Constant Content : Legal Ghostwriting & Content : Janet Raasch : Copy for Lawyers & Attorneys, Law Firm Business Development

For ten years, I taught persuasive writing in the College of Communications at Marquette University.  The primary text was Aristotle's Rhetoric.  As someone who uses the principles of ethos (shared values), logos (demonstration of expertise) and pathos (acknowledgement of feelings) every day to create persuasive content and copy for my clients in the legal industry, imagine my pleasure when I saw this great post by fellow copywriter Amy Harrison on Copyblogger!

Aristotle's Ancient Guide to Compelling Copy

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As my regular readers know, I believe that most attorney biographies are a waste of valuable online real estate that only hit on one persuasive cylinder -- and not very well at that.

Marketing tools (and I include bios in this category) work best when they demonstrate three qualities (first outlined by Aristotle in his Rhetoric)  -- intelligence, good character (shared values) and friendliness (concern for the client).

Most attorney bios attempt to demonstrate intelligence through a boring list of credentials, and totally ignore shared values and client-centricity.  Intelligence can be further enhanced and client-centricity demonstrated by the use of good "case stories" (more than simple case citations) that show how you solve problems for clients.  Shared values can be demonstrated by personal quotes that demonstrate your personal and professional character.

Lawyer and consultant Larry Bodine elaborates on this subject in an excellent recent article, "Turning your bio into a magnet for business."

Smart lawyers turns their bios into a marketing magnet that generates leads, as opposed to a mere resume or a CV, which recites only your education and epxerience.  The trick is to turn a feature of yourself into a benefit to the client.

Bodine continues:

You may have a great resume, but it will just list all the place that you worked.  But when you go into practice, your bio should answer these questions:  What have you done for people?  What have you accomplished?  How have you helped people?  Can you give me some examples?  Writing a bio is completely different from a resume.  it really requires a mental shift.

I agree completely.  Invest in the re-writing of your attorney bio as a persuasive marketing document -- and then post this "profile" not only on your firm Web site, but also on the full range of relevant social networking and content sites.  By doing this, you can easily and inexpensively "own" the first page of search results for your name.

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Lawyer biographies are the most underutilized real estate on any law firm's Web site.  According to Web site analytics studies, bio pages are the "most visited" pages on any site - and yet they are often thrown together as an afterthought, rarely updated and rarely enhanced with an RSS feed to atttract the attention of search engines.  This is a serious mistake!  Most lawyer bios will rank far below the same lawyer's profile on sites like LinkedIn, JDSupra or LegalOnRamp.

There is no better way to differentiate you and your firm from your competitors than a persuasive  Web site bio.  The best new bios will function almost like mini-Web-sites for the lawyer involved -- offering a wealth of links to text, audio and visual samples of that lawyer's actual work product.

This is the first in a series of posts on Web site bios for professional services providers.  In this post, I would like to discuss the bio as a persuasive document.  According to Aristotle (and all modern advertisers), effective persuasion relies on three factors:  logos (logic), ethos (values) and pathos (feelings).

Most lawyer bios consist of a long, dry list of qualifications.   In other words, these bios are using only "logos" to persuade -- and not very well -- completely ignoring  the persuasive value of client values and client feelings.  In the courtroom, any trial lawyer knows how to use values and feelings as well as logic in order to persuade a judge or jury.  Why do they forget this lesson when it comes to persuading clients via their bios?

A good bio is interesting -- putting the compelling "news" about a particular lawyer up top rather than a dull list of areas of practice.  A good bio includes brief, interesting case studies that engage the reader and demontrate how a lawyer solves problems for clients.  A good bio lets you know what kind of person the lawyer is -- by including outside interests and first-person quotes.

I like to call this the "bumper sticker effect."  When you are caught in traffic behind another vehicle, you can tell a lot about the person in front of you by the vehicle's bumper stickers.  You can pretty much tell if you could have a civil conversation -- much less a relationship -- with that person.

Law is a relationship-based profession.  Your bio is your vehicle.  What do your bumper stickers tell a potential client about what it would be like to work with you?

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