By Legal Futures Associate Conscious Solutions
For most of your clients, the copy on your website is the first time they’ll hear your firm’s “voice”. This voice is reinforced by all aspects of your website branding, including elements such as the colours, the logo, and where on the page your content falls. Perhaps most importantly, the tone of voice (TOV) you establish in your copy leaves the most impact.
This is because your copy provides the answers that clients and potential clients are searching for. They’ll not only remember finding the information they need but also how clearly it was presented and how easy it was to understand.
Copy is critical to the success of a law firm’s digital marketing. Not only does it contain the details of your firm’s services, achievements, and commitments, but it indirectly appeals to the client through building trust, warmth, and professionalism.
Your efforts towards copywriting can be the key to reaching your clients from any platform you’re on. This includes emails, blog posts, website content, and marketing materials— anywhere you’ve produced written content is an opportunity to generate interest and leads. The quality of your writing is critical to your success with these opportunities.
How is copywriting different to typical content creation?
Simply put, copywriting involves crafting persuasive and brand-aligned messaging designed to inspire action or convey expertise. While content creation can be broader and more informational, copywriting crafts a cohesive voice that resonates with your target audience across service pages, blogs, and marketing materials.
Of course, blog posts written and hosted under direct authorship are valuable in their own way—they can imply specialism and wield a more personable and individualistic tone. However, most of your firm’s website and marketing will be anonymous content written by someone who understands how to represent the firm in carefully chosen words.
In legal marketing, copywriting can sometimes become a shadow in the light of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but this is often where law firms go wrong.
SEO research tracks how key terms and rankings drive clients towards your content. Your copywriting is the language that your firm speaks. It is, therefore, vital to invest the time and resources into ensuring your writing is clear, well-written and accurate.
Our Copywriting Team has put together five tips for law firms looking to improve their written content.
Top five legal copywriting tips from us at Conscious
Understand your clients to understand yourself
Conscious starts every marketing campaign with an in-depth discussion to determine your law firm’s values and tone. While it’s important to make sure that clients can quickly and easily find out what services you offer, a single bullet-point list is not going to appeal to the majority of internet users.
To show your clients that you get where they’re coming from, try to understand how you can present the side of your firm that appeals to their needs through human connection.
For instance, if your law firm specialises in family law, focus on empathetic and supportive language. Instead of “We provide divorce services,” try “We help clients navigate the emotional and legal complexities of divorce with care and professionalism.”
The Law Firm Marketing Club recently did some extensive research into what legal clients want, and 75% of clients said that a strong website and profile for lawyers is important to them. That’s more than the 51% who said that price comparison websites are important, or the 42% who said social media presence matters. Furthermore, 89% of people said that they expect a description of a law firm’s services on its online presence.
Clients are looking for your services, and it’s important for them to find them on a good website with good content. Copywriting is critical to providing just that. Writing and formatting the content correctly, with suitable empathy based on the subject matter and clear communication that tackles complicated, legally technical subjects, is important to the vast majority of your audience.
Research effectively
Doing an appropriate amount of research before you write can help your copy come across as more professional and expert. Use tools like Google Scholar for credible research, and always verify statistics with reputable sources. Avoid overloading your content with data; instead, balance it with relatable case studies or testimonials.
Even if you’re the expert on the subject you’re writing about on behalf of your company, be careful about referring to studies or statistics. They could become outdated or redundant overnight, or the source website you’re linking to could be taken down, leading to broken links on your firm’s webpage.
Consider this when you include research, even if you’re confident in the statistics and sources you cite. Sometimes, speaking from personal experience—such as using case studies or permitted client testimonials—can be hugely advantageous and help your firm stand out amongst the crowd. Only you can write about the unique aspects and specialisms of your firm.
Plan your content before you write it
Most people will find legal language complicated and jarring. Typically, people encounter legal language in their real lives through subscription and utility contracts, and, according to the University of Law, more than two-thirds of people (68%) either don’t understand or don’t read their contracts. Whilst undeniably important, complex legal content is usually off-putting.
Start with a content brief that outlines your target audience, primary goals, and key messages. Use a content map to structure sections logically and ensure each piece serves a purpose. By properly planning out your content before writing, you can decide when and where you’ll slow down and explain the nuances of your craft in order to help clients trust that you’ll meet them where it matters.
You should also consider the format of your content when you plan it. Writing a case synopsis for a social media post will look vastly different to how you’ll write it up for your website. You need to plan for the container of your words because it’ll affect the length, sentence structure, tone, language, and all aspects of how you write.
The planning stage does not have to be an extensive part of the project, but it is a critical step for firms dealing with something as infamously complex and sometimes antagonistic as the law.
Use tools
AI can be a great way to optimise your copywriting process. By delegating repetitive, formulaic tasks to AI tools, you can dedicate more time to high-value, creative work.
AI practice and integration processes have already begun to feel a bit weathered for some companies. Particularly, policies for trying out every tool on the market before integrating one are becoming less favourable. If you’re going to use AI, it’s good to make sure you’ve got the right tech in your toolkit, but don’t feel as though you must master them all. Find one or two tools that support your writing process.
Some of our favourites include Grammarly, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude.
Proof and peer review
Proofing your work is the final stage of copywriting, where you ideally take a few minutes away from the content (or longer), come back, and check that it all makes sense. You can refer to the goals you set out whilst planning and check that your firm’s tone really comes across.
Peer review is usually relegated to just an academic practice, but all it means is proofing another person’s content. Every piece of writing done by our copywriting team is peer-reviewed. In this process, we’ll check for common errors like inconsistent tone, overuse of jargon, or missing keywords. Peer review ensures your content is error-free and aligned with your firm’s branding.
It means that every piece of copy is double or even triple-checked for accuracy, after word checkers are used, and that every writer on the team knows what projects are being worked on, what new ways we can turn a phrase to deliver a notion, how we all plan and research effectively, and how we’re building our clients brands.
Additional tip: Use the ‘Read Aloud’ function to help you to spot issues with language, spelling and grammar.
What’s next for your legal content?
Writing good content takes time and constant maintenance. Your written content will have to react as your firm evolves, the legal landscape shifts and new laws are introduced or changed. Having outdated content at the front of your firm’s online presence will drive away potential clients, even if your legal team are up to date.
The copywriters at Conscious come from diverse educational backgrounds and are experts in knowing how to translate complex legal language into digestible, communicative content. We work closely with our SEO team to ensure that the language fits the space it’s destined for and contains the correct keywords and links.
In your initial onboarding call, one of our copywriters will record your answers and goals so that we can learn firsthand how you’d like your writing to read and develop the best strategy to communicate your firm’s goals.
If you think you might need legal copywriting support, or if you are happy with your content, but your SEO or website is letting you down, contact the team at sales@conscious.co.uk or 0117 325 0200.
