Why do some law firms have or need multiple websites instead of just one? In this video blog post, I answer that question. For most small firms, a single website is all they will ever need. However, the following are legitimate reasons to consider having more than one:
- Practice areas that are incompatible or don’t make good marketing bedfellows.
- Geographic or jurisdictional differences.
- Language differences.
- Disparate branding.
- Product of company-specific cases as is often the case with mass torts marketing.
Watch the video to learn more about each, to find out some additional reasons why bigger firms might benefit from multiple websites, and to learn how LawLytics makes having multiple websites easy.
Video Transcript: (transcript by Otter.ai, not proofed but looks pretty good)
Hi there. I’m Dan Jaffe, attorney and founder of LawLytics. And today I want to talk about why some firms benefit from having multiple websites. Most small law firms that have one to five lawyers only ever need a single website. But when you run into some of these situations, it makes sense to think about having more than one.
Incompatible Practice Types
The first obvious one is when your practice areas don’t make good bedfellows. For example, let’s say you practice criminal defense on one hand, and you practice corporate mergers and acquisitions on the other. Well, one audience is probably not going to appreciate seeing the information for the other audience on the same website.
So it makes sense to separate them. They’re different concepts, you have different modalities of getting people there. So criminal defense is going to be more reactive and search-based, while corporate mergers and acquisitions is going to be more based on thought leadership, and nurturing relationships with information over time.
Geographic Differences
The next scenario where a law firm might benefit from having more than one website is geographical differences. So let’s say you have two offices, and one is located on one side of the state line, and one is located on… let’s use Georgia and Florida as an example. So let’s say you practice personal injury law. Well, the statute of limitations may be different, the standards of proof may be different, the way that evidence is handled may be different. And not to mention the difference in geography and population and, and potentially legal terminology as well.
And so in order to avoid confusion, both have audiences and client personas, and have the very real law and procedure that you’re describing on your website. In that case, it oftentimes makes sense to clearly separate them into different websites. So you don’t have clients, they get confused. You don’t have clients that rely on something that they read about one state that doesn’t apply to their matter in the other state.
Language Differences
The next reason why attorneys might want to consider having more than one website is language differences. Now, let’s say you have a practice in a single area, and you focus on a single type of law. But you serve clients that speak two different languages. One scenario is you have both languages on a single website. However, there are a lot of efficiencies of having a separate website, in whatever the target language happens to be, if you’re in Arizona oftentimes is going to be English as your primary firm’s website, and Spanish as an equally robust secondary website. That way, when your potential clients and your clients come to your website, you can communicate directly with them and give them the best client experience without them having to fuss around trying to find the language that best suits them.
Branding Differences
The next scenario where attorneys might want to consider having multiple websites is differences in branding. So we’ve seen scenarios where even within the same firm with the same practice areas, there are attorneys that want to be branded differently. So let’s say it’s a divorce firm, and you’ve got a couple of different partners. One focuses on divorce for dads one focuses on paternity cases, or let’s say prenups, or grandparents’ rights — something like that. Well, sometimes it makes sense if you’re doing branding for those separately. So for example, like the dads’ lawyer, or the grandparents’ lawyer to have those on separate websites.
Product or Company-Specific Cases
And then finally, a common case that we see is when there are very specific practice areas that may revolve around a product or a certain event. The most common one would be a mass torts type case where you’ve identified either a defective product, or a defective class of products, or a company or grouping of companies that you’re specifically targeting plaintiffs to be there be involved in litigation that’s already ongoing against or to initiate litigation against such companies. So those are the obvious reasons for small law firms. Let’s say you’ve got one attorney up to maybe five attorneys or a little bit more. Now if you’re in a meeting with a large law firm, and you’ve got multiple people across multiple locations in different departments practicing different types of law, there’s also the case for either giving each location in the larger law firm their own website to be able to more effectively connect with local clients, or giving each department their own website so that they can go deep on a subject matter and really communicate their level of expertise to their target audience.
Additional Reasons Applicable to Medium or Large Firms
And there’s also a case for medium and large law firms to give either each individual attorney or any attorney that wants it their own website, which gives each individual attorney a chance to really have their own voice, their own forum, and develop their own book of business outside of the context of the medium or large law firms larger site.
At LawLytics, most of our customers are small law firms, (one to five attorneys), but we have firms that go up into the 30-attorney range right now. And certainly, we can accommodate firms of any size. But because it’s designed for the small law firm use-case scenario, the most common expansion that we see are those scenarios where you’re adding it because there’s disparate practice areas, disparate locations, disparate languages, different branding, or targeting of specific types of cases, as in mass torts.
How LawLytics Makes It Easy
What LawLytics does is makes it really easy to coordinate common information across multiple websites. So let’s say you’ve got multiple websites for whatever legitimate reason. If you update an attorney bio, you can have that attorney bio update across the range of your websites. If you have multiple locations. And let’s say you update a location, you update it in one place, and it will update throughout your web presence. So if you’re already a LawLytics member, and you want to find out whether your firm will benefit from having additional sites in your account, let us know and we’re happy to walk you through the logistics and the strategy to help you make the best decision. And if you’re not yet a LawLytics member and would like to see in action, how LawLytics works for multiple sites, schedule a demo and we’ll give you a hands-on look at how easy it is.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
