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Lessons from DoNotPay: The Ethical Implications of AI in the Legal Industry

Posted on March 27, 2023June 20, 2024 by David B. Arato

Some shortcuts and hacks are worth it in life and business, and some simply aren’t. Some are harmless, appealing, less expensive, and time-saving in the beginning. Yet, they turn out to cause more problems and hassle than the situation presented initially without the shortcut. But, as one previously-aspiring attorney is coming to find out, AI in the legal realm is more of the latter—at least for now. So if you are an attorney or a marketing professional who works with attorneys, you’ll want to make a note of this case and learn from another’s mistakes instead of venturing down that path or similar ones yourself.

The World’s First Robot Lawyer

San Fransisco’s DoNotPay is “the world’s first robot lawyer,” according to founder, CEO, and software engineer Joshua Browder. The tech company was founded in 2016 by Browder, a Stanford University undergraduate and 2018 Thiel Fellow who has received a remarkable amount of media attention in his short career. Browder says he started the company after moving to the U.S. from the U.K. and receiving many parking tickets that he couldn’t afford to pay. Instead, he looked for loopholes in the law he could use to his advantage to find ways out of paying them.

He claims that the government and other large corporations have conflicting rules and regulations that only stand to rip off consumers. With DoNotPay, his goal is to give a voice to the consumer without consumers having to pay steep legal fees. According to the company’s website, they use artificial intelligence (AI) to serve approximately 1,000 cases daily. Parking ticket cases have a success rate of about 65 percent, while Browder claims many other case types are 100 percent successful.

DoNotPay claims to have the ability to:

Fight corporations
Beat bureaucracy
Find hidden money
Sue anyone
Automatically cancel free trials

The company has an entire laundry list on its website of legal problems and matters its AI can handle, such as:

Jury duty exemptions
Child support payments
Clean credit reports
Defamation demand letters
HOA fines and complaints
Warranty claims
Lien removals
Neighbor complaints
Notice of intent to homeschool
Insurance claims
Identify theft
Filing a restraining order
SEC complaint filings
Egg donor rights
Landlord protection
Stop debt collectors

DoNotPay: Plagued with Problems

While his intentions might be relevant or even noble to some, they are landing Broward in his own legal hot water for which there may currently be no robot lawyer to represent him.

State Bars Frown on AI in the Courtroom

In February, a California traffic court was set to see its first “robot lawyer” as Broward planned to have an AI-powered robot argue a defendant’s traffic ticket case in court. If his plan had come to fruition, the defendant would have worn smart glasses to record court proceedings while using a small speaker near their ear, allowing them to dictate appropriate legal responses.

This unique and innovative system relied on AI text generators, including the new ChatGPT and DaVinci. While in the courtroom, the AI robot would process and understand what was being said and generate real-time responses to the defendant. Essentially, they could act as their own lawyer with the help of DoNotPay’s robot lawyer— a technology that has never been used within a courtroom.

Many state bars and related entities quickly expressed their extreme disapproval when they learned about Browder’s plans. Multiple state bars threatened the business, even threatening prosecution and prison time. For example, one state bar official reminded him that unauthorized practice of law is a misdemeanor in certain states that can come with a punishment of up to six months in county jail.

State bars license and regulate lawyers in their respective states, ensuring those in need of legal assistance hire lawyers who understand the law and know what they are doing. According to them, Browder’s AI technology intended for courtroom use is clearly an “unauthorized practice of law.”

DoNotPay is now under investigation by several state bars, including the California State Bar. AI in the courtroom is also problematic because, currently, courtroom rules for federal and many state courts don’t allow the recording of court proceedings. Even still, Broward’s company offered $1 million to any lawyer to have its chatbot handle a U.S. Supreme Court case. To date, no one has accepted his offer.

DoNotPay Accused of Fraud

As if being reprimanded by several state bars isn’t bad enough, Broward and DoNotPay are now facing at least one, if not multiple, class action suits. The silver lining is that perhaps Browder will finally get to test his robot lawyer in court.

On February 13, 2023, Seattle paralegal Kathryn Tewson filed a petition with the NY Supreme Court requesting an order for DoNotPay and Broward to preserve evidence and seeking pre-action discovery. She plans to file a consumer rights suit, purporting that the company is a fundamental fraud.

