For one thing, the new site combines a traditional black-and-white palette with red highlights and a wide-open, screen-filling design that’s both elegant and modern (the site was produced by local web company rTraction). It’s a unique look, and one of the first rules a law firm website must follow is to stand out from its competitors wherever possible. Law firms, when faced with the opportunity to be creative and innovative, tend to experience a failure of nerve and default to whatever other firms are doing. It’s good to see a firm ready to branch out on a new trail. The new site also features a business law blog, an articling student blog and a community blog, as well as news and events pages and a special section highlighting Harrison Pensa’s expertise in class actions.

But what I especially like is the new site’s focus on the personalities and personal sides of its lawyers. The lawyer biographies are still fairly concise, but they make a point of emphasizing the lawyers’ community and charitable accomplishments. This isn’t a struggle for Harrison Pensa: even among law firms, which often do more than their fair share of volunteer activities, HP is remarkably committed to public service and community work (take the Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl and the Claude and Elaine Pensa Lecture in Human Rights as just two examples). The firm’s lawyer bios are rife with these sorts of activities.

But the site really steps it up with its use of visuals accompanying the lawyer bios. Harrison Pensa has established a reputation for lawyers who are approachable, accessible and easy to deal with — real human beings. The website plays to this strength by featuring many of its lawyers photographed not in the traditional arms-folded business-suit boardroom pose, but engaged in their favourite activities or captured in motion on the way to court, with images that fill the entire page. Here are some prime examples:

• David Williams, managing partner and basketball aficionado
• Cate Crainger, estates partner and musician
• Nawaz Tahir, litigation associate and football coach
• Carol Godby, aboriginal law partner and pro bono leader
• Sean MacKintosh, personal injury associate and hockey coach
• Terry Hainsworth, family law partner en route to court
• Michele Mannering, corporate partner and distance runner
• Jonathon Dunlop, family law associate, lacing up the skates
• Daniel Reason, litigation partner and triathlete

More of these up-close-and-personal glimpses will be added as time goes on, showing clients another side — a side they can more easily relate to — of the firm’s lawyers. Down the road, the firm also plans to add very short videos of lawyers talking about their passions in the law, why they came to specialize in the areas they practise and why it matters so much to them to help their clients. In all these ways, Harrison Pensa means to break from the pack and make one of its strengths — the personal touch of committed lawyers — into a standout brand.

Not every firm would be comfortable with this particular approach, or find that it plays to its strengths, and that’s fine. What’s important is that firms have the courage to be different — not just in their branding, but in reality. The law is perhaps the only industry in which hearing that “nobody else is doing this” is taken as a warning to slow down, not as motivation to speed up. Figure out what sets your firm apart, what truly makes it different, and make that the brand and the promise you bring to the market. If you can’t think of anything that sets you apart, then trust me: branding is the least of your worries.

Congratulations to our friends at Harrison Pensa for a really good new website — one from which other firms could take a lesson.

Inspired by LexBlog’s State of the AmLaw Blogosphere, Law Firm Mobile set out to determine which firms, among the AmLaw 200 and Global 100, had mobile versions of their websites. The key statistics found included:

• 19% of firms on the 2011 AmLaw list now have mobile sites;
• 22% of firms on the 2011 Global 100 list have mobile sites.

From there, the report links to and provides an excellent roundup of screen captures for each of those firms, and also lays out best practices and areas for improvement for mobile legal web design. If mobile design is in your 2012 plan, I would encourage you to see the full report here: LFM 2011: Report on the AmLaw200/Global Law 100 Mobile Web.

At Stem, we believe 2012 will be the year law firms embrace responsive web design – the concept of designing one website that adapts to whichever device it’s being viewed on, rather than creating separate sites for each. (See this collection of examples for a better idea of how responsively-designed websites change according to screen size.)

It won’t be enough to simply test websites in IE, Safari, Chrome and Firefox; those who design law firm websites will need to include smart phones and tablets in that mix as well. Fixed-width and minimum-width designs are on their way out; fluid grids and customized, device-sensitive designs will be necessary for firms to make their websites truly mobile-friendly.

