5 Reasons to Hire a High-Quality Legal Content Writer

by Gary Stroschein | Jun 14, 2022 | Content Marketing

Recent legal industry reports highlight the power of legal content writing as 57% of surveyed respondents indicate they found their lawyer through an online search engine. This compares with 59% who found their lawyer through a referral source.

This data shows law firms and legal professionals need a balanced approach to their marketing efforts and hiring a legal content writer can be an effective way to support the online marketing side of those efforts.

No matter your practice area, firm size, or content publishing frequency, we break down some of the main benefits of hiring a legal content writer and how they can elevate your business by saving you time and money.

Why You Need a Skilled Content Writer for Marketing Your Law Firm or Legal Service Business

Several reasons support the decision to hire a quality legal content writer for your law firm, legal technology company, or other legal service business. We discuss those reasons in more detail within the next section. But first, some key context for why content writing is fundamental to your law firm’s future success in today’s market.

Before the internet, lawyers and law firms heavily relied on word-of-mouth referrals from colleagues or current clients to attract new business. While that marketing source is still important, the internet offers those in need of legal services a new method for finding trusted experts to solve their legal problems.

Your potential clients are increasingly likely to shop for a law firm on the internet and through other social media platforms no differently than they would for other products or services. In fact, potential clients are likely to vet your online presence even if a trusted referral source recommended you.

Both short and long-form content is useful in executing a complete marketing strategy and can include, amongst others, the following types of content:

Blog posts on your firm or substantive legal industry topics
Practice area webpages
Attorney bios
White papers, industry guides, etc.
Social media posts
Emails and newsletters

The shift in how people access legal markets means a couple of things for your law practice. One is that you need an online presence that gives prospective clients an opportunity to find you. However, a mere presence is not enough. Your online profile must effectively speak to two audiences.

The first audience is your potential client’s search engine (e.g., Google, Firefox, etc.) which acts as a gatekeeper through how it ranks and presents your online profile through different queries. The second audience is the potential client who, after finding your profile, requires convincing that you are the right candidate for the job. Both audiences need regularly updated content that demonstrates your expertise and differentiates you from other market choices in the here and now.

The 5 Reasons Your Law Firm Can Benefit from a Legal Content Writer

As explained above, our business reputations increasingly exist via websites and other internet platforms. Providing information and thought leadership about your firm and your practice is essential to client development. However, using a legal content writer can provide significant cost and time savings compared with a do-it-yourself approach or using a non-legal specific marketing writer.

You Can Focus More Attention on Your Legal Practice

Law firms that don’t rely on a legal content writer for developing thought pieces and blog posts often depend on their attorneys to craft content. They may do this to save costs and because they know their attorneys have the industry knowledge (unlike generic marketing services that may lack the skillset to adequately write on a topic).

While this practice may save you marketing expenses in the short term, it may also cut into your opportunities for generating revenue. Your law firm’s attorneys likely bill at an hourly rate. The time they must dedicate to drafting content for your website is time they could otherwise spend on billing to client matters, likely at a rate higher than what you would save on the cost of hiring a legal content writer.

Optimize Your Legal Marketing Efforts for the Average Legal Consumer

Aside from the revenue-cost analysis benefit, your attorneys’ style of writing also might not translate well to high-quality content built for attracting an online audience and ranking on search engines.

For good reason, attorney writing is different from legal content writing. It requires precise use of technical jargon and restatements of law built for audiences of judges, opposing counsels, governments, regulatory bodies, and other sophisticated parties in a formal setting.

In comparison, your legal content writing should still relay accurate information about legal issues but do it in a way that makes the knowledge accessible to the average reader or target audience. The benefit of a legal content writer is their ability to distill legal information and reframe that knowledge in a way that connects you to potential clients.

Legal Content Writers Establish Credibility and Trust with Your Potential Clients and Referral Sources

Legal content writing is about building credibility and trust within your community and leveraging that community to expand your market through their web of connections. Building credibility within your personal and professional relationships takes time. And traditional marketing methods can only extend so far due to your time constraints (e.g., meet and greet events, volunteering, attending conferences, speaking engagements, etc.).

