website considerations for law firms
DESCRIPTION
Website Best Practices for Law Firms The legal industry is changing—global mergers and consolidation, new web, email and social technologies are evolving dynamically along with new expectations from clients as well as employees. Digital capabilities, particularly a firm’s website, provide the first tool to engage existing clients, new clients and employees. But for more than a decade, law firms have considered their websites as just another brochure, not as a way for clients to interact with the firm. Law firms must establish an online presence to promote their brand, facilitate better engagement between the brand and the consumer, recruit new talent and ultimately, acquire new clients.TRANSCRIPT
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Table of Contents
Introduction----------------------------------------------------Page 3
User Experience-----------------------------------------------Page 3
Biographies-----------------------------------------------------Page 8
Search------------------------------------------------------------Page 11
Client Acquisition---------------------------------------------Page 15
Microsites-------------------------------------------------------Page 17
Mobile------------------------------------------------------------Page 20
Conclusion------------------------------------------------------Page 24
Abstract The legal industry is changing—global mergers and consolidation, new web, email and social
technologies are evolving dynamically along with new expectations from clients as well as employees.
Digital capabilities, particularly a firm’s website, provide the first tool to engage existing clients, new
clients and employees. But for more than a decade, law firms have considered their websites as just
another brochure, not as a way for clients to interact with the firm. Law firms must establish an online
presence to promote their brand, facilitate better engagement between the brand and the consumer,
recruit new talent and ultimately, acquire new clients.
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INTRODUCTION When we talk about “Marketing the Law Firm”, there are many aspects to it. The days of relying purely
on “word of mouth” to grow your practice has faded into inconspicuous obscurity. The Internet has now
become the new yellow page and so much more. Digital Marketing has added a whole new dimension to
Law Firm Marketing, it has revolutionized the way you reach your audience - when they need you, and
show them the value you can provide.
The website is probably the most important component of the overall digital experience, others being
email, mobile, social media and many more. Website is typically the first thing that people would like to
take a look at when they are considering some sort of engagement with your brand. In a recent survey
of general counsel, 100% of respondents indicated that they always review a firm's website when
evaluating and purchasing legal services, while 90% of respondents reported that lawyer biographies are
the most important section of a law firm's website. Amidst the big buzz about social media, websites still
remains the mainstay of a Law Firm’s online presence. Whether via Google, word of mouth referrals or
any other source prospective clients come to your website to know about the Firm’s experience, track
record and determine whether your attorneys have the required expertise to meet their needs.
This white paper will explore some of the key focus areas, points to remember, some quick fixes and
tangible things that a Law Firm marketer can do on a short term basis, which are essential and can add
considerable value to your Law Firms website from a strategic point of view.
USER EXPERIENCE User Experience has a huge impact on how people perceive your organization, how they perceive your
brand and how they are able to engage with it because as already mentioned in most of the cases
website provides the first impression or the first engagement that people have with the brand.
Recently Forrester did a survey research which involved reviewing 15000 websites to determine how
these websites will meet the baseline requirements form a user experience perspective. The result
shows only 3 % (45) earned a passing score. This ascertains the fact that while most websites are
remaining static the expectation of clients and customers are moving forward very quickly.
User experience is the combination of a variety of things. It encompasses a broad range of disciplines
like branding, usability, design and Information Architecture with an objective of delivering satisfying
and engaging experience. Usability basically means how people get to use the website, Information
Architecture refers to how the content is structured and presented in the pages and Design helps us to
provide the window dressing around all that information and provides something compelling from a
visual and aesthetics perspective. All of these ultimately result in the satisfaction people get when they
come to the website.
What are the Culprits of Poor User Experience? “Problems with text legibility, task flow, links to privacy and security policies, and use of space have
dominated the top failure list since 2005” - Forrester, 2012
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Things regularly found are:
Crowded page—lack of white space around elements
Misaligned site map—menus do not reflect the importance and relevance of information
Hierarchical menus—difficult to use multi-tier navigation
Deep site navigation—visitors click 3-4 levels to get to the information they seek
Search—overwhelming, irrelevant search results
Sitemap:
From a Sitemap’s perspective, which is about the organization of the structure of your website, the
things that are important are:
Does the order of the main menu reflect what is important to visitors?
Does information hierarchy align with expectations?
The most prominent thing in the site structure should be the thing which is perceived as most important
to the target audience. If you look at the figure above, the high level menu highlights people, practices,
publications & news etc. According to research,” people” – attorneys, law professionals, etc is the
number one place that people go to when they visit a Law firm website second is practices. So “people”
comes right up first in the menu and then comes “practices” and then “publications & news” and so on.
Thus creating the proper order that promotes correct engagement can make it convenient, natural and
bring in the feel good factor.
