By Joshua King
Special to the Legal Technology blog
Search engine optimization is often viewed in the realm of solo and small firm practices; those that need to compete amidst the sea of potential clients who troll the internet looking for a lawyer. Big firms, the thinking goes, needn’t worry about such matters -- their stable, corporate clients aren’t going to be looking online for legal help.
Except that, increasingly, they are. While the purchase decision process and timetable will look different for a Fortune 500 company seeking local counsel than it will for a lead-footed consumer desperate for a speeding-ticket lawyer, the steps at the beginning of the process are largely the same. The economic climate and new business models have also made corporate buyers of legal services increasingly restive and willing to cast about online for more cost-effective counseling options.
Even where referrals are concerned, the idea that companies will simply accept a referral at face value is as quaint as the notion of a CFO calling his bankers to get the company’s current stock price. A referral is always going to be checked online, and the kicker is this: The accuracy of search engines and the amount of online content is rapidly doing away with the old Internet paradigm of entering in a law firm’s Web site address. It’s far easier to simply search Google by name and city, and as an added benefit you’ll get a greater diversity of content than from going straight to a firm’s site, e.g., links to articles, client reviews, ratings, news stories, etc.
BigLaw, however, seems stuck with the notion that their Web pages are simply repositories of information rather than marketing tools that must compete for attention with a sea of other online content. Avvo recently did a study of the Web sites of the 20 largest law firms and found that most are doing a poor job optimizing their content to be found by search engines. Many aren’t taking even the most rudimentary of SEO steps. Suffice it to say that many BigLaw firms get grades that most of their high-achieving attorneys would look askance at had they seen them on a law school report card.
Josh King is vice president, business development & general counsel for Avvo. He has a diverse background in the law, having worked as a litigator in small firms and in-house at technology companies in general counsel and corporate development roles. He is a frequent writer and speaker on M&A, legal and social media issues.
Its true, more and more people are going online for pretty much everything. Legal help and advice included. And yet, we still see tons of people thinking they can ignore the online market. How long before their typical methods of finding clients stop working for them?
Posted by: business development | October 15, 2009 at 07:31 PM