What’s even more interesting is that Tewson notes in her filing that she consents to Browder using his robot lawyer to represent himself in this case and even seems to dare him to do so:

For what it is worth, Petitioner does and will consent to any application Respondents make to use their “Robot Lawyer” in these proceedings. And she submits that a failure to make such an application should weigh heavily in the Court’s evaluation of whether DoNotPay actually has such a product.

Through her own research, Tewson has accused Broward of not even using AI but piecing different documents together to produce legal documents for consumers who either believe they are receiving AI content or real attorney-generated content. Suppose DoNotPay is actually using AI, as Broward claims. In that case, it’s obviously not producing quality work products, and consumers are starting to notice.

A Potential Class Action Lawsuit

As if these legal issues weren’t already enough, next on the DoNotPay docket is a potential class action lawsuit. On March 6, 2023, Jonathan Faridian of Yolo County filed a lawsuit in San Francisco seeking damages for alleged violations of California’s unfair competition law. Faridian alleges he wouldn’t have subscribed to DoNotPay services if he knew that the company was not actually a real lawyer. He asks the court to certify a class of all people who have purchased a subscription to DoNotPay’s service.

Faridian’s lawyer Jay Edelson filed the complaint on his behalf, alleging that he subscribed to the DoNotPay services and used the service to perform a variety of legal services on his behalf, such as:

Drafting demand letters
Drafting an independent contractor agreement
Small claims court filings
Drafting two LLC operating agreements
An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission job discrimination complaint

Faridian says he “believed he was purchasing legal documents and services that would be fit for use from a lawyer that was competent to provide them.” He further claims that the services he received were “substandard and poorly done.”

Edelson has successfully sued Google, Amazon, and Apple for billions. The NYT refers to him as the “most feared lawyer in Silicon Valley.”

When asked directly if DoNotPay would be hiring a lawyer for its defense or self-defending in court relying on its own tools, Browder said, “I apologize given the pending nature of the litigation, I can’t comment further.” Even still, he recently tweeted, “We may even use our robot lawyer in the case.”

What Lawyers and Marketing Professionals Can Learn From DoNotPay’s Mistakes

Stanford professors say that Browder is “not a bad person. He just lives in a world where it is normal not to think twice about how new technology companies could create harmful effects.” Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. In the meantime, attorneys and marketing professionals have a lot they can glean from Broward’s predicaments. They certainly need to think twice about the potentially harmful effects of AI technology use for several reasons.

DoNotAI

The overarching theme that we can take away from Broward and his business’s legal predicaments is that AI isn’t something that law firms or attorneys (or even those aspiring to be in the legal profession) should dabble in, at least for now. It isn’t worth using AI, such as ChatGPT or Google’s new Bard, whether for online form completion like DoNotPay or marketing content like blogs or newsletters. You don’t want to give the impression that something was drafted or reviewed by a licensed attorney when in reality, it was essentially written by a robot. On the other hand, you also don’t want to be accused of piecing legal documents together or performing shoddy work as an attorney because you are using AI.

While relying on AI might seem harmless in some areas, it could later prove problematic, as it has for Broward. For example, using AI for any of your work or marketing content could:

Tarnish your reputation in your community and with your colleagues and network
Have your actions called into question by your state bar association
Provide consumers with the wrong or simply invaluable information, proving disastrous for your marketing and SEO efforts
Lower your SEO rankings and decrease your potential client leads
Cause legal action for malpractice or fraud

Adhere to Professional Standards

Always remember to adhere to your professional standards and codes of conduct. If anything related to the use of AI seems questionable or unethical, treat it as such and steer clear of it. The use of AI as a substitute for the advice and counsel of a bona fide attorney, whether online, in the courtroom, or in representing your clients, isn’t acceptable under any state bar at the current time. Taking shortcuts that rely on AI isn’t worth facing professional consequences up to and including having your license suspended or terminated.

What This Means for Legal Content

AI is permissible and even valuable for some minor legal content generation tasks, such as determining keywords or composing an outline. However, these new and still emerging technologies shouldn’t be used to draft entire blog posts, white papers, newsletters, eBooks, landing pages, or other online marketing copy. There are several reasons to avoid this:

AI-generated content may soon carry a watermark detectable by web browsers
We don’t yet know how Google will react to such content—although Google currently claims the quality of the content is more important than how it is produced, AI may not be generating quality content, and Google could change its stance at any point
State bars may view AI-generated marketing content as unethical or fraudulent
The use of AI-generated content could constitute the unauthorized practice of law in some states
AI content may provide incorrect information and come across as cold or impersonal, something attorneys definitely want to avoid when marketing to potential clients

Do You Need Help Producing Original Content?

