The Law Firm Homepage That Pointed Nowhere

“Nobody hires a lawyer off Instagram.”

That was the whole reply, sent back about an hour after I emailed a two partner firm an audit that nobody had asked me for.

He’s right, as it happens. Have you ever hired anybody off a video? I never have, and I’ve certainly never met a person who scrolled past one and decided on the spot to fight a custody case.

I wrote back anyway, because the link I wanted on his homepage was never going to sell anything to anyone, and it took me two drafts to explain what the thing was actually for.

A gym owner texted me the opposite of that at eleven at night, that his Instagram was doing all the work and the website was decoration. Two men, one link, and both of them wrong about it in opposite directions.

58.3% of the law firm websites I audited link out to a social profile of any kind, which is 41 of 47 among the trades I audit.

Nothing else I check on these firms finishes that low. Not the code, not the phone, not the writing.

It isn’t a hard bar, either. 66% of the sites I’ve counted across every trade point at a profile somewhere, including a great many businesses run by people who would be offended to be called marketers.

And this isn’t a careless trade, which is the part that kept bothering me. Add up the ten checks I run and law firms land on 75 out of 100, 6 of 47 once I rank them.

So an empty footer here isn’t neglect. It’s a decision, made once, usually by a person who never said it out loud.

When it does get said out loud it comes in about four flavors, and I’ve put them in order, best first, using a city that links its profiles better than almost anywhere I audit.

Let me show you one page.

Before

Two partners, wills and estates with a bit of real estate on the side, working out of a low brick building with its own parking lot and a hedge that someone keeps trimmed.

The top of the homepage was the firm name in gold serif capitals, set over a photograph of law books. Nobody in that office has opened those books since articling, and nobody ever will, because they came with the template.

Under that, in italics: “Experience you can trust since 1994.”

Then three grey boxes with a small icon in each. Wills and Estates. Real Estate. Family.

Then two paragraphs about personal attention and vigorous advocacy, the sort of sentences you could paste onto any firm’s website in the country without having to change a single word of them.

Then the partners themselves, photographed standing in front of the same law books, which by that point in the afternoon I was finding funnier than I probably should have.

At the bottom: address, phone, fax number, office hours, and a copyright line that ended in 2016.

Could a stranger tell from that page whether anyone had walked into the building since then?

I clicked every link on that page, and every one of them went back into the page. The only thing on the entire homepage that pointed anywhere else was the map.

Which was the strange part, because the material was sitting right there in the building.

Both partners had a LinkedIn account. One of them posted most months, usually a paragraph about how long probate is running at the courthouse this year, and that paragraph is the most useful thing either of them has ever published anywhere.

Half of this trade already publishes writing like that somewhere, which is the answer a lawyer gives away for free on the phone all day, typed out once.

There was a Facebook page too, set up by a receptionist in 2019, still faithfully announcing the holiday closures every December.

None of it appeared on the website. Not once, not anywhere, not even as an afterthought in the footer where these things usually get dumped.

Would you have pointed at any of it, if the choice had been yours?

What the link is for

Every law office I’ve ever sat in has a wall behind the desk with framed certificates on it.

Nobody reads them. Everybody looks.

A link off your homepage does that same job for the woman who is never going to sit down in that chair until she has already decided that she wants to.

She does her looking at midnight instead, on a phone, with three other firm names sitting open in tabs behind yours.

Think about what she can actually check at that hour. Not whether you’re any good, because she can’t judge that and she knows perfectly well she can’t.

She’s checking two much smaller things. Whether you’re still doing this, and whether she could stand talking to you for an hour.

Your bio page can’t answer either one. You wrote it. Of course it’s flattering.

A profile has dates on it, it’s got other people’s names underneath it, and it’s the only page about your firm that you didn’t write yourself, which is exactly why she goes looking for it before she calls.

One of those two pages is your own account of yourself and the other one isn’t. Which do you suppose she trusts at that hour?

It isn’t as though the trade objects to being discussed in public, either. 92.1% of these firms hold at least one Google review, so the strangers are already talking about you whether you joined in or not.

Do you know where every link on your own homepage lands? I’d start with the ones you didn’t put there yourself.

After

Four things changed on that page, and only one of them took anybody an afternoon.

The partner names in the team section became links, written out as words in a sentence, sitting at the end of each bio: Dale writes about probate delays on LinkedIn, most months.

Not a grey circle in a footer. A sentence that says what is behind the door before she opens it.

Both profile photos got swapped for the headshots that already sit on the website, so it’s the same face in both places, which sounds like nothing at all until you’ve landed on a profile and had to wonder whether you found the right man.

How many of your own profiles carry a photo that matches the one on your website?

The Facebook page went in underneath the office hours, where a closure notice belongs. That page is dull, it’s doing a real job anyway, and I gave up apologizing for dull about four years ago.

Then the copyright line got fixed while I was in there, because I’m not a monster. Nobody had been round that page in years, and going round it is most of what looking after a website actually is.

The fax number stayed. Dale wanted the fax number, Dale is sixty one, and I pick my fights.

After, out loud

Same gold capitals. Same law books, because he likes the law books.

The headline over them changed to say what the firm does and who it does it for, which cost the two of us about forty minutes and one raised voice.

Under Dale’s photo, one line pointing at LinkedIn. Under the office hours, one line pointing at Facebook.

Three ways off that page now, and each one names what is waiting on the other side of it.

How many does your homepage have, counting the map?

What happened next

Not much, and I’d rather tell you that than sell you something.

A caller in March mentioned the probate posts without being asked about them. That’s one caller, and I’m not building a case on one caller.

Would one caller have been worth your afternoon? I honestly don’t know, and I’ve watched clients answer that both ways.

Dale’s page doesn’t dead end any more, though. The woman who wants one more piece of evidence before she calls has somewhere to go now, and dead ends are the only part of this I can honestly promise to fix.

Every law firm site I work on now goes out with those lines already written into it, because I got tired of adding them a year late and pretending it was a new idea.

Argue with me

You might think your trade is the exception here. Law is serious, clients are private, and a family lawyer posting to Instagram is a bit undignified.

So say it. I mean that.

Tell me what she does instead at eleven at night, and where she goes looking when she does it, and I’ll take the argument as seriously as I took Dale’s version, because he won a piece of his and the fax number is still on the page to prove it.

Or would you rather find out first? Send me your address and I’ll click every link on your homepage and tell you where each one lands. It costs nothing and it takes me ten minutes.