Legal professionals are also acutely aware of how their business often depends on the depth and breadth of their relationships with people. In the context of legal services, this largely centers around providing high-quality, effective work products (the main reason why referrals from current and former clients are so critical).

However, the opportunity to showcase the quality of your legal services requires an initial investment of time and rapport building with your network, which includes the likes of:

Family and friends
The public
Fellow colleagues (i.e., other lawyers and legal professionals)
Other professional service providers (e.g., CPAs, financial advisors, insurance representatives, real estate agents, doctors, social workers, etc.)

Legal content marketing gives you a platform to maintain contact and gradually strengthen the trust of your relationships with the above list of people.

So, when the moment comes that a member in your community needs your legal services, they are ready to take the next steps to engage with you or quickly recommend your name. This happens because you’ve already spent time demonstrating your knowledge and ability to help through your legal content. With each piece of quality content, your network becomes more aware of your presence as a thought leader within your practice area.

Industry-Specific Legal Content Writers Don’t Require Much Training or Guidance

When you work with a legal content writer, you can save time and money on researching, organizing, and developing a great piece of legal content. That’s because industry-specific content writers have the requisite knowledge to either write on your topic with minimal research or can effectively research a topic.

Legal industry knowledge generally comes in two forms. The first is through formal education (e.g., having a J.D. or other higher education). The other form of legal knowledge can come from practical experience in the field as a law clerk, attorney, or other legal professional.

Having both forms of knowledge can be especially beneficial as it means your legal content writer has the academic and practical background to give your content true substantive depth. Other benefits of having a legal content writer with extensive education and experience include:

The skills to effectively write on a topic with minimal direction and only having big-picture goals available.
The ability to ask important questions about a content project when necessary.
Understanding how a particular piece of content may interact with other content on your website for optimal cross-linking and website development.
An appreciation for how complex, vague, and uncertain laws can be and how that does not always translate into yes or no answers. The benefit is providing transparent and insightful discussion of legal issues for your potential clients.

Writers without industry knowledge, in comparison, may struggle with going beyond the surface of a researched topic and may not fully appreciate how the topic applies to your prospective clients and their concerns. The result is often content that simply mimics what your competitors have already done and doesn’t bring anything new to the table. This can make it difficult for your content to rank and, more importantly, will not help you stand out to your market audience.

Your Legal Content Writer Should Be Able to Combine Industry Knowledge with Internet Marketing Trends

When you rely on your associates or other attorneys to prepare your marketing content, you risk a final product that is overly technical and difficult to read because of formatting, word choice, or syntax issues. Additionally, this method may not lead to optimal SEO performance if the content does not target helpful longtail keywords or meet other search engine trends.

Alternatively, using a marketing writer that has extensive SEO knowledge but limited legal industry knowledge will give you a product that performs well on Google but won’t move the needle on your credibility with the reader.

A legal content writer offers a balanced solution to what would otherwise be a Catch-22. They have required knowledge to give your content depth and context. However, they also appreciate how the content needs to read for your audience to find it via search engine results.

Meet Our Writer

Why Use Express Writers

At Express Writers, we take great care to vet all our special industry writers, including our legal content writers. Our legal context writers have significant experience in the legal industry, previously working in attorney and other legal professional roles. They carry advanced degrees and have the knowledge to distinguish your content substantively and from an SEO perspective.

Going beyond their credentials, they ultimately love their fields of study and enjoy the opportunity to continue being a part of the industry in this impactful way.

As a lawyer, you may also find yourself often wearing multiple hats when trying to manage and grow your law practice. You may act as the CEO, bookkeeper, hiring committee, and many other roles necessary for your business.

Consider hiring a legal content writer and take internet marketing off your list of duties. With our agency, you don’t have to worry about trying to hire a freelance writer for your content projects – we do the heavy lifting.

Law Blog Writers: 6 Key Steps to Stop Writing Boring, Blah Posts

by Adam Oakley | Nov 29, 2017 | Content Marketing

Blogging. Everybody’s doing it.

It’s not a coincidence. Content marketing and blogging are successful, proven ways to earn leads, conversions, and increase sales and revenue.

More and more marketers are focusing on blogging in particular as the keystone of their efforts.

According to stats Impact shared, marketers consider blogs “critical” to success.

