Law Firm Web Design: The Great Jakes Blog

Long distance clients: the new frontier for legal marketing

by Dion Algeri on June 2, 2011

I was recently speaking with my father — a retired computer industry executive — about the state of legal marketing. During our conversation, I declared “Geography matters less and less in today’s business culture — thanks to new technologies.”

“I’ve heard this before,” my father replied with the authoritative tone of a seasoned veteran.

He explained that with the advent of each new communications technology, people declared that geography would become irrelevant. And they have been wrong — over and over again. In the end, the changes ended up being “incremental at best,” he said.

“I know, I know,” I replied. “But this time, it’s different.”

What’s different now?
Our culture has changed. One hundred years of the telephone, coupled with 15 years of the internet and 5 years of Facebook, has made a large cumulative impact on the way we relate to one another. We’ve all gotten used to managing long distance, “virtual” relationships — especially the under-40 crowd.

Here are some observations from my own life:

My company now conducts the overwhelming majority of its meetings via WebEx — and our clients don’t blink an eye about it. Nobody insists on frequent face-to-face meetings like they did just a year or two ago.
I follow a brilliant tech guru named Dave Winer on Twitter. I’ve never met him, yet I know more about his life than I do about some of my close friends that live around the corner. I actually care about this guy.
My company recently built a website for an international organization headquartered less than 50 miles from our offices. The client never had any interest in meeting us in person — during the pitch or the project’s execution. All meetings were conducted via WebEx and included participants from both England and France.
My company was recently looking to hire an IP attorney. The attorney that had the greatest amount of relevant expertise was located on the opposite coast — in Seattle. We didn’t care. Geography was simply not a factor.

The four items listed above is just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on for pages. In short, I live in a world of long distance relationships.

Now, I realize that I might be a bit ahead of the curve. However, I suspect that my experiences are similar to those of most people under 40 years old. And those folks are quickly moving into positions of authority in legal departments and law firms across the country.

So, what does this mean for legal marketing? Lots. The legal business has traditionally been locally focused — and business development has typically been a highly personal process, often conducted over dinner and drinks.

This is all changing. I’ll elaborate in my next post.

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Should firms help brand individual attorneys?

by Robert Algeri on May 10, 2011

I was recently speaking with the CMO of a large and prestigious law firm, when he did something unexpected: he apologized for his website. It wasn’t an ugly website. Rather, he apologized because the website had been conceived as “nothing more than a brochure to help brand the firm.”

“We’ve come to the realization that our site needs to do more to help individual attorneys market themselves,” the CMO told me.

“Yes!” I enthusiastically replied. That’s exactly what needs to be done. However, I was surprised to hear him say it because, as I see it, the legal marketing world is just beginning to warm to this idea. So, I’m writing this blog post in an effort to bring everybody else around.

Why not focus on the firm?
First, let me say that I think that firm-wide branding should be an objective of every law firm website. However, it can’t be the only goal. In today’s market, it’s also vital to give attorneys and practice areas the tools to market and brand themselves. Why? As I see it, there are two primary reasons.

Firm-wide branding is very difficult.
Branding works best when the focus is narrow. Law firms tend to be very broad — often with hundreds of attorneys, dozens of practice areas, and offices scattered around the globe. Trying to create a brand that meaningfully applies to all of those different elements is a very long and difficult process.
A law firm is the sum of its parts.
Good law firm brands (think Cravath, Bois Schiller) are built on the reputations of their individual attorneys and practice areas. Brand building is a slow process of promoting the skills and experience of the individual parts that make up the firm. Any effort to superimpose a “brand” on a faceless group of attorneys will probably show little, if any, return.

How can your website help attorneys?
Your firm’s website should aim to be more than just a firm-wide branding device. It needs to become a platform that individual attorneys and practice areas can use to make the case for why potential clients should hire them.

This means that the firm’s website needs to be flexible enough to allow attorneys and practice areas to promote themselves in a way that makes sense for their particular markets. For example, one group might need to write articles, another attorney might want to use video content, and a third might want to use podcasts or photos. Most traditional firm-focused websites are too rigid to accommodate different messages and oddball content.

Should firm-wide branding efforts be abandoned?
Absolutely not. Firm-wide branding should always be part of the marketing mix. However, any law firm brand initiative needs to substantiate the firm’s brand claim through the work of its individual attorneys and practice areas. Anything short of this simply won’t ring true.

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Money can’t buy you love (or effective legal marketing)

by Dion Algeri on April 28, 2011

A reader of our last blog post (entitled Is SEO snake oil?) wrote a comment that really resonated with me:

“All too often attorneys want to believe that there’s an easy answer: something they can throw money at that will automatically bring new business in the door…” wrote Fina Wert, Director of Marketing at McNees Wallace & Nurick.

