Attorney bios are a business development tool. Here’s how to use them

October 31, 2024

It’s probably one of the first things you handle when a lawyer joins your firm, but our guess is that most attorney bios haven’t received much love since then. 

Hey, we’re not here to judge. We know the attorneys have been busy doing all the stuff they were hired to do. The thing is, that bio is one of the most important marketing tools your firm has. Done right, it can be a passive business development asset, drawing in potential clients and contacts without lawyers having to lift a finger.

Attorney bios are among the most frequently visited pages on a law firm’s website, used by decision-makers to compare and contrast firms and gauge attorney skills and compatibility. If a prospective client is looking at your firm’s bio pages, you’re halfway there, but you will lose them with unengaging, complicated or outdated copy.

Your attorneys know how their training and experience have shaped them into the professionals they are today and how that makes them an invaluable resource to clients. But do their pages tell that story? 

Here are five secrets to crafting attorney bios that resonate.

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Contributor networks and bylined article opportunities: What lawyers and legal professionals need to know

December 2, 2022

There are many ways to secure a byline in a key media outlet. While working with a legal PR agency is a surefire method to get in front of the right editors and reporters, it’s just one pathway to publication. Joining a contributor network can be an alternative way to break in — and your PR agency can help with that too.

Think of a contributor network as a bullpen of subject-matter experts a publication relies on to provide one-time articles or ongoing columns. Outlets usually open their doors to contributor network writers to offer practical, boots-on-the-ground stories and opinion pieces that supplement their staff-written stories. Once accepted into a network, lawyers and professionals usually have broad discretion regarding what they can write about, so long as they meet the outlet’s editorial standards and publishing cadence requirements. 

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Legal public relations: How to get covered by The Wall Street Journal

August 23, 2022

Getting featured or quoted in The Wall Street Journal can be a major coup for any lawyer whose practice intersects with the business world. With its reputation as the standard bearer of news for the financial community, the Journal has established itself as the leading news source for information about the markets, business developments and — most importantly for lawyers — the latest developments in corporate, M&A and securities law. 

Getting that flashy mention in a Journal feature can do wonders for a law firm. For reputation-building, lawyers get to showcase their knowledge on the ins and outs of emerging business and market issues to the global swath of CEOs, board members, broker-dealers, funds and banking institutions that pore over the Journal’s pages every day. 

For online marketing, one or more WSJ backlinks can do wonders for a firm’s SEO rankings, especially for uber-competitive keywords that CPC-centered law firms lurk around. Not to mention the nifty perk of having a Journal hedcut — which, like a Simpsons caricature, is the media world’s way of saying that a professional has arrived. 

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Reprint Rights 101: How law firms can promote media hits without getting sued

August 18, 2020

Reprint Rights 101: How law firms can promote media hits without getting sued

You get a solid quote in a key publication, or publish an insightful article in a legal trade magazine, and you want everyone to know (particularly potential clients). So, you post the full text of the article to your firm’s website, send it to your email list and put out some social media posts linking to it for good measure. 

Good marketing, right? 

While promoting your media coverage is important (and kudos to you for recognizing that), unfortunately you’ve left yourself open to legal action from the media outlet because you’ve just violated their copyright. 

Don’t feel too badly. This happens fairly often, and we’ve found that lawyers and law firms are among some of the worst offenders. Which is more than a little ironic, because, you know, laws…

The good news is that there are ways to leverage your media hits while staying on the right side of the law — and in the good books of the media outlets that cover you. 

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