Lawyers.com ranks well for many of our client’s target keywords, so naturally we wanted to understand its efficacy as a barnacle SEO site.
Below, we’ve broken down the results of one of our client’s advertising on Lawyers.com, in an attempt to answer the question:
“Is Lawyers.com Advertising Worth the Money?”
Keep in mind that this is just one (1) example; not nearly enough data to make any kind of blanket statement about how “worth it” lawyers.com advertising is, but enough to give a helpful example of what to expect at a particular price point.
If you have experience advertising with Lawyers.com and have seen drastically different results, we sure would like to hear about it in the comments of this post!
Here is what the process of purchasing a listing on Lawyers.com will look like:
We chose only to invest in the “Listing for Lawyers.com” at a cost of $277/mo with a 12 month commitment. Below we have detailed the data after six (6) months of advertising under this package.
When your listing is activated, you are given access to a dashboard (csc.lawyers.com) where you can update all of your law firm information.
This dashboard also contains details for any leads generated from your profile (phone calls and contact forms). Our dashboard is reporting on 35 leads over the 6 months:
We also tracked 31 referral visits from the lawyers.com listing to the client’s website. This resulted in 1 lead:
We are of course interested in understanding how the listing affects the organic search performance of the client’s site.
What we know is that the investment we made comes with listings on lawyers.com and martindale.com We get links from each of those profiles, PLUS we get links from each lawyer’s individual profile. Here are the authority metrics for each:
This is the main law firm profile
This is one of the attorney profiles
This is the other attorney profile
This is the main law firm profile
This is one of the attorney profiles
This is the other attorney profiles
So what we are getting is 6 links from 2 domains. The MOZ page and domain authority for each link is about 36 and 86 respectively. These are impactful links to be sure, regardless of what Google say about buying links.
We are also getting citations from each listing, which is a positive local search ranking signal for law firms.
A citation, in the context of local SEO, simply refers to a mention of the business Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP). With citations, consistency is the key.
BE AWARE: Because these listings come with tracking phone numbers, this will cause inconsistency with your NAP. To avoid this, tell your representative that you’d like to opt out of call tracking, and simply use your primary (local) office number on the listing instead.
It’s hard to say exactly what the return on investment is on these 6 backlinks and 2 citations. What we do know is that these are links and citations that many of this client’s top competitors have, which means if we are to pass them up, we better have a plan for replacing them with equally valuable links and citations.
That depends. The data here is from just one (1) client and it represents only an investment in a basic listing. The cost per lead was roughly $48.
When we calculate the cost per lead for our clients, we normally see about $42 per lead, after 12-14 months. The advantage of advertising with lawyers.com is speed; you get leads as soon as the ad goes live.
The downside is that, once the ad is turned off, you get zero (0) leads per month.
When you invest in SEO, if you stop paying after 12 or 16 months, you will keep getting leads from your site (though, the total may dwindle over time), and overtime, the cost per lead becomes exponentially cheaper. This is why you always here us SEOs saying annoying (but true) things like, “SEO is a long term investment”.
Again, we would truly appreciate if anyone who has experience advertising on lawyers.com would share in the comments below for the benefit of us all! You can also get a lawyers take on the different review services here.
Understanding the Best Practices for Multiple Location SEO
Pre-2012, businesses realized that they could launch a website on a domain name containing the keywords they wanted to rank for, and then rank for those keywords with relative ease.
Want to rank for “Boise criminal defense attorney”? No problem! Just buy boisecriminaldefenseattorney.com and you’re golden.
It seemed too good to be true.
Turns out, it was. In 2012, Google rolled out the exact-match domain (EMD) update. With it, they aimed to lessen the power of keywords in the domain name as a ranking signal.
That’s not to say that having keywords in your domain is bad – not at all! They can even be helpful. Google’s goal with this update was to ensure that websites were ranking well because they deserved to be, not because of the domain name they happened to own.