If you are an attorney or marketing professional who needs help producing legal content, Lexicon Legal Content can help. Don’t cut corners and put yourself at risk by turning to AI-generated content. Our team of attorney-led writers can produce valuable content for your website or other marketing efforts that pass not only plagiarism detection but also AI detection. All content is either written or reviewed by a licensed attorney. Talk to a content expert today about we can meet your legal content needs.

FAQs: Can Lawyers Use AI-Generated Content for Marketing?

Posted on March 9, 2023June 21, 2024 by David B. Arato

Right now, it’s nearly impossible to have a discussion about digital marketing without mentioning ChatGPT or AI generally. The technology is undoubtedly amazing; it’s capable of answering questions, creating a business plan, and even writing essays. One of the most obvious potential use cases for the newest generation of AI tools is content creation – but is it a good idea to use it? Let’s dig in and see what the issues are….

Table of Contents

Can I Post AI-Generated Content on My Website?
Should I Use AI Content?
How Can AI Help in the Content Creation Process?
Is AI-Content Well-Written?
Is AI-Content Bar-Compliant?
In Conclusion…

Can I Post AI-Generated Content on My Website?

Yes, you can. That said , the last thing you should do is post AI-generated content on your legal site without significant oversight and review. On February 8, 2023, Google clarified its position on AI-generated content. In short, it said that using AI-generated content is not against its guidelines. Like other forms of content, it will rank well if it is helpful for people searching for information. Additionally, as clarified in March of 2024, if you use AI to create content in an attempt to “game” SEO, your site will likely be penalized.

Should I Use AI Content?

As the old adage goes, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. If your site deals with topics that can affect your money or your life (YMYL, in Google’s parlance), it will scrutinize your site’s content more closely. Specifically, it will look closely for signals that demonstrate experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).

YMYL sites include sites that relate to topics like medicine, finance, and law. As a result, it’s critical for lawyers to ensure that the content on their site is accurate, helpful, and in compliance with the rules of professional conduct. If you are using AI to generate content, it’s imperative that you (or someone with the necessary expertise) review every word of it before you post it on your website. At that point, it becomes a legitimate question as to whether using AI to create long-form legal content is truly more efficient than human writing.

If you need 100-word product descriptions for kitchen appliances, you’re likely fine to use AI to generate them and post them with a cursory review. If you are creating long-form blog content on complicated legal topics, you probably want to have more human involvement and oversight in content creation.

How Can AI Help in the Content Creation Process?

That said, there are certainly ways in which AI tools can help content creators make the process more efficient. Some of the ways that you can use AI to help in content creation ethically and without creating more work include:

Blog topic ideation
Client persona identification
Keyword research
Content outlining
Basic legal research
Getting over writer’s block

Is AI-Content Well-Written?

Whether you think AI-generated content is well-written depends on what you believe makes content “good.” To many people, it’s just too generic and “clean” to qualify as good content. The reality is that law firms and other professional service providers have a brand identity that they want their content to reflect, and content generated by artificial intelligence lacks the personality that achieves that goal.

Is AI-Content Bar-Compliant?

There is no guarantee that the content created by AI will be compliant with the rules of your state bar. It may make statements that inadvertently guarantee a favorable outcome, it may suggest that you are a “specialist” or an “expert,” and it may even provide incorrect information. Furthermore, it’s possible that some state bars may hold the position that using AI-generated content without oversight is, per se, a violation of the rules of professional conduct.

In Conclusion…

If you are a law firm or a digital marketing agency that works with law firms, AI can certainly help you in your efforts. That said, you should be certain that there is a significant amount of expert oversight in the process. Using AI to mass-produce content and posting without review can land you in hot water with Google and even your state bar.

Google Wants You to Know that It Pays to Be Helpful

Posted on September 16, 2022March 8, 2023 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”

how to increase traffic to your website?

Posted on May 18, 2022April 27, 2024 by David B. Arato

Your law firm’s website plays an important role in terms of marketing and reaching your target audience – and your content matters. Generating relevant and compelling content is the name of the game, but if you find yourself at a loss when it comes to choosing inspiring topics that resonate with your widest potential audience, you are not alone. Many firms find themselves recycling the same, tired titles time and time again, but you can do better, and we have some helpful hints to get you started.

Think Seasonal

The seasons hit us all the same, and they make a great anchor for developing content.

