Why clients can't find you

Attorneys often assume that being good at the work is enough, and that referrals will carry the practice. Referrals still matter — but the way a referral behaves has changed. This is what actually happens between a person needing an attorney and a person phoning one.

How the search really goes

1. Something happens. A death in the family, a house sale, a dismissal, an accident.
2. The person asks someone they trust, or types into Google on their phone: "conveyancing attorney Bloemfontein" or "how long does a divorce take South Africa".
3. Google shows a map with three firms and a list of results underneath.
4. The person opens two or three, glances at reviews, and looks for a phone number.
5. They phone the first one that looks credible and answers.

The whole process takes about four minutes. Every place a firm can drop out of it is fixable.

Where firms fall out

• No Google Business Profile — the firm never appears in the map block at step three. This is the most common and most damaging gap.
• No website — the person searches your name after a referral, finds nothing, and doubts whether the practice is still going.
• No reviews, or two reviews from 2019 — next to a firm with forty, you look like the risky choice, whatever the truth is.
• A phone number nobody answers — the call goes to the next name on the list and never comes back.
• No address, or a pin in the wrong place — for anything the client must attend in person, this ends it.
• Nothing saying what you do — a person looking for help with a deceased estate cannot tell whether you handle those.

What this means for a referral

Even a warm referral gets checked. Your friend says "use Mokoena Attorneys", and the person types your name into Google before phoning. What comes up is the interview you did not know you were sitting. If nothing comes up, some of those referrals quietly go elsewhere.

The order to fix things in

1. Google Business Profile — free, and it is where the searching happens.
2. Reviews — ask the last ten clients whose matters closed well.
3. Correct phone number and address everywhere, matching exactly.
4. A simple website on your own .co.za domain.
5. Practice areas listed clearly, on both the profile and the site.

None of this is marketing spend and none of it changes how you practise. It is bringing the public record in line with the practice you already run. When you have made a change, request a re-scan on your dashboard and our next scan picks it up.