Law Firm Web Design: The Great Jakes Blog

Lawyers Lunch Less

by Robert Algeri on May 16, 2012

Robert Half Legal did a study in February of this year that found that 56% of lawyers said business lunches are less common than three years ago.

Huh? If lawyers are lunching less, how are they supposed to develop relationships with potential (and current) clients?

Here’s how some enterprising attorneys are going about it:

First, they’re publishing great content.
Then, they’re sharing it via social media channels. This inevitably drives traffic to their online bios.
They are turning their online bios into rich repositories of credentialing information that include articles, blog posts, photos, tweets, and podcasts – all of which make the case for why they should be hired.
And, to top it off, they are using their bios to make a personal connection with visitors. Smiling portraits and bits of personal information help depict them as real and likable.

Does having a great online presence replace a face-to-face meeting? No, absolutely not. However, in an era when clients could reside hundreds of miles away, opportunities to share a lunch or cocktail are becoming rare.

As clients increasingly go online to obtain the information that they need to make informed decisions, lunches and other face-to-face meetings will happen less. This new reality beckons a question that applies to every attorney: What will they find when they search for me?

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Half of all professional service firms have redesigned their websites in the past year

by Robert Algeri on November 4, 2011

According to a recent study of 500 professional service firms by Hinge Marketing, nearly half of the firms surveyed said that they redesigned their website in the past year.

Wow. Even I was stunned by this number – and I’ve spent the past several years talking about how marketing is undergoing a little revolution. I guess that firms have begun to adjust their business development strategies in response to the massive shifts that have occurred in the business landscape since the beginning of the Great Recession.

Website Trends
Although their survey included no law firms, Hinge’s findings regarding website redesign trends are entirely consistent with what we are seeing in the law firm market:

Professional services firms are transitioning their websites from passive online brochures to more dynamic, interactive marketing tools. (Here’s a link to some of our thoughts on this as it applies to law firms.)
Over 40% of those firms are now updating their sites at least once weekly.
New websites are being built for publishing a stream of fresh content that can be promoted in social media.

High-Growth vs. Low-Growth Firms
Hinge uncovered an interesting trend: an apparent “digital divide” emerging between the marketing techniques used by “High Growth” firms and “Low Growth” firms. For example:

High-growth firms are more focused on virtually every online marketing technique, often by a wide margin. The top four techniques include: blogging, SEO, LinkedIn and Twitter.
High-growth firms have increased, or have plans to increase, their marketing budget. 66% of firms plan to increase online spending in the next 12 months.
High-growth firms update their websites frequently.
High-growth firms are twice as likely to have redesigned their website within the past 12 months.

Here’s the big takeaway: the professional service firms that are growing fastest are the ones that are enthusiastically embracing digital marketing techniques. Is anyone surprised?

Hinge’s data were compiled from an online survey of 500 professional service firms that averaged 300 employees and $50+ million in yearly revenue. No law firms were included in the study. You can download the complete study for free on Hinge’s website.

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Should your website be solid like a rock – or flexible like a gymnast?

by Dion Algeri on October 10, 2011

I was recently speaking with a legal marketing consultant who said that a client — an AmLaw 200 firm — wanted their new website to be “rock solid.”

Ugh, I thought. They’re headed in the wrong direction.

Having a website that won’t break and requires little recurring maintenance is a fair thing to ask for. In fact, those things should be basic criteria for any new website. But these days, all the legit website development companies working with law firms have “rock solid” technology.

This firm’s focus on “solid like a rock” technology is distracting them from what they really need — a website that’s “flexible like a gymnast.” Let me explain.

Rapidly Evolving Demands
The days of the static “brochure website” are drawing to a close. It’s now commonly understood that your website needs to constantly evolve to meet ever-changing needs and circumstances. For example:

Web-savvy Clients – As your clients have become increasingly web-savvy, they expect your website to contain content that’s more relevant, engaging – and of course, always up-to-date.
Web-savvy Attorneys – Attorneys increasingly see the firm’s website as a platform that they can use to market themselves. This means having bio sections tailored to their specific marketing needs – which are constantly changing.