What does that have to do with marketing your multi-office law firm? Turns out, a lot.
If you’re not down to read the rest of this post (it’ll take about 10 more minutes of your time), feel free to jump down to the “too long, didn’t read” section for an abbreviated version.
The pre-2012 days of lawyer SEO led to law firms launching multiple websites for countless permutations of the keywords they wanted to rank for.
You had lots of attorneys launching websites by practice area:
But you also had a fair amount of attorneys launching websites by location:
A single law firm might have ten or more websites. It was bananas, but it worked.
When Google lessened the ranking power of EMDs, lots of law firms were left with multiple websites that weren’t performing. What we tended to see after this update was one stand-out website and the rest typically didn’t get much organic traffic at all. It’s important to note that this didn’t happen in every case. In fact, there are many local markets (particularly the less competitive ones) where EMDs still do appear to work better than they should.
But for the rest of us, does that mean Google doesn’t like multiple websites anymore? No. In fact, they tell us that every website has an equal ability to rank — but the operative word there is ability.
If DallasTaxLawyer.com, FortWorthTaxLawyer.com, and PlanoTaxLawyer.com are all created equal, how come only DallasTaxLawyer.com is ranking?
Effort.
While all websites (all other factors remaining equal) have the same chance of ranking, it’s the effort required to earn those rankings that tend to favor one over the others when a single business has multiple websites.
This is real data from a Texas attorney with whose campaign I’m familiar. They have five websites, each nearly identical to each other except for the city that they target.
Domain for city 1:
Domain for city 2:
Domain for city 3:
Domain for city 4:
Domain for city 5:
This diminishing domain strength paints such a clear picture of what tends to happen when a single business tries to maintain multiple websites. Inevitably, one takes priority (usually the one that best represents the business) and the others get the backburner, where they struggle to get the attention they need to perform well in search results.
Additionally, because your effort is spread thin across multiple domains, the business receives less of the benefits than they would with a single website getting all the effort.
In other words, if you were this law firm, would you rather have five websites most with fewer than 100 inbound links? Or would you rather have one domain with 2,768 inbound links?
Picking the latter would mean that you have a single domain with a strong link profile rather than multiple domains with weaker link profiles. Usually, these websites are better together than they are apart. I say “usually” because there are some scenarios in which multiple domains might be appropriate, which we’ll address a bit later.
If multiple websites are such a hassle, what’s the alternative for multi-location law firms? How do you market multiple offices on a single website?
Subfolders.
I’m talking about johndoelaw.com/dallas/, johndoelaw.com/ft-worth/, and johndoelaw.com/plano/ instead of johndoedallas.com, johndoeftworth.com, and johndoeplano.com. On the surface, the difference may appear to be just in the formatting, but it’s actually the difference between maintaining and growing three websites versus one.
By hosting your office locations on subfolders, you get to focus all your energy on one domain while still advertising your presence in those additional locations. My friend Miriam Ellis touches on this in her blog post Not Actually the Best Local SEO Practices for lawyers– check it out.
Hosting your law firm’s office pages on a subfolder of your domain is often called a “location page” or “geo page.” When done well, these are a great option for marketing your multiple locations both on your website and on your Google My Business listing (by listing your city-specific URL in your corresponding GMB listing’s website field).
So, how do you do them well? In my experience, some of the best location pages contain:
There are some situations where I can see the merit in keeping multiple websites.
If you currently have multiple websites for your law firm, but now you’re considering a single-domain option, the question then becomes “how do I move from multiple websites to one website?”
It is absolutely possible to combine two or more websites into one, but this type of site migration poses risks to your rankings and traffic if not handled properly. If you move forward with this option, please do so under the guidance of an experienced SEO company.
If you’re not maintaining a different website for each of your office locations, what should you name your domain? A personal injury law firm with offices in Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, and Downtown Los Angeles would not want a domain named GlendaleInjuryLaw.com because that would exclude their other locations. And if you tried to host office pages on subfolders, it would just look silly (GlendaleInjuryLaw.com/Burbank).
