In today’s hyper-competitive legal services marketplace, it is not enough to be smart or even to do a great job for your clients. You must find a way of differentiating yourself and your law firm so that prospective clients have a reason to choose you over your competitors.

Consumers are confused about the legal marketplace and are looking for ways to determine differences between what appears to them to be a sea of lawyers all offering the same services, marketing to them in the same way.

One of the most common mistakes I see attorneys make in their law firms is copycat marketing. We have all seen law firms out there that look exactly like other law firms. Their websites are the same. Their pictures are the same. Their marketing messages are the same.

Consumers are confused. They don’t know how to tell one law firm from the next.

Your problem in failing to differentiate yourself from your competitors is that there are 1.3 million attorneys in the U.S. — that’s one lawyer for every 238 people, men, women and children included. Think about the level of concentration in your city. There are a lot of lawyers who do what you do.

The problem is that if you don’t differentiate your law firm, you will face increased competition and be perceived as a commodity. And when you’re perceived as a commodity, you can’t command the fees you want and need to charge.

When you fail to differentiate, you fail to prove your value to your prospects. Instead of talking about your value, you’ve talked about your services. Instead of talking about solutions, you’ve talked about your degree or the size of your firm. People don’t care about that.

So what do they care about? Here are the four major areas they really care about:

1. The value you bring to the relationship.

2. The benefits they will get from working with your firm.

3. The solutions you provide, especially the creative ones.

4. The results you have achieved for your clients.