Why lawyers need a professional website & blog design

Interesting discussion going on this weekend on the MacLaw listserv about how lawyers can do their own websites. I don’t get it.

Having spent 7 years in school, having spent ten’s, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars on tuition, and being in a profession where a professional image garners work, why would a lawyer even consider doing their own website? Of course, an exception would be if they happen to be a web designer/developer.

I don’t understand the logic that success is being able to get a website up cheaply on my own or on a $10/month service. Assume you have the good fortune of getting some people to your web site via high search engine rankings. That’s not necessarily good if you look like unprofessional. Bad advertising scares people away.

You’re in a profession where people place great confidences in you and pay you a lot of money. If I’m on the other side, and a lawyer has an unprofessional look on the Internet, I’m going to pause paying them a lot of money and placing my confidences in them. I’ll look around.

Today, the Internet is the great equalizer and it’s terribly inexpensive. When I practiced law, a full page yellow page ad (needed to keep up with other firms) cost me $60 to $75,000 a year. In 1996, we were paying $160,000 to cover the yellow page books we needed to be in in rural Wisconsin.

A good website or blog presence with all the SEO and consulting in the world won’t get to 10% of that. Why wouldn’t a lawyer pull out a credit card to get an effective Internet presence? You’ll pay the cost off in less than a year through the work you’ll attract. Heck, it’ll cost you more in lost work in having an unprofessional look. Plus you’ll have a presence you and your clients can be proud of.