Attorneys, like most other professionals, are bound to encounter a wide range of questions from their existing and potential clients about legal issues both simple and complex. This is part of the profession, regardless of your particular areas of focus or the specialties of your practice, and being able to clearly answer your clients’ questions goes a long way toward developing strong and effective relationships.
Depending on how long you’ve been in the field of law, you’ve likely developed a pretty good sense of how to respond to some of the more predictable questions, as well as an understanding of what questions a client might ask based on a specific legal matter. If your firm is looking to expand its client base, your past and current clients’ questions—the frequently asked questions as well as the off-the-wall ones—can play a key role in attracting new business. By regarding these questions as material to explore within your firm’s legal blog content, you can address the concerns of those who encounter your website when searching for information on the issues they are facing.
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At its most basic level, your legal blog is a repository of information for current and potential clients, and their reasons for seeking out information are rarely related to mere curiosity. Rather, they have questions—and your firm needs to demonstrate that it has answers. Here are some approaches you can take to answering questions on your law blog:
- Assemble a list of FAQs: You probably get a lot of the same questions over and over, which means there’s something to be gained by answering them in your blog. Put together a list of the most frequently asked questions or the legal advice you most frequently find yourself offering, and start building blog content out of them. A single page of FAQs can be helpful, but to get the most mileage out of your clients’ questions, you should consider turning each question or issue into its own blog post.
- Keep track of new questions as they arise: Although you likely have a fair amount of repetition when it comes to the questions your clients are asking, every attorney has encountered questions that surprise them, either because they’re truly strange or because the client’s legal situation has some element of unusual complexity. Take advantage of these situations as an opportunity to venture into unexpected—and potentially very interesting—territory with your marketing content.
- Stay on top of new developments in your areas of practice: Many attorneys fall into the trap of blogging exclusively about cases they have taken on personally. Although this can definitely provide some material, it has a significant downside in that it ignores other developments and trends related to the legal areas in which you practice. By staying on top of emerging trends, even if you have not yet seen similar cases in your own practice, you can anticipate and attract future business related to these trends.
These are just a few of the ways in which your law firm might use copywriting and content marketing, including on your legal blog, to acknowledge and respond to clients’ questions. But actually putting these ideas into practice may require significant investment of time and resources. Working with a knowledgeable and skilled copywriting service, particularly one well-versed in content marketing for law firms, can be your best bet for making the most of your law blog and answering your potential clients’ questions.
Tom Useted is an associate editor with ProPRcopy, a respected copywriting services provider that works with numerous attorneys, law firms and legal organizations throughout the country.