The Spring and Summer Months

With summer nearly upon us, your content should focus on legal matters that relate to summer living, including:

With the kids out of school, there are summer child custody schedules to tweak, and child custody modifications are common.
With warmer weather, we see more road trips, which can inspire a wealth of topics, including traffic accidents, road safety, travel routes, destinations, and much more.
Summer means vacay, which lends itself nicely to articles about premises liability claims related to hotels, resorts, and pools.
Boats and jet skis hit their stride in the warmer months, which makes articles that explore related accidents a gimme.

There are also the summer holidays to consider, which deserve some attention of their own.

Memorial Day

This year, Memorial Day is on May 27, and it tends to kick off summer break for all the kiddos out there. Memorial Day is a three-day weekend that brings family and friends together for beer, brats, and yard games (or some variant thereof), and it’s a great opportunity to visit and spruce up the gravesites of our lost loved ones – with a focus on veterans. Memorial Day, however, is also closely associated with some heavy-duty traffic accident statistics, including (according to the National Safety Council, NSC) that traffic fatalities spike over the Memorial Day weekend (compared to the weekends that bracket it). In other words, you can treat Memorial Day as a springboard for a wide range of related articles.

Fourth of July

The Fourth of July falls on a Monday this year, which – for many people – means a 4- or 5-day weekend. Fourth of July has everything that summer has to offer on tap, with some extras thrown in for good measure, including:

Elevated car accident statistics related to increased traffic, increased impairment behind the wheel and increased distraction
Water-related accidents
Injuries caused by fireworks

Labor Day

Labor Day means back to school and the child custody concerns that are often sparked by this transition. There are also topics about accidents on school grounds and accidents related to children making their way to and from school – including bus accidents, pedestrian accidents, and bike accidents – to consider.

We can all relate to the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day – and all the other holidays – on a very personal level, which makes the summer holidays a great platform for blog topics. Don’t be afraid to give your blog entries and articles your own spin – it’s the best way to find your voice and to really speak to all those searchers who can truly benefit from your services. If you have a unique topic in mind, don’t back-burner it simply because it’s not what everyone else is doing – you might have a real winner on your hands, and when you speak from a place of authentic concern, it can have a profound impact.

The Fall and Winter Months

As temperatures and daylight hours decrease, there’s a lot going on – and there’s plenty to keep you busy in terms of content. Consider all the following:

Winter driving risks
Holiday travel
Increased holiday traffic and traffic accident statistics
Increased impairment behind the wheel
Weather-related premises liability claims
Holiday-related stress and the accidents it causes

These basic topics are the starting point for articles that can be woven into your own masterpieces of content – that also address your potential clients’ needs. Remember, too, that a well-polished title and outline – about a subject of your choice – is going to take you farther than a rote reinterpretation of the basics.

A Feast of Topics

If your firm focuses on personal injury, medical malpractice, workers’ compensation, or any combination of these practices, NSC has a treasure trove of potential topics on offer. Each year, they publish a Safety Observance Calendar that focuses on specific national health and safety awareness campaigns (replete with valuable resources for you to explore). For example, just a few of the many topics on tap for May and June of 2022 include:

May is Motorcycle Safety Month, National Bike Month, National Electric Safety Month, Trauma Awareness Month, National Water Safety Month, National Building Safety Month, and much more.
May 21-27 is National Safe Boating Week.
June is National Safety Month.
June 5-11 is National Trailer Safety Week (tractor-trailers).
June 20 is National Ride to Work Day (focusing on those who commute to work on motorcycles and scooters).

This is the tip of the iceberg. If you’re looking for current content ideas, NSC has got you covered.

Keeping Your Content Fresh

In order to create quality content, you need great topics, but that – of course – is not the end of the story. The topic sets the stage, but your content has to deliver. Factors to focus on include:

Creating a strong outline that flows seamlessly from your introduction to a solid conclusion
Allowing the reader to hear your voice
Inspiring your readers to take the next step in moving from potential client to actual client

Finally, don’t shy away from revisiting older content and jazzing it up. Polishing the title, tightening the writing, updating the statistics, and including an eye-popping example or two can breathe new life into work that is down but not out.

Get More from Your Current Content with Historical Optimization

Posted on February 28, 2022 by David B. Arato

You recognize that content is king, but you may not be making the most of the content that you already have. And this is where historical optimization shines. Historical optimization sounds more technical than it needs to be – the bottom line is that it involves breathing new life into the content you’ve already published, which can do you a world of good in terms of giving your return on investment a bump.

