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No PDF files on lawyer sites

How many times times do you see PDF/Adobe files in the articles section of a lawyers Web site? Give me a break. What are law firms thinking? You sure do not see PDF files often on other Web sites.

First, until recently search engines could not find content on PDF files for Internet users looking for info on the topic covered in the article. Second when an Internet user clicks on the PDF file the link automatically opens a PDF file with no navigation to the main site. Users get a clumsy Adobe window and have no way to explore other pages of the lawyer's site for more information.

There is no good reason to have PDF files on law firm sites or blogs. Lawyers use PDF for briefs and the like so people can not change content. The same concern is not present for Internet marketing. The argument that another lawyer will take the content and use it in their marketing or educational materials is ridiculous. Most lawyers have scruples, the content is copyright protected and if even the copy was in PDF, it could be scanned or re-keyed in and used by law firms looking to steal content.

One of the reasons lawyers should put content on their site is so that the site can be found by search engines. Why put up content that often can not be seen by search engines?

I am not sure what other net users think but when I see PDF files for those long boring articles on a lawyer's site I think two things. One, another lazy law firm that does not have the time to make their site easy to use. Two, a law firm that thinks lawyers are so special they do not need to conform to the standards every other business site conforms to by getting their content into text format.

It is possible with Adobe authoring to put hyperlinks into content and some search engines do find terms in PDF. But unless its a document that people will normally print out and complete such as a a form, be smart and pay Internet users some respect, get your PDF documents converted into text and have them part of the navigation of your law blog or Web site.

  • pdfuser

    Surely it depends at least in part on the image a firm wants to project and, in some instances, the extent to which the firm would like greater flexibility in layout, font selection and so forth. Provided the PDF is not too large and is optimised, personally I doubt it's a problem. I would not dismiss PDF – to the contrary, I would embrace it as a worthy alternative or supplement. I doubt copying is really the main reason because, for the reasons you advance, PDF per se is no barrier to copying. Navigation is not really a problem for anyone who knows their way around a web browser and Acrobat, and if the PDF is of a good quality, you can often search the text for what you're looking for. And as you intimate, there are ways around the search engine issue you mention. PDF is, incidentally, widely used not only by law firms, but by government departments and other public authorities. I agree that for a subject specific lawyer blog the frequent use of PDF might be irritating (and more time consuming for the author) but I would suggest that that has more to do with the nature, culture and ease of blogging rather than the pdf format itself. Interesting issue.

  • http://lexblog.com Kevin O'Keefe

    You make some good points & thanks for continuing to comment on my blog.
    I may be off but I do not think the stature of the firm or whether we are dealing with a blog or Web site matter. It is some of the larger firm sites that tick me when they just put up pdf's that do not have the navigation elements of the law firm site nor the internal links to other sections of the site.
    Fonts and layout styles should be able to be controled by a good developer so the firm can get what they want as far as look and feel and in a printable form for those users wanting to print off a copy.
    For an informational flyer, a form, a white paper, a brochure or something of the sort, I agree PDF can be used well to supplement site offerings. But for general promotional info about the firm or educational info about the law I think a firm site should stay away from PDF.

  • PDFUSER

    Entirely agree (and I may have misunderstood the thrust of your original post). A site consisting only of PDFs, for the promotional and similar material you mention, might be enough to send a potential client running off to a competitor's more user friendly site.

  • http://www.myshingle.com Carolyn Elefant

    Kevin,
    I agree with your comments about PDF. Unfortunately, I am now a repeat offender – not just with PDF but Power Point as well (though I do include URLs in documents). After I give a talk or write an article, what I want to do most is get it up at my site as quickly as possible. Converting to PDF or using the power point tools to convert to HTML is easiest. I know that there are tools to convert WP and MS Word docs to HTML but the end result just doesn't look as good and requires a good bit of manipulation to put it into acceptable HTML (as for converting tables to HTML, that's a nightmare). Since I maintain my site myself, I don't have the time to do the conversion so PDF is the next best substitute.

  • http://lexblog.com Kevin O'Keefe

    Understand that pdf is easy to do but wouldn't running a web site on blog software make a snap to bring Word Perfect and Word Docs into html? I have often cut and pasted from such docs into a blog post & then did any formatting required with the blog html coding tools which are as easey to use as writing an email.

  • http://www.sharewarecheap.com/business-finance-word-processing/ pdf tool

    i can’t understand this!