It’s all because one of blogging’s main goals (and successes) is building the consumer’s trust. Once you build that trust, it’s much easier to get them on your side and turn them into customers.

Take a look at these numbers from the same study:

These are great stats in favor of content. People generally feel more comfortable learning about companies through informative articles. After they consume a brand’s content, they feel better about the brand.

The problem?

You can only enjoy the benefits of content marketing and blogging if the stuff you create is good.

Unfortunately, for people in specialized industries who want to take advantage, that’s not exactly simple to do.

If you’re a lawyer or law blog writer who creates content for a legal blog, it may be even harder.

Why Is It So Hard to Write an Interesting Law Blog?

Niche, high-level topics are not easy to write about for the everyman (or everywoman). Often, with the wrong approach, your content can be just as dry and boring as the contracts you draft or the briefs you compose.

Look at this example of a contract between a company and an independent contractor:

Nobody will touch writing like this with a 10-foot pole unless they have to. Unless the law requires it, it’s not happening.

Quite frankly, writing like this looks scary and daunting to read. It may even fill your audience with anxiety.

If you’re tapped into writing like this 24/7, we have a problem.

The thing is, you already know law blogs are inherently boring, but you may not know how to write any other way. Years of law school probably drilled most of those down-to-earth writing skills right out of you.

It’s time to re-learn some writing techniques to make your law blog intriguing and readable. It’s time to pick up some tips so you can craft a great, informative, personable blog alongside all that legal writing you do.

Law blog writers, here are the keys to banishing boring, blah posts from your content roster forevermore.

How to Be an Interesting Law Blog Writer

Law is a notoriously hard topic to write about in a way that’s engaging for the average internet surfer. If you want to make non-law experts and potential clients interested in your blog, give these tips a whirl.

1. Research Post Topics That Fill a Knowledge Gap or Have Built-In Interest

If you’re currently flooding the internet with posts that delve into nitty-gritty aspects of your law specialty, let me ask you one question:

Why?

If you’re trying to attract business with your blog, your audience isn’t law students. It’s not lower-level members of your team or fellow law professionals, either.

Your audience is your clients and potential clients.

These people don’t care about deep-dives into new legislation. They don’t understand legal jargon.

However, to connect with them, you can’t write another post that other law blogs have already discussed hundreds of times.

Instead:

Look at your law specialty. Look at the services you offer. Simplify these topics and do basic searches to discover what’s already out there on the web about them, as well as what people want to know.
Use keyword research tools like BuzzSumo or Google Keyword Planner to find out what interests people right now and what opportunities you might have to fill in knowledge gaps.

For instance, a common legal topic the average Joe searches for online is “DUI law.” Plugging “DUI laws in California” into BuzzSumo shows what people are sharing. It also shows how some law blog writers are addressing narrower topics, like “Green DUI” and how to contest a DUI in court.

Doing research like this shows you where the interest is hovering and empty spaces that you could fill with good content.

Never neglect research when coming up with legal blog post topics. Neil Patel calls keyword research “the most important part of digital marketing” for a reason. It shows you how to reach the right people online with your content – the people who need it, and the people you have a better chance of turning into clients.

2. Cut Your Sentences in Half

Wordy sentences have their place. You’ll find them in legal documents, in some forms of pretentious fiction, and in technical manuals.

Where do they have no business showing up? In your blogs.

Online writing is different from any other type because of how people read it. Think about it: They’re staring at screens of all sizes, scrolling, clicking, and browsing.

It’s not like settling down with a book and giving it your full attention. It’s like sitting in a darkened room while hundreds of pieces of content fly past your face. Ads, blog posts, articles, images, social media posts, links, videos, and more.

Which ones make you want to pause?

According to Buffer, the internet is doused in trillions of ads per year and hundreds of billions of tweets a day. That’s not to mention the extra few billion Facebook posts created daily.

Via Marketoonist

The result is that most people get pretty schizophrenic when they’re online. They skip from content piece to content piece and post to post without drawing breath. They scroll through their feeds like speed demons.

Hence: Online writing must cater to short attention spans. If your sentences mirror the ones in that contract you just drew up, stop. Think again.

