Writer Login Client Login Order Online 877-486-8123

Why Lawyers Should Promote Their Awards in their Blog Posts

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 Issues New Guidance on AI-Generated Content

Posted on by David B. Arato

Earlier today, Google issued guidance on how it views AI-Generated content. The TLDR version is that AI content is not inherently against guidelines and can be used effectively, provided that it is helpful and is not created in an attempt to manipulate search results. According to Google’s blog, this clarification does not reflect a change in its long-standing policy:

When it comes to automatically generated content, our guidance has been consistent for years. Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.

In addition, Google points out that AI-generated content can be helpful:

This said, it’s important to recognize that not all use of automation, including AI generation, is spam. Automation has long been used to generate helpful content, such as sports scores, weather forecasts, and transcripts. AI has the ability to power new levels of expression and creativity, and to serve as a critical tool to help people create great content for the web.

What Does This Mean for Legal Content Marketing?

While Google is claiming that its position on AI-generated content has been consistent, the fact is that this policy is in direct opposition to Search Advocate John Mueller’s April 2022 statement that AI-generated content is spam. Clearly, AI-generated content can be created faster and more cheaply than hiring a team of specialized copywriters – so should law firms and legal marketers rush to mass produce AI content now that Google has explicitly said it’s not against its guidelines?

AI-Content Tools Provide a Good Starting Point

The fact remains that there are significant issues with using AI tools like ChatGPT to generate content. It can hallucinate facts and may not be aware of current events. That said, it’s a good tool for ideating blog topics, creating outlines, and even conducting basic legal research. The fact remains that any content generated by AI needs to be reviewed by someone who is familiar with relevant law and the ethical rules regarding attorney advertising.

Google Treats YMYL Content Differently

Google has overtly stated that certain sites – those that deal with issues related to “your money or your life” – have a extremely high Page Quality rating standard. This means that content on topics that have a high risk of harm to someone’s health, financial stability, safety, welfare, or well-being is more closely scrutinized for it’s E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, and trust). In Google’s own words:

On topics where information quality is critically important—like health, civic, or financial information—our systems place an even greater emphasis on signals of reliability.

As a result, if you are publishing legal content – which falls into the YMYL category – it’s especially important to demonstrate E-E-A-T. As a result, any content that you publish on your legal site should be thoroughly reviewed by a human being who has expertise in the area.

Ultimately, Google has this to say about whether you should use AI to generate content:

If you see AI as an essential way to help you produce content that is helpful and original, it might be useful to consider. If you see AI as an inexpensive, easy way to game search engine rankings, then no.

We’re On It

At Lexicon Legal Content, our team has been integrating AI into our processes for several years, and we’re committed to staying on the cutting edge of how AI tools can improve our content and deliver more value to our clients. To learn more about our offerings, call us today to speak with a legal content marketing expert.

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?”

how to increase traffic to your website?

Posted on 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 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.

Continue reading “Get More from Your Current Content with Historical Optimization”

Lexicon Legal Content Named one of the Top 45 Legal Marketing Blogs and Websites

Posted on by David B. Arato

Lexicon Legal Content is honored to be included in the Top 45 Legal Marketing Blogs and Websites, which lists the best of the best from thousands of online offerings – ranked according to consistent traffic, social media fans, domain authority, and informativeness.

When it comes to legal content, we recognize that there are a lot of options out there, and we’re pleased to have earned our position among the most respected and trusted sources. Our team of skilled legal writers focuses on providing compelling, professional copy, and it shows.   

As search engine algorithms evolve into ever-more sophisticated and nuanced tools, having high quality, meaningful content has become that much more important, and this fact guides everything we do. Publishing material that generates decent rankings without offering relevant, reliable, and highly readable content that fills a need no longer moves the rankings needle, and it’s not a great strategy for fostering long-term business relationships. We’re here to help you change all that. 

Having a bright and shiny website that attracts visitors is great, but if you don’t have the content to back it up, you’re not hitting the mark. We’re in the business of helping clients like you improve their online presence with all the following:

  • Fresh legal blogs that generate interest in your firm 
  • Legal content that is accurate, informative, and written in an approachable voice (no legal mumbo jumbo here) 
  • Press releases that showcase your unique legal operation
  • Website audits that help maximize your legal cachet

Lexicon Legal Content is proud of the solid reputation we’ve built for ourselves, and we take great pride in consistently exceeding the expectations of clients like you.

It turns out that 129 Million Calls Can Tell Us a Whole Lot about Inbound Marketing

Posted on by David B. Arato
A smartphone displaying the word "social"

In 2005, HubSpot’s founder coined the term “inbound marketing,” and we have never looked back. Just like that, we said goodbye to exhausting cold calls and costly commercials and welcomed the modern approach of obtaining new customers from the online content arena, including blogs, videos, social media, and all that stuff. Inbound marketing speaks to millennials and is a bargain to boot – which means there is little not to embrace.

Continue reading “It turns out that 129 Million Calls Can Tell Us a Whole Lot about Inbound Marketing”

How an E-Book Can Showcase Your Expertise AND Grow Your Law Firm

Posted on by David B. Arato
A person reading on an e-reader

A law firm is, first and foremost, a business, and growing your business is the name of the game. While you’ve naturally put time and effort into marketing, you may not have thought about writing an e-book on the topic of your legal expertise. When a potential client is looking for legal representation, your book could be the deciding factor in securing his or her business. After all, you wrote the book on the subject. If you’re interested in highlighting your legal prowess while growing your firm, the legal content marketing experts at Lexicon Legal Content are here to help you imagine, flesh out, and author a book that wows.

Continue reading “How an E-Book Can Showcase Your Expertise AND Grow Your Law Firm”

Guest Post: What are Some Common Defenses to DUI Charges in Minnesota?

Posted on by David B. Arato
Man with hands in handcuffs

Driving while under the influence (DUI) of alcohol or drugs is an extremely dangerous activity in Minneapolis and elsewhere. DUIs put everyone on the road at risk, and a motor vehicle collision that is caused by a drunk driver can lead to serious personal injuries (and sometimes death) for the individuals who are involved in the collision. 

Because of the serious risks associated with driving under the influence, the law imposes harsh penalties against individuals who are ultimately convicted of this offense. In some instances, the potential penalties can include prison time – especially in DUI cases that involve repeat offenders.

Continue reading “Guest Post: What are Some Common Defenses to DUI Charges in Minnesota?”