetings pile up without the referrals following them. One financial advisor who took the cold route met with 86 potential referral sources without gaining a single new client.²
Make valuable things for the people who share your clients, things that help them do their own job, so that when one of their clients needs you, sending that client your way is the natural thing to do.
We start with the people already sending you clients and the people who could: other lawyers, financial advisors, CPAs, bankers, therapists, care professionals, and former clients. Tracing where your last 20 signed clients came from is a good place to begin, and it shows which relationships deserve more of your time.
A CPA, a therapist, and a hospital discharge planner each need something different. For one it's a short brief on a change in the law their clients will ask about. For another it's a one-page explainer for a client in a specific situation, or a guide they can hand over with your name on it. The partner looks good passing it along, and the client arrives already knowing how you work.
Your lawyers send the material to partners themselves and use it to start and keep up conversations on LinkedIn.
A seminar or webinar for the clients you share, hosted together, puts you and your partner in front of the people you both serve.
A referrer who hears back is more likely to send the next client. That can mean an update at each major stage of a matter, a courteous note when you can't take a case, and handouts care professionals can give out. They're glad to have something useful to hand a family, and it reflects well on them.
Every referral is logged with its source, so you can thank the right people and see which partners are worth more of your time.
The Client Magnet System builds resources for the specific situations your clients are in. Those same resources make referrals easier. A partner can say "Here's a great guide from the attorney I mentioned" instead of only passing along your number, and they get to give their own client something useful in the process.
As your Fractional CMO, I decide which partners are worth your lawyers' time, keep the material current, and make sure the referral record feeds the same reporting as the rest of your marketing.
Your lawyers' time with partners. That part stays with you: the meetings, the calls, and the introductions are yours, and we prepare everything you bring to them. We'll also need the client situations you see most often and whatever records you have of where your clients came from.
If someone at your firm keeps the referral record and sends the updates, I'll train them to run it, so every referral gets logged and every referrer hears back.
Financial advisors, therapists, mediators, and other lawyers all meet people in the middle of a divorce or a custody fight. For high-net-worth practices, advisors and wealth managers are natural referral partners. A lawyer who also mediates depends on other lawyers, since they usually choose the mediator.
Financial advisors and CPAs, and the general and family lawyers who send complex plans elsewhere. Giving advisors something useful to forward is a gentler start than asking for a referral arrangement, and it eases the worry on both sides.
CPAs, bankers, business brokers, insurers, and payroll firms. In one payroll company's survey, more small-business owners named their accountant as their most trusted advisor than anyone else.³ Employer-side and sell-side boutiques each have their own circle of partners.
Discharge planners, home-care agencies, and placement advisors meet families at the moment they need an elder-law attorney. Handouts they can give out with your name on them go a long way with this group.
Many cases come from other lawyers, including lawyers who don't handle injury work at all. What keeps them sending is a clear record, updates on the cases they sent, and a decline handled well enough to keep their trust.
Lawyer-to-lawyer referrals, with the same record and the same updates.
One person who signed up for a client firm's guide through its ChatGPT ad was a family life counselor at a church, someone who meets families long before a lawyer does. A resource built to reach strangers also reaches the people who help them, and gives those people something useful to share.
| Coffee and lunch | A referral system | |
|---|---|---|
| Who's in it | Whoever you happen to know | A map of partners, closest first |
| What partners get | Your card and your number | Material that helps them do their job |
| What's recorded | Nothing, or a field no one fills in | Every referral and its source |
| How referrers hear back | When someone remembers to call | Updates at each major stage |
| Where your time goes | Wherever the calendar takes it | To the partners who send the most |
They shouldn't, because everything we make for them is useful whether they ever send you a client or not. A brief that helps a CPA answer a client's question earns its place on its own.
You don't have to, but sending clients back is often what turns a cautious partner into a steady one.
The referral record shows who sent each client, which partners are active, which have gone quiet, and what the clients they send are worth to your firm over time.
Same approach. Lawyers outside your practice area get material that helps them recognize a matter they should send you and know what happens after they do.
¹ 2025 surveys: Smokeball (85% of firms), Martindale-Avvo (70.8% of 800 US attorneys), and Clio (59% of solo and small firms).
² Advisor Perspectives, "What Advisors Get Wrong About COIs," August 28, 2019.
³ OnPay, a payroll company, 2019 survey of small-business owners: 32% named their accountant as their most trusted advisor, ahead of family and friends (22%) and lawyers (16%).
A 45-minute to one-hour video call with me. We map your firm's marketing together on a whiteboard, starting with where your clients come from today and which partners send them, and you keep the map whether or not we work together.
Currently accepting a limited number of Fractional CMO relationships.