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What’s the Point of Law Firm Blogging, Anyway?

What’s the Point of Law Firm Blogging, Anyway?

Posted on by David B. Arato

If you have done research on how to market a law firm online – or any business, for that matter – you’ve undoubtedly come across articles advising you to create content and blog regularly. While it is certainly true that this is good advice, the reality is that many of these articles don’t address the why of blogging. 

If you are just creating content, throwing it at the proverbial wall, and seeing what sticks, it’s not going to provide the results you want.  Understanding why you are blogging is important to doing it well, creating content that your potential clients want to read, and also determining what resources you should devote to it. 

If you are just starting out and have time on your hands, learning how to blog may be a good investment. On the other hand, if you’ve got a busy practice or don’t have the desire to learn all the ins and outs of proper blogging, it’s probably best to outsource your content creation efforts to professional legal content writers.

Let’s explore some of the reasons it’s so important for law firms to maintain an active blog as part of their digital marketing efforts – and how to do it well.

Table of Contents

Establishing Yourself and Your Firm as a Thought Leader

Writing authoritative content on legal topics related to your practice area allows you to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field. If you are the go-to source of information in a given practice area or sub-area, it can significantly bolster your online presence and increase traffic to your site. More traffic coupled with an optimized website can translate into new clients, referrals from other firms, and more professional opportunities. Creating new, engaging, and novel content may lead to speaking engagements, media appearances, or other publicity that can grow your practice exponentially.

Targeting Long-Tail Keywords

Blogging is a great opportunity to target long-tail keywords –  longer keyword phrases that have lower search volume, are less competitive to rank for, and more likely to convert. Here’s a visual representation of what long  long-tail keywords are published by Ahrefs:

So, if you’re optimizing your practice area pages for search terms like “Chicago car accident attorney,” you can use your blog to go after long-tail terms like:

  • What should I do after a car accident?
  • Do I need a lawyer after a car crash?
  • How much is my car wreck case worth?
  • Car crash FAQs
  • How to deal with the insurance company after a car accident?

If you can match your blog titles to specific questions that your potential clients are searching for on Google, there is a good chance that you’ll appear near the top of the search results, driving more traffic – and paying clients – to your site.

One of the more technical – and overlooked – benefits of law firm blogging is attracting backlinks.  Backlinks are links to your site from other sites, and they are also often referred to as “inbound” or “incoming links. Here’s a visual representation:

The reason you want to attract backlinks is that they are one of the most important ranking factors used by Google. You can think of them as a vote of confidence for your website. The more backlinks you have from other sites, the better your website should rank for important keywords. 

Importantly, not all backlinks are the same. Sites from high-quality, popular, and authoritative sites are “worth” more than links from low-quality, low-traffic, and spammy sites. For example, you are going to get a lot more value from a link from cnbc.com than you would from someone’s personal travel blog.

You can attract backlinks to your site by creating high-quality, engaging, and authoritative blog content that others want to link to. 

Creating Good Content and Managing a Law Firm Blog Takes Time – or Money

As is the case with many things, it’s much easier to talk about blogging than it is to actually do it.  Creating content alone takes long enough, but that’s only a small part of what it takes to actively maintain and optimize a legal blog that generates new business.

Topic Ideation

First of all, you need to figure out what to write  about. Remember to focus on things that matter to your potential clients, not what matters to other lawyers or judges. While you may be super-interested in practice tips and new developments in the law, the reality is that your clients aren’t. 

For example, if you practice in family law, your potential clients are likely concerned about issues like whether they are going to be able to keep their kids or how child custody is decided. Similarly, if you practice in personal injury law, they are most concerned about things like how much their cases are worth or how long it will take to get compensation.

If you are having trouble coming up with blog topic ideas, think about the conversations you have with your clients. What questions do you hear again and again? Shameless plug: you can also turn to Lexicon Legal Content’s free AI Blog Topic Generator for ideas.

Content Creation

Now that you know what to write about, it’s time to sit down and write some content. Remember to write for your readers – not other lawyers and judges. This means avoiding legalese and making the content easy to read. Use informative headers, bulleted lists, and other visual elements that make the content easy to scan.

Optimize Your Content for Search Engines

Once you have your ideas on the page, you need to optimize your content for search engines. If you are targeting particular keywords (and you should be), you should make sure that keyword appears at a density of between 2-3 percent. 