Exactly. That’s the underlying tension in legal marketing. Everyone wants it to be faster and easier than it is.

Fina’s words really connected with me because I spent nearly a decade trying to develop a way for law firms to outsource marketing to my company with minimal input from their attorneys. I figured that I’d make a fortune if I could find a cost-effective formula. Despite much effort, I couldn’t figure out an effective way to take attorneys out of the marketing equation.

In the end, here’s what I learned: Most of legal marketing is about building a reputation and developing relationships. And to do this with any degree of success, it’s vital that attorneys are directly involved in the effort.

So, what’s the role of the marketing department? To help craft a plan of action – and perhaps offer some organizational support. However, at the end of the day, individual attorneys must make a commitment to do the heavy lifting (like writing, speaking and networking) that will bring clients in the door.

As far as I can tell, the fast and easy solutions (i.e., those that minimize attorney participation) never seem to deliver a decent return on investment. Am I missing something? If so, I’d love to hear your stories.

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Is SEO snake oil? Here’s the truth about search engine optimization for law firm websites.

by Dion Algeri on April 18, 2011

This post was inspired by a raucous conversation we had with some CMOs over dinner at the LMA conference in Orlando. Thanks guys!

Here’s the simple truth: Search engine optimization (SEO) is among the most over-hyped marketing tactics in the legal industry. It may even be more hyped than social media.

Law firms want to believe in the magic of SEO — and marketing companies are more than happy to sell it. Yet, few people truly understand how it can bring new business through the door.

Before I elaborate, it’s important to know that organic SEO is a core competency of my firm. We’ve been doing it for a decade and have had great success getting our clients’ sites to the top of the Google results page. Over the years, we’ve also learned that top Google rankings, alone, seldom lead to more clients.

The big misconception
When most marketers think of SEO, they imagine that it works something like this:

A prospective client Googles, say, “bankruptcy lawyer in Los Angeles”.
That person lands on the Bankruptcy section of your website and reads your marketing text.
With a little luck, they contact you and you get a new customer.

While this is how people think SEO should work – it seldom, if ever, works like this for corporate law firms. Why? Because the 3-step path above describes a consumer purchasing experience. This 3-step model might work for “refrigerator magnets” or “Red Sox t-shirts”, but it fails for corporate law firms. Companies just don’t buy legal services in the same way consumers buy toasters.

An aside: Back before we specialized in serving law firms, my company was ranked highly on Google for the term “B2B website design”. We were ranked #1 or #2 for many, many years. It drove lots of traffic to our website. And our phone would occasionally ring with inquiries. However, it didn’t result in a single new client. In most cases, the callers were small, unsophisticated businesses with tiny budgets — and we weren’t interested in working with them.

So, how can SEO work for law firms?
SEO can definitely help law firms attract new clients. However, the model is longer and more circuitous than the 3-step consumer buying path described above. Consider this path:

A prospective client Googles a highly specific search phrase, such as “impact of 2010 financial reform act on credit unions”.
That person lands on an article or blog post you’ve written on that exact subject.
They read your piece and are impressed with your insight.
They surf your website and notice that you specialize in the exact legal micro-niche that concerns them most.
They sign up for your newsletter and subscribe to your blog.
Over the next few years, they follow your blog and read your newsletter. Perhaps they also hear you speak at a conference. The more they hear from you, the more respect they have for your legal insights.
They hire you when a need arises.

Here’s what it boils down to: SEO is no marketing shortcut. For SEO to be successful, you’ve got to think of SEO as simply one more means of getting your thought leadership work (articles, blog posts, case studies, videos, etc.) in front of prospective clients. In other words, it’s just another way to help build your reputation as an expert.

So, if you want to win clients through SEO, write and create more (and better) content. And then perform some basic optimization of articles and blog posts. It’s that simple.

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Building a culture of marketing

by Robert Algeri on April 4, 2011

People often ask us, “Who’s your best type of client?” In the early days of our company, the answer would have been easy: “The ones with the biggest budgets.”

However, in our old age, we’ve learned a few lessons. And chief among those lessons is that firms with a strong culture of marketing are our best clients. They are most appreciative of the websites we create for them (not to mention the advice we provide them).

Why does culture matter?
It matters because a good website requires lots of good content. And without a culture to facilitate the creation of good content, your website will end up feeling like an empty shell – no matter how pretty the design is.

The websites that we’re building today are so much more than online brochures. Today’s websites essentially are publishing platforms for attorney-generated thought-leadership content (like articles, presentations and blogs). Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to consistently create quality content for your website. And it certainly doesn’t happen spontaneously. Successful firms weave content creation into their firm culture.