So, what makes a website flexible?
What does a “flexible gymnast” website look like? Sometimes it’s tough to tell how flexible a company’s technology is unless you spend some time examining their backend functionality. That said, here are some questions to ask when evaluating a website development company:

Open Source – Do they build websites using an open-source CMS, enabling you to inexpensively leverage new features built by others?
Core Code Updates – Do you automatically get new modules, CMS features and core code updates as they are developed for other clients? Or does the website development company want you to buy an entirely new website every few years in order to obtain new functionality?
New Pages – Can you easily add any new page you want, to any section of a website? Can you do it with a click of a button?
Social Media Integration – Can you direct Tweets and blog posts that attorneys are generating, to various practice areas and attorney bio pages?
Re-sequencing Items – Does the CMS allow you to re-sequence practically any item on any page? Does it use drag-and-drop functionality?
Age of Codebase – When was their code originally written? If it’s more than 3 or 4 years old, it might be “rock solid” – but chances are that it was built using a rigid paradigm that can’t easily accommodate the changing needs of firms today.

Technology changes fast — and people’s expectations rise in tandem. The law firm website of today needs to be flexible enough to accommodate new and different demands as they emerge. Today’s challenges may be oddball content like videos, podcasts and social media feeds. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? But as long as your website technology is flexible — it won’t matter.

Flexible is the new “rock solid.”

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Eliminating the Ping-Pong Effect — a major usability problem on law firm websites

by Dion Algeri on September 21, 2011

Every legal marketer I’ve ever met agrees that website usability is paramount. Yet, nearly all law firm websites are afflicted with the same usability problem – the Ping-Pong Effect.

What’s the Ping-Pong Effect?
It’s the stomach-churning feeling you get after being bounced around a law firm website – like a ping-pong ball – in search of relevant content. For example, if you are on an attorney’s bio and want to read an article she wrote, you are sent to the firm’s “Publications” section for the full text. And if you want to watch a video, you are sent to the “multimedia” section. Good luck getting back.

The Ping-Pong Effect can be very confusing for website visitors – and studies show that when website visitors become frustrated, they leave. And here’s the kicker: the Ping-Pong Effect is becoming more acute as attorneys create more thought leadership content (as is the trend) and websites grow in size.

What’s the solution?
It’s simple: let people view an attorney’s articles, videos and case studies within that attorney’s bio section. My company built this feature into our Rainmaker-Focused Website technology platform. (I have no idea why the rest of the world hasn’t done something similar. If you have any thoughts, please leave us a comment.)

An example
Perhaps some people just don’t understand the problem – so, I have decided to illustrate the Ping-Pong Effect below. The screen captures below came from a law firm website with profound ping-pong issues (three bounces from bio to article). However, practically every law firm website suffers from the same problem.

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Your bio is not an obituary!
A conversation with Kelly Hoey, strategic networking consultant

by Robert Algeri on August 24, 2011

Followers of our blog know that we champion attorney bios. In fact, the entire Great Jakes website platform is built on the premise that bios are the single most important part of a law firm website. So it was of great interest to me when my friend Kelly Hoey told me about a recent consulting project focused on – you guessed it – attorney bios.

Kelly, a noted “connector, advisor and project solver,” was invited by an AmLaw 200 law firm to conduct an attorney bio workshop. The goal was to help the attorneys make their bios more engaging and effective.

Below are some highlights from our conversation about her experience working with the attorneys and their bios.

What prompted your client – an AmLaw 200 firm – to conduct a bio workshop?
They were launching a new website and the CMO was interested in rethinking what attorneys were communicating on their bios pages. The CMO recognized that there was room for improvement.

Did the firm consider the bios to be important?
Definitely. This particular firm closely watches their website user statistics. They know that the attorney bios are the most viewed pages on their site. However, they were particularly struck by a statistic from the 2011 BTI study “How Clients Hire” that showed that 45% of current in-house counsel (current clients) periodically review their attorney’s bio. That got everyone’s attention.

Why did this stat strike a chord?
Those are their current clients — and they could be re-assessing their choice of attorney! That stat made it super-clear that attorney bios are now a viable way to share information with both current clients and prospects. This means that updating the bio can’t be a once-a-year endeavor. That’s just not going to cut it anymore.