Use appropriate header tags so that search engines are easily able to crawl your content. For example, make sure your title is formatted as H1, subheadings as H2, sub-subheadings as H3, and so on. Additionally, be sure to include links to authoritative external resources and internal links to other pages on your site. Finally, be sure to include a call to action that lets your reader know how to contact you.

Post Your Content on Your Site (and Optimize Your Post)

Now that you’ve got your blog post written and optimized, you should post it on your site. To do this, go to the back end of your website (your Dashboard, if you are using WordPress), and create a new post. Copy and paste your content into the appropriate area, and make sure the spacing between paragraphs and headers is correct – going between Word or Google Docs and WordPress can result in formatting issues.

Next, you should find and add an image to your post. You can find images on sites like pixabay or istock. Add an appropriate image to your site, and then add an alt-attribute to that image. An alt-attribute is text that is displayed if the image can’t be loaded or your site is accessed by someone who is visually impaired and using a screen reader. 

You should also categorize and tag your post in order to help both people and search engines find your content. Categories are a way to create a hierarchical organization of your content, and tags are a way to group content on similar topics together.

Promote Your Post

Now that you’ve got a live blog post, it’s time to promote it. You can do this is a variety of ways, including sharing your post on social media or sending it out to your email list of former, current, or potential clients. In addition, you can always ask your colleagues to share your post on their social media accounts for even more exposure.

Regularly creating and posting blog content takes a significant amount of time. Fortunately, if you are a busy practicing lawyer, you can outsource the entire process to the legal professionals at Lexicon Legal Content. As an attorney-led team, we understand the need for legal accuracy in law firm marketing materials. In addition, we’ve got the SEO chops to create high-ranking content that drives new business.

Should AI-Generated Content Be Watermarked?

Posted on by David B. Arato

Since November of 2022, the world has been captivated by ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot created by OpenAI. ChatGPT’s meteoric rise in popularity  – reaching 100 million users in just two months – has brought attention to generative AI in general. As you would expect, generative AI is capable of creating text, images, and other forms of content in seconds that some consider indistinguishable from what a human would create.

Unsurprisingly, generative AI has been hailed as both a productivity enhancer and a job destroyer, sometimes simultaneously. It has raised serious issues in academia, with some people suggesting that the college essay has become obsolete. In addition, AI’s generative capabilities may fundamentally change the way white collar professionals work and may even threaten their jobs.

Should Readers Know Whether Content is AI-Generated?

One issue that appears to surface regularly in the conversations around AI is whether people should know whether content was created by a human or AI. Knowing the provenance of content seems like a fair request, especially if an individual is relying on the information for a serious matter such as their health, financial well-being, or safety. 

One solution that has been thrown around is the idea of watermarking AI content, allowing people and search engines to recognize it as such. In fact, at Google I/O , the company said that it would voluntarily watermark images created by its generative AI so that people could spot fakes. Microsoft made a similar announcement a few weeks later.

Inaccurate and Fake Content Can Have Real World Effects

It is becoming more and more clear that misleading content generated by AI can have real world effects – and cause real word harm. For example, on May 22 of this year, a false report of an explosion at the Pentagon accompanied by an image likely generated by AI caused a significant dip in the stock market. 

Similarly, many experts consider content containing misinformation to pose a risk to elections. Speaking at a World Economic Forum event earlier this year, Microsoft’s chief economist, Micahel Schwartz cautioned that “Before AI could take all your jobs, it could certainly do a lot of damage in the hands of spammers, people who want to manipulate elections.” 

Bad actors could generate misinformation at a scale never seen before in the form of social media posts, fake news stories, fake images, and even deep fake videos of candidates that are indistinguishable from reality.

Perhaps most troublingly, some observers think that the rise of generative AI risks a future of human incompetence. What does the world look like if all we have to do to demonstrate competence is to ask an AI to do it for us? As put by US DOJ National Security & Cybercrime Coordinator Matt Cronin recently in The Hill:

For even the most brilliant minds, mastering a domain and deeply understanding a topic takes significant time and effort. While ultimately rewarding, this stressful process risks failure and often takes thousands of hours. For the first time in history, an entire generation can skip this process and still progress (at least for a time) in school and work. They can press the magic box and suddenly have work product that rivals the best in their cohort. That is a tempting arrangement, particularly since their peers will likely use AI even if they do not.

Like most Faustian bargains, however, reliance on generative AI comes with a hidden price. Every time you press the box, you are not truly learning — at least not in a way that meaningfully benefits you. You are developing the AI’s neural network, not your own.

