Law Firm Websites - The Good Enough Website

Marketing a law practice is a complicated and time-consuming bit of business. It requires a strong set of soft skills to encourage other attorneys and former clients to refer business to you repeatedly, no easy feat in a state with as many lawyers as North Carolina. On top of those soft skills, it also requires at least a modicum of tech acumen to establish and maintain some kind of digital presence that reinforces your in-person efforts.

Perfect is the Enemy of the Good 

A lot of attention gets paid to the handful of law firm websites (particularly those in practice areas that serve individual, rather than business clients) that belong to extremely dedicated marketers. You know the ones I am talking about: they have huge sites festooned with client reviews and Youtube videos and so on. The sites are so big and involved that they can only be the work of a firm that values marketing their practice at or near the top of everything they do each day.

Good for them, marketing works. And they often have the large legal teams and multiple offices to prove it. 

The thing is, for all the rest of the mere digital mortals trying to do a good job serving their clients and running their firm – the folks for whom marketing is not the very first thing on their to-do list each day – those huge sites can be intimidating. Off-putting. Depressing. Even if you wanted a site like that, it is overwhelming to think about how you would ever get your tiny site there.

The good news is, you really don’t have to. And shouldn’t try.

Looking at those law firm website ninjas… your law firm website doesn’t need to become one of those for you to be competitive. If you benchmark against those huge marketing sites, you’re going to convince yourself not to do anything to improve your firm website. And that’s a mistake. 

The key here is to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don’t decide since you can’t have the biggest, highest-ranked law firm website in the state that it isn’t worth doing some housekeeping on your own site to make sure it is the best version of your firm’s digital avatar it can be.

The Good Enough Website 

What you’re looking for is a website that is good enough. Let me tell you what I mean.

In all probability, your firm website is not going to win you any business. Not one new client. In order to have a website that actually attracts and helps to convert website visitors into clients, you really do have to have one of those mega sites.

What you need instead is much easier and more attainable. You need a good enough website.

You do a good job serving your clients and you are well-respected in your professional community, and those two things win you lots of referrals for new clients. Over time, those things form a reputation and that reputation is the backbone of the actual marketing efforts of a substantial majority of lawyers. Heck, once in a while you may get a referral from an opposing party in a matter, which a lot of lawyers will tell you is one of the most gratifying referrals you can get.

Those are the marketing efforts of lawyers who have decided to practice law first and market a law firm second. 

But even still, when someone refers a new client to you, one of the firs things that client is going to do is to look you up. And they are going to see your firm website. If there’s clipart and a grainy photo of you from you from your first year as a lawyer and a bio that is slightly less warm and engaging than the police blotter… that’s not a great look.

Your firm website just needs to be good enough so that when one of these referrals looks you up, they find a site that is as professional and engaging as you are. It doesn’t need to be huge and fancy and filled with marketing gimmickry… it just needs to be good enough.

Here are six quick tips for things you can do to your current website to make sure it rises to the level of good enough. None of them are expensive or especially time consuming or require the work of a team of “creatives” to remake your “brand identity”. You can do them in any order you want; in fact, you’re probably already doing several of them. But consider them a quick checklist on how to make sure your law firm website is helping your referral generation and not hurting it.

1. Use a professional, recent headshot photo

One of the lowest hanging fruits of updating your website is to update the photos on it. Whether through neglect or vanity, there are an awful lot of lawyer headshots on websites that are years if not decades old. That discrepancy causes a little weirdness and friction in your initial consultation with a client.

Avoid the weirdness and update the photos. It is surprisingly cost-effective to hire a local freelance photographer to do headshots. You can find folks through freelance sites like Thumbtack or Fiverr or just ask around. It’s shocking what a difference an updated photo makes when a professional takes it with the optimal lighting and background.

2. Write a bio your potential clients want to read

There’s a tendency to go all “just the facts ma’am” on law firm bios. I went to school here, I won that award and so on. These are the kinds of things we as lawyers think are important but they may or may not be what your clients and potential clients wish they knew about you.

Ask a couple of your clients about your bio. Ask them what they wish was in there when they first checked out your site. And update your bio to be a little less a recitation of facts and a little more of a narrative that your clients will warm to.

One sidenote: there is a secondary tendency among web designers to convince lawyers to do cutesy bios that are the exact opposite of most lawyer bios. You’ve seen them: “If Erik wasn’t a lawyer he would have invented SpaceX. He also likes collecting antique sewing machines.” There’s a line between warm and kooky. Stay on this side of it.

Don’t go too kooky. Just be a human. 

3. Record one video for your site 

Recording videos is a nightmare. You have all the problems of photography combined with performance. It’s very easy to get wrong and pretty intimidating to get into. But a good video of you can really break down barriers of potential clients picking up the phone to schedule a consultation.

My advice: try one video. A welcome message or whatever small thing you’d say to all clients. It doesn’t have to be the Gettysburg address. Just figure out how to get one, short video right and pop it on your site. Then, later, if you want to experiment with more video marketing, you will have already gotten your feet a little wet.

4. Include a link to scheduling software

Make it as easy as possible to schedule with you, especially for an initial consultation. Using a scheduling software, like Calendly, can really reduce friction and make it easier for potential clients to schedule. It’s super easy to embed right on your website and they cost somewhere north of about $100 per year. Give it a try.

5. Include one form, article or checklist you give out frequently to clients

If you have some bit of information, or a checklist, or an article that you frequently give out to clients, try popping that on your website as a free resource. It doesn’t have to be life changing. Just something that when someone asks, you can point them to a page on your site and say, “you can download my white paper on that right here.” Ideally, this will be some piece of intellectual property you already have made. So, getting it on the site should take little time and even less money. 

The idea is, along with your one video, it’s a first step toward thinking about your site as a resource for your potential clients.

6. Rethink your domain

Domains (the website address for your firm, like MazzoneLaw.com or whatever) are tough. Like real estate, there are a limited number of .com domains available and if you missed out on your first, second, and third choices, the chance that those are ever going to become available are not great. 

Still, your domain address matters. It sends the very first signals about your firm’s digital presence, before potential clients even navigate to your website. Being camped out on a lesser known TLD (a “top level domain” that isn’t a .com) creates more opportunity for people to navigate to the wrong website and never see yours in the first place. Long domains, complicated domains with inscrutable acronyms, attempts to brand your firm with a name other than the firm name (slicklawyers.com, e.g.) all introduce some confusion and chaos into your firm’s digital life.

If you missed out on the domain sweepstakes and you ended up with some sub-optimal domain, consider making the following changes: 

1. change to a .com domain
2. pick a domain name that as closely mirrors your firm name as possible
3. unless you are highly committed to a trade name as an alternative (or primary) brand for your firm, consider dropping your trade name
4. if you have a hard to spell name, register the commonly misspelled alternative domains as well and point them to your site
5. keep it as short as possible
6. avoid tacking on law or nc to the end of the domain if possible (it just means there’s some other site out there that folks may accidentally navigate to instead 

You may not be able to do all or even most of these. Sometimes your stuck with the domain you have. But if you have a clunky domain (you will know you have one when you have to repeat it multiple times to people to get them to understand how to navigate to your site) it might be worth the hassle of a change.

Summary 

You don’t have to become an internet marketing guru to make some small, high-impact changes to your firm website. Try one or two of these changes above and see if it makes some small difference. If you’d like to talk through these, as always, Lawyers Mutual insureds are entitled to three free practice management consults with me and I’d be happy to try to help. Best of luck!