What Is Allowed and What Is Ethical in Law Firm Marketing?

It used to hurt when you would tell people that you are a lawyer, and they would respond by making jokes about lawyers being greedy, sleazy, and dishonest, but now you consider the source.  Being a lawyer is one of the least morally corrupt professions out there.  You don’t make money by buying debts that the borrowers were unable to pay to the original creditors, and then continuing to hound the borrowers for repayment, even though they never borrowed money from you.  You are not an affiliate marketer or social media influencer, promoting whichever products the companies that make these products pay you to promote.  You are not selling people unrealistic expectations about physical appearance, wealth, or interpersonal relationships.  In fact, the laws are stricter regarding what lawyers can

say in promotional content than they are for most other industries, and you can thank lawyers for creating and enforcing those regulations.  This means that, by its very compliance with the law, your legal marketing content is more trustworthy than most of the advertisements you see online and in the analog world.

Be Honest, Be Careful, and Follow Your State’s Laws

It was against the law for lawyers to advertise their services at all until a Supreme Court decision in the 1970s declared that, like other businesses, law firms may solicit clients through advertising.  Today, most states follow a version of Rule 7.2, the American Bar Association’s model standards of professional conduct for law firm advertising, although some states have passed laws that are not based on Rule 7.2.

If you have recently founded your own law firm or been tasked with developing a marketing strategy for a law firm where you currently work, you should read your state’s laws regarding advertising before you embark on any marketing campaigns.  Besides that, you should always read what you write before you publish it, or, even better, have someone else read it, and see whether it would meet the required standard of honesty and truthfulness if you were presenting it as evidence or testimony in a court of law.

What You Say Matters More Than Where You Say It

Most states do not allow lawyers to say that they are “experts” or “specialists” in a practice area of law; you must be truthful and objective in saying that you are certified to provide legal representation.  The rules are generally about avoiding fraud and false promises, not about where you communicate your messages.  No medium of communication is, by nature, too sleazy for law firm marketing content.  You can post videos about your law firm on TikTok or invest in pay-per-click advertising if you think that these channels of communication will get the attention of your target audience.

Hiring Someone to Write Your Marketing Content Is Perfectly Legal

The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC, provide blog posts and other marketing content that complies with your state’s laws about law firm advertising.

Is It Worthwhile to List Your Law Firm on Online Legal Directories?

Information goes out of date quickly on the Internet.  Remember when a debate raged

about whether law firms should have Twitter accounts?  That social media platform hasn’t been called Twitter for an Internet eternity, and the consensus has changed numerous times about how, if at all, lawyers should interact with it.  Listing your company’s website on online business directories is an ancient search engine optimization (SEO) tactic; it goes all the way back to the time when you could not assume that Google was the search engine that everyone was using to find the contact information of local businesses.  Do business directory listings even count anymore?  Do Google and its human users even notice them amidst all the rich snippets, AI-generated content, and noisy videos out there competing for their attention?  It turns out that the more things change, the more they stay the same, and despite all the other kinds of legal marketing content out there, listing your law firm on online business directories is still an important aspect of your marketing strategy.

Your Law Firm’s Contact Information According to You, Not According to Bots

Name, address, and phone number (NAP) are a cornerstone of the content marketing strategy of any business.  It may sound boring, but the most important thing that clients need to know about your business is not what makes you unique but what your business is called and how to contact you.  Google’s bots are in the business of finding information that responds adequately to users’ search queries.  If a user searches for “personal injury lawyer in Fairbanks,” Google will display a link to your website if its bots determine that you are a personal injury lawyer in Fairbanks.  Of course, Google makes a lot of inferences, and as an increasing share of the content online is chatbot-generated, its inferences are becoming less accurate.  It is not just your imagination if you think that Google is getting dumber.

The beauty of online business directories is that you enter your business information manually.  If your law firm’s address or phone number changes, you should update the information on your own website as well as on the business directories where you have listed your site.  Google corroborates the information on your website with the information you have listed on the business directories, so it can be sure that all of the information belongs to the same business.

Are Online Legal Directories Useful for More Than Just NAP?

Customers sometimes read online business directories, too.  You should list your law firm on law-focused directories, such as FindLaw, SuperLawyers, and LawInfo, so that prospective clients can compare how close you are and the types of cases you take to other law firms in the same city.

Online Directories Are Just One Aspect of Content Marketing

The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC can provide well-researched, readable blog posts and page content for your law firm’s website.

Inexpensive Ways to Diversify Your Small Law Firm’s Digital Marketing Strategy

Digital marketing is important for any business, no matter how big or how small.  You cannot attract new customers, and current customers cannot engage with you, unless they can find your contact information online.  Digital marketing does not have to be splashy, gimmicky, or expensive.  If your small law firm devotes too much time and money to marketing, it will only lead to frustration, because the success of a law firm depends more on the quality of legal representation that the lawyers provide to the clients than it does on innovative advertising campaigns and viral social media content.  With legal marketing content for small law firms, a little goes a long way.

Digital Marketing Does Not Have to Cost a Fortune

Small law firms are used to operating on a shoestring budget.  You work around the clock just like those high-profile lawyers do, even though your cases are not going to make national news headlines.  Each employee of your law firm fulfills multiple roles; your law firm’s budget should go to paying your employees fairly, not to showing off to the limited number of people who live within commuting distance of your office and might need your legal services.

There is no need to spend more than five percent of your budget on marketing.  According to the 2023 State of U.S. Small Law Firms Report, most small law firms spend about three percent of their budget on developing and implementing a content marketing strategy.

Small Fixes Can Boost Your Law Firm’s Online Presence

The good news is that you can build a multifaceted digital marketing strategy without spending much money.  These are some digital marketing techniques your law firm can implement with three percent of this year’s budget:

• Blog – A blog makes your site visible to Google, because it shows that you update the site frequently and link internally among its pages.  It also diversifies the keywords for which your pages rank.

• Business directory listings – Your company’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) are the most important parts of search engine optimization (SEO).  By listing your law firm on business directories, you are showing that your law firm’s NAP is consistent.

• Headshots – Your bio page should have a headshot of you, even if you don’t like how you look in pictures.  Google likes to be able to match a name to a face, and so do prospective clients.

None of these requires you to hire professionals; these are all things that you can do personally or that current emp

loyees of your law firm can do without adding too much to your workload.  To build a comprehensive marketing strategy, though, you should engage the services of a professional content marketing firm.

An Airtight Content Marketing Strategy Is a Good Investment

The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC can help you with digital marketing strategy, blog posts, practice area pages, and more for your law firm’s website.