“Hola. Da me un hamburgeresa con queso, no cebollas o pepinos, por favor. Gracias!”

If your Spanish fluency is limited to ordering a cheeseburger with no onions or pickles (please and thank you), it might be time to break out your favorite language learning app. Why? If you are like many lawyers, you are looking for the next untapped legal market. For most parts of the country, that market is Spanish-speaking clientele.

Why? Spanish is the second most popular language in the United States and shockingly few law firms, even if they have someone fluent in Spanish on staff, think to advertise their bilingualism — nor do their marketing agencies.

Of course, connecting with Spanish-speaking clients requires a lot more than learning a few phrases off of an app, and if you want to connect with them on a personal level, your firm needs to have an understanding of their culture in addition to linguistic skills. Marketing is more than words: it’s making a connection to the consumer on a personal level that builds trust and demonstrates that you can handle their needs.

But consider this statistic: according to an older survey by Findlaw.com, the Spanish-speaking market was expected to have $1.7 trillion in buying power by the year 2020, the largest minority market share in the country. And we’re in 2022. Add some inflation and plenty of savings from two years of lockdowns and that number might be even higher.

Further, FindLaw’s study also pointed out some interesting behavioral tendencies of this group that make them an even more valuable demographic for attorneys, beyond the fact that they are simply an untapped market. According to the study, the Spanish-speaking demographic is more likely to use their mobile phones to research legal services (if for some reason you haven’t gotten the message in the last ten years that you need a mobile-friendly website, you do still need a mobile-friendly website) and only 14 percent of these consumers report that they would be likely to try to handle their legal matter themselves. This is far less than American consumers overall.

Rough math here: eighty-six percent of $1.7 trillion is … still a $1.46 trillion market size.

Trying to tap into the Spanish-speaking market can be extremely difficult from a marketing perspective. Multilingual websites are difficult for any business to pull off, but especially for a small law firm that probably struggled to find someone halfway competent to pull off their English language marketing — and every agency does English language marketing. It may feel like, at least at the outset, that the expense of running bilingual marketing far exceeds any potential gain, or is at least too big of a risk for a new market vertical.

That is where we come in. Rather than invest heavily in a Spanish language marketing strategy, replete with a Web design overhaul and social and paid ads “en espanol,” consider purchasing leads that are Spanish-speaking clientele while you build out the procedures, processes, and marketing that is necessary to serve this demographic.

Is your receptionist bilingual? Can you respond to client inquiries about the case over email in Spanish? Do you have someone in the office who can translate at all times, assuming you do not speak Spanish?

There will be growing pains if you decide to try to serve the Spanish-speaking language demographic and there is no better way to dip your toe in than to start with a couple of clients through purchased leads and, once you’ve worked out your bilingual processes, and you are satisfactorily serving this demographic on a smaller scale, you can focus on building a more well-rounded bilingual marketing strategy.

Sign up for Spanish leads today.