When are Law Firms Going to Take the Internet Seriously?
As I have for eight+ years, my goal is to contribute to the improvement of the effectiveness of law firm websites. And the truth is they have improved immeasurably. But, compared to both the potential as well as the greater business-to-business marketplace, there is a huge gap. Here’s my unabashed assessment.
Law firms, by and large, your websites are stiff. They are also ineffective. I know this because I work for other non-law businesses and, in comparison, you spend too much and get too much junk in return. Collectively you spend millions of dollars for some of the most ineffective product found online. Few lawyers know what an effective website is or how to determine if one is effective. Legal marketers are often at the mercy of their clueless lawyers. But that’s no excuse. Most have done little to improve their knowledge of internet best practices. Our legal industry recognizes some of the most abominable products and fail to provide leadership in this arena. And web developers, well, we really have no excuse. You know better. Unless you are really just that bad.
I recognize this is quite an indictment. I’ll accept all push-back if you’ll join me to begin to take the Internet seriously. That is, make your website a strategic part of your business development, recruiting and client relationship management.
Why am I so agitated? And what forms the basis of my sentiment? I just spent 3 days at the Legal Marketing Association annual conference talking to legal marketers and having them share with me their websites, web strategies and their website challenges. I encountered frustration, ignorance and indifference.
- There’s the marketing manager of the 500 person international law firm who is responsible for her firm’s website. And this represents about 40% of her job responsibility. The rest is as a data analyst. Her CMO pays little attention to the website. This scenario was common.
- The award winning law firm website whose attorney Facebook pages are more prominent in search than the firm’s attorney bios. And try to print a bio page or any page on the site for that matter. Ha, ha, ha. No print style design. (Not to mention the scores of sites that cannot be viewed properly in Firefox, mainly because most law firms don’t use Firefox browsers. Talk about being inward focused!)
- The well-publicized failure of Holland and Knight, to name one firm among many others who have failed to protect their trade name on Twitter. Twitter.com/hklaw is now the “source of information, Articles and Complaints involving Holland & Knight Attorneys” and out of the control of the law firm. Yeah, but Twitter has such a funny name, who can take it seriously (tongue positioned firmly in cheek).
- The bulk of law firm websites that have no performance metrics running on their site. And if they do have these metrics, nobody knows what to measure or what to do with those metrics except generate reports for management. Action steps? Forget it. None taken.
- Gross cluelessness about what LinkedIn is or how to respond to an invitation to connect when they receive this invitation from a client.
- Mass ignorance about search engine optimization, what it means, how to achieve it and what to do with the traffic when they get it.
OK, so that’s what I encountered with the websites that are already built, but the next generation will be better, right? No, not right. Let’s look at the law firm website RFP’s we are getting today. First, law firms tell us they want a good looking website. Now that’s good to know. Because we were thinking of giving them something really ugly. So thanks for clueing us in. And they even want intuitive navigation. Imagine that! But intuitive navigation to what objective? No conversion objective. It reminds me of the joke about the dead atheist – all dressed up but nowhere to go.
Recently, excellent & respected consultants from Wicker Park Group publicly shared an executive summary of a study they conducted on behalf of web solution provider Hubbard One. And they astounded us with the “discovery” that General Counsel look at law firm websites. (This characterization is from the response from the legal market, not the presentation from Wicker Park or Hubbard One to whom we appreciate all shared information) “Almost 90% of them agreed that a law firm’s website plays a key role in influencing a purchasing decision”. You’ll have to forgive me if this was like asking if the Pope is Catholic or if bears poop in the woods. I mean, did we really have to ask to know that answer? Unfortunately, I guess we did.
So I’m going to make a prediction and then make a simple request. My prediction is that one day a business to business law firm, not a plaintive firm, will discover that the strategic use of the Internet gives them a galloping advantage over their competition. They will put together a public website together with a presence on third party sites and leveraging social media, content marketing and feedback metrics and assemble a strategic assault on their market that will make them an unassailable force. And in doing so they will demonstrate how a law firm can return value to all their partners and associates.
And here’s my request: Just once I want to get a website RFP from a law firm that says, in essence, that they don’t care if their website looks like yesterday’s garbage and has the navigation of something designed by Rube Goldberg. All they care about is that the website make a measurable contribution to their business proposition by making the phone ring, bringing people to their events, signing up people for their newsletter and all the other meaningful conversion events that they have developed. There are thousands of law firms out there. I’m just looking for this one. I know you exist. Call me. Please.
