‘Tis the season in which lawyers make New Year’s resolutions, and so does everyone else. As a lawyer, you cannot afford to procrastinate. Therefore, you have already decided on your personal and professional New Year’s resolutions, but those are not what concerns us in this post. Your law firm’s blog is utterly unconcerned with what you decide to eat this year or how much you spend on SEO.
The MyShingle Post on Selling Clients Their Own Dreams
A post on the MyShingle website encourages lawyers to advertise the things that clients can do with a lawyer’s help, rather than advertising the legal services themselves. It focused on graphics and slogans rather than blog posts; for example, it recommended a graphic of a person moving into a new house with the caption “fresh start” for a law firm that handles divorce cases or represents people filing for bankruptcy. It is possible to apply the principle to blogs, too. Here are some examples.
· If you are a criminal defense lawyer, research news archives and find stories about people who have achieved career success after having their criminal records expunged. End with a call to action encouraging readers to contact you to help them get their criminal convictions expunged.
· If you are a family law attorney, describe the ways in which filing or modifying a parenting plan can help a financially strapped single mom simplify her life. (If she is reading your post in January, she has probably just made a resolution to earn more money and reduce her spending.) If she knows that the children will spend every Friday and Saturday night with their dad, she can take a second job waiting tables on those evenings without having to pay for childcare and sleep in on Saturday and Sunday mornings to rest up for another week as a single mom with two jobs. Meanwhile, she can watch her debts shrink and her savings grow.
· If you are an estate planning lawyer, bust the stereotype about trust fund babies. Write about real-life examples of young adults who graduated from college debt-free thanks to trust fund money from their grandparents and went on to become productive and financially self-supporting.
· If you are a divorce lawyer, cite statistics about how access to no-fault divorce protects women from much worse fates than having to pay a divorce lawyer. Cite the studies that more divorces equals less domestic violence.
In other words, don’t just drone on about statutes on your blog. Use your blog to show your clients what they can achieve if they hire you.
Legal Content Writing
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