Did you know that attorney bio pages capture at least 80% of a typical law firm’s website traffic? It may take minutes to brainstorm what to write in your attorney bio but look at things from your client’s point of view.
On one hand, most prospects seeking legal services are relatively uninformed regarding legal matters, including decisions about hiring an attorney. Moreover, their client journey typically involves jumping online and ‘Googling.’ If by X or Y reason they end up on your website, they’ll likely want to put a face behind the firm, and thus, they’ll start looking into your firm’s staff, including the attorney biographies.
Remember that your attorney bio is a prospect’s first impression of you; again, it’s one of the most visited pages of your website. Besides being informative, your bio should help visitors keep their eyes on you rather than competitors. Eventually, it should serve as a bridge that connects you directly to those in need of legal services.
We’ve said it time and time again – your attorney bio matters. It’s one of the most important pages on your law firm website. In terms of visits, your attorney bio page often ranks just behind the home page.
Our good friend and law firm marketing expert Larry Bodine reinforces that message in a blog post. The headline says it all: “56 Percent of Law Firm Website Visits Go to Attorney Bios.”
Given how vital lawyer bios are, Larry asks the burning question: “Why are they neglected?”
That’s a good question, indeed. At Consultwebs, we recognize how important those bios are. We work with clients to develop narratives that blend lawyers’ professional and personal highlights and appeal to the law firm website’s visitors.
A Golden Opportunity to Tell Your Story and Sell Your Strengths
When we review visitor analytics for our clients’ law firm websites, we’re consistently struck by one unmistakable fact: Attorney bios tend to be among the most-visited pages on lawyer websites, second only to the home page. The attorney bios typically outrank a law firm’s practice area pages.
What does that mean for you and your law firm’s online marketing efforts? It means your attorney bio page may be your very best opportunity to convert a site visitor into a client. Do not miss this golden opportunity!
Many people are already intimidated by lawyers. The typical attorney bio does little to make the visitor more comfortable. It usually contains a few dry facts — a bare listing of law school graduation dates, memberships in Bars or legal groups, the odd award or two, and a listing of practice areas.
Yes, that’s all good information, and it should be included. But never forget that a visit to your bio page provides the perfect moment to paint a richer portrait of yourself. People prefer to do business with individuals they like and trust. Some prefer to work with someone who is their age, sex and ethnic group and has a similar background. The bottom line is that they want assurance on an emotional level that you care about them and will be personally invested in their case.
At Consultwebs, we conduct interviews with our lawyer clients and encourage them to tell their story. We ask for the details that reveal who they are as legal practitioners as well as people. We want to know why they were drawn to the practice of law. We ask about the defining moments of their careers – the case they won against all odds for a deserving client – that shows they care about their cases and their clients. Our goal is to blend the professional details that demonstrate a lawyer’s experience with the personality traits that serve as strengths in the legal efforts on a client’s behalf.
What should your bio narrative include to capture the person and the professional?
Here are a few points to consider:
- Your approach to the practice of law
- Your areas of expertise
- How you relate to clients
- What attracted you to the practice of law
- Why you selected your practice area
- The personal and legal skills that make you good at your job
- Your community and civic interests
- Hobbies and other non-work activities
You should consider getting to know your clients on another level through social networking. If you have a professional Facebook account (separate from your personal account), you could provide a link to it from your bio page. You may be surprised to find that potential clients are more comfortable contacting you there for legal advice, and you can get the ball rolling on a case with them. Sometimes they might just ask you a question and not really have a case, but you never know when that person might recommend a friend or family member to you, simply because you took the time to show your willingness to communicate with a potential client.
Essential Features of the Perfect Attorney Bio
Law firms offer a service, not a product, and buyers look at the people behind the services. A complete bio can make all the difference and yield the best attorney-client relationship.
1. Attorney Name and Title
Obviously, your name and title should be front and center. Take a look at one of our client’s bio introductions:
This bio also immediately makes good use of space by adding contact information (phone and email) and a call to action to entice the user right off the bat.
Here’s an example of the opening bio for another attorney:
Pro-tip to implement in your name and title:
- Feel free to think outside the box! As you can see, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all or cookie-cutter template you need to follow. To help you get started, these are the two ways you can organize your bio:
- Prose: If you’re narratively inclined and have a story to tell, use this format.
- Lists: If you want to keep it short, sweet, and simple without much “fluff,” then adding lists and bullet points is best.
Your bio should give your readers an immediate idea of who you are, what your values are, and how you work. The key here is to infuse your bio with the proper adjectives and descriptors. Here is a quick exercise to help you come up with the best description of who you are.
- Assume you walked into a room full of people, and a colleague sees you without you seeing them. What do you think they will say about you? Write down what you think in terms of adjectives such as “curious” or “intuitive.”
- Come up with sentences that describe how you fit those adjectives. For the two above, you could come up with something like, “John can identify problems and solve them without the client ever finding out there was an issue.”
2. Headshot
People process images faster than text. Images are processed 60,000 times faster than text. And your prospects are no different. They want to put a face to the name. So once your bio loads, the first impression of you is given by the photo on your bio.