Cronin argues that incompetence will increase over time as we use AI, comparing using it to having someone else work out for you and expecting to get fit as a result.

Consider a hypothetical generation of surgeons who have been raised on AI and suddenly do not have internet access – do you want them operating on you? Do you want a lawyer who got through law school learning how to correctly “prompt” AI representing you in court? Of course, for most of us, the answer is “no.”

The fact is that generative AI allows people to seemingly demonstrate knowledge or expertise they do not have. While this clearly presents an issue in academia, where students are expected to demonstrate knowledge in writing assignments, it also raises an issue as to whether consumers can trust that knowledge-based professionals like lawyers, physicians, and mental health providers actually possess the skills they claim to have in their website content. 

What Does Watermarking AI-Generated Content Look Like?

You are probably already familiar with the idea of watermarking as it relates to visual content. For an example, go to iStock and see how they display the pictures they have for sale. In order to prevent you from simply right-clicking and saving the image to your desktop, each image has “iStock by Getty Images” superimposed on top of it.

Google is taking watermarking AI-generated images a step further and embedding data that will mark them as AI-generated. In a May 10th blog post on The Keyword, Google explained that:

“. . .as we begin to roll out generative image capabilities, we will ensure that every one of our AI-generated images has a markup in the original file to give you context if you come across it outside of our platforms. Creators and publishers will be able to add similar markups, so you’ll be able to see a label in images in Google Search, marking them as AI-generated. You can expect to see these from several publishers including Midjourney, Shutterstock, and others in the coming months.

Watermarking Content Presents Special Challenges

Of course, watermarking AI-generated text would be different from watermarking images. One idea that has been discussed by AI-creators like OpenAI and other stakeholders is the idea of cryptographic watermarking. This type of watermarking involves embedding a pattern or code into the text in a way that allows software to detect whether content is generated by AI.

Hany Farid, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, recently explained how watermarking text may work in a piece for GCN:

Generated text can be watermarked by secretly tagging a subset of words and then biasing the selection of a word to be a synonymous tagged word. For example, the tagged word “comprehend” can be used instead of “understand.” By periodically biasing word selection in this way, a body of text is watermarked based on a particular distribution of tagged words. This approach won’t work for short tweets but is generally effective with text of 800 or more words depending on the specific watermark details.

This idea has gained traction in many circles. Professor Farid believes that all AI-generated content should be watermarked, as does Matt Cronin (mentioned earlier in this article). Additionally, Fedscoop’s Nihal Krishan reports that Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technology met privately with tech executives  at the RSA Conference – including those from OpenAI and Microsoft – and urged them to consider watermarking any content their AI models generate.

Conclusion

While the future of AI-content watermarking remains unclear, what is clear is that generative AI can pose risks to individuals as well as  society as a whole. Misinformation has been a problem before, but the difference now is the scale and speed with which it can be produced.

One way to handle the issue would be for AI companies to watermark all of the content they create so that everyone has a clear idea of its provenance. This would allow for the use of AI in academia without the fear of an incompetent workforce, the use of AI in journalism without eroding the public trust, and the use of AI in marketing with transparency. 

In light of the risks posed by the proliferation of AI-generated content and the potential erosion of human competence, watermarking provides a practical measure to ensure transparency and accountability. By implementing watermarking practices, content creators and publishers can contribute to a more informed and discerning society, enabling individuals to make better decisions based on the origin and authenticity of the content they encounter.

Generative AI for Law Firm Content? A Quick and Dirty Guide

Posted on by David B. Arato

It’s May of 2023, which means that professionals across all industries are working on determining how they can incorporate AI into their workflows to improve efficiency. Everyone knows the legal field moves more slowly with technology than others, but that doesn’t mean that lawyers and law firms are not trying to figure out how they can use it to do non-practice tasks like create marketing materials.

It’s true that generative AI can create fairly convincing human-sounding content, so law firms and their marketing managers may wonder whether they can use it to churn out content at scale. AI is a great assistant, but it still needs a human at the helm – especially in a high-stakes area like law. 

Below are some guidelines as to how law firms can currently use generative AI models like ChatGPT to help in the marketing efforts.+

Do Not Rely on It to Create a Finished Product By Itself

The first thing that lawyers and law firm marketing directors should realize is that you cannot rely on AI models to create a finished piece of content without human intervention. AI is a very convincing liar, and it is known to “hallucinate” answers that are just flat out wrong. 

It doesn’t take much to recognize that this can be a serious issue when creating legal content. Providing incorrect information could result in bar complaints or even a malpractice suit if someone who became a client used the information on your site for the basis of taking a specific course of action.