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Navigation:
From the perspective of Navigation, the things that are important are:
How deep must visitors go to get to what they need?
Do menus support a “first glance” overview of navigation options?
The above figure(a non law website) illustrates the concept of a mega menu, it solves a specific problem
around exposing people to all the options they have without having to go down to each one of those
middle drop downs. You might have experienced sites which have two or more additional dropdown
links where you have to go back and forth to find specific information and this makes the experience
similar to going through a maze in a corn field. Thus the objective of the mega menu is to bring in a flat
structure by exposing all the options and provide a better usability and experience.
Page Structure and Typography It is a combination of a variety of things which involves taking chunks of information and properly
structuring them so that they make the perfect sense. From the perspective of page structure &
typography the things that are important are:
Is the information structured in order as is followed by people’s eyes?
Does it have sufficient white space to make the information stand out?
Is there an appropriate use of font size, type & color and line height to guide the eye?
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The above figure illustrates a bio page from a law firm website. This is basically an example of what not
to do. There is too much information on the page making it difficult to read, it is not aesthetically
pleasing, and in addition to that the main information is surrounded by a lot of details which confuses
the reader in terms of where to start and how you want the eye to follow (or be guided)
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The above figure illustrates another bio page from a different Law firm website here the structure of the
page, the amount of content and even the use of color and type of font insinuates a subtle hint about
where you want to draw your eyes. In this page right below the name you have the key contact
information i,e the phone number. Instead of providing the email address in words they have icons.
Moreover another very important aspect of this page compared to other bio pages (where you may find
a list of links that take you to accolades, affiliations, etc and eventually you get lost amidst a whole lot of
information) is that in here they have provided the overview and some basic tabs on the top specific to
affiliation, honors and speeches. This really provides a much cleaner experience. Then to the right is the
photo which is clear and matches the theme of the page in terms of background, clarity and focus. And
finally below the photo they have given information about education, employment, etc in a compact
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way. All these elements make it a perfect example of a very well executed site in terms of page structure
and typography.
BIOGRAPHIES Biographies are the key thing when it comes to your Law firm websites, it is what that lures the
prospects to your website.
“45 percent of current in-house counsel (current clients) review their attorney’s biography
periodically” - BTI Study, 2011
"56% of website traffic goes to attorney biographies" - The Great Jakes Blog, 2010
The figure above talks about the thought process of clients and customers when they buy/avail the
services of a Law Firm/Lawyer. This can be considered as a scenario when buyers start looking for
different law firms or change the law firm they are doing business with. They initially begin by taking
referrals, they google and research information over the internet, they visit the visit the respective
lawyers websites & biographies and compare the short listed lawyers bios side by side. They may call a
few of them before finally selecting a lawyer over the others because the references where strong and
the experience that the biography presented was current and relevant.
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Thus it is important to get your attorney out there from a find-ability perspective. This essentially means
being easily found in google and making that happen is not very difficult but it does require some
efforts. Given below are a few things that we need to keep in mind for enabling and enhancing the
chances of your attorney’s biographies being found in google.
Another important aspect which is critical when it comes to merchandizing your attorneys is getting
your message delivered – this can be done by the following ways:
Make it personal—start with a great image that engages
Make it convenient—organize information from most commonly viewed to least
Make obvious—the most popular information, like contact details should be at the top
The image or the Photo of the attorney plays a crucial role in the overall look and feel of the biographies,
the pointers given below are essential while considering the best fit image of the your key asset:
Formality is opening up to personality—let your people shine through
Reflect the culture of the firm, while letting the person be the focus
Consider stance, dress, color and overall tone
Do not sacrifice on quality or size—this may be the attorney’s first impression
Show up on Google
Google typically pulls the
first 150 characters in a
lawyer's bio for the search
results
Use the right words
Be descriptive and
differentiating—what
makes you different
Do not forget the links
In-bound and out-
bound links
determine
relevancy
Link to pages
within your sites,
or external articles,
accolades and
news
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Are Ratings and reviews next? – A lot of Law Firms are considering this or having discussions
regarding this. At the present moment this may be somewhat controversial as a topic but it is still
something to be aware of and worth keeping in mind. The phenomenon may be termed as Amazon
Attorneys – only from the stand point that Amazon has really set the bar for this notion of ratings.
All of us have probably gone to Amazon to purchase something and in the process we might have
sorted the listed items on the basis of number of starts or read the reviews to judge the value of the
product. This may be the direction in which the attorney biographies are heading in the near future
as it is going that way for doctors, dentists and other professionals. So more of it may be possible in
future and there is no doubt about the fact that it will definitely provide an opportunity to connect
to your audience. Moreover it can be considered as a differentiator if your law firm decides to step
up and implement it. The first mover advantage is up there for grabbing as very few firms are
actually doing it in a big way.
