Content Writing Guide for Law Firms

Law Firm Content Writing: Your Guide to Writing Better Legal Content

Have you ever wondered how to reach potential clients? We realize this task can feel overwhelming when you have your own day job to focus on—let’s face it, focusing on law and serving your clients should be your number one priority. However, reaching potential clients is also critical to keep your business prospering. Establishing yourself online and developing strong content are crucial parts of the process. In this article, we will showcase how to create a content writing plan for your firm an editorial calendar, and answer all your questions.

Table of Contents>

• The Importance Of Law Firm Content
• Create a Law Firm Content Writing Plan
• Defining Your Audience
• Establish Your Brand ID
• Conduct Competitive Research
• Create Valuable Content
• Structure Is Key
• Content Should Be Created At An 8th Grade Reading Level
• Update Your Existing Content
• Editorial Calendar
• Use Social Media Platforms To Communicate
• Measure Results
• FAQs Of Content Writing for Law Firms
• How do you write content for a law firm?
• Why do law firms need content marketing?
• Informative and Engaging Content for Lawyers by PaperStreet

The Importance Of Law Firm Content

Developing strong content for your law firm is an essential part of your marketing and branding strategy. Your goal should be to create strategic, valuable, and relevant content for potential clients and find ways to engage with them.

Content is extremely valuable as it serves as a vehicle for establishing your expertise, building trust, and nurturing client relationships. By delivering high-quality content that consistently educates and informs, your firm can position itself as an authority, ultimately enhancing its brand reputation. Content marketing is also extremely important if you want to positively impact SEO. Consistently providing valuable, optimized content can help generate juicy backlinks, drive referral traffic, and improve search rankings—all targeted at resonating with your audience.

Create a Law Firm Content Writing Plan

As you prepare your content writing plan, there is much to consider and plan for. We have developed a guide aimed at providing you with as many tools as possible for effective law firm content writing. In this guide, we will explain tips for creating a plan and mediums to use to tailor your approach to potential clients, such as utilizing blogs, social media, videos, newsletters, etc.

Defining Your Audience

It is important to do your homework to define your target market and develop effective ways to reach the team. You must also truly understand your audience's legal needs.

As you research your audience, consider questions about them, such as:

• What is the demographic of my ideal client—age, gender, location, occupation, and income level?
• What are their primary legal concerns—what challenges and pain points are they facing that I can help address?
• How am I most likely to engage with my audience—social media, blogs, newsletters, etc?
• What topics are important to my audience that I can help clarify?
• How can my firm differentiate itself to provide valuable information and meet the specific needs of clients?

After you have defined a list to help identify your audience, then do research. This can be accomplished by gathering feedback through surveys, interviews, and website analytics. You can also just ask a few key clients questions. You can monitor social media engagement and conduct keyword research to help identify audience interests, trends, and search behavior.

Establish Your Brand ID

Establishing a brand for your firm is vital in many ways and ultimately contributes to the firm’s long-term success. A strong brand ID will go a long way in communicating with potential clients, such as:

• Differentiating your firm from competitors—clients will understand what makes you unique and what you have to offer
• Conveying professionalism, trustworthiness, and expertise—all very important for a law firm
• Effectively communicating your values, mission, and unique selling points
• Enhancing your firm reputation and visibility but also contributing to long-term success

Conduct Competitive Research

A great way to ensure your firm stays on top of trends and remains competitive in the market is to consistently conduct competitive research.

• Who is your competition? Conduct competitive research if you are not already in tune with your top competitors. Find out who you are competing with locally and even review some top national firms.
• Check out Google. Conduct a competitive Google search. For example, if you are a personal injury law firm, you can type in “Personal Injury Attorney,” and a list of local firms will appear in the results.
• Do it better. A great way to improve your work is to find out what your peers are doing better. Follow other firms on social media, sign up for their newsletters, and take advantage of any other opportunities to connect.
• Mirror tactics. Review who your direct competition is and mirror (do not copy) their tactics. What are they doing well that you can also try to implement for your firm?

Here is an example of the search results. These firms are likely doing something right in your area since they come up first in the search.

Create Valuable Content

When creating content, it is very important to take the preliminary time needed to do research to understand your target's needs.

Good questions to address in your research are:

• What content will satisfy my client's needs?
• What type of information are potential clients seeking?
• Are important questions in my existing content not being answered?
• Are there pressing topics that are being overlooked?
• What are current newsworthy opportunities to create content around?