That’s exactly why I’m such a fan of branded domain names for multi-location law firms. Not only is this a cleaner option for hosting office pages on subfolders, but it also means that you’ll get more brand awareness out of your ranking keywords.
Think about it. If you’re ranking for “what are the penalties for DUI in California?” and you have an EMD, searchers are going to see “GlendaleInjuryLaw.com” ranking. But if you have a branded domain name, every time someone searches for that keyword you’re ranking for, they’re going to see your name!
Generally, they’re also easier for your audience to remember and tend to look more trustworthy to searchers.
If you’re still wondering what domain name is right for your law firm, check out Juris Digital’s Guide to Choosing Your Law Firm’s Domain Name.
Another question that owners of multi-location law firms have to answer is “how do I set up my GMB?”
According to Google, you can have one page for each location of your business. However, there are a few things you must keep in mind in order to avoid violating Google’s guidelines and ensure you’re optimizing appropriately.
Before creating a GMB listing for one of your law firm’s locations, ask yourself the following:
Google does allow you to set up separate listings for individual practitioners or departments within your law firm, but if they’re categorized the same as your main GMB listing is categorized, they could compete with each other.
There’s a lot that goes into marketing multiple office locations, but just know that it’s not always a black-and-white issue. Armed with this information, I hope you’re able to choose the route that’s most appropriate for your unique situation.
I’m convinced that family law attorneys have one of the toughest jobs out there.
The emotional tax that comes with handling serious issues like divorce and child custody day-in-day-out is steep, requiring just the right mix of empathy, resilience, and relentlessness.
If that’s you, hats off. I have so much respect for what you do.
Knowing that you deal with such sensitive and emotional matters, you’ve probably wondered more than once how you should present yourself to the world.
While it works for some lawyers to shout about their toughness to acquire clients, that’s just not you. How do you get more family law firm cases without sounding insensitive?
Family law firms need to take a different approach with their tone, branding, and message.
Related: A Game Plan for Marketing Your Family Law Practice
Related: Local SEO For Law Firms
Since Juris Digital is a digital marketing agency, we’ll focus on those aspects of branding that have direct applications for your law firm website and other digital properties.
“Tone” or “voice” refers to the personality your digital content conveys. Here are some of my favorite examples of brands that have nailed down their digital voice:
Every family law firm is unique. You have the liberty to choose a brand voice that matches your unique personality, but there are some personality traits that it’d probably be best to avoid when coming up with your family law firm’s brand voice.
Brand tones your family law firm should avoid:
There are exceptions to every rule, so it’s entirely possible these “tones to avoid” may work well for you in your specific locale or among a specific demographic. I recommend the free tool Google Optimize to test which copy leads to better website engagement, and use Google Ads data to see which tone converts better.
You should also pay special attention to your brand voice in these areas:
Remember, your message can change to fit the unique situation, but the tone in which you convey that message should remain consistent.
Think of a tagline or slogan as your law firm’s catchphrase. It should be short, striking, and memorable. A motto that quickly lets your prospective clients know what you’re all about.
Some famous examples of slogans:
Notice that none of these taglines state the product or service. The best taglines convey an idea that compels potential customers to act. So how could this be applied to family law firms?
How to create a good law firm tagline:
Imagery is powerful – use responsibly.
Some of the best logos are simple (think: H&R Block), and many law firms simply opt for a stylized version of their business name. If you have an especially long law firm name (the longest I’ve worked with is a law firm with 5 named partners – a total of 50 characters), it might be a good idea to use an acronym for your logo.
You have a lot of flexibility with your law firm’s logo, and to be honest I haven’t seen a lot of truly terrible ones. Where you really have to be careful is the additional imagery you put on your site, such as stock photos.