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SEARCH: Search is the functionality which will allow your readers to search the site for information. This utility
encourages engagement with your web visitors. However it can be one of those prickly areas for a lot of
firms who have older search technologies and did not feel the need to upgrade it. The facts given below
ascertain the importance of search when it comes to site navigation.
"90 percent of companies report that search is the No.1 means of navigation on their site" - Search
Technology: Resurrecting the Web’s Workhorse, Jupiter Media Metrix
"82 percent of visitors use site search to find the information they need" - Specialize Your Site’s Search,
Forrester Research
The figure on the left shows a law firm
website with search in it. They have
made the search appearance obvious
as it is where most people expect
search to be. This is a good example of
implementing search in your Law firm
website.
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A few things which can add value from a search perspective are:
Make it obvious
Put it where people expect
Make it look like a search box
Make it large
Make it large enough hold the longest attorney name or practice
Make it consistent
Same place on every page
Same behavior on every page
In order to make search more effective we need to think from a content perspective as well. This
essentially means – different search for different content. Things like practices & services and general
information like about us, contact us, etc are generally said to be hierarchical content. Then there are
things like biographies, publications, news, events etc these are referred to as flat content. In a typical
firm 20% would be hierarchical content where as rest 80% are flat content.
The website in this figure (not a law
firm) has done a better job when it
comes to search because it is huge
and you cannot miss it. It can
accommodate larger search terms,
names, phrases etc.
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For hierarchical content people prefer using the menu, sub-menu, mega menu, etc which are a part of
the information architecture. In the case of flat contents it is difficult to find the exact information and
narrow down your search. Thus we need to apply filters and use faceted search. Flat contents constitute
large volumes of data and they are associated with many attributes, so filtering by attributes can narrow
the search quickly. Moreover the structure of the advanced search or search by filters should be
consistent as this makes it easier to show specific details in search results.
Another interesting fact which is associated with search is that:
"49 percent of visitors do not bother to reformulate their search queries after the first failed results" -
Jakob Nielsen, 2011
Each successive required search query will lose more visitors and it is evident that getting a first-time
satisfactory search results in greater engagement.
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The key capabilities to get the first-time search results right:
Auto-Suggest
Recommend content that does exist in your website
Synonyms
Make smart substitutions
Auto-correct
Fix misspellings on-the-fly
Avoid “No Results”
Phrase-based searches
Deliver relevant results around multi-word searches
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CLIENT ACQUISITION As far as the Law industry is concerned they have not always considered digital to be the way to acquire
clients. However recent trends show that – this is changing
"80 Percent of executives aged 50 or below will use the internet daily to seek business information
(that figure is still over 60% for those aged over 50)" - Forbes, 2010 - So there is no reason why they
shouldn’t come to your website to seek business information and thus you should bolster your brand
and highlight your attorney’s expertise around some problem solving areas.
"2 million regular readers of the McKinsey quarterly, over 40,000 Facebook fans, and around 40,000
followers on Twitter" - SRC Associates, 2010 - Mckinsey is a great example of a professional services
organization doing a fantastic job of growing their base of fans and readers around their thought
leadership approach.
Your website is the ideal vehicle for thought leadership marketing (TLM) to drive client Acquisition
through engagement. The figure below illustrates how to go about TLM:
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According to Gartner Thought Leadership Marketing (TLM) is:
"The principle of TLM is simple enough: You give away a little valuable intellectual property to
establish your potential usefulness to the client, in the expectation that the client will use your
expertise and services" - Rolf Jester, VP, Gartner, 2010
Practically this means, when you create valuable information in terms of white papers, webinars, blogs,
etc that provides the stimulus for people come to the website and download that white paper or
register for that webinar. Then people will provide you some information about themselves like their
contact information, organization, industry, problem areas etc. (explicitly or implicitly) through these
information we can profile the individual prospects and nurture them accordingly.
In terms of making thought leadership matter to the client the figure given below provides some of the
key takeaways:
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Another thing which is crucial for the thought leadership is the find-ability aspect of it. Given below are a
few considerations for engaging and enticing the audience in terms of thought leadership marketing:
Find-ability (SEO)—prospects use Google search to find solutions to problems
Use industry vernacular that people would use to describe their problem
Use tools like Google Insight and Trends to confirm your key word relevance to a market
Gate the content—require registration before access—they give to get
Follow-up with email to create a closed-loop marketing cycle—create nurturing relationship
MICROSITES Microsites are typically used to add a specialized group of information. The main distinction of a
microsite is its purpose and specific cohesiveness as compared to the broader overall parent website.
