Book Review: The Lawyer’s Guide to Marketing on the Internet, 2nd Edition

Reviewed by Jerry Lawson, Netlawtools: Internet Tools for Lawyers.
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Internet marketing has come a long way since 1996, when the first edition of this book was published. The first CLE programs about the Internet attracted record crowds, swelled by lawyers motivated by a mixture of panic and greed.

In that environment, just about any book on the subject might have done well, but the first edition of The Lawyer’s Guide to Marketing on the Internet was, as my review of it pointed out, “a concise masterpiece.” The second edition has many impressive features, but there is also plenty of room for improvement.

Authors: Gregory H. Siskind, Richard P. Klau, Deborah McMurray Publisher:Law Practice Management Section, American Bar Association Pages: 248 Price: $79.95

The world has changed since1996. Web sites are no longer intriguing novelties. Lawyers are no longer frightened by the Internet, but they are no longer excited about it either. But familiarity does not equal understanding.

Disappointing results have soured many. An anonymous lawyer quoted in Trial magazine expressed an all too common view: “We have a Web site. We are probably going to get rid of it. We do not have the time to supervise it or to maintain it. And as far as we can tell, it does not produce business.”

In my experience, these negative views are mistaken. Disappointing results are generally caused by poor understanding of the Internet and how to use it. It’s easy to put up a web site, but putting up a successful one requires substantial knowledge and commitment.

The ABA’s Law Practice Management Section realized it would be a challenge to again attract this now-complacent audience and develop a book that would excite them. Therefore, they decided to call in their A-Team: Greg Siskind, Rick Klau and Deborah McMurray. Having had the pleasure of working with Siskind and Klau on multiple projects, I can enthusiastically affirm that both have deep knowledge of law firm marketing on the Internet. Ms. Murray is new to me, but her achievement-studded resume shows she is up to the task.

Strong Points

As might be expected given such a well-qualified team of authors, this book has many strengths, including the following:

The book provides a good overview of the best practices of contemporary Internet legal marketing, with many specific examples of things particular law firms are doing well. For example:

·      I had known for years that it was technically possible for web site owners to initiate real time instant messaging with visitors to their sites, but until I saw this book, I didn’t know any law firms that were employing the technique.

·       The book does a good job of explaining how to format marketing information available for PDAs and wireless devices. (I believe one of the authors, Greg Siskind, was the first lawyer in the country to do this).

·       The examples of web sites developed solely for the purpose of recruiting are good.

I particularly appreciated this much-needed piece of web site design advice: “If any picture takes longer than eight to ten seconds to load [over a dial-up, i.e., 56K modem], there is a problem.” 

The corporate counsel who visits your web site while compiling a list of possible hires may be contacting you while telecommuting from her home, with a 56K modem, or from a hotel room where the poor phone line means she can’t download faster than 33K.

Some chapters impressed me as being particularly strong:

·       Chapter 3, “Email Marketing: Leveraging the Mass Appeal of Email” deals with some of the most powerful, let least appreciated marketing techniques available to law firms.

·       Chapter 12, “Using Web Technology to Market Your Firm,” which is mainly about online meetings, sometimes called “webinars.” This exciting technique has promise, but also potential pitfalls, and the chapter presents a balanced view.

·       Chapter 13, “Weblogs,” is short, at only seven pages, but it manages to cram many good ideas into a short space.

Poor strategic planning is the first place that many law firms go wrong, so the basic guidance that Chapter 2 provides on this topic is welcome.

Not So Strong Points

With all these good things (and others) going for this book, there is also plenty of room for improvement:

·        The quality is inconsistent. Some of the chapters don’t come close to the level of those praised above.

·        While the authors do mention a few relevant resources for law firm Internet marketing in the text, some of the most significant resources are overlooked. I can’t find in the index and don’t remember seeing any mention in the text of key resources like the Lawmarketing Portal and mailing list, the substantial FindLaw section on law firm marketing, the archives of the ABA’s own Law Practice Management Magazine and many other resources that would benefit the buyers of a book like this.

