Legal News from an Attorney

Attorney Spending on Law Websites

legaltech — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:41:19 +0000

Some law firms spend little money on a website. In fact, I know one law firm that doesn’t even have a website. This particular law firm has around 20-30 attorneys and practices in a niche area of business law.

Other firms spend a lot of money on attorneys. Just look at pricing on Adwords and you will see how much it costs for just one click. For example, some criminal defense attorneys will spend over $20 for one click in large metropolitan areas.

Other law firms, like this attorney, has a few brochure-style websites to provide information to city-specific web visitors like Edina Mn Attorney, Golden Valley Mn Attorney, St. Louis Park Mn Attorney, Minneapolis Law Attorney, Minnetonka Mn Attorney, Excelsior Mn Attorney, and Wayzata Mn Attorney.

Similar sites include Delano MN Attorney, Delano MN Lawyer, and Edina MN Business Attorney.

If you look at the cost of legal terms on Adwords, you can easily see that the expensive terms relate to consumer law, such as criminal law, bankruptcy, family law, personal injury, and other areas of law that unsophisticated individuals may seek.

On the contrary, the areas of law that sophisticated buyers might seek are less expensive. These areas include contract law, mergers and acquisitions, ownership and fiduciary issues, and other areas that businesses or sophisticated clients might seek. I believe the reason for this decrease in cost for such terms relates to the fact that most sophisticated legal clients don’t select an attorney by a mere web search. In other words, searches for these terms don’t result in new business for law firms, so law firms won’t pay much for them.

Law Website Pages for Attorneys

legaltech — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:09:52 +0000

What pages should an attorney have on a law website? Most attorneys have a contact page, about page, and a legal services page. Some attorneys have a bio page with information about each attorney.

Large law firms often have a news page, and possibly an articles page. Other pages may include a jobs or career section to post job openings.

Some law websites have a disclosure or disclaimer page with the usual legal jargon. Similarly, legal websites often include a privacy policy. The exact reason that these websites use a disclaimer or privacy policy is somewhat a mystery because I have never heard of a court ruling in favor of a plaintiff who alleged, for example, that a law firm estabished an attorney-client relationship with someone just because that person visited their website. However, attorneys continue to disclaim any attorney-client relationship with website visitors.

Consider, for example, these similar sites owned by a Minnesota attorney:

Another interesting note is that some law firms have a “legal services” page which goes by many names, including “practice areas,” “services,” “areas of law,” et cetera.

It is also difficult to know whether the major firms are trend setters, or whether the major law firms are stuck with established CMS software, so they are essentially followers, leaving small firms and solo attorneys to lead the innovation in website design.

Small vs. Large Attorney Websites

legaltech — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:57:15 +0000

A variety of law websites are focusing on the long tail keyword search. These websites tend to be small firms that focus on consumer law areas such as criminal law, family law, bankruptcy, and personal injury.

This approach to web marketing is interesting, but it is also costly. Maintaining many small domain names has high costs merely for domain name registration and renewals. More expensive is the cost of staff time to setup and maintain these websites.

For example, consider these attorney websites that utilize the domain name focusing on the long tail keyword (the cities here are fairly small). These first websites are focused on city names and the term attorney:

These law websites are focused on a city name and the term lawyer:

There is an argument that the better use of resources is building only one website, having a lot of valuable content on it, and having it well organized.

The key factor to evaluating these SEO approaches is the Google algorithm. In short, whatever approach the Google algorithm rewards, that approach is best. If Google sends more traffic to one large site than a small, micro site, then the large website is the better investment. Even if we knew which approach was best now, Google could change it’s algorithm. In the meantime, we can test which approach is best by doing searches in Google to see what types of sites Google shows on its results. For now, it seems the large law sites are doing best.

Lawyers Using WordPress as a CMS

legaltech — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:04:48 +0000

I’m going to start highlighting various legal websites that take an innovative approach to online marketing. The online methods may vary, but each site has something that can be gleaned as you consider the best way to prepare your legal website.

For example, here are a few websites that use WordPress at the CMS to prepare the web pages:

The benefits of using WordPress as a CMS (content management system) include the fact that the CMS is free, the site can be edited easily, the site has a built-in RSS feed, the site is SEO friendly, and the site can be customized with themes.

Of course, a legal site based on WordPress will not have the high-end features of an expensive CMS package. For small sites, WordPress works great. For large firms, WordPress probably would not be acceptable.

Do you use WordPress as a CMS? What do you think?