My prediction: Video clips of attorneys will soon become a standard part of attorney bios on websites. Why? Because video has the potential to have enormous emotional impact on prospective clients -- far more impact than text and still photos alone.
Why is this important?
The business landscape for professional service firms is currently undergoing a major shift. Clients are now increasingly willing to hire attorneys located halfway around the world (as long as they have the exact right skill set and a reputation for success). And as it becomes increasingly common for attorneys to pitch business long-distance -- without ever meeting in person -- legal marketers will be looking for technologies that will help bridge the distance. And that’s where video comes in.
Do in-house counsel want to watch videos?
According to a March, 2009 survey of General Counsel performed by the Wicker Park Group, two thirds of the respondents “expressed interest in video interviews that would appear in the lawyer bios.” Several respondents explained that video “would be helpful in evaluating a lawyer’s demeanor, presence or style…” This number has probably grown since March 2009, considering the shifts that continue to occur in the business landscape for law firms.
What’s stopping firms from embracing video?
Frankly, I’m surprised that it’s taking so long. I think that there is probably a lot of latent demand for video. Once a prestigious firm launches a website with video interviews of all of its partners, everyone else will jump on the bandwagon. One of the video experts I spoke to for this post said that their company is currently negotiating a big deal with a major firm. So, perhaps we’ll see this happen soon.
What are firms doing now?
In researching this blog post, we scoured the web looking for examples of videos on attorney bios. We didn’t find many. Of the firms currently using video, it appears most are just starting to experiment with it.
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Listed below are all of the examples we could find. If you know of other firms using (or producing) good attorney profile videos, we’d love to know about them. Please leave a comment that includes a link.
Note: This list only includes attorney profile videos. We did not include any videos promoting an entire firm or practice area. Also important to consider: lots of smaller firms - especially personal injury plaintiff firms – are using video. However, most of these videos had low production values, so we didn’t include them on our list.
Axiom
These videos are impressive. They use a documentary-style approach that focuses on the personal lives of their attorneys. The production values are very high and I imagine the videos weren’t cheap to create. Note: Axiom is not a law firm proper. As I understand it, it is more of a placement firm. Either way, their videos are worth watching.
McMahon Butterworth Thomson
This small New Zealand firm’s site features nicely produced attorney videos. That said, their use of a stark background, funky-chair props and peppy background music might be a bit too much for some US firms.
Babcock Partners
This three-attorney firm in Louisiana does a nice job with their videos. Each of their partners has several video clips answering questions like: “Why did you choose to work for Babcock Partners?” and “Where do you see this firm in the next five years?”
Lowenstein Sandler
Several partner bio pages on the Lowenstein site include video clips, each 30-40 seconds long. The clips show an attorney speaking about themselves and the firm.
Wow, are these video used small! They are placed on the attorney bio page in place of a headshot photo -- which is probably what dictated the postage-stamp size.
Several of Proskauer’s bio pages include videos of an attorney speaking about themselves and their practice. The videos use nice interstitial graphics. Additionally, at least one attorney’s bio page includes a video of him speaking at a symposium.
Intelligent Video Solutions is a video production company that created a series of excellent attorney profile videos for Loeb and Loeb. The videos, which include music, b-roll footage and voiceover, focus on both the personal and professional sides of the attorneys’ lives. Interestingly, none of the videos appears on the attorney bio pages of the Loeb website.
Legal Minds TV is a video production/marketing company that also helps attorneys distribute their videos. Their clients include firms like Pillsbury and Dorsey & Whitney. Interestingly, most of their clients do not include the videos on their website bio pages, probably because those pages are not designed to easily accommodate them. I particularly like Legal Minds' approach because they have the attorneys talk about issues that their clients are dealing with. This “thought leadership” style is very different from the conventional approach of having lawyers talk about themselves.
Thanks for the mention, Dion. Our approach focuses just as strongly on the distribution as the content creation. Featuring the firm’s expertise more broadly than just the firms’ websites not only extends their reach and influence, but dramatically increases discoverability – a case in point is if you google “accessing capital markets.”
Of course I don’t want to minimize the value of featuring the videos on the firms’ websites or attorneys’ profiles, which is why we also provide an embed code and hosting for the video so the firm can easily add the video to their site without dealing with technical issues such as transcoding or bandwidth constraints. But as you pointed out, firms are still working on redesigning their sites to accommodate video content.
As a footnote, we recently launched LegalMinds digital magazine http://www.legalmindsmagazine.com to extend the distribution of our content and provide our client’s with additional opportunities to “market” their thought leadership.
Duane Morris also features videos on some of its attorney profiles. However, they make the same mistake that most of the other firms do — they feature attorneys talking about themselves. Blah, blah blah. Prospective clients would certainly be more interested if they were to talk about something substantive. How about telling me a little about how you think?
Here is an example of an attorney video on the DM website:
http://www.duanemorris.com/attorneys/frederickcohen.html
I agree, Earl. For contrast, compare those videos to these LegalMinds videos featuring attorneys at the same firm …
http://legalminds.tv/index.php/intellectual-property/protecting-brands-from-trademark-infringement/
http://legalminds.tv/index.php/2010/01/20/advising-entrepreneurs-on-business-formation-growth-funding/
Our analytics show a high level of engagement for these videos, which means the viewer watched most of the interview. And at 6-10 minutes each, that demonstrates a significant level of interest in the subject matter and helps establish the attorney’s thought leadership in the topic.