Here are some guiding principles for choosing imagery for your family law firm website:
Again, A/B testing tools like Google Optimize will help you determine which images facilitate better engagement with your website, but generally, the following principles serve as a helpful guide for your family law firm’s branding.
Color psychology (yes, that’s a thing!) plays an important role in family law firm branding. Color can have a massive impact on human perception, and can actually influence our mood.
Colors that would work well for a family law firm website:
Stay away from:
Colors have the ability to present your law firm as a haven or a source of additional anxiety. Choose the former.
Once your brand has a digital voice (point 1), use it to address the topics that your potential clients care about. How can you find out what these topics are? Two main ways:
The buying cycle can often be longer for family lawyers because of how much is at stake. Your potential clients are going to be doing a lot more research than say someone who needs an emergency plumber for a pipe burst. Use that extended research phase as an opportunity to answer their questions and build the trust that’s necessary for them to choose you as their representation.
The topics you choose to address can contribute to your family law firm’s brand as much as your tone, tagline, images, and colors can. Choose them wisely.
Deciding how you want to present your family law firm online is a lot of work. Juris Digital understands the nuances that come with each unique legal service area, and can do the heavy lifting to ensure your website is securing more family law clients, not turning them away.
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Lawyers are busy people. Between meeting with clients, appearing in court, handling paperwork, and plenty of other day-to-day responsibilities, finding the time to sit down and write a fresh piece of content just isn’t really at the top of the priority list for most. On top of that, most attorneys really don’t see the point.
After all, your website already states your purpose pretty clearly, and you probably already have a page for each major practice area, so what can a blog post do better?
And who is even going to visit your website and click on the blog section? Do your potential clients even care what you have to say? As it turns out, blog posts are much more valuable than you might think. Here, I’ll discuss the advantages of blogging for lawyers, as well as some basic best practices.
Those nice practice area pages you have do come with limitations. Although those pages should be descriptive, they should also be concise. Readers will lose focus and likely leave the site if a practice area page begins to veer off on a tangent. Instead of including detailed discussions about specific issues on the practice area page, you can create a blog post instead.
For example, a bankruptcy lawyer who handles both Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy may have a page for each, but a blog post would be the perfect place to describe to a client which one is the best choice for their particular situation.
From an SEO perspective, there are great advantages to publishing this type of support content. Every blog post that supports a practice area page should include a link to that practice area page, and even other related blog posts if they are relevant. Over time, you will create a network of content that is related and connected via a series of links.
As Google crawls your site, it will pick up on these networks, and will reward you for having such a complete repository of information. This makes sense, because having all of the information readily available on your site is a good user experience, which is really what Google’s algorithms are attempting to deliver.
Because you are linking to the main practice area page from each related blog post, it will be clear to Google that this is the most important page in the network, and it will have the best chance of ranking. Furthermore, any time a link from another site–called a “backlink”–goes to one of the blog posts in the network, authority is passed from that site to yours.
Part of this process happens on a page-by-page basis, meaning that the blog post being linked to will get the biggest authority boost. Having a link to the practice area page from that blog post will ensure that some of that authority is passed along to the practice area page, helping it to continue improving in the rankings.
Okay, I’ll be honest here—people don’t necessarily land on your homepage and go “Oh yay, there’s a law blog! I have to visit that!” But that doesn’t mean that people won’t ever see your blog posts. The key is to write posts that answer very specific questions, like “Why Do Lawyers Blog?” (See what I did there?)
In an attorney’s case, you might write a post entitled “How Do I Get Divorced Without Going to Court in Connecticut?” Chances are, someone will actually ask that specific question or some close variation in Google or another search engine, so by writing that post, you’re creating an opportunity for your site to rank for that question. These very specific queries—called “long-tail queries”—have much less competition than head-term queries like “divorce attorney,” so you’ll have a much better chance of ranking more quickly for that term.
