Very few law firms are in a position where they can sell their services directly online, and therefore one of the major aims of their websites is to encourage prospects to contact them.  Typically the reader will either have stumbled across them through a search engine or some other online mechanism or will have been referred to the firm and be using the site to verify that they want to instruct them.  Either way, credibility is critical to a law firm’s site.

Let’s not beat about the bush here: the vast majority of lawyers have been very successful academically, and will have achieved decent grades at school in English.  At university they’ll have had to write many essays that expound complex ideas.  Consequently they’ll be rather confident in their ability to write content, and often see little need to farm out the task of writing their content to a third party.

So why would a lawyer ask someone else to write their online marketing information for them?

Broadly speaking, there are two very strong reasons for this.  Firstly, while one would expect a lawyer’s grammar and vocabulary to be top notch, what they don’t necessarily have is the ability to write in the appropriate style: engagingly and persuasively. Having said that; I have read a brilliant blog site recently from an individual Lawyer.

Writing an academic essay for a law tutor is very different from writing a page convincing a prospect that you are the person who should represent them at an employment tribunal, because while with the former you may be trying to impress the reader with your terminology and vocabulary, with the latter your aim is to engage, and long words and complex jargon certainly won’t help you there.

Writing persuasively is also about knowing when your reader is likely to be ready to pick up the phone to contact you, about understanding their feelings, fears and thoughts and relating that to what you have to offer.  Unless the course work for law degrees changes significantly then a lawyer is rarely going to be experienced in communicating in this manner. 

The second reason that a lawyer may need someone else to write their online marketing information is SEO.  For many lawyers search is a new-fangled discipline of which they are barely aware but know they need to adhere to.  Search is important, because like it or not many clients now only use Google as the route to finding the lawyer of their choice, and by ignoring search you are ignoring a large chunk of your target market.

Obviously there’s not much talk of H1 tags, white hat SEO or back linking in law school, so it’s worthwhile speaking to a copywriter who knows their stuff in this area and can help your site towards the top of Google and in front of your prospects’ eyes.

So there you have it: two conclusive reasons why lawyers particularly need to involve a professional copywriter to make the most of their online presence.  If you feel your firm would benefit from the expertise of a top class wordsmith then contact us today on 0208 956 2242.