As I understand it, three attorneys volunteered to have their bios overhauled during the workshop. What advice did you offer them?
This firm has an entrepreneurial mindset. So, every attorney had a willingness to consider new ideas, particularly the three brave souls that volunteered. Here are some key points I told them to consider:

Perspective: Try viewing the bio from your client’s perspective. Does your bio highlight transactions or cases that the client would find significant?
Appearance: It’s important to organize the content to make it readable. No endless paragraphs! No pages that scroll forever! Think bullet points.
Curate: You don’t need to put everything up there. Have just enough information so that a potential client says, “This person clearly has the skill-set that I need, let’s talk to them.”

How did you help the attorneys think through what information they should include?
There are four questions that I encourage every attorney to ask themselves when they update their bio:

What work are you known for?
What type of work do you want more of?
Who is your target client?
Why should someone hire you – how are you different?

Did you make any across-the-board recommendations?
One thing I suggested was that they could share more about themselves. For example, if an attorney did lots of charitable work – or was really involved in her community — that should come across clearly in her bio. That type of information can really make a connection with people.

Also, their bios were very uniform in tone from attorney to attorney – and I recommended that they move away from rigid standards. One of the attorneys I worked with serves mostly owners of construction companies. It makes sense that the tone of her bio be less formal than an attorney whose clients are all corporate GCs. She might even want to refer to herself by her first name in her bio.

We’re seeing more and more “oddball” content on law firm websites (like video, podcasts and photos). I’m curious if you expect this firm to add oddball content to bios in the near future?
It wouldn’t surprise me! There was such an understanding and enthusiasm for differentiating their bios for the purpose of business development. This was not a group that was about to jump onto the next hot trend – but if there was a better way to connect with their clients, I think that they’d do it.

What about attorney profile photos?
I told one attorney – the moment that I met her – that she needs a new photo. She looked 25 years younger in real life! Coincidently, the night before her client told her the same thing. I hate getting my picture taken, so I understand people that are reluctant. But it’s sooooo important!

That’s fascinating. Are you saying that she never met her client before?
That’s correct, not until the night before the workshop.

That ties into a trend that we’ve seen – that geography matters less and less in the hiring of attorneys.
Exactly! One of the attorneys I worked with was a commercial real estate attorney with cross-border expertise. She never meets some of her clients – but they definitely look at her bio and the types of transactions she’s handled.

So, what do you think, are these attorneys going to change their bios?
They were completely on-board. Within several hours of the program many of the attorneys had submitted changes to the firm’s marketing department to revise their bios.

Do you have any parting wisdom to share about attorney bios?
Yes. Ask yourself, right now – at this very moment – why should you be hired? That’s what needs to be in your bio. Also – remember that your bio is not an obituary!

Not an obituary? That’s funny. What exactly do you mean by that?
Two things. First, it needs to communicate vitality – and lots of attorney bios fail to do this. Also, it doesn’t need to be a catalog of your entire career. Just answer the question “why should you be hired, today.” Chances are, if it happened once in 1982, that’s not really helping your cause today.

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4 Steps to winning lucrative “Rocket Science” legal work

by Dion Algeri on July 28, 2011

This blog post was inspired by a comment that Ian Brodie left on our recent post about “Long Distance Clients.” Ian’s a marketing consultant from across the pond. I highly recommend his work.

Rocket science work is the best kind of legal work. It’s highly complex, cutting-edge work that requires a specialized expert with a nimble mind. It’s also the most profitable work. Clients are willing to pay a premium for “rocket science” counsel.

Yet, most attorneys are stuck in the rut of commodity work – the kind of work that doesn’t pay particularly well and walks away on a whim.

The big questions: How do you move up the food chain? How do regular attorneys position themselves to win lucrative rocket science legal work? The answer is straightforward: become a world-renowned expert in your field. This, of course, is easier said than done. However, it can be achieved – and the path is not very complex.

Step 1: Pick a micro-niche.
This is vital. You’ll never become a world-renowned expert in a broad field. When picking a niche, think narrow and think global. Clients don’t care if their rocket scientist lawyers are located in a different time zone.

Step 2: Declare yourself to be a leading expert in your niche.
Do whatever it takes to be able to convincingly make a claim of specialized expertise. I figure it takes, at most, 6 months of highly motivated effort for an experienced lawyer to re-brand themselves as a specialized expert.

Step 3: Share your best ideas.
Write, speak, blog. Parade your cutting-edge ideas around. Creating “thought leadership” content needs to become part of your job – not just something that you do on the side. Budget 5 hours per week – every single week — to do it right.