More importantly, these posts tend to capture a type of client who does research before deciding who to hire. While a person may not read a post and then call you immediately, it may serve as a first touchpoint for someone who is not yet decided. If your post makes a strong enough impression, they may go back to your site hours or days later to call you or fill out a contact form.
The important thing to remember here is to be empathetic toward your potential clients’ needs. Understanding the type of questions that people might ask is an important first step in deciding what to write.
Age is a peculiar thing in websites. While a well-seasoned domain holds more authority than the new kid on the block, Google likes to give a big thumbs-up to shiny new content. There are obvious reasons for this. Adding more content adds to the network I mentioned above, and it updates users on the latest information.
Times change, and as they do, laws are amended, precedents set, and new information introduced. Keeping people updated on topics relevant to your industry shows Google that you’re on top of the newest information, which means that your site is the most qualified for displaying that information to searchers. This really follows the same principles as freshness.
But there is one pitfall that many lawyers fall into on this front. It is common for lawyers to churn out a legal spin on political or social commentary regularly, allowing them to constantly push new content. While an occasional post on this subject can be warranted (as long as it really does fit into your practice’s area of expertise), these usually lack substance or uniqueness.
Since news outlets frequently cover the same topics, sometimes even including legal information, a local law firm website has little chance of actually ranking with this content, and with only loose relation to the rest of the content on your website, it really only fits at the fringe of the networks we previously discussed.
If you do feel that you would like to use these topics to your advantage, it would be advisable to submit that content to a larger publication, including a meaningful backlink to a relevant page on your own site. This will be much more effective in boosting your rankings and getting your voice out.
Perhaps the most infamous type of horrible blog post is the ever-present “me, me, me” post. These are the posts that small business owners begin to churn out several times a week because some well-meaning web developer with a few thoughts on SEO said, “You should really start blogging on your website. I’ve heard it can really help your SEO.”
Usually, they comprise of posts like “Look at How Much Fun Our Office Party Was!” and “This Week Only: 25% Off a Consultation!” Occasionally, there will even be an outward-focused post that isn’t quite as bad, but is still mostly useless, such as “Wishing You a Happy Memorial Day From Our Team!”
The good news is that attorneys don’t commit these offenses as often as the shoe store next door. At the end of the day, these posts aren’t really hurting anyone, but they aren’t helping either. Nobody will be searching for that information, and as I’ve already admitted, few people are likely to get too excited to visit your blog just because they want to see what you’ve written.
However, not every single post has to be about legal services. In fact, there are some great ways to use certain types of non-legal blog posts to your advantage. For example, hiring a new attorney or making someone a partner in the firm is a good reason to create a press release, which is essentially a blog post hosted externally for reporters. All you have to do is create a bio page for the new attorney on the site, write up a few paragraphs about his or her experience and why they came to the firm, and then use that information in a press release with a link back to the bio. You may or may not choose to make a blog post on your own site about it, but either way, it is useful.
Another great solution is to write a blog post each month about community service. Some law firms like to include this in the main blog, while others will have a separate community blog to fulfill those needs. These also warrant a press release, but are even better candidates for direct outreach to the press. You can also contact any organization that you worked with on the project and ask them to do a write up on their site with a link back to yours.
Like I said before, attorneys are very busy people. Having your content written by a professional would take an enormous weight off your shoulders, and doing that comes with certain advantages, including more scheduled posting and lengthier posts. If the writer has SEO knowledge, they will be able to strategically plan posts and optimize them.
On the other hand, ghost writers simply don’t have the ability to address a given legal topic with the same authority that the actual attorney does. They won’t have the background knowledge necessary to give opinions, and they are not as well-versed on current legal issues. Ultimately, content created by ghost writers is usually flat.
If you’re going to utilize ghost writers, my suggestion would be to work closely with them in strategizing. If a new piece of industry information becomes available, let your writer know, and ask them to write something about it. You should also make sure that you do occasionally write a post on your own, and when you do, write about specific or opinionated information that a writer wouldn’t be able to give.