It’s time to ruthlessly edit yourself. Cut your sentences in half. Insert periods instead of commas. Trim out useless adjectives.

Here’s a great example:

Both of these sentences say the same thing. Sentence #1 is 16 words long. Sentence #2 is 8 words long. In half the time, you can say the exact same thing.

Guess what. The American Press Institute even did a study on sentence length and comprehension. Now, guess how long a sentence had to be for readers to 100% understand it?

That’s right: 8 words long.

And, it turns out the longer the sentence got, the harder it was to understand.

Bottom line: For better blogs, trim the fat from your online writing. Snag attention, don’t divert it. Keep your readers on the same page: yours.

3. Talk TO Your Reader, Not at Them

Writing and talking TO someone looks a whole lot different from talking AT them. Observe:

One sounds formal and stuffy, like you’re reading a textbook. The other sounds conversational, like friendly advice.

The first example, #1, is written in the third person. This type of writing sounds formal because it is – it’s reserved for academia, professional papers, and other formal settings. Legal writing is also always in the third person, but you knew that.

The second example, #2, is written in the second person. It directly addresses the reader as “you.” The writer is talking to you on a one-to-one level.

That approach is huge for readable, interesting content. After all, who wants to feel like they’re reading a textbook? That’s no fun.

Meanwhile, having an informative yet friendly conversation with an expert, on a topic you care about, IS fun. You get the picture.

4. Write in Plain English

According to research, to write an interesting, readable blog post, you always need to use plain English. This means using language that anyone can understand, and by extension, enjoy.

For ultimate reader comprehension, avoid using legal terms and jargon. You should also use fewer complicated or rare words in general.

Forget sounding smart. Sound understandable.

Writing tools like the Hemingway Editor will find the complex words lurking in your writing and suggest simpler alternatives automatically. You can also root them out yourself and avoid using them in your future blogs.

For instance, instead of “utilize,” say “use.” Instead of “comprehending,” say “knowing.” Rather than say “mitigate,” say “lessen” instead.

Don’t think of this as dumbing yourself down. Think of it as getting on the same level as your readers so you can effectively teach them, help them, and add value to their lives. What could be worthier than that?

5. Don’t Be Afraid of Empty Space

When you’re writing about potentially complicated or complex topics for the common person, don’t forget to embrace the empty space on the page.

This means a few things:

Shorter paragraphs, and more of them
More headers breaking up the page and organizing ideas
Long lists with commas converted to numbered or bulleted lists

When you embrace the white space, you give your readers’ eyes a rest. They can easily scan the page. As such, readability and comprehension will improve, especially for topics that need a lot of explaining.

On the other hand, if you fill your page with walls of text, this is HubSpot’s top reason why your blog might be hard to read.

Their blog on this very subject has great white space, naturally:

Look at all that room around the content! That’s ideal.

You should follow suit. Break up your ideas visually as well as contextually. They’ll be easier to understand and more interesting by extension.

6. Get Excited

If you’re not excited about your blog topic, how will your readers get excited?

If you want people to be interested in what you’re writing, you must first feel that interest.

There’s a huge difference between a writer approaching a topic with excitement, and a writer approaching a topic between bouts of falling asleep at the keyboard. One of them will naturally infuse their post with their enthusiasm. Their readers will glom onto that tone, pulling them into the post.

The other writer? Well… Their results won’t be pretty. They’ll be lucky if they get a handful of reads. Mostly, it will be crickets.

Of course, the right direction to go is the one with excitement. When researching post topics and keywords, follow the ones that make you excited to get researching and writing.

Yes, abide by the cliché and “follow your passions.” It will make your readers want to follow along with you.

Law Blog Writers, You CAN Write Epically Interesting Blogs

Any topic can be interesting with the right approach.

Research law topics people are looking for and knowledge gaps you can fill. Keep your sentences on the short side and your language plain and simple. Talk to your audience on their level, like a friendly chat, and get excited about your topic.

There aren’t really any super-star law blog writers out there, yet, writing for everyday people. There’s an even bigger lack of quality posts with good information that are also interesting.

Are you ready to fill the gap?

Writing an authoritative yet engaging legal blog for average readers is hard. If you need a little help, check out our legal writing services and expert blogs.