10 Legal Content Marketing Terms You Should Get to Know

Posted on February 8, 2022 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.

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

Posted on January 7, 2022February 15, 2023 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.

What Is Content Readability and Who Defines It?

Posted on December 7, 2021December 7, 2021 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.

Assessing and Changing Underperforming Content

Posted on September 25, 2021February 15, 2023 by David B. Arato

Although SEO strategy is multi-faceted, content optimization is a big-hitter when it comes to successful marketing. Like other methods that bring traffic to a website, ups and downs are common in content marketing. Unfortunately, many companies using best practices still find that their content underperforms or that it is not reaching as many people as they would like.

If you find this happening with your content, don’t simply chalk it up to a natural waning in your marketing. Content that isn’t performing or working to increase the success of your business demands your attention. It’s a wake-up call that something needs to change. You should start by reevaluating your content to detect what contributed to its poor performance.

Who Is Your Target Audience?

No matter the business, it makes sense that you want content that will reel in the most user traffic. However, having your content geared towards an audience that matches your company’s brand is imperative. Carefully select content topics, ensuring that they will reach and interest the audience you need to attract. Your content should establish your knowledge and expertise within your field. Furthermore, headlines are a significant piece of garnering traffic—they should grab the readers’ attention and draw them in.

Additionally, you should consider the type of promotion and your desired audience when determining the length of your content. For example, individuals who dive deep into scientific journals will be more than willing to read longer content than someone who browses blogs. Using email newsletters or websites as a platform for content advertising won’t reach as many people as social media platforms. While newsletters and websites may give you more digital real estate to publish content than social media platforms, the priority should be quality over quantity.

Deciding on a Topic and Avoiding Duplications

If you have a built-out SEO strategy, you may have already published numerous blogs and other pieces of content. Although this is usually a good thing, it can create duplicate and overlapping topics within the content. It’s critical that you are mindful of your previous publications so that you can avoid repeating topics and significant overlap.

Suppose you already have a well-performing page or blog with the same predominant topic. It could be receiving more of an audience than a newly published one. In that case, reconsider your current content, reframe it, or focus just on the original piece itself.

Overdone topics also lead to underperforming content. It’s crucial to recognize that readers can locate hundreds of versions of one single topic. It can all blend together and, honestly, might bore your readership. Content marketers should pivot from these old habits and instead utilize a unique and fresh perspective when approaching their content marketing strategies.

For example, search for holes in competitor content. Use those weak spots to target where there will be little, if any, competition. Another strategy would be to integrate attention-catching components into your blogs—such as:

Altering the headline
Adding certain keywords like “free” or “instantly”
Using visuals and an easy-to-read format

Changing underperforming content to successful content is often a challenging task. However, organizations can attain substantial improvements in their reach and conversion rates by:

Reevaluating their marketing strategies
Working towards more effective SEO practices

If you aren’t quite sure what your next steps should be when it comes to SEO and content marketing or if you are simply ready to let someone else take the reins, our attorney-led team of legal writers is here to help. Join the many law firms and digital marketing agencies with legal clients that rely on us to create highly effective and visible content marketing campaigns. We promptly provide ethics-compliant content that establishes your authority in your niche. Our team will focus on your content while you focus on serving the needs of your clients. Call our office today at 877-488-8123 or contact us online to discuss your content needs with one of our marketing experts.

Your 2021 Legal Content Marketing Toolkit

Posted on April 23, 2021May 16, 2023 by David B. Arato

If you’re a law firm and you’re unsure about this content marketing you hear so much about, there’s no reason to panic. Content marketing consists of publishing content on various platforms. The content you publish can be blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, or anything else that allows you to connect with your potential clients. When it comes to legal content marketing, the most important point to keep in mind is that it matters. In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing for your firm can garner about three times the number of leads you’re likely to bring in with paid searches.

Potential Clients Appreciate a Genuine Approach

The web is full of flashy ads that very few of us actually rely upon. In fact, the average online consumer is bombarded with thousands of ads a day, and the sheer volume alone has a way of dimming their shine. It’s difficult to break through that wall of advertising noise with an ad of your own, no matter how well-produced it is. Your potential clients are looking for professional legal guidance, which means they are looking for authenticity, authority, and accessibility. While online ads certainly have their place, they can’t help you connect with potential clients in the same way that well-written, targeted, and informative content can, and this is especially true for law firms.

Continue reading “Your 2021 Legal Content Marketing Toolkit”