How to Do Law Firm Copywriting the Right Way

Why Is Copywriting Essential for Law Firms?

To a large extent, what prospective clients think of you comes down to the way you phrase your words, your choice of words, and the level of integrity they convey. Good legal copy hooks clients, keeps them reading, and compels them to call.

Copywriting is essential to connect with your ideal clients and can be used to:

Transform Legal Knowledge Into Actionable FAQ Content

FAQs are an excellent tool to increase your law firm website’s visibility in search engine results for relevant queries. Here’s the crux: Your potential clients might not even know they need an attorney.

Instead, they’ll ask Google, “What do I do if I slipped and fell at work in Chicago?” or “Do I have to report a criminal record to future employees in New York?”

As an experienced lawyer, you can address these thorny questions as part of your content marketing strategy to lead them further down the sales funnel. However, you’ll need good legal copywriting skills to explain things in a simple and understandable manner.

Always write to empower everyday people, so they hire you because they know exactly how you can help them and are 100% confident in your professional capabilities.

Showcase Your Legal Knowledge and Personality

Today’s law firms have a proactive marketing approach—they can’t just rely on referrals or word-of-mouth alone to grow leads. Whether you’re creating content for your blog or marketing materials, or website copy, you need to communicate what makes your law firm better than your competition, in a customer-centric way.

Your law firm requires good copywriting to create social media posts, write thought leadership blogs, and communicate with prospects online. Sure, accurate, informative writing on legal issues will never be unfashionable or stop being relevant, but it’s more interesting for clients to read if it’s written by you.

New clients want to know who you are as a firm before they schedule a consultation. That’s why good copy attests to your legal knowledge, your practice’s ethos, and your personality. It gives your law firm a unique brand voice.

If there’s a cliché that applies to both life and copywriting, it is this: “It’s not what you say, but how you say it that makes all the difference.”

Differentiate Your Specialty

57% of clients find a lawyer with an online search. When prospective clients look online for specific types of law firms, Google lists plenty of options. When two reputable law firms offer the same services and are equal in reputation, how do they convert customers?

Client conversion relies on convincing copywriting. Great copywriting can persuade prospective clients with a fresh perspective. Take a look at the website of Barr & Young Attorneys our copywriters worked on. One of their unique selling points is that their attorneys are from the communities they serve.

While competitors might offer the same legal services, they won’t necessarily be from the same communities, and so this personalized approach sets Barr & Young Attorneys apart. It’s a good example of how to successfully incorporate storytelling into your copywriting approach.

Strengthen Your SEO and Marketing Strategy

When clients search for a law firm and click on the first few websites that pop up in a Google search, they experience copywriting and SEO in action. Not only does SEO copywriting (more on that soon) help your website show up in search engine results, but it also attracts new clients.

Chances are that legal copywriters knew exactly which phrases to use in those website descriptions and titles before visitors even clicked on their links. When a law firm shows up in search results for specific queries, it’s because its copywriter has pre-empted which words to use, based on research by marketing strategists.

The more your website appears on search results, the higher it climbs until it reaches the top. And the more optimized your marketing content and website copywriting are, the higher the chances of improving organic traffic.

How to Use Legal Copywriting to Demonstrate Your Expertise

 Do:

• Write valuable information: 70% of your clients want to understand the legal process. They won’t hire you unless they comprehend what their case involves and how you’re going to help. Therefore, your content must answer their most pressing questions, and its keywords should match your potential clients’ search intent.

• Describe difficult cases: Who doesn’t love a good David and Goliath story? When you write about your success with difficult cases, you persuade prospective clients you’re capable of representing them and getting favorable results.
• Write about particular case types: Digital marketing works best when you’re specific. For instance, if you’re a personal injury lawyer, you’ll want to write different blog posts about specific types of cases like car accident claims, work claims, animal-related injuries, etc. This is because different people are likely to search “how to sue work for injury,” or “dog-bite lawyer.” The more specific you are, the greater the chances of new clients finding you online.
• Highlight emotionally rewarding experiences: Conveying enthusiasm and remaining professional is a fine line. But perhaps you won a case that touches an emotional cord or had a positive effect on a community that’s worth writing about. The Innocence Project is a good example of how to create content about these types of emotionally rewarding cases.