Additionally, even if you teach AI your brand voice, the fact is that AI-generated content does not capture the intricacy and personality of human writing. If you really want to make a connection with your readers, make sure there is a human touch to the final product.

Know What AI Does Best

Now that we’ve addressed some of the significant issues with AI content creation, it’s important to address the things that it can do extremely well. There is zero doubt that – when used correctly – AI can improve productivity and make the process of creating law firm marketing content easier. Some of the best use-cases for AI in legal content marketing include:

Topic Ideation

Sometimes, the hardest part of creating content is figuring out what to write about. After all, you can only package “why you need a [insert your practice area] attorney” in so many different ways. The fact is, however, that there is plenty to talk about in the legal field, and many questions that provide you an opportunity to connect with clients online.

Getting ChatGPT to spit out strong blog topics takes a little prompt engineering. For example, you need to narrow its output to consumer-facing matters (have you met a client that really wants to know the difference between assumption of the risk and comparative negligence?) and tell it some other details. 

Fortunately, the legal professionals at Lexicon Legal Content have done the hard part for you and created a legal industry-specific AI-Powered Legal Blog Topic Generator that you can use for free.

Getting Past Writer’s Block

So now you have some topics, but you are still looking at the blank page without any idea where to start. In cases like these, AI can help you get started. You can ask it to provide a basic introduction for your topic, which is often enough to get past writers’ block and put something on the page.

Outlining Your Content

Another place that AI shines is creating content outlines. Sometimes, it is just as simple as asking it to provide headers for an x-number of word article on your chosen topic. In others, you could ask it to get more granular and summarize pontiac ideas to cover in each section.

Read Every Word

When it comes to AI content, it is critical that someone with legal expertise (preferably someone with a JD) reads every single word of the output. A light edit adding some personal or brand flavor here and there is not going to cut it. As mentioned above, it is common knowledge that AI spits out incorrect information, and even a slight error could result in professional and legal consequences. 

In addition, AI may create content that is noncompliant with the advertising rules in your jurisdiction. A stray “specialist” or false statement about your experience could result in marketing materials that could land you in hot water with your state bar.

Run it Through a Plagiarism Checker

To vastly oversimplify the technology, generative AI uses advanced algorithms and available internet content to predict what word should come next. The fact that it is using existing content to create new content should make lawyers very nervous that the content that it generates may be extremely close to existing content on the internet. 

If you and some law firm across the street or across the country ask it to generate content on a similar topic, it may spit out very similar answers. For this reason, you should always run any AI-generated content through a plagiarism checker before publishing it. 

Keep in Mind that Without Significant Human Intervention, AI Content is Not Protected by Copyright

Earlier this year, the United States Copyright Office issued guidance regarding whether AI-generated content is subject to copyright protections. Feel free to read the entire document here, but the TLDR version is this: a work is not copyrightable when an AI generates content without human involvement, and providing a prompt is not sufficient human involvement to make a work copyrightable. In other words, if you tell an AI to “generate a blog on car accident law,” proofread it, and publish it on your website, you do not own it.

Outsource Content Creation to Legal Professionals

If this sounds like a lot to worry about when using AI to create content, it is. The reality is that in many cases, it is quicker to just write content from scratch the old-fashioned way than it is to have AI generate it and then clean it up. That said, when used correctly, AI can make parts of the content process more efficient and improve productively.

At Lexicon Legal Content, we leverage AI to create legal content for our clients that turns website visitors into clients. To learn more, call us today or send us an email.

Why Lawyers Should Promote Their Awards in their Blog Posts

Posted on by David B. Arato

It’s estimated that over 2,000 honors or recognitions specifically target the legal profession in the United States. The number of awards given by bar associations, law schools, and media outlets has swelled tremendously during the past two decades. The law firms and attorneys receiving them can leverage them to their advantage by blogging about them.

Legal awards and recognitions are third-party validation of an individual attorney, practice or law firm’s credentials. No legal client is likely to hire a lawyer simply because of an award they received. However, it may get them on a prospective client’s radar or shortlist.

Simply put, legal awards and honors help enhance attorney and law firm profiles law firms, and differentiate them from the competition.

One way to get your audience and prospective clients to learn about the accolades you have receive is to start writing blogs announcing when you receive them.

Awards Set You Apart from Other Attorneys

Legal marketing isn’t easy, especially considering the many ethical and legal compliance constraints you must adhere to. You must be keenly aware of how you talk about your services, skills, and track record.

