Tagged with 'law firms'

We recently completed a website for Leonard, Street & Deinard which is built on the Drupal content management system (CMS).  At launch the site includes some effective functionality which was enabled largely due to the CMS.  Although Drupal-based sites are propagating rapidly on the Internet, to our knowledge, this site is one of the first enterprise law firm Drupal websites.  BigLaw, it seems has Drupal constipation. In fact, based on our own experience, do-it-the-way-they-did-it-yesterday (because it is safe) law firms continue to build new sites on proprietary content management systems for twice the price and half the functionality that is available to them.

Not surprisingly, the innovation in law websites comes from the entrepreneurial companies – both law firms and the professionals whose clients are law firms. In particular, we recently learned of Simplicity Law, a Littleton, Colorado based law firm with a differentiated set of services focused on small business. Their creative business model is represented by a forward looking site built on Drupal.

Most important for the Simplicity Law site is the effortless content presentation.  For example, a page featuring small business law articles includes a “most popular” list generated by Drupal’s ability to incorporate visitor behavior. Content is “tagged” for organization by the site administrator and access by the site visitor. And, bless their souls, site visitors are invited to add their comments to the articles presented. You can call this Web 2.0. I just think it is a site that initiates the client relationship by inviting engagement. You know, client centric.  BigLaw are you listening? No. I don’t think so.

I was discussing this site with one of my strategic partners in the LiftOff Law consortium, John Hellerman of Hellerman Baretz Communications. I was excited when John told me his firm’s new website was also built on Drupal CMS.  And indeed it was good to note his site features integrated social media and social forwarding capabilities. Additionally, one of my favorite practices Hellerman Baretz embraces is featuring (like, to the home page) recent posts headline from their blog. What I also especially liked was the seamless integration of the blog into the site.  Unlike some BigLaw firms who hold their blogs out at arm’s length (because they might bite? … or smell?) or call them not-so-clever things like “blawgs” (ha, ha, ha, uh, not funny) or simply bury them in a link from an attorney bio, the Hellerman Baretz blog is just another way of presenting content. The blog is prominently accessible through the site’s top level navigation as “Knowledge” Knowledge. How accurate. And useful.

It’s great to see this kind of website execution from professional services firm like Leonard Street & Deinard, Simplicity Law and Hellerman Baretz. We’re not claiming Drupal CMS is the Holy Grail. And we also know some of the things we and others try aren’t as effective as we thought they might be. But at least we try, revise and try again. In doing so we endeavor to share a common plane with our entrepreneurial law firm clients who are also evolving their client services to serve their market.

Should you put a link to LinkedIn on a biography page of a law firm website? That was the question posed recently on the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) listserv by Gail Lamarche Director of Marketing at Henderson, Franklin, Starnes & Holt.

I opined that, for professional services firms such as this law firm, the attorney biography page is the best thing we have as a “money page” on the website. Therefore, driving visitors away from the money page was, strategically, a bad idea. Moreover, it seemed if there were really content on LinkedIn that was valuable to the site visitor, then that information should be on the bio page. And if it wasn’t there, the bio page was somehow deficient.

Smug I was in the righteousness of my response. But I got an earful of dissent from LMA listserv contributors. The arguments are worthy of consideration:

Jayne Navarre, LawGravity, presented these points persuasively:

• Branding – The LinkeIn link is like a hip badge of Web 2.0 awareness
• Connections – LinkedIn provides a transparent view to an attorney’s connections, arguably a value to any prospective client
• Authoritative – Access to the LinkedIn Questions & Answers provides additional proof of the attorney’s authority

Heather Milligan, Director of Marketing at Barger Wolen emphasized that LinkedIn:

• Human – helps make the attorney “dynamic, human, liked”( in case we have any residual concerns about their humanity) and helps the attorney pass the “known, liked & trusted” test of prospective clients.
• Dimensional – And in rebuttal to my “bio is deficient” comment, Heather notes that to maintain a certain appearance consistent with other bios and the overall website, “the firm bio is controlled for content, style, etc….(while) LinkedIn is the perfect place where an attorney can bring together their outside interests and professional careers, making them more human and likeable.
• Connections – Perhaps the most valuable feature, LinkedIn is fundamentally a connecting tool that might serendipitously reveal a third party connection to the site visitor which presents all kinds of opportunity for real introduction.

It’s not a slam dunk either way. The answer to Gail’s original question seems to be, “It depends.” The circumstances dictate the strategy. I’ll give it a nod of possibility and something worth trying.  Yes, I know, “first I was against it, now I’m for it.” Thanks to the enlightenment of my marketing peers.

But I’ll have this last (never!) word.  Think doubly hard about sending your site visitor from the most valuable conversion page of  your site to an information wasteland. Don’t do it unless the LinkedIn profile to which you are sending visitors:

• provides a rich set of business connections
• demonstrates some effort to contribute authoritatively to the online Q&A discourse
• otherwise expands on the website attorney bio page
• (if possible) provides a path back

And whatever you do, measure the results. Professionals keep score.

Now you can link away to my LinkedIn profile.