Skip to content

Law firm websites : Tips for the new year

January 23, 2006

Frederick Faulkner, a great guy and Webmaster of the American Bar Association, provided his tips for law firm websites in article at LLRX. His practical tips were broken into 3 categories, the easy, the moderate, and the difficult. Here’s the highlights.

Easy

  • Marketing Copy. When was the last time you looked at the copy on your website? By revising your marketing copy you can give your website an intellectual face-lift. One tip when revising marketing copy – remember that visitors scan, more than read, long paragraphs of copy. Break your copy up into coherent chunks, and use sub-heads so visitors can hone in on what they are looking for quickly.
  • Attorney Bios & Photos. Update them as to any publications, significant cases they’ve won or been involved and visible pro bono or public service projects. Are you still using black and white photos of your attorneys? Maybe it is time for a new photo shoot where you can get color photos of your attorneys.
  • Contact Information, Directions, and Maps. Having a main office phone number (or client intake line), detailed directions to your firm, as well as a map, is a great client service. Don’t make them take the extra step to look you up on an Internet map service; give them one right on your website. A bonus to having this information on your site is that it will help your firm get picked up on local search results as well.

Moderate

  • Add a Blog. Blogs are a great way to demonstrate that your firm and attorneys are knowledgeable about current legal topics in the sectors/arenas you support. By adding a blog to your firm’s site, you can provide additional content in an easy to manage interface.
  • Add or Update Your Client Intake Form.
  • Basic Search Engine Optimization.
  • Descriptive tag with rich keywords first. Don’t have ‘My Law Firm’s Name: Page Title’. Rather, have ‘Page Title – My Law Firm’s Name.’
  • Use keywords in section headers. Use the keywords in the tag in the section headers on the page.
  • Proper metadata tags. Make sure you have a description and keywords meta tag on every page.

Difficult

  • Accessibility Compliance. If you are a law firm who specializes in cases for the disabled, your website should be optimized to be read by screen readers (for clients with limited vision). 
  • Usability Study. Sometimes a navigation structure or organization seems logical to you and your planning committee, but in reality it is not for the visitor. Going through a usability study can help optimize your site to convert visitors to clients in the quickest fashion possible.
  • Complete Website Redesign.

Source for post: Dennis Kennedy; And Dennis you may score me some points with my wife by suggesting I look like Jack Bauer on 24 in my picture on my blog.

Posted in: