Your law firm has just launched its new website. Or maybe, after years of letting a very basic site just sort of sit there in cyberspace, you’re finally getting serious about making a vibrant online place. You’re ready to get cracking and produce fresh legal content.
Only one question:
What should I write about on my blog?
Here’s some tips for lawyers to help you break through the writer’s block.
Discuss current news and events
There’s always news stories that have a legal angle and people are happy to get the commentary of a qualified attorney.
We would suggest avoiding making your legal blog the place you go to opine on highly polarizing, public issues. If you do choose to step in, at least be aware that you could make half the audience hate you and half the audience love you, and then have a marketing plan in place to work on that basis.
Most firms will benefit from simply finding the countless little stories that abound each day within their wheelhouse. If you’re an intellectual property firm, maybe a recent court decision will affect patent holders. Write a brief commentary on that. A criminal defense lawyer might be aware of legislative hearings on new laws regarding sentencing. Offer a few thoughts on what’s happening.
These kinds of posts won’t go viral, but they will establish your reputation as a solid thinker, who’s aware of what’s going on beyond the headlines. That’s what people are looking for when it’s time to actually hire an attorney.
Use FAQs
Perhaps you have a website that already has an FAQ page. If so, each of those questions can be turned into a blog post that deals with the question in more depth. You can also find more commonly asked legal questions by going into message forums and seeing what people are asking.
The best source of all for FAQs is the lived experience of you and the people in the office. What do people ask you when you’re in a social setting and you tell them what you do? Maybe it’s something like, “Isn’t it hard to be a defense lawyer if you think the person is guilty?”
Questions like this, frequently asked by non-lawyers, are great topics for a blog post that explain the essential nature of a vigorous defense for everyone if a constitutional system of advocacy is to hold.
Your victories
If you’ve been in business any length of time, you’ve probably got some courtroom wins that can be pointed to. Sometimes these can be hard to write up without sounding boastful, and you have to be sensitive to how much your client wants the case discussed. However, the final result is in the public record.
All you need is 300 words or so talking about the case. The main thing is showing people that you win.
This can be tougher for personal injury lawyers whose biggest wins come in settlements that might be confidential, or in areas like real estate law where a cut-and-dried “win” is a lot harder to quantify. But you get the general gist—write about your successes.
Share helpful content
Is there a good article, book or documentary about your area of law that you think the average layman would really appreciate? Write about it and link to it.
Helpful content doesn’t always have to be educational. Maybe there was a rom-com movie involving lawyers that made you think of some real-life stories that are okay to share. By all means, talk about them. It won’t hurt to let clients and prospects know that you’re human.