The typical characteristic of a microsite is given below:
Small task and message-focused websites
Landing pages (1-2 pages) support lead capture, typically from email or PPC campaigns
Larger micro-sites support branding and SEO campaigns with targeted messaging
Typically are stand-alone with their own URL
The Attorney Microsite - How can Attorneys use them?
Complements the main website biography
Provide greater detail about themselves personally, their matters and documents
Becomes blogging platform to communicate and interact with the public
Each attorney can personalize the experience
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The Practice Microsite - How can Practice use them?
Deliver industry or problem-specific messages to a targeted audience
Build a following around the thought leadership first, firm brand second
Host a moderated forum to support the overall targeted discussion to establish credibility and
trust
Develop deep SEO to drive acquisition in the target market
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Key considerations for Microsites Create unique content
Content duplication (copying) between the main website and the microsites will lower page
rankings within Google for all sites
Inventory obsolete microsites to understand their content when compared to the main site—
these forgotten sites can damage rankings
Keep it focused, keep it simple
Targeted content results in targeted visitors—maintain tight, guided editorial control to reach
the right audience through search
Drive people to take action—register for an event, download a white paper or to call you to
discuss their concerns
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MOBILE It is a big part of the overall strategy for most of the firms.
"The number of SMARTphone users exceeds 100 million within the first three months of 2012" -
comScore, Inc. 2012
"Nearly one in four smartphone owners (or 24%) also using tablets during the first three months in
2012" - comScore, Inc. 2012
Thus it’s evident that Mobile devices have drastically impacted the online landscape. However when it
comes to mobile apps, it has pros and cons and 90% of the times it’s observed there is no particular
need for mobile apps.
Do law firms need Mobile Apps? – Consider this:
Apps are expensive: Must be written for iPhone, Droid, Blackberry
Apps are task-centric: Ideally suited for repetitive tasks people need to perform while mobile
Apps are hard to find: Apps are only found in a market
Apps are cool: They position your firm as future facing
People really need to focus on a mobile optimized site and there are certain ways of accomplishing that
so that the effort that goes on in building this can also be leveraged for other platforms. Figure given
below is a great example of a mobile optimized site. This is a firm base out of Vancouver, Canada and
you can see how beautifully they have organized it through simple menus, clean appearance and with
core functionalities.
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However we really need to ask ourselves – Do we really need the core functionalities in the mobile
optimized sites. As a most of the folks when they have a phone in hand they are primarily looking for
information like address, map, phone number and name.
Adopting a Mobile-first Strategy The Mobile-first strategy is more of thinking about your website from a mobile perspective first and
growing it out from there so that we don’t have to put the cart before the horse – which most of us have
been doing and now with all these tablets, smart phones and other mobile devices coming up we are
scratching our heads figuring out how this is going to work.
This strategy provides us with the mindset that sky is the limit and as more and more new devices come
out, new formats come out – the website is designed to be responsive and adaptive to all these
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“We really need to shift now to start thinking about building mobile first. This is an even bigger shift
than the PC revolution.” - Kevin Lynch, CTO Adobe
“We're just now starting to think about mobile first and desktop second for a lot of our products” - Kate
Aronowitz, Design Director Facebook
Thus we need to think about the website as MOBILE site first and start with mobile as the premise for
our site.
Opportunity: A growing use of tablets and smartphones
Constraints: Screen size, Network speed, Modes of use
Capabilities: Location (GPS), Visual input, Gesturing
Responsive Design All these point us to the notion of Responsive design, where we think of one website instead of separate
mobile and desktop sites. This is a new technology that has come up over the last year or so and is being
adapted very quickly.
One website: Not a separate mobile and desktop site
HTML5 & CSS3: New technologies to create sites that respond to screen sizes and orientation
Future proofing: Do you know what is next?
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The figure above show the example of responsive web design for Boston Globe website – here you can
actually take your browser window and shrink it to see how beautifully it can really change the size into
something that fits into a tablet and also a smart phone.
The above figure illustrates the responsive web design for a Law firm website - Thorsteinssons LLP based
out of Vancouver, Canada. This is a great example of a law firm website changing its size to fit as per the
device requirements.
Finally the figure below provides you with a comparison in terms of separate mobile site vs. Responsive
Web design as per your business needs.
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CONCLUTION An engaging website is a key asset of your overall digital strategy. In order to maximize the contributions
of a website to the Law Firm’s overall marketing, business development and promotional efforts, it is
essential that law firm websites are transformed into best-in-class engaging websites. As the dynamics
of the legal industry is changing it emphasizes the fact that Law firm’s websites have to come out of the
enigma of being static depositories of information. The focus on the key areas mentioned in this white
paper can significantly add enormous value to extract the best out of a law firm website and channelize
the overall digital marketing approach from a strategic point of view.