·        Additional chapters are needed. A chapter on using the Internet for marketing research would have been a wonderful addition. If the authors did not consider themselves to be qualified to deal with this highly specialized area, some of the best law librarians in the country, like Genie Tyburski or Cindy Chick would probably have been willing to contribute to a high profile project like this.

·        The most glaring missing chapter is one on promoting law firm web sites. Next to confused strategic planning, poor web site promotion may be the most common law firm web site development mistake.

The First Edition recognized the significance of web site promotion, devoting an entire chapter to the topic. All this edition provides is a few scattered tips, and this advice about search engine optimization, one part of web site promotion:

This is a highly specialized area and requires someone with experience in providing this service. Your Web developers may not have this in their shop, but make sure they recommend someone to do it.

This is good advice, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Snake oil and puffery are common among web promotion companies. There are only a handful of people in the country that I would even consider hiring to do this type of work. This not a place you want to make a hiring mistake, or not know enough about the work to be done to evaluate it, because search engine operators, like Google’s, consider some promotion techniques favored by overly aggressive web promoters, like cloaking, computer-generated doorway pages, or hidden text, to be abuse that can cause them to blacklist your web site.
 

Solos and Small Firms

The book could do a better job of attending to the needs of solo practitioners and small firms. There is little information about low-cost or turnkey options for establishing a simple web presence that may be right for some firms. In other cases, there is a shortage of information that would significantly help someone trying to market on the Internet. Two examples:

·       The book advises on page 82, “Linking to outside resources gives your visitors reasons to exit your site and they may not return. Consider putting these pages in pop-up windows.” Excellent advice—as far as it goes. However, many of those in the potential audience for this book will not know how to create such a link. Explaining exactly how to do this in a sidebar would have taken very little effort, but would have made the book more valuable to many readers. One reason people would buy a book like this is because they want to take a hands-on approach to their law firm’s web page.

·       The book advises on page 95: “Search engines can be built into the site itself or a search field for a third-party search engine can be built into the page.” Again, excellent advice—as far as it goes. However, it could have been much more useful if the authors had recommended one or more providers of such services and given just a little more explanation of how they can be “built into the page.”

The common thread between these two examples and the omission of a chapter on web site promotion in favor of a recommendation to hire a consultant discussed above, as well as others that could be mentioned is an assumption that the readers don’t need to understand much about the details of how things work, because a consultant will be doing all of the actual work. This assumption seems to reflect a misunderstanding of the market:

·       The lawyers and marketers who think consultants are the way to go and don’t want to know details are not a prime audience for this book.

·       Many lawyers and marketers—especially the ones who are the most likely market for a book like this—are just not going to hire consultants, especially high quality consultants who specialize in law firm web sites, for a variety of reasons. In fact, a major reason this group would buy a book like this is to learn the basics of things like web site promotion.

The bottom line and blog bonus

Despite some areas in which it could be improved, this book has so many significant strengths and deals with such a significant topic that it can’t be ignored. It should sell well, and deservedly so.  

The single feature of this book that impressed me most is the blog, or “web log” that the authors are using to update the book, engage their audience, and market the book.

Blogs are not on the radar screen of most law firm marketers today, but I think that is going to change. Most people don’t consider blogs as a marketing tool, and it is easy to understand why. The overwhelming majority of the blogs presently on line are very poor quality vanity sites of little interest to anyone except the owner. However, blogs have some attractive features.  For starters, they are easy to use, and if well done, tend to rank highly in search engines, including the most popular, Google. They also have some more subtle but significant advantages that will become better known as they mature.

While concrete success stories are rare so far, blogs have enormous potential for legal marketing. If you haven’t checked out the blog phenomenon yet, the web site accompanying this book is a good place to start. The Lawyer’s Guide to Internet marketing blog will be the next Site of the Month pick at my web site. Check it out.