Most importantly, if you’re working with an attorney SEO company, run everything by them before publication, and ask them to optimize it accordingly. This may include some formatting changes, and minimal rewording, but can almost always be easily done without fear of losing the integrity of the content.
Ready to start blogging? Check out our guide: How to Start a Law Firm Blog.
Law practices rise and fall on the strength of their paralegals.
Whenever smaller practices contact us to ask why they aren’t seeing the same success as their similarly sized rivals across the street, we tell them it’s usually one of two things: their marketing or their support staff… or some combination thereof.
(This may also be true in much larger firms, but the bigger the practice, the more complicated the calculus.)
No matter how big your firm, though — and no matter what kind of law you practice — a truly excellent paralegal will help you:
But how do you find the right person?
In “Big Law,” they have a whole Human Resources department devoted to the task. And veteran lawyers have worked with enough paralegals over the years to know what they’re looking for.
What’s a relatively new lawyer to do, though? What should you look for when hiring a paralegal?
Below, we present The Ultimate Guide to Hiring Your First Paralegal. As you might suspect, there’s a lot to know, and it isn’t as easy as you might think.
(Don’t believe us? Put out a Help Wanted ad and see how simple the process feels! …Good help is hard to find.)
There is no standard job description for paralegals. The Greek prefix para means “near,” “beside,” “alongside,” “resembling,” or “beyond.” That’s a pretty broad definition, and if you look inside enough law offices, you’ll find paralegals who match one interpretation more closely than another.
Here are questions to ask yourself when hiring a paralegal:
Your answers to these questions will determine the qualifications to look for when hiring a paralegal. They can also guide you in writing an employee policy book for your law firm (something you should absolutely do before hiring anyone), and even when posting a job listing.
Keep in mind, though, that the prefix para has also been interpreted to mean “apart from.” In other words, a paralegal is apart from the law. To that end, there are things paralegals strictly cannot do, as determined by your state’s bar.
As a general rule, paralegals can assist you in the practice of law, but they cannot practice law themselves. It’s a fine line, and your clients’ interest must never be compromised by crossing it. Be sure you know the rules for your jurisdiction inside and out before posting that help wanted ad.
We’ve already demonstrated that the word “paralegal” can mean many different things when translated literally. But it also means different things in people’s minds — including the minds of paralegals themselves.
Did you know anyone can call themselves a paralegal? While there are many certification programs out there, not all states require paralegals to be certified.
Indeed, you might receive applications from paralegals who have substantial experience but who were never formally educated, certified, or trained.
Certainly, those candidates can make fantastic paralegals (experience counts for a lot), but if you have your choice of applicants, there’s a lot to be said for someone who has attended a great certification program. To boot, you can advertise your paralegal’s credentials to prospective clients too.
Because the word “paralegal” doesn’t always mean something precise, you need to be a shrewd reviewer of résumés. Here’s what to look for when hiring a paralegal:
Law school doesn’t teach you everything. In fact, it teaches very little about the practical side of practicing law. It’s all case law and theory.
In a very real sense, then, your paralegal might become your last great “professor.” (For that matter, even seasoned attorneys can learn a lot from paralegals who’ve been around the block in various fields of law.)
Hire someone who can show you the ropes. Hands-on experience is probably the single most important thing to look for when hiring a paralegal.
If you’ve only been on the hot seat side of a job interview, you might think it’s easy to ask all the questions for a change. But to get the most out of your interview, you should prepare for it. Here are some tips:
Strong interview skills are among the most important things to look for when hiring a paralegal!
We recently wrote about the widespread problem of law firms losing clients because of the way their paralegals answer the phone. This has as much to do with the law firm failing to properly train its support staff or put proper client intake procedures in place. But you do want to make sure you’re hiring a paralegal who will answer incoming calls from prospective clients in a way that enhances your brand and encourages them to choose your office over the three others they’ve called. As you consider your applicants, think about who you’d most want to talk to if they answered your phone call.