Effective research can include analyzing client inquiries, social media discussions, and online forums like Reddit. These examples can help you identify common questions and topics important to your audience. Clients may go to these forums to seek information.

Be sure to pay attention to gaps or overlooked topics in your existing content; there may be opportunities to address areas you have not properly covered.

Focus on topics that resonate with your audience and address concerts.

Structure Is Key

When a potential client visits your page, it should not look like large blurbs of words on a page. The content should look inviting and engage the user to keep reading. The key formatting components we typically recommend for pages of content include the following:

• A Strong H1 Heading—ideally, this includes any keywords important to the page for ranking purposes.
• Content should be broken up into paragraphs, H2s, and bullet points throughout
• Include links to internal pages. If you mention something relevant in the content on another page on your site, link it.
• Include links to external pages (Google loves the external love)
• End the page with a call to action. Tell the potential client how you can help and invite them to contact you. Tip: make sure to link to your contact page from here.

Following these simple formatting guidelines will help with your page readability, engagement, and time the user spends on the page—this all improves SEO, but more importantly, improves the user experience on your site.

Below is an example of a best practices formatted page. You will find H1, H2, bullet points, links to other pages, and a call to action at the bottom.

Content Should Be Created At An 8th Grade Reading Level

Write your content to ensure it is at an 8th-grade reading level. We know this sounds rudimentary. Why would a lawyer want to make their communication tone sound less educated or less expert? But, for many reasons, this is a smart tactic. It is critical for readers to understand your content and that Google can effectively crawl it as well.

• The content should not contain long chunks of information. This will ensure clarity and accessibility, making the content easier to understand for a wider audience.
• Provide simple language and clear explanations—you can effectively communicate complex legal concepts without overwhelming or confusing your audience.
• Content written at an 8th-grade level is also more likely to be engaging and retain the reader's attention
• Engaging content will deliver higher levels of comprehension and retention of key messages

All of the above are very important for SEO—the longer the reader stays on the page, the better. Search engines tend to favor content that is easy to read and understand. This can help improve your search rankings.

Update Your Existing Content

We understand how extensive and time-consuming it can be to craft content for your entire website. It is typically a huge project, and many hours are spent on the initial effort. However, the content/trends of the internet are constantly evolving. It is very important to set a time every year to evaluate the content on your website. One of the worst impacts to your brand is if a potential client visits your site and everything is outdated.

If you set a calendar, for example, in January of each year to review your website content, go through each page, and ensure the information is still accurate. Do things need a refresh?

Practice Areas

Below is a brief checklist to consider when you review your practice area pages:

• Review each for content quality
• Is any of the information, laws, or your practice information out of date
• Have new attorneys joined the firm that needs to be included on these pages?
• Are there opportunities to optimize the content with relevant keywords?
• Are there opportunities to link the content to other pages on your website?
• Have any phone numbers changed?

Bios

The last thing you probably want is for a client to go to a bio on your site that the attorney has not updated since 1988. Imagine an 80s hairstyle and information about awards from 1985.

In our experience, the bio pages are among the highest-trafficked pages on a firm's website. Therefore, this is absolutely the most important content next to the home page on your firm website. Clients want to know who they will be working with and who will be representing them. They will immediately get an impression of your firm and your attention to detail. As we know, first impressions go a long way.

We highly recommend you ask your attorneys to review and update bios once a year. It is very common for bios to be forgotten and outdated. Tips for reviewing attorney bios:

• Request each attorney to review and update their bio each January
• Review bios for any outdated or stale information
• Take the opportunity to spice up the writing if needed
• Are there new paragraphs that can be added
• Any new awards from the year to include
• Did anyone participate in community service or pro bono that is not listed
• Any key representative matters or cases that are not listed

When you update bios on an annual basis, the task becomes less overwhelming.

Blogs

Outdated blogs are another eyesore for many firms. Often, firms start a blog with good intentions and high hopes of consistently blogging. However, keeping an updated blog is a commitment that not every firm has the bandwidth to achieve.

The one thing worse than not having a blog is having an outdated one. We recommend you set a calendar to review your blog page every month to ensure timely posts.

Editorial Calendar

It is very important to create a powerful editorial calendar to help organize your plans. This process begins with defining your goals and objectives of what you would like to communicate and aligning them with your firm’s overall marketing strategy.

