Would You Instruct Your Own Law Firm?

Start With the Search

The client journey often starts long before somebody reaches your homepage. They might have been charged with drink driving, their marriage may have broken down, an employee could have brought a claim against their business or they may be involved in a dispute with another shareholder. Whatever the situation, their starting point is usually the problem they’re experiencing rather than the legal service your firm has decided to call it.

This is where there can be a disconnect between the terminology law firms use internally and the language their clients use online. A solicitor might describe something as a “private children matter”, for example, whereas a parent may search for “my ex won’t let me see my child”. Both relate to the same area of law, but they’re approaching it from completely different perspectives. Good legal marketing needs to understand the legal terminology while also recognising the words and questions real clients actually use.

Would You Click on Your Own Firm?

Now imagine your firm appears alongside several competitors in Google. Look at your page title and description and ask whether you would actually click on it. Does it clearly explain what you offer and why it is relevant to the search, or has it primarily been written to squeeze in the keywords you want to rank for?

It’s also worth looking at what your competitors are saying. If every firm describes itself as experienced, trusted, approachable and committed to providing excellent legal advice, those words aren’t really helping the client make a decision. This is becoming even more important as people use AI alongside traditional search engines. By the time someone reaches your website, they may already understand the basics of their legal problem and be looking for a reason to choose one particular firm.

Look at Your Website on Your Phone

Open your website on your phone and try to forget that you already know how it works. Can you immediately understand what the firm does? Can you find the service you need without navigating through several menus? Is the text easy to read and is there an obvious way to call or make an enquiry?

Speed matters as well. A potential client isn’t going to spend several minutes trying to work out how your website works when there are numerous other law firms available from the same search results. A website can look fantastic from a design perspective and still be poor at generating enquiries. Its job isn’t simply to look professional; it needs to help the right people understand what you offer and make it easy for them to take the next step.

Read Your Own Content as a Client

Choose one of your main service pages and actually read it from beginning to end. Would everything make sense if you weren’t a lawyer? Law firm websites can easily become too technical because they’re written and reviewed by people who understand the subject incredibly well. Terminology that feels completely normal within a legal practice may mean very little to someone encountering the legal system for the first time.

That doesn’t mean legal content needs to be dumbed down. Clients are looking for expertise and your website should demonstrate that you understand the law. The skill is explaining something complicated in a way that makes sense to the person who needs your help. Your clients didn’t go to law school, so your website shouldn’t expect them to have done.

Does Your Website Give People a Reason to Trust You?

Once someone knows that you provide the service they need, they still have to decide whether they want you to provide it. This is where many law firm websites rely heavily on statements about being experienced, professional or client focused without giving much evidence to support them.

Look at what a prospective client can actually find out about your firm. Are there genuine client reviews? Can they see the solicitor who might deal with their case? Do your solicitor profiles tell them anything useful about the person behind the qualifications? Are there case studies, articles or examples that demonstrate your experience in the particular type of matter they’re dealing with?

Trust is particularly important when marketing legal services because clients are often contacting a solicitor during a difficult period in their personal life or business. Showing people how you work, what you know and what previous clients have experienced can be far more persuasive than simply telling them you’re good at what you do.

Try Making an Enquiry

One of the simplest tests a law firm can carry out is making an enquiry through its own website. Complete your contact form and see how straightforward the process actually is. Look at how many fields someone is expected to complete and whether you’re asking for information you genuinely need before you’ve even spoken to them.

More importantly, look at what happens after the form is submitted. Is the enquiry acknowledged? How quickly would somebody receive a response? What happens if the first telephone call isn’t answered? Is there a follow-up process or does that enquiry simply sit in someone’s inbox?

Law firms can spend significant amounts of money generating leads through SEO, PPC, social media and other marketing channels, but that investment can quickly be wasted if good enquiries aren’t handled properly once they arrive. Marketing doesn’t finish when someone completes a contact form. The way the firm responds is part of the client journey too.

Look at the Whole Client Journey

This is what we mean when we talk about legal marketing being built around the client at BSD Legal Marketing. SEO, PPC, content, websites and conversion rate optimisation all matter, but a prospective client doesn’t see them as separate marketing activities. They simply have a problem and want to find someone they believe can help them.

Our job as marketers is to understand that journey from their perspective. That means understanding what people are searching for, helping the firm appear when those searches take place, answering the questions that matter to potential clients and giving them enough confidence to make contact. It also means identifying anything on the website that could unnecessarily make that journey more difficult.

Try going through the process yourself. Search for one of the problems your clients regularly contact you about, compare your firm with the competitors appearing around it, visit your website on your phone, read the relevant page and try making an enquiry.

Once you’ve done all of that, ask yourself the question again: would you instruct your own law firm?