Set in Style

Look! You wouldn’t want one of your attorneys showing up for an important client meeting with dirty fingernails. And you know exactly why.

Then why in the world would you publish a document that makes it seem as if you could care less about how your firm appears — and not just to one potential client, but to so many of them?

Consider the following excerpt from an article published by one well-known firm:

Not so easy to read, is it? That’s because there’s not enough contrast between the copy and the background.

Note: And when the article is printed on a black & white laser printer (e.g., you’re going to read it on the plane or on the train), it’s not readable at all. That, despite the fact that it could easily be set to print just fine (i.e., black type on a white background) on a typical printer.

An effective tool for making sure that foreground/background color combos offer good contrast (read legibility) is offered by the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium.

Use it. And consider this. A law firm that says it’s very knowledgeable about ADA compliance should show that it’s thinking of people with limited visibility, like color blind law school students using the Web to search for summer jobs.

This site will analyze your firm’s site to make sure that its “contrast is high enough for people with visual impairments.”

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Now, consider the following excerpt from a client alert published by another well-known firm:

Once again, the reader has to struggle.

I know what you’re thinking — all you have to do is zoom in on the copy, and it will be so easy to read, right? Wrong! The client alert is a GIF file, so zooming in on it just leads to this:

If you want your firm to appear sharp — like it’s the sort of firm that pays close attention to even the smallest detail — then make sure its publications look sharp.

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I suppose this is as good a place as any to note that very many of the largest, best-known firms don’t bother to review their own Web sites.

Lawyers don’t bother to review their firms’ sites to make sure the articles they’ve written look like they’re set in style. Managing partners don’t bother to make sure that their firms’ sites make a good impression, and that lack of concern has the power to leave potential clients with the impression that — despite what the firm says — it certainly doesn’t pay attention to detail (and the partners don’t review what their associates are doing).

A firm’s site can do the firm just as much harm as good. When potential clients review a firm’s site and see that the firm publishes documents that can’t be read, they’re not going to be favorably impressed.

Would you be impressed with a firm that doesn’t bother to review its own work?

This article describes a recent competition between law firm Web sites that resulted in a tie between Womble Carlyle and Helms Mulliss.

The judges weren’t overly impressed with what they saw. Said one, “I feel like I woke up from a dream where I’ve been walking on dry, arid soil for about 50 years, and I find myself on a Ford Taurus sales lot. When part of your business success is dependent on differentiating yourself in a busy, cluttered marketplace, you’ve got to stand out on a limb and not look like everyone else.”

The other judge said, “it was hard to miss the fact that a large portion of the sites were created by one firm — a vendor that specializes in building sites for law firms. Happily, there were firms that entered the competition that got it. These sites were good sites, but they stood out all the more when contrasted with their template-bound competition.”

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The latest issue of Law Firm Inc. has an excellent article about law firm marketing written by Norm Rubenstein. In it, he says, “Indeed, the lack of differentiation is the common plight of the majority of the Am Law 200.”
Amen!

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Weird: Kilpatrick Stockton just issued this press release announcing that it came in third in this year’s Internet Marketing Attorney law firm Web site awards.

What’s weird is that the link to that press release results in a Page Not Found error.

Heck! As of this writing, all of the links from the site’s News and Events page to the firm’s Featured Press Releases yield Page Not Found errors.

This link works, but it reveals another problem (an all-too-common problem): few of the firm’s press releases indicate the year they were published.

Consider this press release. Was it published last year, or the year before, or five years ago, or ten years ago?

How about this press release?

Leonard, Street and Deinard is exploring a new format for presenting information to clients. It’s presenting the information in high-quality audio podcasts.

Here’s a link to the firm’s first audio podcast: What Every Business Should Know About the New Rules of Electronic Discovery

A fabulous idea?

Before you answer that, compare that podcast to the firm’s client alert on the same topic.

Now . . . do you suppose Leonard, Street and Deinard is going to be publishing podcasts like this a year from now? What about other firms? Do you suppose they’re likely to follow this lead? Why, or why not?

How is writing for a podcast so very different from writing for print? (Or, what’s the difference between listening to a narrator, or reading an author?)

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Update — 23 April 2007: I just found another firm (Fowler White Boggs Banker) with a bunch of podcasts going back to last June.

Done properly, client alerts are a law firm’s most effective publications, not least because they give people what they want — good information about something of interest.

There’s some event, like a court ruling or new legislation. Law firm clients — some or most or all of them — are affected. They want to know what happened and what they should do, and this is a great opportunity for any firm that likes to sieze opportunities.

That takes work. You’ve got to examine the event: collect the information and analyze it. You’ve got to decide what to say, and then say it; you’ve got to write it up and lay it out and do it in good style if you want it to become popular.

That’s your goal, right? You want your client alert to be the most popular client alert of all. Isn’t that what it means to be most effective?

So let’s talk about client alerts. Let’s talk about their design.

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Here’s a snapshot of an alert that has many good qualities, including an excellent design:

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Note: to follow this discussion, download the alert (it’s a PDF file) and print it.

Compare the above design to its predecessor:

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Note: download the alert (it’s a PDF file) and print it.

How is the new design better than the old design? In quite a number of ways, including the way the body copy is set.

In the old design, readability is impaired 1) by setting the body copy in a sans-serif type and 2) putting too much space between the lines:

Those two mistakes are corrected in the new and improved design, where the copy is set much more like the copy in a newspaper or magazine:

With the new design, readability is much improved (giving the alert a more professional appearance AND better prospects for greater readership) PLUS each page can hold more copy — 30% more copy than the old design!

Now . . . compare the appearance of your firm’s most recent client alert to the two alerts mentioned above. How does it compare?