Step 4: Compile all of your content on your website.
I can’t stress enough how important this is. An attorney’s reputation-enhancing content (articles, videos, blog posts, podcasts) all needs to reside in a single place where prospective clients can easily find it. Many law firms fail to do this. For example, it’s not uncommon for a video of an attorney to be placed in a “multimedia” section (and thus banishing it to oblivion). Since the overwhelming majority of website traffic goes to the attorney bios section, it only makes sense for thought leadership content to reside on the bio pages. For many firms, this may mean re-conceiving the format of your firm’s bio pages.

So how do you know when you’ve achieved the status of “rocket scientist”? You’ll begin to see it in your bank account. However, you’ll know for sure, when the decision to hire you isn’t determined by how much they like you but rather, because you possess the specialized expertise they need to fix a problem or escape a crisis.

Wouldn’t that be great?

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The content marketing boom. 8 reasons why lawyers are creating all of this stuff.

by Robert Algeri on July 19, 2011

In my last piece, I predicted that law firm websites would grow dramatically in the coming years, due to the proliferation of attorney-created thought leadership content. In that post, I referred to the market forces behind this trend. I figured that it would be helpful if I compiled a list of these trends (many of which I’ve written about previously). So, here they are — 8 market forces pushing attorneys to generate more thought leadership content:

Skepticism toward Marketing – Our society has become increasingly numb to marketing messages. As a result, it’s no longer enough to simply claim that you’re the best – you have to demonstrate it.
A Trend toward Specialization – Routine matters are increasingly being handled by in-house legal departments. This means that the work given to outside counsel tends to concern highly specialized, bet-the-company matters. Content marketing is simply the best way for attorneys to demonstrate their specialized expertise.
A Wider Market – Geography is becoming less of a consideration when hiring outside legal counsel, especially if the client is looking for highly specialized expertise. As more and more work is pitched long distance – with fewer face-to-face meetings – the importance of insightful website content increases.
Increased Meritocracy – The “old boys’ club” is diminishing in importance as the playing field widens and there is increased specialization. In short, a person with a reputation as the “leading authority” will win out against “the familiar.” Attorneys will be looking for ways to demonstrate that they are a leading authority.
The Emergence of Social Media – As attorneys embrace social media marketing, they are realizing that it’s not sufficient to simply “be social.” Increasingly, it’s becoming clear that an effective social media marketing campaign is about driving people to read your cutting-edge thought leadership content.
Increased Competitiveness – Right now, there are more lawyers than there is work – and it looks like the market will remain competitive into the foreseeable future. This means that attorneys need to work harder to win business – and that they have more time to create content like articles and blog posts.
Increased Reliance on Websites – A 2009 survey conducted by the Wicker Park Group showed that nearly all general counsel visited attorney bios on a firm’s website when considering hiring them. Attorneys and firms are now recognizing this reality – and beefing up their bios with reputation-enhancing content like articles, case studies and blog posts.
A Realization that Content Marketing Works – A recent study by The Brand Research Company found that 53% of executives surveyed have put a firm on their short list based on the information found on the firm’s website. Data like this indicate that attorneys offering the highest-quality content are best positioned to reap the benefits.

Am I missing any? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Prediction: Your website will get bigger. Much bigger.

by Robert Algeri on July 12, 2011

The online publication ReadWriteWeb recently posted a piece that asked, “Is the Website about to Become Extinct?” The premise of the article is that the likes of Facebook and other social media sites will eventually obviate the need for having a traditional law firm website. Legal marketing authority Kevin O’Keefe tackled this idea in an excellent blog post, which he concluded by saying, “I cannot see destination sites going away anytime soon.”

I agree with Kevin. If anything, I believe that he’s understating things. In my opinion, the law firm website is going to flourish. In fact, I expect that most law firm websites will grow three or four times larger than they are today.

Why? Because attorneys will be creating more and more content. Powerful market forces have converged to make content marketing (the creation of reputation-enhancing articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts) more prevalent than ever. And it only makes sense that all this content is compiled in one central place — on the firm’s website — even if it was originally created for publication elsewhere. As a result, I expect that you’ll see an explosion in the size of law firm websites.

