Since COVID-19, many aspects of lawyering, from discovery to client meetings, have gone online. 

Accordingly, law firms and lawyers must have high visibility online to attract and retain leads in the new digital world of lawyering.

And good content — such as videos, blogs, podcasts, eBooks, and infographics — shows clients you are knowledgeable in your field and dedicated to your clients (think testimonials).

Read on to learn the following and more about crafting effective legal content:

• Why legal content is important for law firms
• How legal content writing works
• How to write a legal content brief
• How to write a legal content outline
• 7 legal content writing tips for your firm

Why Is Legal Content Important for Law Firms?

Legal content is crucial for the digital marketing strategy of law firms for three main reasons.

1. Well-written legal content that is optimized for search engines can help attract more leads to your firm.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your online presence to increase its visibility on search engines. By providing valuable legal information, your content can boost your brand exposure and attract potential clients who may not have heard about your firm otherwise.

2. Legal content can help you connect with your existing clients. 

By keeping your legal blog posts and pages up-to-date and informative, you can keep your clients aware of the latest developments in your industry or practice area. This can help them gain more knowledge about a situation they or their loved ones are involved in. 

And when you pit your law firm as an authority in the legal field, clients are more likely to return to you and refer others to your site and firm.

3. High-quality legal content can establish you as an authority or thought leader in your industry or practice area. 

For example, if you run a criminal law firm, creating detailed, informative, and relatable blog posts about criminal law in your state can increase your law firm’s standing in the criminal law space and cultivate a reputation as a subject matter expert. 

Other firms may start referencing your blogs or inviting you to speak on certain issues at a conference or podcast, leading to more visibility and leads for your firm.

Key Facts on Legal Content Writing

• Legal content in law firms: 83% of marketers, including marketers for law firms, use content marketing to create brand awareness, 77% use it to build and grow trust, and 72% use it to educate audiences (2023 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends Report).
• Legal content in the marketing budget: 33% of the most successful marketers, including law firm marketers, spend at least 50% of their entire marketing budget on content marketing. In contrast, the least successful content marketers only spend 8% (2023 B2B Content Marketing Budgets, Benchmarks, and Trends).
• Outsourcing legal content marketing: In 2022, 83% of legal firms hired third-party marketing firms to handle their marketing. This shows how legal firms view content marketing as important (CallRail’s 2022 Marketing Outlook for Law Firms). 
• Law firm involvement in content marketing: In 2022, 71% of law firms said they were “somewhat” to “very” involved in their marketing strategy and efforts (CallRail’s 2022 Marketing Outlook for Law Firms).
• Legal content in law firm brands: In 2023, owned content such as blogs and eBooks was 19% of law firms’ top channels for brand awareness (CallRail’s 2023 Marketing Outlook for Law Firms). 

How Does Legal Content Writing Work?

Creating content for the legal industry can be intimidating, especially if you run a small firm and don’t have a marketing team that can advise you on content creation. 

Fortunately, creating legal content is easy (and fun) if you follow certain steps. Here’s a breakdown of the basic legal content writing process.

1. Identifying Your Legal Audience

Before you write anything, you must identify your target audience — that is, the people who will be consuming your legal content. 

If you fail to identify your audience, you will waste time and money creating content that doesn’t do a very good job attracting leads and potential customers.

Ask yourself the following questions to identify your legal audience:

• What is my practice area, and what is my niche within this practice area? For example, you may be a car accident lawyer specializing in traumatic head injuries.
• Where are my clients primarily located? Most law firms operate in one or multiple areas within the United States or a state (or several states). To attract potential clients, it is crucial to target your content to people residing in the areas where your law firm provides services. 
• What are the demographics of my clients? What are the age ranges, occupations, and life experiences of your clients? For instance, if you are a lawyer who fights for the rights of veterans with mesothelioma and other asbestos illnesses, your target audience is veterans (typically over 60) who may have experienced asbestos exposure.

2. Finding Relevant Legal Topics and Queries

Next, you must find relevant legal topics and queries. 

Mine topics that are important for your audience by using the following tools:

• Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool. You can use it to find keywords (words and phrases) potential customers are looking for, discover content ideas from competitors and across the web, and track your law firm site’s ranking progress.
• Google Predict can show you popular queries. For example, suppose you are a car accident lawyer in Michigan. By typing questions that people looking for you may type, you can locate hot legal topics and queries. For instance, if you type “what to do after a car accident,” Google may suggest “what to do after a car accident Michigan,” “what to do after a car accident not your fault,” and “what to do after a car accident for your body.” You can use these queries as starting points for your content.
• Google’s People Also Ask feature can also tell you what potential clients are asking. For instance, if you’re a premises liability lawyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, you can type “what is a premises liability claim in Philadelphia,” and you will see the following:

  You can then craft content to answer these popular questions.

• Forums are sites where real people talk about their issues. A great starting place would be the subreddit r/legaladvice, where many users go to ask legal questions. To narrow down queries, just search for your practice area in r/legaladvice. For example, you can use the terms “landlord” and “slip and fall” if you’re a premises liability lawyer.

Additionally, you can brainstorm about the issues clients come to you with. Talk to your legal and admin teams to get a broader range of questions clients have asked.

If you don’t have the time or would like additional guidance on creating appealing content for clients, you can sit down with a content marketer like Excelsior Content, which has a lawyer on their team. 

We can work with you and your legal team to identify related topics and create well-researched, SEO-friendly content.

3. Developing a Legal Content Strategy

Next, use the research you’ve done to create a strategy based on the following:

Choose Relevant Topics for Your Audience

To attract and retain leads and prospective clients, you must create content based on relevant topics for your audience, and you must be as specific as possible. 

For example, if you’re a medical negligence law firm, don’t just stop at “medical negligence law” as your relevant topic. 

You need to drill down to the specific topics that will attract clients, such as questions loved ones of babies who have developed traumatic birth injuries and cerebral palsy would ask. You can then write blog posts to answer these questions.

Present Your Services to Your Audience in the Most Efficient Manner Possible

You must put your services in front of your audience in the most effective and efficient way possible. Otherwise, you will waste time creating content that doesn’t convert as much as it could’ve if it were posted on a more popular platform. 

To determine where you should put your services, look at your analytics with tools such as Ahrefs and see where your audience spends most of their time. 

If it’s a particular part of your website, such as a particular blog post about your practice area, you should put more time into such posts rather than spend time crafting eBooks about your practice area that attract very few leads.

Establish Your Law Firm as an Authority in Your Industry and Practice Area 

The more highly regarded your law firm is in your industry and practice area, the higher it will rank on search engines, and the more people will click on your site. 

To establish your law firm as an authority, you must produce content at optimal times. When a large act or case relevant to your law firm or practice area is in the news, you should write at least one blog post about it. 

For example, suppose you are a Veterans Affairs (VA)-accredited lawyer. To show that you are at the top of your game and dedicated to the well-being of your clients, you should create blog posts every time there’s a development in the Camp Lejeune multidistrict litigation (MDL). 

Discuss whether you think a ruling is fair and the case developments’ impacts on people who are filing or want to file a Camp Lejeune lawsuit against the government.

Build Traffic to Your Site Through High Quality Backlinks

Backlinks, also known as incoming or inbound links, are links created when one site links to another with anchor text. 

Backlinks improve your rankings on search engines, because search engines view the quantity and quality of backlinks as votes of confidence and authoritativeness from other sites.

You can get backlinks to your content by creating linkable assets such as:

• Infographics
• Long-form guides (like this one) 
• eBooks
• Data-driven studies
• Engaging legal podcasts

You can also get backlinks by promoting linkable posts through newsletters, LinkedIn posts, and people you personally know who can benefit from your resources.

4. Crafting Unique and User Focused Legal Content

After creating a legal content strategy, the next step is to develop unique and user-focused legal content. 

Specifically, you must write detailed content briefs with instructions for what to target in each section. 

Content briefs are requirements and recommendations that guide writers as they create content. They usually include requirements such as the topic, word count, keywords, and title. It can also provide information on the content’s audience, goals, and suggested headers and subheadings. 

When crafting content briefs, remember that each webpage for your site should be hyper-vigilant about covering a specific query and staying on topic. Otherwise, it won’t truly be user-focused.

5. Promoting Your Legal Content Across Multiple Channels

Finally, you must publish your finished pages with proper internal linking, title tags, meta tags, and other valuable SEO. The next step is to promote your webpage on all of your social media channels. 

Don’t just copy and paste — each post should be tailored to each platform to maximize views. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn all have different algorithms and audiences, so you must research what works best for each.

To learn more about building traffic to your law firm site, get a free quote from Excelsior Content. After telling us about your content and marketing needs, we can analyze your site, build a strategy for maximizing traffic to your site, and tell you how we can produce lead-driving content for your brand.

How to Write a Legal Content Brief

Now that you understand how legal writing works, here’s how to write a legal content brief.

• Do the keyword research: Use a tool like Ahrefs to find keywords for your legal content brief. This will help you understand the related topics that leads may want to see when looking for a specific topic.
• Complete initial topic research: You need to engage in detailed topic and keyword research to gain a deep understanding of the information on your topic. Otherwise, creating engaging content for attracting and retaining leads will be difficult. Use databases, search engines, and more to get an initial understanding of the topic.
• Undergo competitor analysis: Next, look at what content your competitors are creating. This can help you come up with topics for your briefs and content. However, resist the urge to copy or too-closely mimic your competitors.
• Choose a title: Your title depends on your brief’s purpose, topic, focus keyword, and user analysis. It should be descriptive, helpful, attention-grabbing, and weave in the focus keyword naturally.
• Add internal links: Internal links are links from a company’s webpage to another page on the same website. Be sure to include internal links that actually give insight into the main topic and subtopic of your page.
• Find expert sources: Finally, you should add credible expert sources from third parties, such as university, state bar, and government sites. This step adds credibility and authority to your content.

How to Write a Legal Content Outline

Now that you know how to write a legal content brief, follow these steps to write a comprehensive and SEO-friendly legal content outline.

1. Write a legal content outline using the Inverted Pyramid Style. At the top of the page, put the most important subtopics related to your focus topic. As you move down the page, the topics will decrease according to their level of importance.
2. Choose descriptive headings. Avoid walls of text or too-short headings (such as only a keyword or phrase). Instead, use headings to draw readers in and tell them what they will learn. 
3. Add subheads to make content as digestible as possible. Subheads make it easier for readers to scan pages and understand what they will be learning about. Your content outline should give the reader an idea of what the page is about — before adding any content.
4. Write descriptions in every section for your content writer. Tell your legal writers upfront what they need to write about in each section. You can use the comment tool in Google Docs and Word to write these descriptions.
5. Include a word count, example pages, and any further instructions. These components greatly help legal writers understand what you’re looking for and produce top-tier content that will attract and retain leads.

Top 7 Legal Content Writing Tips for Blog Posts and Web Pages

There’s a lot to learn when it comes to writing great legal content for blog posts and web pages. Here are seven legal content writing tips to get you started.

1. Write for Your Legal Audience

It’s tempting to make your content more appealing to Google by sprinkling your copy with SEO-friendly keywords, using more subheads than you normally would, and using shorter sentences. 

However, you need to write for legal audiences. Don’t build your content solely around SEO. Instead, you need to start with a concept in mind and optimize for SEO later. 

If you build your content around SEO, you will have awkward phrasing, confusing sentences, and other elements that make your content less appealing to readers.

2. Understand How to Integrate Legal Keywords Naturally

Keyword stuffing is an old SEO technique that involves using the same phrases or keywords over and over again in your website’s content.

You should avoid this technique for two reasons:

1. Google’s Hummingbird algorithm: In 2013, Google introduced the Hummingbird algorithm to punish marketers who use keyword stuffing, an old SEO technique that involves using the same phrases or keywords over and over again in your website’s content.
2. Readers don’t like keyword stuffing: Marketing is about providing a positive and memorable customer journey and experience. Keyword stuffing can be distracting and difficult to read, leading to a poor user experience, which could lead to lower conversion rates and fewer prospective clients.

3. Learn What Makes Great Legal Content

Next, you must learn what makes great legal content. You can do so by:

• Reading and researching your competitors: You can do this by Googling your competitors and reading their website copy and blog posts. If you’re having difficulties finding competitors through Google, you can use tools such as Clearscope to locate competitors. 
• Staying open to trying different tactics to achieve results: Marketing is all about flexibility. Since the market always changes, you need to consider trying a wide range of tactics to achieve results.
• Adjusting your marketing methods to meet people’s legal needs: Flexibility isn’t just about the tools and approaches you use. It also involves adjusting your marketing methods to help people’s changing legal needs. For example, if you discover people find podcasts more helpful than blogs, you should focus more of your marketing efforts on creating and promoting your podcasts. This could help you reach a larger and more engaged audience.

4. Have Empathy for Your Audience

Remember, people usually seek legal content because they are in a situation where they need help from a lawyer.

Accordingly, you should never be condescending, make any assumptions about people’s situations, or use fearmongering language to try to make them take action. Instead, foster empathy and understanding of their situation, and show them that you want to help them.

5. Break Down Legal Jargon

The average person likely does not understand every or even most legal terms. As such, you should include legal terms for SEO, but explain them in layman’s terms so your audience can understand what you’re talking about rather than feeling belittled.

6. Write to the Reader (Avoid Passive Voice)

Passive voice is when the receiver of an action is the subject of a sentence. For example, “the ball is kicked by Matthew” is in passive tense because the ball, which is the receiver of Matthew’s action, is the subject of the sentence.

Scientists, lawyers, and others often use passive voice, but it is not a good choice for blogs and web pages. It makes your message unclear, sentences bloated, and writing more distant. As such, you should stick to active voice. 

7. Use the Most Concise Explanations Possible

Legal explanations and coverage can quickly become long and hard to read. Instead, use snappy, easy-to-read sentences.

If you’re unsure if your content can meet these writing needs, schedule a free consultation with Excelsior Content for a legal content review.

What Types of Legal Content Should a Law Firm Cover?

Legal marketers should produce a wide range of legal content, all of which should be tied to meeting potential clients at their phases of the customer journey. 

Here are the main types of legal content a law firm could benefit from creating.

Legal Content Pillar Pages

Legal content pillar pages serve as the cornerstone of a topic cluster and provide a detailed overview of a topic, such as a practice area. 

You can use them to link to related content pieces and provide information for potential customers who are in the buyer phase of the customer journey. You can also use them to establish your law firm as an authority in the industry.

Blog Posts on Legal Topics

Blog posts are part of the awareness stage. They help drive awareness of your law firm and site in the legal space. They do this by covering topics that are recent and relevant to your audience. 

Legal Guides and White Papers

While blog posts are informal and created to engage readers, legal guides and white papers are long, formal documents made to educate people on a particular legal topic. 

Blog posts and legal guides are hosted as web pages on your site, while white papers are typically downloaded as PDFs from your site.

Testimonial Pages and Case Results Pages

Testimonials and case results pages demonstrate your law firm’s track record. They help during the consideration stage, where the potential customer is looking into hiring you or seeking your services. They answer the question “Why should you hire me or work with me?”

Legal FAQ Pages

FAQ or frequently asked questions pages contain longtail keywords, such as “What should I do if another driver rear-ended my car?” They answer specific questions, establish trust from the user, build awareness, and drive authority.

What to Look for in Legal Content Writing Services

Finding legal content writing services can be challenging, especially if you have never hired a  legal content firm before. 

Here’s what you should look for when seeking legal content writing services:

• Experienced content writers with legal experience: Don’t just choose a generic content writing company. You should choose one with licensed lawyers who have legal experience and knowledge to write accurate, easy-to-read, and SEO-friendly legal content. 
• Content consultants with years of experience in crafting legal content: Content consultants have the skills and experience to elevate your legal brand and create messages that connect with your audience. They can use tools to conduct market research, create style guides for your law office’s content, create social media posts, define your marketing goals, choose your market channels, create and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs), and more.
• Professionals to help identify and drive legal content strategy: Last but not least, your legal content writing company should have a team for identifying and driving legal content strategy. These professionals will help the content consultants execute their marketing plan for your firm.

How to Find Top Legal Content Writing Services 

To find top legal marketing agencies and providers, you must be strategic. Here are some ways to look for legal content writing services:

• Referrals from trusted friends and colleagues: If a friend or colleague achieved excellent results after hiring a legal content writing firm, ask them about the service provider. If you like what you see, book a consultation with the company to see if they’re a good fit for you.
• LinkedIn: There are many great legal content writing service providers on LinkedIn. Simply search for them, reach out to them, and voila, you have a marketing partner for your law firm. Remember to request a writing sample from them before hiring them to see whether they’re a good fit for your content needs.
• Freelance marketplaces: Freelance marketplaces are online platforms where clients connect with content writing providers in the legal industry. You can use them to find legal content writers from around the world. Just create a project, and you will start receiving bids from qualified applicants. However, using these services can be time-consuming since you have to vet each applicant.

Excelsior Content is a content marketing consulting agency with a combined 30+ years of content experience. 

We have a lawyer on our team, and have helped our clients get top rankings for competitive queries, drive client leads, and boost site engagement with our high-quality content.

Reach out to us today to learn more about how we can elevate your legal content marketing strategy. 

Legal Content Writing FAQs

How do I become a legal content creator?

Becoming a legal content creator is different depending on where you live. 

If you live in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or another Commonwealth jurisdiction where you can attend law school after high school, you can get a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and start building your legal content portfolio. 

After graduation, you can start working as a legal content creator by working for a company or marketing your services to new clients.

However, if you live in Canada and the U.S., you must get a Bachelor of Arts or Science in another subject before you go to law school for a Juris Doctor (JD) law degree. 

This is because law school is a second-entry undergraduate degree in these two countries, which means you must have a bachelor’s degree before applying to law school. Once you get into your JD, you can start building your legal content writing portfolio. 

What does a content writer for a law firm do?

A content writer plans, edits, and writes well-researched and engaging search engine optimization (SEO)-friendly content for law firms. They also research topics and create style guides for the law firm’s content.

What is an example of legal content writing?

An example of legal content writing is a legal blog post about the benefits of hiring a personal injury lawyer on a personal injury law firm’s website. Another example would be a piece of content, such as a podcast or guide, about how the criminal defense system works in Delaware.

What style of writing is legal content writing?

Unlike legal memorandums and other legal documents written for legal proceedings, legal content writing is written by legal blog writers for lay people. 

As such, legal content writing and legal blog writing avoid legalese or legal jargon. It also seeks to educate people about legal topics rather than persuade them into accepting a particular legal argument.

How hard is legal content writing?

Legal content marketing writing can be hard if you are unfamiliar with legal concepts. 

The best legal content writer for your team should be either an experienced paralegal or lawyer and have several years of working or legal content writing experience under their belt. They should also be part of a savvy marketing team that knows how to convert leads into clients.

What do law firms look for in a legal content writing sample?

Law firms look for accuracy, conciseness, and clarity in legal content writing samples. They also look for detailed legal research and an understanding of how the writing sample applies to a specific stage or stages of the customer’s journey. 

Last but not least, they prefer samples that focus on a particular area of law, such as birth injuries, personal injury, or family law. Consider including references to case law and case studies to make your legal content writing sample more robust.

How is legal content writing different from other types of content writing?

Legal content writing requires more research and expertise than other types of content writing. 

While it is possible for a non-lawyer copywriter to produce well-researched legal content, we generally recommend hiring a licensed lawyer to do so. 

Licensed lawyers and legal professionals have the education, training, and work experience to research faster and write content that aligns with law firms’ needs and expectations.

How can I improve my legal content writing skills?

You can improve your legal content writing skills by doing the following:

1. Thinking about what your customers want: Think about what your customers’ pain points are and how you can meet them.  
2. Doing practice exercises: Next, create legal content briefs and outlines about your customer’s pain points. You can fill these out to practice your legal content writing skills. Once you’re done, send them to a non-lawyer friend or colleague and get their feedback. If they have difficulties understanding your content, you need to make your content easier to understand. You should also get feedback from a lawyer to see if your content is accurate.
3. Creating a portfolio of legal content writing: Once you’ve written several practice pieces, you can create a portfolio containing your best legal content pieces. You can then get feedback on these pieces from non-lawyers and lawyers alike.
4. Consulting companies like Excelsior Content: Last but not least, you can consult marketing companies like Excelsior Content for all of your legal content writing needs. Not only can we look at your portfolio and give feedback, we can also plan, create, and edit tailor-made legal content for your law practice.

Sources

CallRail. “The 2022 Marketing Outlook for Law Firms.” Retrieved February 11, 2024 from https://www.callrail.com/learn/2022-marketing-outlook-for-law-firms. 

CallRail. “The 2023 Marketing Outlook for Law Firms.” Retrieved February 11, 2024 from https://www.callrail.com/learn/2023-marketing-outlook-for-law-firms-report. 

Content Marketing Institute (2023). “B2B Content Marketing: Benchmarks, budgets, and trends.” Retrieved February 11, 2024 from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/b2b-2023-research-final.pdf. 

Nielsen Norman Group. “F-Shaped Pattern of Reading on the Web: Misunderstood, But Still Relevant (Even on Mobile). Retrieved February 11, 2024 from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/. 

Nielsen Norman Group. “How Users Read on the Web.” Retrieved February 11, 2024 from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/ 

Search Engine Land. “Google Reveals ‘Hummingbird’ Search Algorithm, Other Changes At 14th Birthday Event.” Retrieved February 11, 2024 from https://searchengineland.com/google-birthday-event-172791.