• Understand your audience—identify preferences, interests, and pain points.
• Brainstorm—any idea is a good idea; try brain-dumping a number of ideas until the right ones resonate. The ideas should be focused on your goals, audience research, and industry trends.
• Organize—Once you have established the ideas and content you want to create, organize them into themes or categories.
• Identify platforms—figure out the most effective ways to communicate the information. For example, the use of blog posts, videos, or infographics. Be sure to cover all appropriate channels, such as Facebook, YouTube, etc.
• Establish a consistent publishing schedule—create a calendar and assign publishing on specific dates. Big tip: Do not try to do it all yourself; try to assign responsibilities to colleagues as much as possible. Content marketing for your firm is a team effort.
• Monitor performance—use analytics tools and revise your calendar and strategy based on insights and feedback you are receiving.

Use Social Media Platforms To Communicate

Using the power of social media, blogs, newsletters, and video content can establish meaningful connections with your clients.

• Social platforms allow you to engage with your clients, share valuable insight, and showcase your expertise.
• Blogs allow you to provide more in-depth exploration of recent laws or guides for your clients to help them understand the law.
• Newsletters provide a direct line of communication with your mailing list (people who actively signed up to hear what you want to say—built-in bonus). Make sure to create compelling, newsworthy content to share.
• Videos offer you the ability to communicate in a dynamic storytelling way, and you can explain complex legal concepts in a visually engaging format. This is a great opportunity to include various attorneys from the firm and create a strong brand that visually relates to clients.

Make sure these platforms all work together for you. For example, if you write a very engaging blog, share it on social media and blast a newsletter about it.

Measure Results

Measuring the results is just as important as creating a content plan and strategy.

What is the point of putting in all the effort if you do not track the results to ensure they are working? At the beginning of your plan, you should identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you assess the effectiveness.

• Examples would be increasing website traffic, generating leads, or improving brand awareness.
• At scheduled times, be sure to track and analyze your KPIs to identify patterns and correlations between content efforts and outcomes.
• Gather feedback from your audience through surveys, comments, or reviews to gain an understanding of their perception of your content efforts.

This effort in monitoring your KPIs can significantly help you understand how to improve your future efforts.

FAQs Of Content Writing for Law Firms

How do you write content for a law firm?

Start by understanding the audience you are addressing. Figure out if you are trying to reach individuals seeking legal advice or businesses requiring corporate services. By understanding their needs and the information they are seeking, you can better tailor the type of content you need to develop and set the tone of the writing.

It is important to research legal topics, industry trends, and common questions within the firm’s practice areas. Once you have this data collected, a content plan will be created that will effectively address the needs of your audience.

Be sure to create content in a clear and concise voice. Offer tangible value by offering advice, insights, or solutions. This will showcase the firm's expertise and build trust with potential clients.

Why do law firms need content marketing?

Content marketing is so important to a law firm's marketing strategy. It can help firms connect with target audiences, build brand awareness, and drive growth. Below are highlights of the importance of law firm content marketing:

• It helps establish the firm's online presence—without this, potential clients will find it difficult to find you online.
• Positioning your firm as an authoritative source—consistently creating and distributing valuable content will help build trust and credibility with your audience.
• A platform for showcasing expertise—this can really differentiate you from the competition. You can showcase thought leadership, your unique value proposition, and the overall expertise and experience of attorneys.
• Contributes to client engagement—this really empowers your clients to make informed decisions about their legal matters, which again builds trust.
• Improve the website’s ranking in search results—by driving organic traffic. This will increase the likelihood of visitors becoming actual clients.

Informative and Engaging Content for Lawyers by PaperStreet

In this guide, we have delved into crafting compelling content, engaging with your audience, and tips on driving growth. We hope these tips will help equip you with the tools necessary to create a compelling content strategy for your firm. Understanding the importance of content writing is so important in today’s digital age.

Without an effective strategy and understanding of the fundamentals of content writing for your site, your website, and firm will not get the attention it deserves. By following our recommendations in this guide and implementing best practices, you can elevate your firm’s online presence, engage with your target audience, and drive growth.

At PaperStreet, we are experts in crafting content strategies and completing website content for law firms. Our team is composed of experienced attorney writers who are talented in these areas. Contact us today if you need help with your content plan or writing.