This article originally appeared in the June 2005 issue of the American Bar Association's GP/Solo magazine.
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- Because many attorneys
have been successful marketing their services via traditional means,
including publications, brochures, business cards, and phone directory
and perhaps even radio and television advertising, some lawyers might
wonder whether establishing their own websites is necessary to grow
a practice. Estimates are that at the end of 2004, nearly 70 million
adults in the United States logged onto the Internet each day to find
some sort of information. Lawyers who do not have a web presence will
not reach them.
- Law firms of all
sizes have gotten this message, but solo attorneys have been the slowest
to take advantage of the Internet’s marketing capabilities. An
ABA Legal Technology Survey for 2002-03 reported that 100 percent of
responding law firms with 50 or more attorneys had a website. In the
few intervening years, even small firms have begun to build a web presence.
According to the soon-to-be-released 2004-2005 edition of the technology
survey, nearly two-thirds (62.4 percent) of responding small firms (two
to nine attorneys) have a website, which is up from 50 percent in 2003
and only 6 percent in 1997. Solo attorneys, however, have been slowest
in adopting this form of marketing, with only 19.7 percent of responding
solos reporting their own websites—up only slightly from 16.9 percent
in the 2003 survey.
- Although all law
firms on the Internet are competing for the same business, the cost-effective
nature of websites can level the playing field somewhat among large
firms, small firms, and solos. Whether you’re launching your first
website or updating an existing one, it’s important to assess the
site from not only an aesthetic but also a strategic marketing perspective—whether
and how potential clients can easily find and use the site.
- Design Plus
Purpose
The purpose of a successful website is to attract and retain clients and address their legal concerns. To be most effective in doing so, the site must be usable, informative, aesthetically pleasing, and findable. To reach these goals, you must think carefully about the site’s overall presentation, much of which will be affected by the programming language and graphics you choose. The number of options that go into creating a website are innumerable, but creating a site shouldn’t require a large initial investment. Even free setups for law practices are still available: Justia.com offers lawyers free template-based websites in addition to its custom design services.
- An essential initial
consideration is to decide how showy the site will be. This determination
will affect how the site is actually created: principally in standard
HTML, which is rather plain and straightforward, or using a program
such as Flash, an aptly named web design application. Should the site
include an audio component—music or spoken words or both—especially
in the introduction? Lastly, how creative—which often means how
complicated—should the graphic elements be?
- A labor law firm
that represents management might want a simple HTML site that is straightforward
in use and presentation. A showier site featuring multimedia programming
might alienate a potential client looking for a more conservative image.
However, an entertainment lawyer’s potential clients likely would
expect some online panache, even from their lawyers. Miami sole practitioner
Barry Oliver Chase solved this problem by offering both styles at his
site, www.entertainmentlawyermiami.com,
including a splashy graphic element but making it an optional link from
the site’s more reserved home page.
- Most attorneys
will want to travel between the extremes of nondescript and overkill.
One hint is to design the site to be as stylish as is your reception
area, which is probably neither dowdy nor garish yet represents the
overall tone of your practice. Another suggestion is to start simple
and gradually add the bells and whistles as you gauge your clients’
response.
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- Get on the Map
“Find-ability” refers to the ease with which potential and existing clients who do not already know your URL (website address) can locate your site among the Internet’s trillion or so pages. A consumer who needs legal help with a bankruptcy matter might type “lawyer” into a search engine—but will receive an unwieldy list of more than 11.8 million sites. Adding “bankruptcy” and “ New York” still will result in more than half a million. Most searchers don’t look past the first two or three pages of results before giving up, so attorneys with sites listed near the top are most likely to attract the business.
The address of your website—its domain name—is a big factor here. It should be descriptive enough to grab the attention of your intended audience but short enough for a client to easily remember. For example, a lawyer who represents dog bite victims would get more cases using the domain name dogbitelaw.com or dogbitelawyer.com than using the lawyer’s own name. Adding geographical information to the domain name—newyorkdogbitelawyer.com, for example—might also help. Surprisingly, the survey found that only 14.4 percent of respondents use a generic domain name relating to a practice area (up from 5 percent in 2001).
- But the survey
also found that 94.4 percent of respondents use a firm name or a version
of a firm name as the domain name (up from just over 50 percent in 2001).
This is fine for a target audience of current and former clients only,
but it may not attract new clients. If your firm name has several named
partners, limit the domain name to the first one or two partners to
make the URL easier to remember. And keep in mind that lawyers can have
more than one domain name, each covering a different area of practice.
- Some states have strict ethics rules governing web addresses that are something other than a firm’s name. Be sure to consult your state’s ethics rules regarding websites before launching yours. In the absence of rules dedicated to websites, attorneys might want to look to the rules governing advertising for guidance on what is permissible.
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- Encourage
Repeat Visits
Once your clients are in the habit of using your site for information, be sure to give them reasons to visit periodically. One common practice is for lawyers to generate newsletters and post them on the site, as well as offering visitors the option to have the newsletter e-mailed directly to them. Once the newsletters are posted, it’s a simple task to archive the issues so that past topics as well as current ones are available; adding a searchable database helps visitors locate exactly what they need. To increase the marketing value, post all public documents as PDF files so that the formatting and graphics (especially the firm logo) are intact in printed copies; this increases the chance that clients will keep and use the printed documents. You can do this easily using Adobe Acrobat software (www.adobe.com).
