Great question. I’ve found calling and speaking with the attorney directly to be effective. Often they may not be interested, but may know someone they believe to be a good fit.
Another tactic that is situationally dependent is calling up other people who are involved in the related specialty and seeing who they use. If many people use the same person, that’s a good one to reach out to. For example if you were into boats and needed a maritime lawyer, you could reach out to your boating friends to see who they use. If you’re looking for a criminal attorney, this obviously wouldn’t work.
Always discuss the fee structure and try to have them give you a ballpark guess for the number of hours they would expect in a best-case scenario and a worse-case scenario. They’re going to be deliberately vague on the number because it’s hard to forecast the unforeseen, but you can usually get them to throw out loose numbers by asking questions like how many hours have you seen with similar cases in the past? or you can throw out a ridiculous number and they’ll usually promptly dismiss is and bring you back into their range: “This isn’t going to be a $500,000 case is it?” “Oh, no, no, it’s usually $15,000 to $35,000.” They want to close the deal after all. I hope that helps.