Don’t:

• Hype yourself: You’re an attorney, not a salesman. Therefore, your content should implicitly sell your services. The best way to “sell” your firm is through the successful cases you’ve won. (Putting client reviews on your law firm’s website is also useful as they function as third-party endorsements.) When writing, avoid using clichés like “experienced,” “expert,” “best,” etc. If you’re a good lawyer, your track record will speak for itself.
• Scare clients: Lawyers are expensive and legal processes can intimidate clients. While you always want to be upfront with them about their case difficulty and its costs, try to do so in a way that’s clear and direct without sensationalizing the matter.
• Use legalize or other legal jargon: Just because someone can read challenging text doesn’t mean they want to. Write for everyday readers in an interesting and understandable way. While your goal is to be a source of inspiration and authority in your field, you still want to come across on the page as an approachable lawyer or firm.

Legal Copywriting and Marketing Advice

Legal copywriting does more than demonstrate competence. It gives prospective clients a taste of your legal knowledge upfront. As the foundation of all marketing efforts, it’s important to understand the nuances of writing different kinds of legal marketing copy.

Website Copywriting for Law Firms

The first step to convincing website visitors they should hire you is to craft copy that speaks to your potential clients. What this sounds like depends on your type of law firm, who your target audience is, and what their needs are.

Write for Real People

It’s fundamental to remember your law firm’s website copywriting is for real people, who are looking at your law firm as a solution to their real problems. You want to be sensitive to their emotional state, draw them in, and build rapport.

Your website content and search engine optimization strategy must center around the needs of your clients, so your law firm ranks in search engine results pages and appeals to readers. We’ve seen many law firms fail to capitalize on their web pages because they merely list services but don’t explain how they help their clients.

Showcase Both Expertise and Benefits

We advise formulating your copy from a combination of keyword research results and real questions your law firm’s clients ask. This not only orientates readers but also helps search engines understand your content.

For example, take the first sentence on the About Us page of the African law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyer:

“We are able to provide experienced legal support and an authentic knowledge-based and cost-effective legal service for clients looking to do business in key markets across Africa.”

Can you see how in one sentence, they’ve simultaneously explained what they do and how it benefits prospective clients?

Legal Copywriting for Law Firm Ads

Your ads must be short and straight to the point to get qualified leads. With pay-per-click advertising, you don’t have space to write lengthy and descriptive messages. Ideally, you should sum up your ad in one sentence that perfectly encapsulates your message.

Naturally, your headline should grab a reader’s attention and show benefits, not features. Potential clients aren’t interested in what you do. They want to know how your law firm will benefit them.

Examples of good headlines for search ads include:

• Personal Injury Attorneys—Assistance with Injury Claims.
• Personal Injury Lawyer—No Win, No Fee.
• Divorce Lawyers—Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

The underlined words are likely all keywords that match the search query of users. Keywords help you make the most of your ads, ensuring your messages resonate with users who need your legal services.

You’ll also want to include a strong call to action (CTA) to close the deal and convince new leads to click your ad. Make sure your intentions are clear and only have one CTA per ad.

Some great examples of CTAs are:

• Direct answer: Call, download, ask a lawyer online now, etc.

• Lead generation: Subscribe, contact us, enroll, etc.

• Engagement: Watch, view, discover, reach, etc.

Why Law Firms Need SEO Copywriting

Throughout this blog, we’ve mentioned using keywords to attract more clients. That’s because online marketing adds a layer of complexity to content marketing copy. Not only do you need to master how to use words persuasively, but you also need to weave in search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.

Legal copywriting should be SEO-optimized, meaning it should meet both your target market and search engine’s expectations. This starts with keyword research, i.e., identifying the word, terms, and phrases potential clients type into Google most frequently when searching for law firms and legal advice.

If you’re a patent lawyer, you might find “intellectual property” is a popular keyword, so you’ll want to develop fresh and informative content around this keyword and use it on your website, landing pages, blog, and social media.

The keywords you use are incumbent on your law firm’s specialty, trending terms, and phrases used by social media users. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and SEMrush can assist you with finding the most valuable and high-performing keywords for your law firm.

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Attract more leads to your law firm

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Who Should Do the Copywriting for My Law Firm?

Lawyers vs. copywriters, which are better? We’re asked this a lot by our legal industry clients. In our experience, it’s better to hand over the copywriting to professional wordsmiths and allow our clients to proofread the copy. This is because a good legal copywriter can translate legalese into solid marketing copy and understands which tactics are best to attract new clients.

If you need seasoned legal copywriters to transform your law firm’s website into a lead magnet and create web copy that’s persuasive, we can help. Comrade’s professional copywriters can increase your sales-qualified leads by 70% on average. Contact us to increase your client list and revenue.