How do you build a culture of marketing?
I really can’t say. However, I can tell you that I’ve observed common characteristics among firms with a strong and successful culture of marketing. Here are a few:

High level buy-in. To build a culture of marketing, a firm’s leadership needs to wholeheartedly endorse marketing. One clear indicator of this is if the CMO or marketing director serves on the executive committee or is otherwise a part of the firm’s leadership.
Professional marketing leadership. Legal marketing is a profession that requires years to learn and master. If your marketing director was recently the office manager (or a paralegal), chances are that your firm isn’t really dedicated to building a culture of marketing.
Incentives for marketing. It takes time for marketing efforts to yield clients. Thus, in order to nurture a culture of marketing, it’s important that people are incentivized to perform the incremental work of marketing (like writing and speaking). Credits towards billable hours work well.
A decent budget. Money certainly isn’t everything. However, firms with a successful culture of marketing are generally willing to spend the money to do it right.

Has your firm built a strong culture of marketing? If so, I’d love to learn how. Please leave a comment.

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The Revolution was, in fact, Tweeted.
Malcolm Gladwell revisited.

by Dion Algeri on March 28, 2011

You may recall that back in October, I wrote a blog post critiquing Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece entitled, “Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” I concluded by writing, “Despite what Malcolm Gladwell says – I’m absolutely convinced that the next revolution will, in fact, be tweeted.”

Turns out I was right. And it’s taken only 4 months for history to prove the social media curmudgeons like Gladwell wrong. The events of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya are spectacular examples of the transformative power of social media. (Check out PBS’s Frontline documentary on Egypt to learn the degree to which social media was instrumental to the success of the uprising.)

I also think that it’s important to revisit another theme of my October blog post: Social media is not a silver bullet. Alone, social media will not bring about a revolution. And, alone, it will not build your legal practice. It’s just another marketing tool to add to the list of things you are already doing (articles, speaking, email newsletter, networking).

Furthermore, consider how the “new media” can work hand in hand with the old. Jordan Furlong, the legal marketing expert, recently made this point in a fantastic blog post. Here’s a snippet:

“One of the most effective ways to get the attention of old media is through the strategic use of new media. Blogs, Twitter, and even LinkedIn are…extremely handy ways to establish your expertise with editors, reporters and news producers. And they come with the attractive feature of bring virtually free.”

Here’s my message (again) to social media curmudgeons: Social media is not a silver bullet. However, it can be revolutionary. Perhaps it’s time you take another look.

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The most corrosive and counterproductive logic in all of legal marketing

by Robert Algeri on March 18, 2011

Should attorneys include personal tidbits on their bios?
In an online forum, recently I saw someone summarily dismiss the idea of including personal information by offering the following logic: What if the prospective client was a member of a rival fraternity? Personal information like this could keep us from being hired.

This is probably the most corrosive and counterproductive logic in all of marketing. Why? Because it reflects a fear of clearly defining yourself. While defining yourself strongly and unequivocally can be a difficult task, it is the key to successful marketing. In doing so, you may turn off some prospects — but you’ll engender profound connections with others. And the trade-off will be worth it.

Personal marketing is important
Normally, when people talk about attorneys’ defining themselves, they mean on a professional level (i.e., focus on a clearly defined legal niche). However, this also needs to happen on a personal level. Why? Because people most often buy from people with whom they have a connection.

This is nothing new. Business relationships have always been at least partially personal, often built over dinner and drinks by people who travel in similar circles. However, in today’s business world, the client/lawyer relationship often begins online — specifically, it occurs the moment the prospective client visits the attorney’s website bio.

The big question
So here is the question you need to ask yourself: what do you want prospects to see when they visit you online? A bland, lowest-common-denominator message or a strong, clear picture of who you are?

Those attorneys and firms who are afraid of “turning people off” will continue to offer the status quo: a one-page list of legal qualifications. Those that understand the new reality of our business culture will increasingly be offering a rich array of information that includes both professional qualifications and personal information.

Which approach do you think will win the day?

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Introducing the law firm “Editor-in-Chief”

by Dion Algeri on February 11, 2011

Creating thought-leadership content is never easy. Creating content that’s truly compelling is 10 times harder. Yet, this is vital.

As more and more attorneys recognize the value of content marketing, more and more content is being created. How does an attorney stand out amidst all this noise? There’s only one answer: quality content.

Unfortunately, creating quality content is easier said than done. While attorneys may have lots of expertise to share, many may need help turning their ideas into engaging and readable pieces. And that’s okay — writing snappy prose is not a job requirement for lawyers. (To my knowledge, nobody’s ever paid an attorney extra to write an entertaining contract.)