Once you know what to look for when hiring a paralegal, you’ll need to know where to look. Here are some suggestions:
A legal assistant may be the lifeblood of daily operation, but ultimately, it’s clients who keep a law firm alive and thriving. So in addition to hiring a paralegal, find a legal marketing team that can keep clients coming through the door.
Juris Digital is a legal marketing agency that uses the internet to get bigger cases and better clients for the law firms that hire us. We work with firms of all sizes, from solo practitioners and transitioning attorneys to mid-size practices and beyond.
At Juris Digital, we are obsessed with Google and getting our clients to its top spots. We do that through content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), PPC advertising, website design, social media management, and more.
Through those disciplines, we’ve taken law firms from a negligible web presence to powerhouse placement in the search results. Even more importantly, we’ve helped to convert that traffic into real clients, which is what it’s all about.
Paralegals are the lifeblood of any law firm. Attorneys depend on them for anything and everything that doesn’t strictly require a law license.
But surveys of legal support professionals across the country suggest that paralegals often struggle with morale, feeling overburdened and underappreciated for their extremely critical role in the firm.
Your own practical experience in hiring, managing, and firing paralegals over the years may have left you with the same conclusion.
This matters. As a business, your law firm performs better when paralegals are firing on all cylinders, so there is a real business imperative in boosting morale.
How to do that, though? This is a conundrum for many lawyers (and especially for managing partners), who aren’t always inclined toward sentiment and who certainly don’t have time to fret over everyone’s feelings.
Your time is a concern, certainly. But business operations are, as a rule, human operations. Feelings are a part of the human experience, and so they are a part of the business experience. Failing to tend to them — particularly to the feeling of being underappreciated — is simply bad for business.
In this article, we offer several strategies for improving attorney-paralegal relations and boosting morale across your law firm’s entire support staff.
Attorneys understand one another because they’re motivated by the same kinds of things — the win-loss record, the size of the contingency fee, the competition with colleagues, the need to make the most of many years of education, the success of the firm, and so on.
These are not the same things that motivate most paralegals. They are employees of the firm, so they don’t share in your profits. Generally speaking, their careers do not rise and fall on a record of verdicts, settlements, and judgments. They do not have extensive schooling or substantial student debt that they still need to justify. No one is rating them on Avvo.com.
As an employer and/or manager, it is your job to understand your employee’s motivations and speak to them.
Some of these motivations are universal. Employees, as a general matter, are motivated by appreciation and acknowledgment. (Time and again, studies have found that American employees value a feeling of workplace appreciation over incremental increases in their salaries!)
But much of motivation is personal, too. Each of us is motivated differently, so to really connect with your paralegals, you’ll need to understand their unique personalities and goals. You need to figure out how they tick.
To that end, you might fancy yourself an interpersonal communications expert for a week or two and dive into a few studies of human behavior.
There’s Gretchen Rubin’s The Four Tendencies, for instance — a book that divides people into one of four categories based on what motivates them. And if you don’t have extra time to read the book, there’s a quiz that can be taken online.
Or the classic Gary Chapman guide, The Five Love Languages (just make sure you’re using it to understand how each paralegal receives tokens of appreciation… not to woo them, lest you cross a line).
Getting to know and understand someone takes time and effort, but you’ll be a better boss for it.
It’s a simple principle, but it’s tried and true. Constructive criticism is most effective when it’s couched in compliments. Unconstructive criticism, meanwhile, isn’t effective at all.
We suggest following this single, familiar rule: for every criticism, give at least three compliments.
Don’t force it, though. If you rebuke an employee and then robotically spew out three random compliments, no one’s going to buy it. Authenticity is key.
So here’s the challenge: start actively looking for things your paralegals do well. Remember them. Make note of them. And when you’re impressed, say so.
