Law Firms: Videos should be Client-centric

Cummins and White, a small insurance defense firm has launched a smart-looking, video-centric website.

Positives:

• Clean looking with lots of white space and glance-friendly
• Integrates social media on the homepage – links to Facebook and YouTube
• Lawyer bios are well-designed with rich content including videos featuring the attorney

Negatives:

• Videos are all about the law firm. They even have a YouTube Channel which again is focused on the firm.  Clients and potential clients would be very interested in latest developments in specific areas of law that impact them or things clients can do to work more efficiently with their attorneys.  Is anyone (besides the principals) really going to watch 15 videos about how great Cummins & White is?  I don’t think so.
• Why not include LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook links on the attorney bio pages to give clients and potential clients a window on the attorneys?
• What about disclaimers? I didn’t see any – not associated with the contact form nor associated with the testimonials – these are California attorneys and the California Rules of Professional Conduct state that testimonials need to be accompanied by a statement letting people know that these testimonials in no way suggest a positive outcome in new matters.

Client-focus key to award-winning lawyer site

The Rosen Law Firm website which is called, “North Carolina Divorce Law” won the Elawyering award at the ABA Tech show this year.  It not hard to understand why.  Yes, it has a great layout, with lots of tools and video but the key for me is the focus – its all about offering tools and information to visitors rather than about the lawyer(s).  Everything about the site says, we care about what is happening to you and are here to make a very stressful and difficult process easier.

Florida law firm website gets the UK treatment

Recently I’ve heard a couple stories about lawyers who think they should just grab copy from a competitor’s website and post it to their own site.  Not only is this illegal, its stupid from a marketing sense.  You need to convey to potential clients what makes you stand out,  not what makes you the same as your competitors.

But this story is completely a different animal.  A Florida personal injury attorney did a Google search on his firm’s website and pulled up a British law firm website which was identical except for swapping out dollars for pounds and the Florida address for a British one.  The Florida firm is suing Go-Daddy.com and the unknown duplicater.