As a example of how we’re incorporating responsive web design into our own best practices, see our client Thorsteinssons‘ website – it looks and behaves differently on a desktop computer, an iPad and a smartphone – subtly and intuitively:

Thorsteinssons LLP – iPad:

Thorsteinssons LLP – iPhone:

Side-by-side comparison, iPhone, iPad and Desktop:

If you’ve seen some excellent (or not so excellent) examples of mobile law firm websites, please consider dropping a note in the comments. We’re always on the lookout for great mobile implementations.

• Website 101: Build and Rebuild was co-presented with Courtney Ward-Reichard and covers all the major aspects of law firm websites: selecting and managing a domain name, using content management systems (CMS), developing content, branding, and best practices. The slides give a good overview of the presentation, but to see what participants thought of the session, check out Simon Fodden’s takeaways and Beverly Michaelis’  live-tweets.
• Website 201: Optimize and Get Noticed was co-presented with Bob Ambrogi and focused on three important aspects of law firm websites: SEO tactics, content writing strategies, and calls to action. Allison Shields posted extensive notes on what she learned, Simon Fodden had another recap, and Joan Feldman called us a true pleasure to watch – thanks, Joan, the pleasure was ours!

The ABA has also posted PDF versions for many more of this year’s presentation on their website. Be sure to check them out.

PolicyTool is a policy generator that simplifies the process of creating a privacy policy for your website or company. It’s easy to do. The streamlined process simply requires you to answer a brief questionnaire and provides you with a complete Privacy Policy customized to your company. PolicyTool has been developed by rtraction in collaboration with Harrison Pensa lawyer David R. Canton, one of Canada’s leading authorities in Internet and technology-related legal issues.

Wisely, PrivacyTool advises that using the site to craft a privacy policy is only the first step: “Once you’ve received the policy, make sure you and your legal counsel are comfortable with the promises you’ve made and [that] everyone in your organization is compliant.” This latter point rarely gets enough attention within organizations: simply posting a policy on your site does little good if your employees aren’t on board with the policy, its aims and its strictures — if the policy isn’t implemented in the organization’s everyday life, it won’t help you.

What I especially like about PrivacyTool is that it’s an excellent example of the evolution of legal services in the internet age. It condenses an array of legal knowledge and content into a simple, user-friendly Q-and-A process that doesn’t require any specialized expertise to navigate. This is where many legal services are heading, especially those for which the outcome is a document or other tangible output: lawyers will help create processes and algorithms by which clients can take on more of the work, corresponding to clients’ growing readiness to assume more responsibility for their legal affairs. PrivacyTool is a harbinger, one that law firms of all kinds should carefully review.

It should be said that every website is susceptible to a hacking attack to some degree, and vulnerability often depends on the determination of the individual hacker.  The measures suggested here are much more about protecting your website against automated password testing, or scripted attacks.  Taking these precautions, along with adding the recommended modules, can help guard against these attacks — and conceivably save your firm a few headaches.

On the SEO side, the column recommends monitoring your website’s status in Google Webmaster Tools; and how Google can help confirm if a hacking attack has taken place. It also discusses the fallout of recovering from temporary search ranking penalties, which may be applied to your domain.

We’d much rather see firms market their websites than be forced to recover from a hacking attack.  Frankly, it’s a huge waste of everyone’s time…  So please, be cautious about using WordPress out-of-the-box, and pass along these tips  — they should take less than an hour to put into place.

Out of Google’s eight site links — those sub-links that are shown right underneath your homepage listing — only four of them are currently working.  Google is also still showing ABANet.org as the Association’s domain:

Now, Google will figure this all out on its own, eventually.  An organization the size of the ABA has enormous publishing power (and the associated PageRank) which gives it a natural boost in how fast Google crawls the website.  The web page re-directs will push the changeover process, as will any new in-bound links to the new domain from outside sources.  In addition, we would expect that the ABA also has a Google domain movement plan – a defined set of actions to preserve its current relationship with the search engine. A dedicated plan, you say? Absolutely. Any outside source that provides more than 80% of your website’s referral traffic (not type-in traffic) deserves special treatment.