As long as you’re offering praise more frequently than correction, the latter will be received in the right spirit and is more likely to take root.
Almost everyone enjoys receiving gifts (whether they admit it or not). But gift giving isn’t as easy as it sounds. How do you give someone something they really want without spending a fortune or sending the wrong message?
Well, don’t overcomplicate things. Choose from this go-to list of gifts and you’ll never go wrong:
Some experts recommend chocolates, candies, and flowers. There is nothing inherently wrong with those gifts, but given their traditional role in romance, you should be mindful of dynamics and personalities before bestowing them on your subordinates.
Cards are always a nice complement to gifts, too. You’ll find some examples of paralegal-specific greeting cards here, here, and here.
In addition to gifts, a do-it-yourself coupon (the kind your kids make for your birthday) can be surprisingly morale-boosting. These are ideal for paralegals who are raising children, supporting aging parents, dealing with hectic home lives, or who commute a long distance to work.
Coupon ideas include:
You might stipulate that advance notice is required for redemption (to avoid being caught off guard on the worst possible day).
When should you give all these gifts, cards, and coupons? There’s never a wrong time. “Just because” gifts are always welcome, and a well-timed present can also make for the perfect mea culpa.
But there are days when gifts are especially appropriate… and at least two times a year when they’re downright expected — Legal Assistants Day and the winter holidays (during which a bonus might stand in lieu of a gift).
Nothing is worse for morale than your paralegals learning that their colleagues in other firms were treated to a lavish lunch or spa day while they didn’t get so much as a trinket.
Here are a few occasions when a token of your appreciation might be appropriate:
At least once a year, take your staff out to eat at a nice restaurant. Or, if lunch sounds too stuffy, consider a retreat. (Very large law firms will likely need to do this by practice group or department.)
Dinners, outings, parties, and team-building exercises can all work wonders of camaraderie — sometimes in just a few hours. It’s amazing what a little shakeup can do.
You paid a lot of money to go to law school, where you learned a lot from other lawyers. But your paralegals have an opportunity to learn a great deal from you for free. Convey that in a way that seems like an opportunity, not an obligation or condescension.
Offer to send them to continuing education courses, legal seminars, or even to court for the day. The insight they’ll gain will make them more well-rounded legal professionals, and that’s ultimately to your benefit. Alternatively, you might offer to conduct an in-house legal seminar yourself.
More than anything, you want your staff members to feel extremely comfortable asking questions whenever they aren’t sure about something. Those who are too intimidated to speak up are more likely to make mistakes or compromise efficiency.
Is there festering resentment in the paralegal-attorney relationship? It’s time to stop those nasty feelings in their tracks. They’re counter-productive and toxic to productivity.
If you have a concern, address it. What if you suspect your employees are the ones with a grievance to share? Open up the floor and listen earnestly. If you need to apologize, do so forthrightly.
Communication fixes everything. So get to the root of your problem and then start over with a clean slate.
If you want to tick off your paralegals, start assigning them arduous, time-consuming tasks that (A) aren’t in their job description and (B) get in the way of the work they were actually trained and hired to do.
Case in point: law firm marketing.
Paralegals didn’t pursue a career in marketing, don’t have a background in it, and don’t have the available hours in their work day to devote to it.
Unfortunately, too many lawyers make the mistake of saddling their support staff with marketing demands. It doesn’t work for anyone. The job doesn’t get done, the law firm website doesn’t move up within the relevant Google search results, and the firm’s case support suffers because the assistants are distracted.
Let paralegals be paralegals and assign your marketing to marketers instead.
Juris Digital is a team of legal marketing experts who do only one thing: grow law firms using the web.
Through content marketing, PPC advertising, SEO, and more, we put law firms at the top of Google and get them bigger cases from better clients.
Just as importantly, we don’t require contracts. We know our process works, so we don’t need to lock you in. (Want to see some proof? Just ask to look at our past and ongoing results.)