At the same time, many prospective legal clients don’t know how to tell one lawyer apart from the next and generally assume that they are all about the same. So how can you set yourself apart from the competition and still stay within your ethical and legal bounds?

There are many ways, but one of the easiest and most obvious is to include your award nominations and recognitions in your marketing efforts. This includes publishing blogs about the honors you receive.

Awards for attorneys aren’t typically handed out like participation trophies to the elementary soccer team. These awards, honors, and recognitions set you apart from the competition.

When you leverage them in an appropriate way, you can do so without seeming like you are bragging or at the risk of crossing any ethical boundaries.

Awards and New Attorneys

You can certainly benefit from writing a blog about a recognition or award if you are a newer attorney. When you first start out, you may not have much experience or many skills that differentiate you from your local peers. Receiving awards and recognitions might be the first thing that distinguishes you from someone else and ends up bringing you more clients.

Publishing a blog post about your award not only helps you with SEO but also establishes your authority locally within your legal niche and target audience, drawing more potential clients to your law firm’s website and increasing your numbers.

Highly Decorated and Experienced Attorneys

Attorneys who have been in practice for quite some time may have received multiple awards; some may be the same award year after year. While they might seem redundant, don’t discount these awards.

Having numerous awards or receiving the same recognition for many years in a row not only shows that a lawyer was experienced and successful then but remains that way now. Some potential clients will be more likely to hire an attorney with more recent awards and recognitions than someone who won them years ago but not since.

Tips for Writing an Award Blog Post

Follow the Award Advertising Guidelines

Professional organizations that award recognitions in the legal industry frequently have their own guidelines for announcing and promoting these awards.

When you publish a blog post about or publicize an award on your website or elsewhere, always be sure you comply with their guidelines. If you don’t, you could be penalized by the organization and prohibited from further promoting the award in the future.

For instance, Martindale-Hubbell requires that any rating internet advertisement includes the text below and either a specific explanation of the rating or a link to the Martindale-Hubbell explanation:

“AV®, AV Preeminent®, Martindale-Hubbell DistinguishedSM, and Martindale-Hubbell NotableSM are Certification Marks used under license in accordance with the Martindale-Hubbell® certification procedures, standards, and policies.”

Some organizations require you to place a trademark symbol by their name or the award or otherwise refer to the award in specific terms.

Furthermore, some companies let you know you have won the award months ahead of the announcement and require you not to release the information until they make their formal announcement. Martindale-Hubbell, Super Lawyers, and Best Lawyers all publish their guidelines online.

Include All Recognitions Awarded to Lawyers in Your Law Firm

If you work for a law firm and multiple lawyers at your law firm receive the same or similar recognition at the same time, be sure you write one blog to include all of the awards received by the lawyers at your firm and the law firm itself. You can list each attorney and what they were recognized for and provide a short bio about them.

Comply with Your State’s Ethics Requirements

Attorney advertising falls under state bar regulations, including legal ethics rules. Attorneys or law firms who violate rules of professional conduct may face penalties such as fines, public censure, or even disbarment. In these cases, the attorney, not their marketing department, will be held responsible for what is published online.

Before publishing a blog post about your recognition or award, review the specifics of the professional conduct rules in every state where you practice and are licensed to ensure compliance.

For example, most states prohibit any statement that isn’t objectively verifiable, such as “Tom Smith is the Best Lawyer in the Pacific Northwest.” However, “Tom Smith has been recognized by Best Lawyers®,” is permissible. If an award recognizes an attorney’s work for a specific year, geographic location, or legal practice area, be sure to include that in the blog post or other announcement.

Keep in mind that some states have precise requirements. For instance, the Supreme Court of New Jersey recently enacted a provision that lawyer and law firm awards, honors, and accolades may only be referenced when they can be verified and the awarding organization has made sufficient inquiry into the qualifications of the individual attorney or law firm.

New Jersey also requires the following to accompany any reference to the award:

  • The name of the award-issuing organization
  • A description of how award recipients are selected, in the blog post itself or by referencing an easily-accessible public source
  • The disclaimer: “No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.”

Remember, it’s your responsibility to check your state’s legal conduct rules.

Don’t Forget Local or Regional Awards

Just because your award or recognition didn’t come from Avvo, Super Lawyers, or Best Lawyers doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share it with potential clients and your target audience. In fact, it may be more significant to those local to you.

