Hire a Lawyer to Write Your Legal Content: 8 Big Reasons Why
Many marketing agencies with no legal expertise position themselves as marketers ”for law firms” because they think it will be lucrative.
Here are eight powerful reasons why you should not hire them. Instead, hire someone with real experience practicing law.
1) Protecting your reputation
As a lawyer, your reputation is your biggest asset, and you protect it fiercely. So why would you trust a non-lawyer to write your web content? Your website will often be people’s first impression of you. If you want to look like an expert, your writer must be an expert.
Your reputation matters greatly to your clients, and it also matters to Google. Google identifies and promotes trustworthy sources. Having a non-lawyer write your content can damage your reputation in real life and on Google. Undoing such damage is difficult or impossible.
Non-lawyers writing about law is like non-doctors writing about medicine. Many people do it, but do you want to listen to them? No, of course not. Cheap freelancers and robo-content do not work in this business.
Protect your reputation at all costs. Google wants to know that you are an authority, so hire an actual authority to do your writing.
2) Ensuring Legal Accuracy
Hiring a non-lawyer puts you at risk of publishing inaccuracies that could jeopardize someone’s case, cause irreversible damage to their finances, affect their ability to get medical treatment, or wrongfully land them in jail.
Legal and factual errors can ruin someone’s life, cause you to rank lower on Google, and violate the rules of professional conduct in your jurisdiction.
People with no legal expertise fail to recognize nuances in the law. Hire a lawyer with proper training who knows how to research the relevant law and ensure your content is accurate.
3) Fierce competition for legal search terms
Ranking for legal search terms is like a knife fight in a phone booth. The competition is rabid, and there is very little space on the first page of Google. Someone is always striving to outrank you. Your content has to be A+, or it will get buried.
Understanding how Google ranks content is the only way to outrank the competition. Content written by experts ranks higher. If it’s obvious an expert didn’t create the content, it will affect your search results.
Only the highest quality work will rank on Google. Anything less will not, nor does it deserve to. An authority who demonstrably knows the topic well must write your content.
4) Understanding clients’ needs
Your content should answer potential clients’ burning questions – this is how you win clients online. The better you can answer people’s burning questions, the more likely they are to hire you over someone else. Non-lawyers who have never practiced law have little understanding of clients’ needs.
Google scores for people-first content and penalizes content written for SEO. A seasoned lawyer who writes for potential clients will score better than an SEO generalist who writes for search engines. If your content is made to rank for SEO rather than to provide real answers to real questions, it will affect your rankings on Google.
Lawyers better understand clients’ pain points and can better tailor your content to what people want rather than what search engines want. Hire a lawyer who understands your client’s concerns and objectives.
5) The ability to speak from experience
Google scores for originality. It does not reward you for regurgitating whatever else is on the internet. Lawyers can speak from experience, contribute novel legal analysis, and provide a fresh look at new legal issues.
Writers without a law background can only summarize what others say without offering new information. They don’t have the necessary experience.
Trusting non-lawyers to do legal analysis is foolhardy at best and illegal at worst. Don’t violate ethical guidelines by trusting a non-lawyer to write your legal content.
6) Risk violating the rules of professional conduct
Ensure your writer knows the rules of professional conduct, or you risk violating them. Every jurisdiction has rules regarding marketing, unauthorized practice of law, and malpractice. Hiring a non-lawyer who doesn’t know the rules puts you at risk of breaking them, which could lead to discipline from your state bar.
7) Avoiding extensive automation
AI can help speed up tasks like choosing blog topics, checking for plagiarism, and proofreading for grammatical errors. However, do not overuse it. Google penalizes excessive automation.
Google is aware of scaled content abuse. It penalizes using AI to create massive amounts of content and manipulate search results.
8) Law is a ‘’Your Money or Your Life’’ topic in Google’s algorithm
“Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) topics impact people’s health, financial stability, safety, or welfare. Google scores pages about YMYL topics with the highest level of scrutiny due to their potential impact on society and the reader’s life.
Thus, Google gives even more weight to the writer’s ‘’experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness’’ (E-E-A-T) for content about YMYL topics. If your page is untrustworthy, harmful, or spammy, Google will penalize it.
Legal writing requires real expertise. Google promotes trustworthy content and eliminates phonies.
Key considerations when hiring a legal content writer
Hiring a writer is a big decision that could be a boon for your business or a waste of money. It all depends on who you hire. Here’s what to look for:
Excellent writing skills
Your writer should be a great storyteller who can write compelling copy. Simply repeating information that is already online is not going to rank on Google. Average writing is a waste of money and reflects poorly on your law firm. Your writer’s skill should reflect your firm’s professionalism, acumen, and excellence at what you do.
Expert SEO knowledge
Even great writing won’t rank on Google unless optimized for SEO. Your writer should possess deep knowledge of how to use keywords, headings, links, photos, metadata, style, formatting, and backend tools to appear at the top of search results. Your content will only be seen if it’s optimized for SEO.
Experience practicing law
Great legal writing requires expert legal analysis. The best legal writers are lawyers. Before hiring a writer, ask them how much experience they have as a lawyer. If the answer is ”none,” then look elsewhere. When it comes to legal content, there is too much at stake to hire someone who does not have a legal background. Hire someone with significant experience as a lawyer who is good at analyzing legal issues and understands the ins and outs of your business.
Proven history of ranking in legal search fields
Hire someone who specializes in writing legal content for law firms and has a proven history of ranking in highly competitive legal search fields. Prior experience and past results are the best indicators of future success.
Looking for an expert legal content writer? Call us today.
We have the knowledge, skill, and experience to write content that drives viewers to your website and converts readers to clients. We don’t just get you rankings; we get you cases. We are proven, responsive, and accountable. We only take a limited number of clients to ensure that each receives outstanding service.
We offer a complimentary consultation where we’ll ask questions about your practice and create a detailed, customized content plan based on your answers. There is no charge, and the content plan is yours to keep. We have limited spaces available, so don’t wait to contact us.
Schedule your free consultation today.