If they get the wrong impression, they won’t hesitate to close the page and continue searching. This is why images are such an essential piece of the puzzle. Your photo should exude professionalism, warmth, and confidence. Here are some rules of thumb you should use to take your picture.
- It should be a headshot.
- It should reflect your personality and character. These are communicated through your pose, facial expression, angle, lighting, and background.
Whether you opt for a DIY or professionally taken photo, a quality headshot can boost your first impression. The most important tip when it comes to headshots is making sure the background is not overly distracting, which is why a neutral backdrop works best. Take a look at our client’s headshots:
Are you opting for a DIY photo session for you and your team? We’ve got you.
Download the FREE DIY Headshot Tips & Tricks for All Legal Professionals.
3. Expertise and Experience
This is the “meat” behind your bio. Although a lot could be included here, try to be succinct by keeping this section between 1-3 paragraphs. It should include:
- Who the attorney is
- What they do
- Why do they do it
- How long they have been doing it
Pro-tip to implement in your attorney expertise and experience section:
Should you use a first-person or third-person tone of voice? It’s generally recommended that bios are written in the third person as it lends authority and makes it easier to describe accomplishments without sounding boastful.
What kind of law do you practice?
Although it goes without saying, you will be surprised at how many attorney profiles fail to deliver this point. Some omit it entirely, and others don’t quite manage to get the message across.
Your bio should include a section that breaks down what kind of law you practice in layman’s terms. Technical language and legal jargon may sound condescending to the readers, or it may just confuse them – both instances will typically cause them to turn away from you.
Once you write your bio, you can run it by some non-attorney staff to see if they fully understand it as well.
What makes you different?
Why should they hire you instead of the tens of attorney websites open in their background tabs? What sets you apart from them?
Although this should be spread out throughout the bio, to supercharge your attorney bio, you should close your bio with why they should choose you. You can complete an accomplishment, award, or recognition for your services with a case you handled.
4. Accolades, Publications and Cases
By adding accolades, publications, and verdicts, you’re not just telling; you’re showing! This section is critical because it’s where you get to sell yourself.
While this section should be around 1-2 paragraphs, don’t be afraid to add lists and videos, or pull quotes, and reviews from online directories like Avvo and leverage a unique design to showcase these. Our client and attorney, Brian Zeiger, made excellent use of this in his bio:
Pro-tip to implement in your bio’s accolades, publications and cases:
This is where prospects are looking to see what you have to offer and what you have accomplished, so if there’s something you feel is worth bringing up, now’s the time.
5. Education Breakdown and Notable Accomplishments
Lastly, adding your education and notable accomplishments helps establish further authority and allows prospects to dig in deeper and find a connection with the attorney, e.g., attending the same university.
If you Zoom in on the bio above, it’s clear that he keeps his educational background to the point:
Pro-tip to implement in your education background:
Try to use approximately 10 bullet points for this section. If you need to add a sentence, make sure it’s no longer than 1 sentence per bullet point.
6. Leaving “Breadcrumbs” In The Attorney Bio
Those are the must-haves in a legal bio, but if you’d like to go the extra mile, you can leave “breadcrumbs” to encourage users to eventually book a call or schedule a meeting so you can nurture them into cases.
This is where you can use your attorney bio to link to other lead converting pages like the Contact Us page. For example, attorney Harvey B. Morris adds 3 strong calls to action that help capture leads and obtain their information:
7. Is Your Attorney Bio Set to Convert?
As one of the most visited pages of a law firm’s website, the attorney bio should be set to convert. So, we’d like to end with our last pro-tip: don’t forget to update your biography!
Your web profile isn’t static, especially when firms are growing. Ideally, you should tweak this page at least once a year. This could be as simple as changing the call to action, updating the headshot, or adding a new article/video.
While it may seem overwhelming to check all the boxes mentioned above, crafting an impactful biography can be the differentiating factor between gaining and losing a quality lead.
It should be easy for a potential client to contact you using more traditional methods as well. Thus, we try to include contact information – for instance, phone numbers and email addresses – as part of attorney bios. A potential client just read about you and liked your story. Include a quick contact form on your page. Make it easy for them to get in touch.
Other elements to consider for inclusion on your bio page:
- Custom photography
- Impressive verdicts and settlements (assuming your State Bar allows these)
- Video
- Testimonials (if allowed by your jurisdiction’s ethics rules)
8. Optimize for SEO
As mentioned above, 80% of legal website traffic goes to biographies, and more than 50% of people click the first three results on the Google results page. As such, you should put effort into ensuring that you rank higher than other attorneys offering similar services. You can do this by optimizing your bio for search engines.
Because you know who you are targeting, you can research what words they mostly search for and include them in your bio. These are known as keywords. You should include them sparingly to avoid being penalized by search engines by lowering your rank.
Also, you should include geographical information on where you practice. For example, instead of saying “John is the best lawyer,” say, “John is the best lawyer for auto accidents in Kissimmee, Florida. His specialization includes road traffic accidents.” This will ensure that all local searches lead to your page. Additionally, it caters to your ideal niche market.