That said, I don’t think that a typical “profile” video doesn’t serve a purpose in introducing the attorney as a person. But I think potential clients are more interested in the attorney’s expertise and understanding of the legal issues which impact their business.
I’m glad some of these firms are starting to create video. But there’s a bigger problem here than most realize. Nobody wants to watch a video of an attorney talking about himself. In fact, most people don’t care about the attorney. The only people who are urging attorneys to create biographical videos are the video production companies that believe viewers want to watch this stuff. I totally disagree with this approach.
Think about why someone is online searching for an attorney or visiting their website. 99.9% of the time it’s because they have a legal problem and they need an attorney to help solve their problem.
I lecture to attorneys throughout the country about the importance of providing video content that explains to viewers how you can help solve their problem. That’s the goal. The entire purpose of creating this type of marketing message is to convert an online viewer into a caller. It’s not a branding piece. These biographical videos simply don’t convert viewers into callers.
There was a comment earlier about general counsel viewing a biographical video to see an attorney’s demeanor, level of expertise and confidence. However, that can be accomplished by having the attorney talk about something useful and educational.
As the only veteran medical malpractice trial attorney who’s also an experienced video producer who helps other lawyers create educational video to market their law practices, I can tell you unequivocally that most lawyers do not use video effectively. The only people who are interested in biographical videos are the attorneys who want to feed their egos, and their family members who are obligated to watch those videos. The general consumer or potential client looking for an attorney will typically not make a decision to call you based upon your credentials and where you went to school. Rather, the only reason they will call you is if you can offer a solution that will help solve their legal problem or if you have significant experience handling their particular type of matter.
Currently, I have over 350 educational videos to market my own law practice, and you can see some of them here, http://nymedicalmalpracticevideoblog.com. Creating educational video allows me to compete with the biggest law firms in New York who spend millions of dollars a year on advertising and marketing.
Most of the mid-size and biglaw firms have failed to grasp how important creating educational video is to set themselves apart from all of their competitors. In my opinion, these bio videos don’t help market your message and set you apart from everyone else. That’s the bottom line. If you think that bio video is going to compel a viewer to pick up the phone and call you, you are mistaken. Think about that next time you choose to make a video to market your practice.
Gerry
Founder, Lawyers Video Studio, LLC
http://lawyersvideostudio.com
516-487-8207
Gerry, I agree the prevalence of bio-type videos may be a bigger problem than most realize. But if you read the article and comments you’d see that Dion, Bruce and Earl all made the same point.
Mitch Cohen
[email protected]
To answer your question: its coming.
Another question is whether the web infrastructure, i.e. the mechanisms needed to distribute high quality videos will be in place and will clients have better access to thoughtful, well-produced, video-based legal content? A bio video is just the beginning imho. We at Womble Carlyle are working on it.
I do think the rush by law firms to get video up may result in some people not thinking about how you do it, where you post it, and why you do the video, not to mention the ‘what’ when presenting video. We refuse to do ‘talking head’ videos and are instead looking at the issues involved in each practice and how those issues affect our clients.
The cardinal rule of social media content marketing is “Be useful.” There is no rule (yet)that a lawyer’s biographical video cannot convey personal background AND provide useful information. Since study after study confirms that bios are the most visited sections of law firm websites, it makes absolute marketing sense to create an engaging user experience once visitors navigate there.
Dion,
You mention that personal injury attorneys are using video and their production values are relatively poor. You are correct. However, many viewers look past the production values and instead are focusing on the content. In fact, some consumers don’t care whether a video was created with a flip camera or a Kodak Zi8, as long as the attorney has useful information they need to know.
Having said that, I truly believe that good production values are crucial for attorneys who create video. The goal is to make the video production process transparent so the viewer focuses on the content only and not on your audio, your lighting or video techniques. In fact, I point this out in a monthly featured column I write for Technolawyer Blog called YouLaw that appears at http://blog.technolawyer.com. Each month I review and critique attorney videos to identify what’s good about them and what’s not. I also include tips on how to improve those videos that lack good technique.
http://www.LnnUsa.com produces very high-end videos for attorneys. Two styles:
1) News Segment to talk about a case
2) Up Close and Personal Segment.
I’d be happy to share any of my experiences along the way…Rick
Family lawyer, J. Lindsey Short, Jr says, “…I just got hired on a new family matter. Client is from out-of-state and was deciding between me and two other very good lawyers for representation . When I asked her why she hired me, (I hadn’t met her yet) she said she watched my video and was confident that I was the right choice. This works.”
– J. Lindsey Short, Jr.
Short, Carter & Morris
Board Certified in Family Law
all were different cases to one another.but all are informative
Great show of video being used well. While the post has some 6 months on it now, I think we can safely say that video is being used relatively extensively by many firms. Though while I agree that they’re great for firm bios, they work extraordinarily well as a medium to convey legal information that otherwise would be too laborious to deal with it in text. Lawbuddy at http://www.lawbuddy.com.au is such a platform that we’ve kicked off
Dan,
You mentioned that the videos are great medium to convey legal information. I agree that the videos are a fantastic way to convey useful information. However, I know you would agree that you certainly do not want to have the attorneys providing legal advice on video.
In fact, it is extremely important that lawyers do not provide legal advice in their videos for multiple reasons. First, the laws may have changed by the time someone watches a particular video and they may rely on incorrect information in that video. Secondly, if an attorney is providing legal advice in a video, a viewer may not recognize the correct context and may not correctly understand or interpret the implications from that advice.
I believe it is extremely important that lawyers give general information, but under no circumstance should they be providing specific legal advice.
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