Giving proper consideration to this relationship, here are the tasks that I think must be involved in a domain move:

• GW Tools: Step one in any domain move is to register and verify both domains within Google Webmaster Tools (GW Tools).
• 301 permanent redirects – This is also critically important.  Upload a text file named .htaccess into the root of your old domain (applicable to UNIX servers, there are other methods) mapping all URL variations with 301 permanent redirects from their old file location to their URL on the new domain. Every sub-page of your old website should be routed; and yes, even when you have thousands of URLs.
• Submit an updated sitemap in GW Tools: As soon as the servers have been flipped, register a current and exhaustive sitemap file for your new domain in GW Tools. The sooner the new URLs are in play, the faster the transition.
• Add/Update the robots.txt file in the root of your website: Adding a robots.txt file tells search engines which directories you want in their index, and which are denied.  When moving domains, don’t forget to update this file with the corresponding changes to the directory structures.  Your robots.txt file should also be confirmed in GWTools.
• Boost the temporary crawl rate in GW Tools for both domains: Don’t max out the crawl rate, but a moderate boost can ensure URLs are forwarded as fast as possible.
• Use the Change of Address tool: Don’t skip ahead to this step! You can’t use this tool until both domains are verified, regardless; but it works best when you have completed the above steps – especially having a comprehensive set of 301 redirects.
• Schedule time to clean up 404 errors: File not found (404) errors are never good. Users hate them, and it’s a poor quality signal to Google. Review crawling errors within GW Tools, and fix your lost traffic issues.

Law firms should take notice: moving a domain is no easy task, and one that I would try to avoid at all costs. Even with all the above steps, it’s very difficult to replicate the trust factors of an aged-domain; especially with respect to its performance in the search engines. Staying at one location has real benefits, and that domain (like fine wine) will improve with age.  Unless you have a name Partner that leaves on bad terms, I would preserve your domain investment.

And if you must move,  use the steps above to create an actionable plan. It’s worth the time.

An important piece of context here: Kevin’s most recent post refers specifically to larger firms’ blogs.  I’m also assuming that he’s referring to firms that develop multiple practice area blogs and position those blogs as subdirectories (or subdomains) under the firm’s principal website.

Does this make sense? Mostly, yes; and because Kevin is addressing the larger firm scenario, I’ll agree with him.  But before I give you the pros of putting a law firm blog on its own domain, let’s explore the counter-arguments, some of which are valid:

1. Blogs on the firm website help generate domain trust. This can help SEO on a site-wide basis, including producing better rankings for practice group pages, lawyer profiles and other genres of firm publishing.  Blogs also draw deep links, which can be another sign of domain authority, and help inspire a more thorough indexing of your website by the search engines.
2. If the subject of the blog and of the website are closely aligned, it might make sense to consolidate your efforts. Consider the case of boutique practices, or solos and small firms with limited practice areas. Our SEO goal is to help Google understand each domain; making clear the core set of keywords, phrases and topics that each website covers. Larger firms’ websites and blogs are rarely this closely aligned, but boutiques, solos and small firms can be. When firm services and blogs are targeting a similar core set of keywords, it might not make sense to split your SEO footprint.

While these are both good arguments, neither is enough to sway me with respect to larger law firms.  Domain trust for firms with more than 30 lawyers invariably isn’t much of an issue.  Moreover, law firm domain names rarely gain enough subject authority to compete in the search rankings with niche-subject blogs. In almost every circumstance, I recommend that firms place each of their blogs on its own unique domain.

Here are the arguments in favour of separate blog domains from the SEO side:

1. The absence of subject-aligned keywords embedded within the firm’s domain name hurts SEO. Like it or not, PetersononBrainInjury.com — all other factors being the same — will outperform PetersonLLP.com.
2. The firm website is about the firm, as it should be. With multiple areas of practice, a law firm website’s incoming link text and other on-page factors can become so scattered that Google has trouble giving weight to the firm domain on any particular subject. Keeping a tight focus is a critical part of competitive SEO.  That doesn’t mean that a practice page can’t compete in the rankings if we focus on the task; but for a law blog that wants to become a topical powerhouse, a single-subject and focused domain will outperform the firm website every time.
3. Law firms websites’ link networks tend to be unfocused. Having a strong set of links (both incoming and outgoing) to similar subject websites is another measure of subject authority and relevance.  Blog links have this attribute in spades, while firm websites rarely do.
4. Links from practice blogs actually support the firm’s website. Strategically linking from blogs back to the sponsoring firm’s practice pages can help your SEO.  But doing that from inside the firm website does not have the same impact.  Blogs on their own domain have their own status with Google, including PageRank, a different set of incoming links, different signals of subject relevance, and so on. It might be an investment to develop the online presence for another domain name, but this is a question of building assets. Long term thinking says having two (or 22) strong website assets is better than having one.

And here are a couple more arguments from a simple common sense perspective:

1. You must let your blogs and your bloggers shine. Let’s face it: burying five or ten blogs within the firm website often means just repackaging the firm’s newsletter content. Simply calling such repackaged content a “blog” doesn’t make it one. There must be a change in how lawyers approach their writing; the lack of personal opinion on a blog can kill its chance of success.  Putting blogs under the firm website risks stifling the personality of the website and of the lawyers who are blogging.
2. Mixing commercial and non-commercial commentary runs several risks.  Blogs on a firm website will always appear tied into the commercial entity of the firm. This becomes not just an issue of optics, raising the question of whether bloggers are restricted from offering value-added opinion. It also runs an ethical risk: changing the nature of the firm’s content and tone with an internal blog may draw unwanted attention of some state ethics panels.
3. A separate blog domain will have a better chance of building readership. Developing a blog’s readership is difficult at the best of times and will be more difficult within the confines of a firm website. A unique and memorable domain is a big marketing plus for any website, no less so for law firm blogs. Blogs on law firm websites don’t have that feature. Law firm website developers also tend to embed these blogs into their larger CMS product, frequently omitting the RSS feed and email alerts in the process. All of which is to say, blogging technology rarely gets utilized in a way that lets these blogs fully interact within the blogging community.

Are there circumstances when a law firm blog can exist within the structure of a law firm’s website? Sure, but invariably, that scenario is not for firms with hundreds of lawyers and multiple practice groups. For reasons of SEO effectiveness, but even more importantly, for the sake of the blog itself, firms should park it on the driveway and not in the garage.

Anyway, I’d also be willing to wager that among those 10% purged pages would often be the one marked “Media.” A lot of law firm Media pages are devoted to compilations of published articles that the firm’s lawyers have written or for which they were interviewed. If you view the page’s subtext as “Our lawyers’ appearances in the media,” basically a marketing tool, then that makes sense — although I’ve come across very few clients who like to scroll through a giant list of published articles when choosing a lawyer. However, if you view the page’s subtext as “Information for members of the media” — which, by the way, reporters and editors tend to do — then it’s not exactly helpful in that regard.

Here’s what I think a Media Page should include:

1. Points of Contact: Even if your Media page is otherwise a blank screen, it should include the name, phone number and email address of people in two categories: (a) an overall firm spokesperson and (b) individual contacts for press inquiries on specific subjects of your choosing. “This is our managing partner.” “This is our communications director.” “This is our immigration media contact.” “This is our white-collar crime media contact.” Each contact person’s responsibility is to reply to inquiries, find out what a reporter wants and by when, and make absolutely certain that the inquiry ends with a conversation that meets the reporter’s needs insofar as the firm is able. And each contact must be reliably responsive: there’s no better way to alienate a journalist than by specifically offering on the Media page the coordinates of a person who fails to return calls.

2. The Business Side. Not every reporter’s inquiry involves law-related issues — increasingly, especially in the legal press, stories involve the business side of practice. Yet even savvy Media pages usually offer contacts only in substantive-law areas. At the same time, firms might reasonably resist the idea of a staff member (even a director) acting as a spokesperson, and professional employees themselves are often reluctant to speak to reporters. If so, identify a lawyer who can speak to a  business-side subject: the chair of the marketing committee, for instance, or the partner in charge of hiring. No matter who’s your business-side contact, however, make sure he or she is willing and able to respond to media inquiries under the same criteria listed in #1.

3. The Firm’s Media Resources: What if reporters were clients? What if you wanted them to understand what your firm can do for them in as short a time as possible? You might create a section on your Media page explaining what your firm can deliver that matters to them: “We provide objective commentary, both on and off the record, on emerging legal issues.” “We offer free subscriptions to, and free reproduction of any content in, our newsletters and blogs.” “We are happy to make the following media contacts available for TV appearances and/or audio interviews.” And you could throw in some caveats, too: “We cannot discuss any matter covered by lawyer-client confidentiality.” This also ties in nicely with the next recommendation:

4. A Series of Primers: Not to paint with too broad a brush, but the level of legal literacy in the mainstream press is not terribly high. Consider creating a series of primers on your Media page that explain basic legal concepts on issues that appear regularly in the press. If you have a criminal law practice, offer a section on what “reasonable doubt” means or why evidence wrongfully collected can be excluded from trial. Family lawyers could provide information on why spousal support is usually mandatory and defining the “best interests of the child.” Even high-end corporate firms could offer a glossary of terms that commercial lawyers use every day but that even business reporters might not recognize. Benefits include less time spent explaining the basics over the phone, greater chance of accurate reporting, and goodwill from under-the-gun journalists.

What should not be on your Media page? Many of the following items are regularly offered but are of little interest to the media. Consider moving them off the page altogether, or at least cross-linking the subjects to their own separate pages.

• Your lawyers’ published appearances in media outlets: these are marketing materials, and they belong with lawyers’ biographies, or on Practice Group pages, or on a separate “Our Lawyers In the News” page.
• Your firms’ awards, recognitions and rankings: see above under “marketing materials.”
• Your firm’s newsletters: just because these are publications doesn’t make them of interest to publishers. (But see #3, above, re: offering subscriptions.)
• Your firm’s history: it’s not news and no reporter cares about it; if it’s important to your firm, create a separate “History” page.
• Your press releases: you shouldn’t be creating these anyway.

There’s an old expression: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” I think something similar could be said about the press: even if you don’t want to talk to them, it’s quite likely they want to talk with you, and they may have good reason. Some law firms, especially mid-size and smaller ones, show little interest in cultivating relationships with members of the media and don’t provide anything on their websites to encourage them. But the rewards are considerable for the lawyers whom the press finds: I’d estimate that 95% of the time, media connections lead to positive outcomes. A properly structured Media page is the way to facilitate those inquiries.

The term ‘law’ produced only 59 logos, so it’s not particularly heavy on legal examples;  but a database of 200K operational logo designs may help your next brainstorming session.

As many of you may know, Matt is a long-term member of the legal blogging community, and prides himself on inspiring innovative thinking. His current push over at lexthink is to inject that method into his speaking, conferences and law firm retreats.  I genuinely hope he finds that success, mostly because I do find him inspiring.

While I encourage you to visit & read the post in its entirety, there were a couple items on this list that really stood out for me. And they were:

9.  Your future clients have been living their entire lives online and will expect the same from you.  If you’re invisible on the web, you won’t exist to them.

Such an essential point, and especially for younger Lawyers. If you’re in your 30s or 40s, you need to think long term. Marketing your practice the same way as a practitioner in their 60s makes little sense. Learn from an older peer’s success? Absolutely. But don’t mimic marketing tactics. The mix for a younger lawyer should be very different.

7.  Having the scales of justice on your business card says you’re a lawyer — an old, stodgy, unimaginative, do-what-everyone-else-has-done-for-fifty-years lawyer.  Same is true for your yellow pages ad.

The same holds true for law firm websites. Stock images = stock lawyer. Invest in a good photographer and a graphic designer. Find imagery that works for your practice, and stand behind it for a few years.

2.  Google tells me there are 337,000 “Full Service Law Firms” out there.  Which one was yours again?

This is one of the ‘big ones’ in my world.  Neither corporate or commodity legal consumers use generic terms when searching. Couple that fact with a lawyer that’s unwilling to ‘hang their hat’ on an area of practise, or narrow their target geographic region of service…  and the whole sales proposition becomes infinitely more difficult.  Similar to off-line brand tactics, its much easier to explain & share a simplified concept – a lawyer who knows exactly what they do, and who they do it for.

I hope you’ll go read Matt’s post … and kickstart your Monday morning. :)

[If you're looking for some background, please see the preceding link from Todd Friesen who originally broke the story, and the follow up critique from Kevin O'Keefe.]

My response to clients (admittedly in hindsight) was the right one… “decline it”. Google’s hit bigger sites than Findlaw in the past including the Economist, the Times of London, and the Wall Street Journal (link cite).

I don’t want to re-hash the details of the situation in this post. And really, it’s well covered in the above links… but, I was asked recently on Twitter how I see things, and if I would be commenting. I do have some thoughts, so let me share.

• First, Findlaw selling link-based advertising isn’t the issue here. To be clear, the issue is that Findlaw used the Google measure of PageRank as the basis for selling those links. And that has long been off-side when it comes to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
• Second, Google’s response of a PageRank reduction penalty isn’t new. It’s similar treatment to what a group of prominent bloggers received just a few months ago. The penalty is likely temporary and probably will last until Findlaw kills the program.
• Third, the reduction (PR7 to PR5) is for the visible PageRank displayed in the Google Toolbar. Does it effect the actual rankings? As of today, in Canada, when you search for ‘find lawyer‘, I’m getting Findlaw as the No. 1 result. I repeated the search over the phone with a US client, and Findlaw was No. 2. If Google had hit Findlaw with a true penalty, those results wouldn’t be happening.
• And related, the reduction of visible PageRank was the objective here. Lowered PageRank removes Findlaw’s ability to sell its pages as a commodity using the Google PageRank measure. Google have been consistent and clear: they want PageRank to be a measure of authority, and not the basis of a link marketplace.

Finally, I’d just like to add one personal opinion. Findlaw’s biggest crime here may just be how blatantly overt they were. It’s almost as if they were tempting Google to hit them? or naive? dumb perhaps? Take your pick.

Here’s why I think so. Google themselves say: “Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results.” Findlaw easily falls into the class of a legitimate advertising opportunity.

Was it their choice to provide raw links? Not likely, or at least not by itself. There are lots of websites with raw links; and if that alone were the factor, paid sites with low editorial standards like the Yahoo directory (sorry, that’s how I feel) would have been hit long ago.

So what tipped Google off? It was the whole package. Those spammy marketing materials, unsolicited emails, selling links based on PageRank, training lawyers how to show ‘link love’ and apply link text, and just generally having the feel of a total Machiavellian manipulation of the system. Frankly, it was arrogant.

Now, let me tell you why those firms are wasting their money. Unless you are in a completely uncompetitive search market, 3 links and a few articles from one website won’t make a dent in your ranking equation. You need links from lots of websites; in some cases, thousands. Those links need to be from a wide range of authorities (think: government, education, professional associations, libraries, conferences, magazines, journals); and increasingly, those links should be from websites on the same finite subject including blogs and social networking groups. Subject specificity is making great strides lately. What’s the topic of the page linking in? what about the pages linking to that person? All parts of the puzzle that must be considered.

Do I think this will all blow over? Sure, and Findlaw will likely get some or all of its PageRank back… after they terminate the program. Or perhaps they won’t terminate it and the Lawyers will get involved? Either way, it should prove interesting to watch Thomson Reuters and Google – old publishing economy vs new publishing economy – stand off. Get the popcorn! :)

Keeping perspective on personal productivity is an important issue. True, but what about down time? While the typical lawyer has less ‘social surplus’ (see video below) than the average person out there, most still have *some* time dictated by personal choice. If you’re not working, doing a family activity, sport, club/assoc. meeting, grocery shopping or laundry – what are you doing then? where do you escape?

Clay Shirky’s video from the Web 2.0 Expo (below) is thought provoking. Every hour can’t be accounted for under the category of “work productivity”. There’s a lot more optional time than any of us believe.

So for every law blogger, twitter user (yup that’s me), or social network participant out there who has to answer: ‘where do you find the time?’ … Tell them you’re being very productive, with your social surplus. And that many parts of the social web are both productive for business, and enjoyable.

Do lawyers watch TV? I suspect a few do.

[hat tip: Connie Crosby]

Here’s a short snippet about Ron’s practice:

About Ronald Chapman, P.A.: Since 1990, Mr. Chapman’s law firm has represented those who have been accused of committing crimes in both State and Federal Courts within the State of Florida. Mr. Chapman is a sole practitioner whose service areas include violent crimes, DUI offenses, drug offenses, domestic violence, Sentencing & Appeals and criminal records services.

Ron is also new law blogger, and a Lexblog customer. One of the big challenges we’re going to tackle is how to mix traditional law firm website features with blogging and providing legal commentary. And to that end, I think what we’re doing is somewhat unique. Working within the lexblog platform, we’re trying to integrate some of the traditional service-based website features, but, still use the blog as the public front-end of the website.

As an example, one of the first things we’ve done is to ‘beef up’ Ron’s service pages. Why? Well, blog commentary is great, but you still need to explain to people what services you offer. These pages aren’t yet exhaustive in describing Ron’s practice, but it’s a start.

How successful will we be? Hard to say at this point, but I’ve got high hopes. We’ll be using the same techniques as I did with the Stem site. You see, not only is this blog running off blog software, but Stem’s principle website is too – entirely built on WordPress. This time, we’ll be using Lexblog’s platform, and hopefully in a month or two, we’ll have Ron’s phone ringing off the hook. :)

So a big welcome to Ron! And thanks for agreeing to be a case study.

Update: I’ve added some related thoughts to this post over at the VLLB.

The recommendations via Harley Manning at Forrester are nothing new, saying ’97% of corporate websites get a failing grade’. With the key factors for success identified as: Value, Navigation, Presentation, and Trust. At the end of his post, Kevin suggests that law firms go beyond other legal websites when looking to innovate, and check out other corporate websites.

Ok, Kevin’s probably sticking himself out on a limb here, especially with a 97% chance of replicating one of those failing websites, but the essence of his thought is correct. Web innovation rarely comes from the legal web, and many times law firms don’t need to be that cutting edge. The trick is simply timing your innovation, and when it will be accepted by the business community.

Anyone want a curve ball? I suggest looking at banking websites when it comes to law firm website design. Banks have similar issues – delivering lots of varying services, packaging or productizing services lines, and making the complex easier to understand.  In general, I don’t consider banks more innovative, but if you look at their high-end services, the audiences can be similar. If you’re trying to get outside the box, banking sites can offer an alternative approach to how you conceive of presenting your services online.

The irony of course is that many law firms, even those substantial in size and resources, have a minimal content offering. If we consider that now in 2007, many firms have had an online presence for 10 or so years. And if we also consider that website content is cumulative, and the majority of law firms rarely (or do not) cull their content offering, then… What gross size would you consider to be appropriate for a law firm website? more than 2,000 pages in size? 5k? 10k? 30k?

From my list of global 100 law firm websites, we see that 65% have less than 10k pages published.  And from personal experience I think I can safely estimate that with smaller firms, in general, online publishing does not exceed 1k pages. So the next question, as noted over on the VLLB, is bigger necessarily better? My answer would be a very firm - it depends. :-)

Benchmarking the raw size of those websites was interesting to me because, in my opinion, legal web marketing is currently going through a big change; with firms moving from a single domain presence to more of a multiple brand / multiple website effort, ie. my hub-n-wheel approach.  This may be one of the last points in time that we are able to measure (most of) a firm’s web presence without identifying and reviewing all the pieces of the puzzle.

I expected to find a lot of very large websites in that list, and surprisingly did not. To me that indicates many firms are still working off of brochureware websites — lawyer profiles, transaction lists, media quotes, representative clients, deals, etc.  And running against conventional wisdom, I do not see that as an entirely bad thing.

Firms with long standing content initiatives may already have drafted content in place, but face the challenge of keeping their offering attractive and current. They face decisions about when to spin that content off into other websites, how to rework & republishing the most valuable content, and when to cull. Is it easier to create content from scratch? or to get decisions made about existing content? my opinion – a coin flip. Depending on the environment, either could be a big challenge.

There’s also the matter of web strategy. If a firm knows exactly which audiences it’s targeting, and puts up niche information that draws qualified leads from key decision makers, the size of the website will have very little to do with its rate of success. As a web marketer, I see the value in both (1) casting a wide net of content to draw audiences, and (2) identifying and expanding the most successful methods.  

What may be more important in reading that list, is what it tells the individual firms about the overall health of in-house routines and processes regarding the web.  If a firm has a 1000 or 2000 lawyers and can’t produce more than a page per lawyer, their troubles may be more systemic in nature. Firms with robust web publishing operations typically have:

• a great in-house committment to writing by lawyers;
• a defined content strategy;  
• a solid understanding of the desired audience;
• approprite publishing vehicles in place;
• active efforts to market both the content and authors.

Put these elements together, and great content can help firms connect with new audiences. I believe that. And while a bigger website may not necessarily be better, I do think it represents an understanding that modern global business relationships have a strong virtual component, that law firm brands are constantly in flux, and that people’s opinions are altered by online exposure. 

So maybe bigger is better? Execution has to count for something. Right?