The big question
In my opinion, there is really no question about whether law firms will continue to need a website. Rather, the big question is whether law firms’ current websites can accommodate all of the content that will be created by attorneys. The proliferation of content introduces some big logistical challenges:

Navigation challenges – As the volume of content grows, it’s important that the content be organized in a way that makes it easy for users to find what interests them. This is no small task. Many law firm websites will become un-navigable if much more content is added.

Oddball content – Currently, the overwhelming majority of website content is text-based. This is changing. You’ll be seeing more videos, podcasts, PowerPoint presentations, and social media content. Unfortunately, most law firm websites can’t gracefully accommodate oddball content.

In short, the proliferation of content means that the next generation of law firm website will be bigger and more flexible than its predecessor. How exactly will this manifest itself? We have some ideas. However, I’m curious to hear yours.

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Legal marketing is like weight loss. Beware of hucksters.

by Dion Algeri on June 14, 2011

Legal marketing success requires hard work and a long-term commitment that many people find difficult to muster. And whenever the stakes are high and success is elusive, the ground is fertile for hucksters. Weight loss and legal marketing share this. In both instances: buyer beware.

I bring this up because I recently came across a PowerPoint presentation delivered by a prominent player in the legal marketing space. It was about optimizing your website to “boost sales.” I thought that the presentation was deceptive.

It wasn’t that the ideas contained in the presentation were patently wrong. The problem was that they made it sound like the barriers to successful marketing could be solved by implementing expensive technological solutions. This is seldom, if ever, the case.

For example, they focused on techniques like:

Marketing automation
Lead generation tools
Advanced search engine optimization strategies

Just to be clear — these technologies and techniques can be helpful, if implemented under the right circumstances. However, most law firms don’t need these.

Why? Because techniques like “marketing automation” are icing on the cake. If you’ve got a well-oiled marketing machine, maybe they’ll help you boost your results by 5 or 10 percent. By focusing on the icing — and not the cake — many firms will likely be distracted from mastering the basics that can yield the biggest immediate results, namely, writing and speaking in order to develop a reputation as an expert in your niche.

So, how do you know if you’re ready to move beyond the basics — and embrace some of these advanced techniques and technologies? It’s different for each firm. However, I’d say that you’re probably ready if your firm is regularly producing a stream of high-quality thought leadership content (like articles, blog posts or podcasts) and if this content has garnered a loyal following. Short of that, I’d say you should save your money.

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Long distance clients, part 2. How does this impact legal marketing?

by Dion Algeri on June 3, 2011

As mentioned in my last blog post, our society has recently hit an inflection point — and we are now entering the era of the long distance business relationship.

Better technology has made it largely unnecessary (on a practical level) to work with local folks. Additionally, after 15 years of widespread internet usage, people now have less of an emotional need to be located near their clients and co-workers. As a result, geography is becoming less of a consideration when purchasing all sorts of products and services, including legal counsel.

How will marketing shift?
What does this mean for legal marketers? Lots. As geographic barriers are brought down, I expect that you will see the following changes, among others:

Micro-specialization: Adam Smith once said that specialization is a function of market size. As the market for legal services goes global, expect to see an unprecedented level of specialization.
More thought leadership: Clients looking for a highly specialized expert will expect you to prove your expertise. As a result, you can expect to see a large increase in volume of attorney-generated content, like articles, blogs, videos and podcasts.
Increased meritocracy: The “old boys’ club” will diminish in importance as the playing field widens and there is increased specialization. In short, a person with a reputation as the “leading authority” will win out against “the familiar.” Read Ian Brodie’s fantastic blog post about this subject.
Emphasis on website bios: People will increasingly turn first to the web for information about attorneys. In many cases, the information contained within the bio is what will determine whether a referral turns into a client (or at least a meeting). Judging by the number of flimsy one-page attorney profiles, most law firms haven’t yet realized the importance of improving their online bios.
More personal information: As face-to-face meetings become less essential (and thus less common), attorneys in the “Facebook generation” will use their website bios as a platform to create an emotional connection with prospective clients. Expect to see more engaging attorney portraits and increased use of video as well as lots more personal information about attorneys.

Will these changes happen overnight? No. However, I think that five years from now, the legal industry will be noticeably different. And, as is the case with any industry shake-up, there will likely be big winners and big losers. Am I overstating this? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

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