of these elements. A brand is a critical component of what an individual, group, or organization stand for: it implies trust, consistency, and a defined set of expectations. A strong brand clearly communicates the values, mission, and vision of the business to the various stakeholders (i.e. employees, potential and actual clients, regulators, the media, etc.).

Popular brands such as RIM, Nike, McDonalds, and Google are leaders in their respective industries for a simple reason: the businesses behind these brands spent significant time, money, and effort to strategically market their products and services to their target market(s). They selected a simple and focused idea and then created a brand name, image, slogan, etc. to embody and project that idea. Their brands (i.e. name, logo, slogan, etc.) are easy to identify and remember, distinctive from the competition, catchy and appealing to the target market, and suggest something about the quality or characteristics of the product/service offering.

Learning from these and other market leaders, lawyers / law firms should hire a talented graphic designer to develop a strong brand identity by using the right font, images, illustrations, and layout designs to project

We reviewed hundreds of lawyer / law firm websites and found that the most appealing ones had:

A strong brand name.

A well-designed layout.

An easy to navigate user-interface.

Current and meaningful content.

Specialized Services.

To best promote their services on the Internet, lawyers / law firms should hire a graphic/web designer to ensure that these elements are effectively embodied and projected through their websites.

Prepared by:

Michael Carabash and Joseph Khlaif

Regrettably, many solo/small firm Toronto lawyers either don’t have websites or have tacky looking ones

that provide bare-bones information (e.g. who, what, and where). Clients – both actual and potential – expect their lawyers to have a robust online presence; if they’re paying the bills, clients will want to see that their lawyers have a professional and aesthetically-pleasing website that offers current and meaningful information. A lawyer / law firm’s website is a portal to their services and clients will want to keep coming back if it’s worthwhile. To this end, the purpose of this report was to identify the key features that will generally make a lawyer / law firm website stand out from the crowd.

MethodThe findings in this report are common sense and resulted from our review of hundreds of randomly selected solo/small firm Toronto lawyer websites in the months of January/February 2009. These lawyers operated either on their own or in a firm with up to fifteen (15) other lawyers total.

ConclusionsWe found that the most appealing websites had the following characteristics:

A Strong BrandA brand is the totality of thoughts, feelings, associations, and expectations that people experience when exposed to a particular name, term, symbol, design, or a combination

5 things to make your Lawyer / Law Firm website stand out!

February 2009

A Strong Brand

the lawyer / law firm’s value proposition to the target market(s).

Well-Designed LayoutFrom the moment someone visits a lawyer /law firm website to the time they leave, that website should try to meet and anticipate that person’s needs through the features that they use. A well-designed layout with high quality images establishes a positive first and long lasting impression in the minds of the visitors.

Information overload and tacky-looking websites are big turn-offs. So too are too many banner ads. A website that employs a visually appealing design will project a professional image, whereas a poorly designed website based on some stock template will send the opposite signal about the lawyer / law firm’s services.

The look and feel of the lawyer / law firm website will also help deliver on the promise of the complete client experience. The features of the website that must strive to “tangibilize the intangible” include pictures, buttons, frames, banners, graphs, tables, paragraphs, text (with respect to size, style, and content), and even e-mails sent on the website’s behalf.

Finally, the physical appearance of the website must at all times be maintained because doing so projects the website’s value proposition – e.g. of consistently offering high quality services in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Easy-to-Navigate User InterfaceNavigation is a significant component of lawyer / law firm websites. Through correctly designed navigational elements, visitors can see where they are on the web site, where they can go from this page, and where they have been. These elements can

be provided with a site search box, sitemap, or help section. A navigational toolbar is an element of the website which can usually be found on the left side of the website or above the body text. The navigation bar generally includes links to other pages on the website, and is visible on all or most web pages of the website.

Another common method of showing the visitor where they are presently and where they came from is the use of ‘breadcrumbs’. Breadcrumbs are usually located at the top of the screen and show the path to the present page. For example, a sports apparel store could have a breadcrumb navigational element like this: “Home > Tennis > Shoes > Nike”. Here, Nike tennis shoes is the page that the visitor is on. In this case, “Home”, “Tennis”, and “Shoes” would be hyperlinks to the corresponding pages.

Current and Meaningful ContentBased on a previous survey we conducted (entitled “Solo/Small firm Toronto Lawyers and the Internet” – February 2009) of 1,000 randomly selected solo/small firm Toronto lawyers, almost half of the the websites surveyed had no meaningful content whatsoever (e.g. in the form of articles, cases, and commentary). Worse still, only 13 of those websites had blogs!

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Our Services Family Law

Real Estate

Criminal Law

Home

About UsEasy to

Navigate

Current and Meaningful

Content

About Us DynamicLawyers.com is a website that allows users to anonymously and freely post their legal issue(s) online and get free information and quotes from Toronto lawyers. Since launching in November 2008 in Toronto, DynamicLawyers.com has been featured in various Toronto media (e.g. newspapers and radio).

Yet posting blogs, forums, and articles are all part of what makes a prospective client want to interact with the lawyer / law firm’ and engage their services. Blogs tend to rank high in the search engines because they deliver what search engines want: targeted content updated frequently with lots of inbound and outbound links. Blogs, forums, and articles also give visitors a chance to freely “sample” the lawyer / law firm’s expertise.

Overall, offering free and constantly updated content will draw prospective clients to the website and encourage them to return (e.g. to contact and ultimately retain the lawyer / law firm).

Offering Specialized ServicesThe most memorable lawyer / law firm websites offer a clear value proposition that differentiate their services from competitors. Generally speaking, specialization is a viable strategy for earning above-average returns in any industry: it creates barriers to entry, yields higher margins with which to deal with supplier power, mitigates buyer power (since buyers lack comparable alternatives and are thereby less price sensitive), and insulates against competitive rivalry because brand loyalty results in lower sensitivity to price.

In this context, service offerings should focus on particular target market needs, wants, desires, and expectations. Typically, solo/small firm lawyers will offer the same types of services to a broad range of clients in an attempt to capture all markets and thereby mitigate external risks and adapt to the changing environment.

Michael Carabash is a Toronto Lawyer and President

of DynamicLawyers.com

Joseph Khlaif is Vice-President

of DynamicLawyers.com

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Specialization

General practitioners will, for example, offer basic real estate, business, wills and estates services, and perhaps criminal and family law representation. But this strategy of diversification is not to be preferred over a specialized one, which can build a strong brand name and image, help focus the lawyer / law firm’s time and energy, and allow the lawyer / law firm to offer expert and cost-effective strategies and solutions. Overall, a lawyer / law firm website that reinforces specialized knowledge, skills, and experiences in a given field will likely be remembered and returned to when a user is in need of those legal services.

All of DynamicLawyers.com’s marketing materials are designed by Paris Productions: 416-836-2008 or parastou27@rogers.com