For example, in the Denver metro area, 5280 Magazine publishes a list of Top Lawyers annually every January. While people looking for a lawyer in the area may have never heard of Super Lawyers or Best Lawyers, many have heard of or even regularly read 5280 Magazine. Lawyers with an award from this magazine will stand out to locals, whereas lawyers with other awards may not so much.

Stay Away from Paid Recognitions

There are many awards and recognitions out there. To protect your integrity and remain ethical, it only makes sense to stay away from paid recognitions.

You want to be able to say that your award was earned and well-deserved; paying for one can undermine your credibility and authority to your audience and legal community. Some of them may even be scams. The only thing these honors are recognizing is your ability to pay, not your actual skills or expertise.

Although some may offer paid advertisements in their publications, real awards honor outstanding attorneys without caring whether they pay. Instead, focus your efforts on your clients, which will, in turn, likely put you in the running for reputable recognition.

Don’t Just Post Award Announcements

Effective legal blog writing, just like all other marketing efforts, requires ongoing action. You can’t just write a blog post each time you have an award or recognition to announce for your practice or firm. Not only could it come across as tacky to your prospective clients, but it also doesn’t help your SEO.

Writing and publishing a legal blog at least once or twice weekly to drive traffic to your site and generate interest. Blogging about your awards should only be a small portion of your blogs. Instead, focus on blogging about helpful and valuable content for your readers when you don’t have awards to announce.

Remember, you wouldn’t be an award-winning attorney if you didn’t have valuable information to share. Periodic sharing of awards won’t attract the interest of real people or online algorithms. You need to regularly publish a blog post for effective SEO.

Don’t be afraid to share your awards and accolades with your readers via your legal blog and even your firm’s newsletter, if you have one. Incorporate these tips, good SEO, and it will only be a matter of time until you start to reap the benefits.

Do You Need Help with Blog Writing? Turn to the Blogging Experts at Lexicon Legal Content

If you need assistance writing your award announcements and other legal blogging or don’t have the time to do it yourself, the attorney-led team at Lexicon Legal Content can help. Contact us today to learn more about our customized blogging and legal content services.

Google Wants You to Know that It Pays to Be Helpful

Posted on by David B. Arato

The world of SEO is abuzz about the helpful content update recently published by Google. While this latest offering doesn’t seem to be earth-shattering, it is important to familiarize yourself with it – and to generally keep up. As such, there are five basic tips that can help anyone out there who needs to pay attention to SEO, which means any law firm with an online presence. The message driving Google’s latest offering is that you should be taking a people-first approach – rather than writing for bots. When Google embraces its human side, it’s time for businesses to follow suit. 

Continue reading “Google Wants You to Know that It Pays to Be Helpful”

Is There a Magic Number When It Comes to Law Firm Blog Posts?

Posted on by David B. Arato

If you’re regularly updating your law firm’s blog, you already know that blog posts help you connect with current and potential clients alike. You may wonder, however, if there’s a magic number, schedule, or time frame regarding how often and when you should be posting. Should you be slapping content up every day – even if you really don’t have much to say – or should you leave people wanting more by posting intermittently? Fortunately, it’s no longer a guessing game – there are some tried-and-true guidelines to help guide how often you should be updating your law firm’s blog. 

Continue reading “Is There a Magic Number When It Comes to Law Firm Blog Posts?”

10 Legal Content Marketing Terms You Should Get to Know

Posted on by David B. Arato

Marketing your legal content seems easy enough – write stellar copy and get it out there where it needs to be. There are, of course, challenges along the way. One of the primary building blocks of solid legal marketing is understanding the terminology that populates its principles and methodologies. Because even major players use terms in different ways – sometimes with newly imagined meanings – it’s important to have a nuanced understanding of the basics. Others may play fast and loose with their legal marketing terms, but once you and your team have settled on meaningful definitions that work for you, you’ll be far better prepared to make your mark in legal marketing.

Continue reading “10 Legal Content Marketing Terms You Should Get to Know”

Four Easy Ways to Find Fresh Ideas for Your Law Firm Blog

Posted on by David B. Arato

Whether you are a solo practitioner or part of a large law firm, improving your Google search rankings and online authority should be one of your top marketing priorities. When your audience likes and can relate to what you are publishing online, Google rewards you, as do your prospects when they turn into clients. The best way to accomplish these goals is to draft high-quality content for your website frequently.
However, creating compelling content isn’t as easy as it might sound. For most attorneys, wordsmithing tasks become buried by the dozens of other duties they must complete. Publishing excellent content that resonates with your desired audience must be a priority, or your blog won’t be an effective marketing tool. You won’t reap the rewards you desire. In fact, it’s so crucial that we highly recommend creating an editorial calendar that can serve as a guide and will remind you to keep creating content.