- Many firms host
numerous discussion forums that potential or actual clients can join
online to discuss injuries, locate others in similar legal straits,
or seek emotional support. Topics may range from clergy abuse to inheritance
problems to specific defective medical devices. While all attorneys
with a website should prominently post a disclaimer indicating that
information on their sites is meant for informational purposes only
and that a user’s reading, following, or otherwise relying on that
information does not create an attorney-client relationship, firms that
host such discussion forums should be even more diligent to ensure that
the disclaimer is clear and posted conspicuously.
- Be sure the site
includes an area with reprints or the text of published articles you
or other firm members have authored for newsletters, bar journals, or
other legal media. Another option is posting links to or abstracts of
current news articles related to your practice. While authors usually
retain the copyright to reuse the text of articles they have written,
if you are posting PDFs or images of articles as they actually appeared
in a publication, be sure that you have reprint/copyright permission
from the publication to do so. One essential caveat is that current
events must be kept current or your practice will quickly look out-of-date
instead of up-to-date. If you know up-front that maintaining the site
will be sporadic at best, forgo the topical content.
- Some attorneys
list their prominent cases (or clients) on their websites, along with
notable verdicts and settlements. Again, timeliness is essential; if
it’s been years since you’ve had a reported or memorable case,
consider listing by the amount of the largest verdict or settlement
or the case that features the most well-known parties first (without
dates).
- A website can be
useful to you in terms of direct savings of staff time and effort. To
facilitate initial consultations, some lawyers post online intake forms
that potential clients can fill out and e-mail or download and print.
Others add a downloadable collection of government forms, or lists of
links ranging from general to specific practice topics.
- You might want
to consider starting a law-related web log (“blog” or “blawg”)
instead of or in addition to a regular website. A blog can give you
a web presence and a forum to easily share your views on current issues
with potential clients or other attorneys who might refer cases to you.
Some people find setting up a web log easier than a regular website
with display features. Then check out the free tools available at Blogger
(www.blogger.com)
or Live Journal (www.livejournal.com)
to create and host an entry-level blog.
- Not everyone thrills
to the electronic beat, so keep in mind that many online visitors would
rather communicate with a person than a search engine. Consider offering
them the option of chatting live during regular business hours with
a client services representative—either a member of the existing
office staff or a representative from an outsourced (and off-site) service.
At large firms, chat links generally are directed to in-house client
development, marketing, or management personnel; solos probably could
handle those queries themselves. Your website should include at least
one prominent, general e-mail link for messages to the firm, if not
direct links to each lawyer. Be sure your full mail address and phone
number are also easy to find. If you include an e-mail link, be sure
to respond to queries in a timely manner. Another helpful courtesy is
a printable map to help clients and potential clients find your office.
- Register
Your Site and Monitor Traffic
The Internet contains thousands of search engines, but only a relatively small number are used most often. Your goal is to increase your site’s chances of being ranked as close as possible to the beginning of the returned list. The best way to accomplish this is to formally submit your website to the search engine for consideration. Obvious places to begin are Google, currently the most used search engine on the Internet, and Yahoo, which is a close second. Google’s submission process is free for businesses. Go to www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl for details.
- Yahoo, on the other
hand, began charging to register sites at the end of 2001. All commercial
websites (this includes law firms) must pay a
$299 “Yahoo! Express” fee to be considered for addition
to the Yahoo Index. The fee does not guarantee your site will be included—just
considered. After you submit your information and fee, Yahoo will inform
you within seven business days whether your site qualifies for addition;
if it does not, a Yahoo representative will send you an explanation
for the decision. Once a site is accepted, you pay an annual $299 fee
to keep the site listed.
- An as-yet little-known
alternative does exist, however. Altavista (which is owned by Yahoo)
offers a free submission option to Yahoo search (www.altavista.com/addurl/default).
The “Basic Submit” option allows anyone with a free Yahoo
account to submit a site to be crawled for inclusion in the Yahoo Search
index.
- If you do register
your site, you may notice that its ranking for the same search term
varies from engine to engine because each one indexes (catalogs) web
pages differently. To keep site designers from manipulating this process,
search engines do not list their indexing or ranking criteria. However,
search optimization websites have done research to report which elements
count for indexing and assigning rankings. See, for example, SearchEngineWatch
(www.searchenginewatch.com)
to learn more.
- After your site
is launched and you’re comfortable with returning inquiries, updating
content, and accessing new clients from your online forms, you may want
to determine how visitors find your site (e.g., through a search engine
or by linking from another site) and what content is most popular once
they are there. You can even receive breakdowns of how often specific
pages are clicked.
Some Internet service providers such as Earthlink (www.earthlink.net) include traffic statistics as part of their web hosting services. A number of others, including Hitslink (www.hitslink.com) and SiteMeter (www.sitemeter.com), offer tracking services, which start at $10 per month for basic service. (SiteMeter also offers some traffic information for free.)
- No matter what form your site takes, why waste the effort you put into establishing it? Be sure to determine who your audience is, and then create a site that will meet its various needs. Creating a website does not automatically guarantee that clients who are looking online will find your site and hire you, but not having a website guarantees that they won’t.
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For more information about creating and maintaining an effective Web site for your practice, see:
