August 15, 2006

Making Lawyer Bios More Interesting

I have blogged in the past about lawyer bio photos being one place where most law firms aren't doing a good enough job of injecting personality into their brand. But the same is also true of the bios themselves, a point made in no uncertain terms in a July 2006 Lexpert article (link to extract only) by the always witty Marzena Czarnecka. In the article Czarnecka laments the woefully generic and boredom-inducing state of most lawyer bios (a.k.a. profiles). She takes particular umbrage with lawyers that can't be bothered to obtain client permission to use real names in the descriptions, and instead opt for the "handled a major piece of litigation on behalf of a really big Canadian company" approach to describing their representative experience.

She's right. Lawyer bio pages are the strategic core of any law firm website, and they should be as fully realized as possible. Put yourself in a potential client's shoes: you have to make a choice between two similarly sized firms, with similar reputations, working in offices across the street from each other, or even on different floors of the same building. There doesn't appear much to choose from between them. You go to their respective websites to dig a little deeper on each of the lawyers and find one filled with blandness and generalities, while the other has detailed descriptions of specific cases or transactions on behalf of named clients in your industry sector. Which of these two lawyers are you more inclined to follow up with?

Posted by dougjasinski at 02:55 PM | Permalink

August 11, 2006

Do you work at an Anonymous Law Firm?

If you've ever worked in a large law firm as either a lawyer or legal marketer, you will be able to see the humour in the Anonymous Law Firm website. Warning: this is clever satire at its best and therefore only suitable for those prepared to laugh at themselves. As someone who regularly writes website copy for law firms, I found all of the clichés of the legal marketing genre nicely portrayed here. For lawyers, be sure to dig in to the individual lawyer bios for any number of recognizable character types.

Posted by dougjasinski at 11:02 AM | Permalink

August 10, 2006

A new look for Legal Marketing Canada

I've decided to compensate for my woeful lack of posts the last while by updating the site design with new graphics in advance of adding some additional resources, links and most importantly, new content coming shortly. Stay tuned.

Posted by dougjasinski at 05:14 PM | Permalink