Finding Fresh Content Ideas

Sometimes it’s less about prioritizing your blog and more about fresh ideas. Far too often, lawyers give up on their blog because they run out of topics they want to talk about or think their audience wants to hear. Generating new content doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming—consider these tools to help keep your content up to date and innovative.

What Are People Asking About Online?

Research what people are asking about online. Garner ideas from questions people are asking about in your area of practice. TextOptimizer is one tool that can help you get inside your readers’ heads. It allows you to research what questions are being asked about specific topics. Simply type in a keyword on the “Find Content Ideas” page. For instance, typing “personal injury” reveals these results:

  • Do I have a personal injury case?
  • Do I have a personal injury claim?
  • What is a personal injury lawsuit?
  • Do I need a personal injury lawyer?

For more detailed results and tools, you can pay for the subscription service on the site. Its additional features can help you narrow down content suggestions and find keyword combinations that meet search engine requirements.

Many people turn to the internet daily for answers to their questions. If your website can provide a reliable answer, it will see more traffic and reach higher rankings.

Enlist the Help of Your Intake Team

To help specify your topics even further and keep them relevant to your potential clients, consider asking your intake team to document your prospects’ questions and concerns. This step can provide you with insight into what your audience is looking for when it comes to legal information and help.


Apps such as Slack or Google Docs are an excellent way for them to record the questions they receive on intake. Such a database will provide a convenient way to view them easily in one place when you are ready to do so.

Use Keyword Research Tools

While keywords are typically thought of in terms of SEO, they can serve other purposes. Taking the time to research relevant keywords can give you some valuable insight into your prospects’ questions and interests. Check out these tools:

  • Kparser generates several keyword ideas around the main topic of your choosing. It can provide you with fresh topic ideas that you may never have even thought about.
  • Answer the Public allows you to use keywords or key phrases and receive an aggregated view of the questions Google and Bing receive. For example, if you type in “slip and fall,” you will receive hundreds of different answers and topic ideas.

Recognize Seasonal Trends and Relevant News

Your audience experiences many of the same things you do, including seasonal trends such as:

  • Holidays
  • Back to school
  • Summer vacation
  • Travel
  • The Super Bowl and other popular sporting events
  • Gearing up for winter weather conditions

Suppose you practice family law. In that case, you may want to focus on parenting topics and shared custody during the Christmas season or summer vacation. If your practice focuses on estate planning, make it a point to discuss tax topics during the first quarter of the year.

You may also want to focus on what is nationally recognized on certain days or weeks of the year. For example, if you are a business attorney, publish a blog about National Small Business Week a week or two before it’s recognized.

Making your blog timely and relatable to what is going on will also help draw traffic to your site. Your prospects also pay attention to the news from various sources. As such, if there have been recent news stories or changes to the law that impact your area of expertise, be sure to address these matters in your content. Not only will it help increase your online traffic, but it can show your audience that you stay up to date and are an authority in your area of practice.

Do You Need Help Publishing Frequent Fresh Content?

It’s easy to get bogged down when it comes to publishing fresh and timely blogs on your law firm’s website. Whether you find it challenging to make room in your schedule to write and post your blog or to keep your readers coming back for more with fresh content, our team of attorney-led writers can help. Call us today at 877-488-8123 or contact us online. Our seasoned marketing professionals are happy to address your content needs and show you how we can help.

California Judge Says “Nevermind” to Nevermind Child Exploitation and Pornography Lawsuit

Posted on by wpengine
The Nevermind albums cover with the word "dimissed" superimposed on it

The controversial cover of Nirvana’s 1991 Nevermind was thought by many to be symbolic of the grunge rock band’s attempt at reaching for the almighty dollar. However, according to the album’s art director, it arose from lead singer Kurt Cobain’s captivation with a water birth documentary.

Either way, the late Cobain likely never imagined that the album cover would become so iconic as the likes of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Elvis Presley’s 1956 self-titled album, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon, Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy, Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA, or Prince’s Purple Rain.

Neither would he have imagined that the baby on his album cover would one day file a lawsuit for damages relating to child exploitation. Yet, in August 2021, it happened.

