A blog is probably the most effective way to drive potential clients to your (virtual) door. Well-written, attractive, and well-configured blogs consistently appear at the top of search engine results, and often result in earned media exposure for the blogger.

What is a blog?

A blog is just a frequently-updated website. It is a simple, easy way of publishing content to the web. Many of the websites you visit every day (CNN and the New York Times, for example) probably have the bones of a blog, but you may not even know it.

Earn great search engine results

Picture your ideal potential client. When faced with a legal problem or a need for legal advice, how will your potential ideal client find a lawyer?

Only a tiny percentage—11% or less—of middle-class Americans use the phone book. Most start with Google.

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Jay Foonberg reported that, as of 2006, only 22% of blue-collar Americans and 11% of middle-class Americans use the phone book to find a lawyer. And that was two years ago.

If you don’t market online, that means you are ignoring 80-90% of your potential future clients.

And not just the younger ones. According to the AARP, 52% of americans 62-71 are online, using search engines (59%), staying in touch (59%, presumably with social networking sites as well as email and IM).

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Like time-share shysters and ultra high-end restaurants, most lawyers prefer not to advertise their fees. Oh, many attorneys advertise their hourly rate, but that does not really help consumers, who have no idea how long a task should take.

Why not?

Sure, you have a better chance of getting a client to sign a retainer once they walk in the door, so many attorneys focus on that. But if potential clients already know what you charge before they walk in the door, your potential client:client ratio should approach 1:1.

Will you lose clients if you give up the opportunity to give your “spiel” to each one? I suppose that, in part, depends on your spiel.

I have seen criminal defense attorneys whose sales method seems to be scaring the hell out of potential clients, then trying to find out how much money the client could beg, borrow, or steal for a retainer fee. That is definitely harder to do through a website or phone book ad.

If, on the other hand, your strategy is to be straightforward, up front, and consistent, I think advertising your fees—to the extent you can—could only help. We’ll see, anyway. I am giving it a try to see how it goes.

Ah, Avvo – the new rating system lawyers love to hate. Lawyers instinctively do not like Avvo because it looks like they are using a secret formula that measures lawyer quality to try to make money off of hooking prospective clients up with lawyers.

But, for a moment, change Avvo to a non-profit, consumer rights and information organization, like Consumer Reports.  This non-profit’s sole mission is to help prevent consumers of legal services from being ripped off by dishonest, incompetent, inefficient, unpleasant, or greedy lawyers.  But how would one do that?

Short of some sort of court-sanctioned audit process that reviewed a lawyers briefs and transaction documents, sat in on random client meetings and negotiations, talked to the receptionist, and went to trials, it’s nearly impossible to accurately get an objective rating of a lawyer’s quality.

So how do consumers, who may only use a lawyer once or twice in their lives, pick a lawyer? Most would say get a recommendation from a friend or relative.  But of course, the friend or relative only used the lawyer once or twice themselves, and a lawyer’s good work in one case is really very little indication of whether the lawyer will do a good job in your case.

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Most attorney bio pages are nothing special. Mine, for example, is basically just a CV.

Not at the Van Winkle Law Firm in North Carolina. Each attorney there has a “professional” and a “personal” page with more about what they do when not at work.

Adventures in Lawyer Advertising: It’s Dress-Up Barbie Time! | Above The Law

Every Friday for the last few weeks I have posted interviews with solo and small firm attorneys who talked to me about their marketing strategies, online and offline, high tech and old school. Today’s (belatedly posted) interview with Tom Tuft is the last interview.

My last interviewee is Tom Tuft, of Tuft & Arnold Law Office, PLLC. We actually collaborated on a CLE for the Ramsey County Bar Association this winter, which was well-attended and well-reviewed. Like me, Tuft is interested in technology, although he is a gadget man (he carried a Fujitsu ScanSnap in his briefcase), while I prefer one gadget—my laptop.

The Tuft & Arnold website is a good example of a clean, nice-looking, and effective website. It has a lot of information about the firm, its practice areas, and some “handouts” for prospective clients.

Like my own practice, Tuft’s clients tend to hire him only once. This kind of practice requires a fundamentally different marketing approach from a practice with clients who have ongoing legal needs. Instead of cultivating current contacts, one must constantly try to reach new people and new markets.

Keep reading for the full interview.

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Okay, so you are comfortable with online privacy issues, you have spent some time on Wikipedia and Google learning about the “geek stuff,” and now you want to get going and market your law firm online. Obviously, you want to start with square one: a website. And a website is the logical next step in online marketing, so let’s get to it.

When I say “static website,” I mean a normal website: a set of web pages with content that rarely changes, and could be described accurately as a sort of dynamic business card and resume rolled into one. Many people will throw in a brochure-y article or two, but the bottom line is that a static website rarely changes. (A “dynamic website,” by contrast, could be a blog, wiki, or other frequently-updated website.)

A static website is online marketing 101. Every firm should have one, almost without exception. Most Americans have internet access in one form or another. Many will get referrals to more than one lawyer, who they will try to find online. The ones they find will get phone calls. The others probably will not.

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When it comes to marketing your practice, it is essential to know your audience and focus your marketing on the needs of your potential client base. Take Peter John, a 1998 graduate of the LSU Law Center who holds an MBA and, apparently, a pilot’s license. He is also a reggae artist with some catchy lines.

David Lat called up P’Ta Mon last August, and John turns out to be quite articulate and even a bit sage about his advertising campaign.

You’ve got to find your style and go with it.

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By now, most attorneys are at least thinking about marketing their practice online, if not doing it in some fashion already. But “online marketing” is a concept so vague it is completely unhelpful. Online marketing encompasses everything from websites to social networking sites to chat rooms. Much online marketing is similar to offline marketing, but some of it is very different.
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But whatever your comfort level–both with privacy and with technology–you can find a way to market your practice online. In this series of three posts, I will talk about privacy issues, the necessary technical know-how, and the major ways to market yourself and your practice online: websites, paid advertising, blogs, and social networks.

First, privacy and technical know-how.

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