What do clients expect from a lawyer’s website?

A lawyer’s website plays many important roles. Apart from informing the potential clients about practice areas, team members and contact information, it is the most basic marketing tool for any lawyer. Moreover, your website is a platform to convince the potential clients on why they should choose you as their lawyer.

Here are a few basic pointers on what a client expects from your website:

Content

“The best way to understand your customer is to be your customer”

– Dino Dogan

Before creating content for your website, ask yourself the question, “who is the target audience?”

Content on your website should target existing clients and potential clients. You should build separate pages for each practice area and create content discussing the latest cases and the developments in your practice areas. In addition to textual content, provide information in the form of graphics which will keep the readers engaged.

However, keep the content clear and simple. It should be easily understood by everyone, irrespective of their level of knowledge of laws. One of the important points is to avoid using jargons or legalese. Once you have finalized the content, it is recommended that you get feedback from a non-law background friend. You should also avoid clichéd images of books, gavel, lady justice and scales of justice which will make the website boring and unremarkable, because every other lawyer’s website has this too.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

“Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life.”

-Avinash Kaushik

Provide content which is informative and helpful to both, the existing clients and the potential clients. Answers to FAQs provide dual benefit of value proposition for the website visitors and search engine optimization (SEO) for the website. When a person is searching for a specific legal issue, he or she is likely to do a search using long-tail keywords, rather than using shorter keywords.

Take this example: If someone who is interested in a divorce, might search- “how long does divorce take?” or “how much maintenance should be paid?”. If your website can provide answers to these questions, it will improve your credibility, and most importantly, the likelihood of a visitor to contact you to handle his or her case.

E-books

“These days, people want to learn before they buy, be educated instead of pitched.”

– Brian Clark

Lawyers are often hesitant to provide any information for free that can be termed as a “legal advice”.

However, explaining a potential client how a case may progress through the court or how a particular law works does not constitute a free “legal advice”. Such information would not make anyone an instant legal expert who will no longer require your expertise and services. When you provide free downloadable e-books, you provide potential clients a helpful resource, which increases the likelihood of them contacting you for further assistance. These e-books can be watermarked with contact information and logos, so if they are shared, it will inform any reader of the source of origin.

Always remember that clients, whether existing or potential, expect to find helpful information and resources on your website, and not just a brochure of your services.

Did you find some helpful tips in this post?

Let me know in the comments.