Now 30 years old, the baby featured on the cover, Spencer Elden, filed a lawsuit seeking $150,000 in damages. He accused Nirvana and those associated with the album of knowingly distributing the naked picture of him taken at four months old. The lawsuit accuses photographer Kirk Weddle, a friend of Elden’s father, of taking sexually graphic photos of him.

According to Elden, the album cover was to feature a sticker over his genitals but never did. He also claims that he never received any personal compensation for the photograph and that his parents never signed a release authorizing Nirvana to use the image.

In response to the album’s 30th anniversary in November and rereleased cover, Elden’s attorneys wrote that “It’s past time to finally put an end to the child exploitation and violation of privacy our client has endured for his entire life.”

Last month, the defendants in the case, Kurt Cobain’s estate, Kirk Weddle, Universal Music, Geffen Records, Warner Records, and MCA Music, asked the judge to dismiss the case. According to them, “Elden has spent three decades profiting from his celebrity as the self-anointed ‘Nirvana Baby.’ He has re-enacted the photograph in exchange for a fee, many times; he has had the album title Nevermind tattooed across his chest; he has appeared on a talk show wearing a self-parodying, nude-colored onesie; he has autographed copies of the album cover for sale on eBay; and he has used the connection to try to pick up women.”

Elden was given until December 30, 2021, to respond to the request. His attorneys at Marsh Law failed to respond, and subsequently, the judge dismissed the case. They now have until January 13, 2022, to re-file the case, which could lead to both sides meeting on January 20. Marsh Law stated that they will file a second amended complaint soon and that they are “confident Spencer will be allowed to move forward with the case.”

Do You Need Timely Content for Your Firm? Call Us Today

As an attorney, one of the ways to keep your potential leads fresh is to publish timely content that relates to your area of practice. Whether you’re a divorce attorney whose state has new laws concerning child support, a criminal defense attorney who wants to highlight a local high profile case, or you want to unpack current national events related to what you do, we can help. Our team of attorney-led writers can identify pertinent, timely topics and use them to create traffic-driving content on your website. Give us a call today to learn more.

What Is Content Readability and Who Defines It?

Posted on by David B. Arato

Most of us think something is readable if we enjoy it. We want a piece to have a beginning, middle, and end, preferably in that order. If it’s fictional, we want it to be about people we care about or like. Sometimes, it’s a book you just happen to come across or a title or a cover that drew you in, and you couldn’t leave till you finished the story. Sometimes, it’s something so powerful that you simply can’t let it go. However, these qualities aren’t the only kinds of readability.

When it comes to getting your law firm website to rank, content readability is an important factor. Search engines analyze readability and reward it. In other words, they rank (and put at the top of the SERPs) the articles that have the features the engine thinks will make a reader stick to the end. Aside from all the other things the contributed to readability, being current and up-to-date is one of the most important factors. Keeping your firm’s website current and up-to-date with content that people want to read will go a long way to keeping you high on that first results page.

Do We Know It When We See It?

One of the ways a search engine defines readability is by determining how long a reader stays in place before sliding on to the next result. It doesn’t just matter how many people click on your page; it matters how long they stay after they get there. There are ways to encourage them to stick around, such as with video and audio content and eye-catching graphics. Paying attention to these things takes more time than simply reading – or not reading – whatever copy you’ve offered. Still, words are usually far less expensive than sound, pictures, and graphics, so it is very much worth your time to offer the best and most readable content you can provide.

Key Readability Factors

Factors that Google will focus on when deciding the readability of your page include:

Sentence Length & Variety

You want short sentences but with some variation in their length and style. Avoid unnecessary or overly formal words. Additionally, it’s better not to crowd your text with words like “actually” and “usually,” which give you no value for the space. Avoid using too many adjectives and consider breaking up long, complicated sentences.

Structure & Style

Again, short sentences are vital. Each sentence should have a subject and a verb – preferably in that order. Make sure to include graphics and video here as well. They are supporting tools and hold your visitors. Avoid fussy fonts.

Paragraph Length and Formatting

Use short paragraphs made up of short sentences. Readable paragraphs are usually 5 or 6 lines long. Use a title and subtitles. Bullet points are your best friends, and you should always try to include at least one. Don’t forget to include keywords. You’ll want to put them in subtitles as well as in your paragraphs and try to repeat them without sounding like you’re just adding keywords.

Make It Work for You

All of these factors and more can make your website attractive and engaging to readers. You can contact us to help you provide the most readable copy for your website. We will even provide a free sample, marketing written expressly for you to help you decide how best to move forward with your legal content.