Who sends attorneys business
The professionals who meet your client before you do, and why they have a reason to refer:
- CPAs and accountants - entity formation, tax disputes, business succession.
- Financial advisors - estate plans, trusts, business owners preparing to sell.
- Realtors and lenders - contract disputes, title issues, closings that need counsel.
- Business consultants and brokers - contracts, employment issues, purchase agreements.
- Other attorneys - conflicts, matters outside their practice area, out-of-state work.
Who you send business to
A referral network only works in both directions. These are the partners your clients need next:
- CPAs - clients with tax exposure or messy books uncovered in a matter.
- Financial advisors - settlements, inheritances, business sale proceeds.
- Realtors and mortgage lenders - divorce and estate matters that involve a house.
- Insurance agents - coverage gaps found during a claim or a business review.
- Other attorneys - matters you decline or cannot take.
Where the loop breaks today
- Referral sources are concentrated in a few personal relationships that took a decade to build.
- Attorney-to-attorney referrals are the largest hidden market and the least organized: the lawyer who declines a matter usually sends it to whoever they saw last week.
- You cannot tell which relationships are balanced, so a partner who has sent you five clients drifts away because you sent none back.
How Referral Nova is used in attorneys
- Your profile lists practice areas, the clients you want and the professionals you refer to, so the AI matches you with the CPAs, advisors and attorneys who serve the same clients and want to meet a lawyer in your area.
- Attorney-to-attorney matching works the same way: a family lawyer who marked "business attorney" as a partner they want, in your state.
- Referrals arrive with the matter summarised and sit in your Pipeline until the engagement letter is signed; the sender sees it convert.
- What you send is tracked too, which is what keeps a CPA or advisor sending.
Referral fees and rules in this field
Fee sharing between lawyers is governed by your state's version of Rule 1.5(e) (division in proportion to work or with joint responsibility, in writing, with client consent), and paying a non-lawyer for referrals is prohibited under Rule 7.2 with narrow exceptions. Referral Nova charges no commission, takes no share of any fee and is not a lawyer referral service. The referral fee agreement members can sign is a document between two members; do not use it in a way your rules of professional conduct forbid.
Which matching factors matter most
Keyword overlap does unusual work for attorneys because practice areas live in the profile text, so "estate", "family", "business", "personal injury" drive the match. Reverse alignment (partners who want to meet a lawyer) and location, since bar admission is by state, are next.