Your Bios Need Help

Post Date:

November 8, 2010

No offense, but your law firm bio stinks.

Seriously. It's an issue, and it's hurting your business. We're going to tell you how to fix things, but the first step to recovery is recognizing what a big problem you have.

To wit: Adrian Dayton noted earlier this month that over half the traffic to law firm websites goes to attorney bios. And according to Wicker Park Group research, 90% of general counsel say that attorney bios are the most important pages on a law firm website.

What do firms put on these highly-trafficked pages offering the best chance to sell themselves? Sleeping aids.

This is the start of a typical bio from an AmLaw 100 firm, which we plucked entirely from random:

"[Partner X] represents public and private companies and financial institutions in a wide range of transactions, including mergers, acquisitions and divestitures; joint ventures; domestic, international and cross-border structured financial transactions; commercial real estate development, leasing and finance; leveraged leasing . . ."

Zzzzzzzzzz. We're stopping here, for fear that asking you to read further could qualify as torture in an international criminal tribunal. Suffice it to say, this bio tells us nothing about Partner X. Plus, you know the rest anyway: a list of "representative matters" that has been so airbrushed of details as to be meaningless, with a paragraph about the attorney's education tacked at the bottom.

You can almost hear the General Counsel clicking off the page.

How can bad bios be fixed? Here are three steps that will go a long way:

1) Make the Lawyer a Real Person

Give us a sense of who this person actually is. You don't have to tell us their life story, but giving just a small taste of the lawyer's persona will transform them into a three-dimensional character, and, thus, someone a general counsel may want to connect with. A great way to do this is adding a 30-45 second video interview with the attorney. The subject of the interview (a litigation victory, growing up in Wisconsin, whatever) hardly matters; seeing the attorney's manner is what's important.

If you don't go for video, sprinkle a few personal details throughout the bio. Or give your attorneys a couple of questions ("What's your daily routine?"; "What do you like best about being a lawyer?"; "Favorite vacation?") and have them give short, lighthearted answers to run in a sidebar.

2) Make Networking Easy

The second place you would look when hiring a professional (after consulting their website bio) is that professional's LinkedIn page. And so, it boggles our mind that law firms don't include links to attorneys' LinkedIn, Twitter, or JD Supra pages right on their bios. Do so, and display the links prominently.

This makes it easy for that general counsel to take that next step toward hiring-investigating the attorney's network.

3) Describe the Attorney's Practice Meaningfully

Forget the laundry lists of practice areas-tell us what the attorney actually does.

Don't tell us that the attorney has experience in competition law; tell us that she has represented 12 defendants in criminal cartel matters before the UK's Office of Fair Trading.

If you read a bio or two, you can almost sense the fear in the mind of person who wrote the bio. They throw in all kinds of broadly phrased practice areas, scared of turning off anyone who might be interested. They end up with mush.

There is no value to the mushy, laundry list approach. Go with specifics instead. Even if your experience does not match up precisely with the needs of the prospective client reading your bio, they will know who you are and what kind of work you do.

And they'll respect the fact that your bio doesn't stink.

UPDATE: No sooner did we post the above than Greenfield Belser, a marketing firm we have great respect for, offering their own thoughts on personalizing your professional bios. (Link). We'd say this confirms our contention that your bios are an absolutely critical part of your website that merit close attention.