Introducing the “Editor-in-Chief”
Here’s an idea: What if law firms employed an editorial professional to help attorneys craft informative and interesting content? This full-time hire (whom I’ve dubbed the “Editor-in-Chief”) would work with attorneys to elevate the quality of their articles and blog posts in order to:

Increase readership
Attract a loyal following
Elevate the firm’s brand through its content
Help build the reputations of the individual attorney-authors by casting them as leading experts

When it comes to content creation, there are three areas where an “Editor-in-Chief” could provide some real value to attorneys:

Packaging – Presenting content in a way that is interesting to readers. For example: most attorneys wouldn’t think to write an article entitled “10 Reasons to Try XYZ,” or better yet, “Why ABC is dying and XYZ is the future.” Yet, anyone who has ever worked in publishing knows that these are exactly the type of articles that get read most.
Brevity and Clarity – Attorneys tend to write lengthy pieces that contain dense passages full of footnotes and citations. Unfortunately, most people — including other lawyers — want to read concise, energetic articles with bite-sized content and plenty of graphics.
Timeliness – The Editor-in-Chief could help attorneys put together an editorial calendar — and then hold them to it.

Crazy?
Does this sound far-fetched? Well, it’s really not. McKinsey & Company, the uber-elite management consulting firm, has been publishing the McKinsey Quarterly since 1964. By all accounts, it’s worked out well for them.

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Please, don’t hire a “Director of Social Media”

by Dion Algeri on February 4, 2011

I have a message for law firm CMOs: Don’t hire a Director of Social Media.

No, I’m not a Luddite. In fact, I’m a big fan of social media marketing for law firms. I just don’t believe that a “Director of Social Media” is necessary for most law firms. In fact, I’m guessing that most firms hiring for this position may misunderstand social media — and the barriers to doing it right.

The Misunderstanding
In most cases, law firms are looking to fill these positions with people whose primary qualification is knowledge of social media tools like Twitter, blogs and LinkedIn. While this may seem logical, it’s actually a mistake. Why? Because an understanding of social media tools and tactics is not the biggest barrier to success in social media marketing.

So, what’s the biggest barrier? Content. As I’ve written before, insightful, well-written “thought leadership” content must be at the center of any successful social media marketing effort by law firms. Unfortunately, most candidates for Director of Social Media are unlikely to have an editorial background, which is exactly what is needed to help lawyers craft truly compelling content.

The Solution
If I were a CMO of a law firm, I would forget about hiring a Director of Social Media. Instead, I would bring in two different people:

A social media consultant – Someone to teach attorneys the basics of social media tools and tactics. This person would work on a consulting basis. There are plenty of really great consultants out there who can get your attorneys up to speed over a period of 6-8 weeks.

A Director of Content – This person would be a full-time employee who can help attorneys take dry legal thinking and turn it into compelling, readable stories that will attract a loyal following. Perhaps this person has a background as the editor of a magazine or trade publication.

These recommendations are built on my strong belief that social media tools and tactics are relatively easy to learn. In my opinion, the tough part is creating the kind of content that will rise above the clutter and help build the reputations of your attorneys. Those firms that understand this — and respond by bringing in content specialists — will have a clear advantage. More about this in my next post.

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Introducing the Rainmaker-Focused Website: A next-generation approach to law firm websites.

by Robert Algeri on January 24, 2011

We normally don’t use our blog to promote our own work. However, we’re making an exception today since it’s an important milestone for Great Jakes.

After years of building traditional websites for law firms, we have just introduced an entirely new approach. We call it the Rainmaker-Focused Website and it employs a next-generation web-marketing paradigm that we developed for law firms. It required more than a year to refine our ideas and build the supporting technology.

The first implementation of the Rainmaker-Focused Website was created for McManimon & Scotland, a law firm in New Jersey that is renowned for its public sector work.

The Rainmaker-Focused approach
For those of you who follow our blog, you’ll see that Rainmaker-Focused Website reflects many of the ideas that we’ve been writing about for months (like this one, this one and this one, just to name a few). The defining element of the Rainmaker-Focused Website are attorney microsites. Attorney microsites are multi-page attorney bios sections — essentially, small, highly-customizable websites for each attorney that fit seamlessly within the firm’s larger website. Our microsite approach is a significant departure from the single-page, “cookie-cutter” attorney bios found on most law firm websites.

Our Technology
The Rainmaker-Focused Website is supported by a highly robust, yet easy-to-use, content management system (CMS) that was built using an open-source CMS framework. It works like a dream. If you’re interested, I would be happy to show you our new backend.

Learn More
To learn more about the Rainmaker-Focused Website, click here, or call me at 212-699-3684. I would be happy to give you a guided tour.

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