In Praise of Lawyers Who Pay Meticulous Attention to Linguistic Detail

Middle school English teachers know which students will grow up to become lawyers,

because those students’ eyes light up during sentence diagramming lessons, which most students find even more painful than factoring quadratic equations.  A certain type of mind enjoys seeing the way that the semi-autonomous thoughts that make up a complete sentence relate to each other.  In the future, these will decide the outcome of legal disputes.  The public has no idea about the sophistication of the legal arguments that determine the outcome of lawsuits and criminal trials, and your blog is an ideal place to give them a glimpse of it.  From disagreements over the meaning of a single letter in a contract to seeing through the hype of laws with sensationalized names, the interpretation of words and their subtext is a lawyer’s superpower, or perhaps a lawyer’s superpower, since the placement of an apostrophe can make a difference.  Use your legal marketing content to show clients how you can use your superpowers to help them win their cases.

Four Years of Litigation Over an Indefinite Article

A Florida couple spent four years in divorce court arguing about the meaning of the word “a” in their prenuptial agreement.  The amount of lump sum alimony to which the wife was entitled depended on how many years the couple had been married when “a divorce petition” was filed.  The trouble is that the wife filed for divorce twice.  The first filing was after seven years of marriage, and she then dismissed it so quickly that the court did not even have a chance to serve the husband with divorce papers.  The second time was after ten years, and that time, the divorce became final.  In the end, the court decided that “a divorce petition” in the prenup more likely referred to the seven-year filing.

“Slayer Statute” Is a Cool Name, but …

Florida probate law has something called the Slayer Statute, where the probate court disinherits a beneficiary of a will if there is evidence that the beneficiary intentionally caused the testator’s death.  Originally, “intentionally caused the testator’s death” only meant murder, but it has since been expanded to include neglect and preventable accidents.  The civil courts do not require litigants to prove their claims beyond a reasonable doubt, so estranged family members may persuade the court that the actions of a relative who was with the decedent at the end of his or her life count as intentionally causing the decedent’s death, even if that relative was never formally charged with a crime.  The lawyers’ skill in interpreting words can expose the abusive actions of a family member or prevent a family member from unjustly losing his or her inheritance.

Cast Not Your Pearls Before the Blogosphere?

Of course, after you successfully read the negative space of legally binding agreements, thereby helping your clients get justice, you may not have the time or energy to string together a single sentence for your blog.  The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC will write blog posts that show, not tell, your audience how awesome you are.

How to Use Generative AI for Your Legal Marketing Content Without Losing Your Writerly Identity

The fact that generative artificial intelligence technology has progressed to such a degree that chatbots can write entire

blog posts based on simple commands has inspired people who are so old that they already had a driver’s license when they got their first email address to become prolific writers.  Everywhere you click, you can find them polemicizing about the encroachment of chatbots on the writer’s craft.  It is as if their eloquence is a final act of defiance, a desperate attempt to show the bots who is boss.  Meanwhile, content firms that value quantity over quality are licking their chops, since they will not have to pay bots anything to write bottom-of-the-barrel content, increasing their profits even beyond what they make after paying paltry compensation to freelance writers, who are usually willing to turn out marginally idiomatic prose for a fraction of a cent per word.  

As a lawyer, you are not foolish enough to get drawn into this debate; you know that things are not as black and white as Internet trolls make them sound.  The question is not whether or not bots should be part of your law firm’s marketing strategy, but rather a question of how.  In other words, don’t fear the chatbots, but don’t trust them to write your legal marketing content, either.

Bots Can Consume Social Media Content So You Don’t Have To

Believe it or not, chatbots might be able to save you from your worst self.  When you are stressed out, it is easy to spend hours scrolling through insipid opinion pieces and pointless social media content, even though you know that it is pointless.  At the same time, getting an idea of what the Internet is saying about topics related to your practice area can give you ideas for blog posts.

The good news is that since bots don’t have souls, soul-suckingly asinine online content cannot break their spirit the way it breaks yours.  Asking a bot to summarize what Reddit is saying about Florida’s decision to abolish permanent alimony is like sending a drone to deliver a gift to your beloved on the other side of a swamp of quicksand so that you don’t have to walk across the quicksand yourself.  Reading a bot’s soulless summary of web content drawn from humanity’s worst impulses gives you just enough knowledge of the content to inspire you to write, but not enough to ruin your mood and decrease your productivity.

Who Needs Generative AI Apps When You Can Do a Good Old-Fashioned Google Search?

Of course, there is a simpler way to glance at what the Internet is saying without getting sucked into its misanthropy, even without asking a generative AI app to do it for you.  You can just do a Google search.  If you have enough willpower just to scroll through the search results without clicking on any of them, you can get the same burst of inspiration without the risk of falling into a clickbait doom loop.

Outsourcing Your Content Writing to Humans Is a Better Idea

The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC are human beings who are all too familiar with the negative effects of mindless web content and will write thoughtful, informative blog posts instead.

How to Prioritize Quality Over Quantity in Your Law Firm’s Marketing Content

If you cared more about style than about substance, you would not have chosen law as a profession.  Yes, you enjoy an elegant turn of phrase as much as anyone does, but you put so much time into doing your work that it does not leave much time for shameless self-promotion.  Besides, it is virtually impossible for lawyers to create a sudden and vast surge in demand for their services, at least without committing any violations of professional ethics or outright breaking the law.  By nature, law firm marketing is about quality rather than quantity.  Not everyone needs your services; it is great if people choose you when they need a personal injury lawyer, but it is better if the insurance company offers them a fair settlement on the first try, and better still if they do not get injured at all.  Therefore, the focus of your legal marketing content should be to make it easy for the people who need your services to find your website and your contact information.

Five Informative Practice Area Pages Are Worth 100 Blog Posts

The most important part of your law firm’s website is your name, address, and phone number (NAP).  If your site is simply your NAP with a clipart image of the scales of justice, it has accomplished more than 50 percent of its purpose, provided that your business name tells prospective clients what you do, such as “Bloggins & Associates Injury Lawyers” or “Bloggins Estate Law.”

Your website should, however, have enough content to persuade prospective clients that they want to hire you.  Create a practice area page for each type of case that you represent, for example, divorce, parenting plans, child support, and prenuptial agreements.  If each page tells readers everything they need to know to convince them that you can help them with their case, Google users will keep navigating to your site, and Google will keep sending them.  Adding blog content shows Google and your clients that you are still paying attention, but it is useless unless you have informative practice area page content.

Meet Your Target Audience Where They Are

Posting blog posts on your own website is nice, but you can reach a wider audience by posting content on sites where your target audience is likely to be reading.  If you are an estate planning lawyer, post guest posts on lifestyle websites for retirees.  If you are a family law attorney, post a guest post on a website for single parents.  Don’t worry about how authoritative the website is.  You bring the authority; the website is where you find the people who might need your services.

What If You Don’t Have Time to Focus on Quality or Quantity?

The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC will write practice area page content for your law firm’s website or blog posts for your own site or other sites where you plan to guest post your content.