Solo/Small Firm • October 2024

Visual Content

Using video to boost your law firm's online presence.

Written by Alyssa Woulfe

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth? According to James McQuivey, principal digital analyst at Forrester Research, watching a one-minute video rivals reading 1.8 million words of text. While we certainly wouldn’t suggest collapsing War and Peace into a 30-second short—or replacing your website copy entirely—video is one of the most powerful ways to disseminate information on the web and should be an integral part of a law firm’s marketing strategy.

The Impact of Video
Video content gives people the information they need in the format they prefer. About 83% of U.S. adults say they have used YouTube, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, and a recent Forbes study shows that 75% of executives say they watch business-related videos at least once a week.

Video content allows lawyers to connect with potential clients, members of the legal community, and the general public to establish personal connections, communicating in a way that is more personal and relatable than text alone.

Whether video content is used in attorney bios, case studies, or testimonials, it can convey a law firm’s narrative in a compelling and authentic way. This kind of storytelling is crucial in the legal industry, where trust and credibility are everything.

Digital Footprint
Video content is a powerful tool that goes beyond simply sharing information—it plays a critical role in enhancing your law firm’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and showcasing your unique strengths in the digital space. By integrating video into your marketing strategy, you can significantly boost your online visibility. Search engines, especially Google, prioritize video content, meaning that videos featured on your website can improve your search rankings and make it easier for potential clients to find you.

Web content cannot help much unless it can be found. Simply embedding a video on your site or including your homepage URL in a YouTube video description can boost page rank. Just as important as boosting rank, however, is creating substantive, findable content branded with your law firm’s name—videos that deliver information viewers want and want to share will drive traffic even further.

Without a strong web presence, potential clients may not know you exist—or worse yet, doubt your legitimacy. Video is a great way to populate websites, microsites, blogs, and social media pages to trumpet your legal expertise. If you’re spending on digital marketing but aren’t taking advantage of video, you may not be making the best use of your resources.

Mobile Access
Increasingly, clients access the web from mobile devices, where video performs particularly well. Some sources claim video content accounts for around 70% of mobile traffic today. As users migrate from computers to smart phones and social media use rises, video will become even more important. Social media platforms can be used to cross-promote your video content across other platforms to further amplify engagement.

Substantive Content
Videos should emphasize your law firm’s legal savvy but cut the promotional gobbledygook. Videos must communicate information that’s relevant to your audiences. Topics may include:

Attorney Bios. By pairing a face with your firm name, you give your law practice personality and differentiate yourself from the millions of attorneys with an online presence.
Explantion of Services. The average consumer or potential client may be unaware of what each practice area fully encompasses.
Use a video to explain—in plain English—what your firm does.
Firm Promotion. Highlight your victories (including favorable defense verdicts) and explain why your approach gets results.
Client Testimonials. Potential clients will believe past clients more readily than they’ll believe an attorney. Ask a client you respect to speak on your behalf. The same approach can be taken with co- counsel.
Earned Media Placements. If a law firm or attorney has been featured on TV as a legal expert, optimize those clips by posting them to your website or YouTube channel and tagging them with ke
Demonstrative Evidence Examples. Show potential clients and referring attorneys what is shown to the jury. Animations, models, and diagrams can further showcase the law firm’s expertise and resources.

As always, you should ensure that any content you post complies with the applicable disciplinary rules governing information about legal services.

Quality Over Quantity
Video content does not have to be long to be impactful. In fact, about 75% of viewers watch short-form videos on mobile devices. About 83% of marketers say that videos should be under 60 seconds. Keep videos brief and to the point.

Video appeals to web surfers—and the search engines that guide them—by communicating practical information in an appealing format. No one wants to watch a video that’s all sparkle and no substance, but few audiences will remain tuned into a clip that’s clearly low quality. Fuzzy sound, poor lighting, cluttered backgrounds and low-res video scream amateur. A thrown-together video suggests the law firm doesn’t take its work seriously.

What online audiences overwhelmingly refuse to do is soldier through a magnum opus, so synthesize your information in a video that’s hard-hitting, touching, quirky, or somewhere in between.

This article, which was originally published on the Androvett blog, has been edited and reprinted with permission.

Headshot of Alyssa Woulfe ALYSSA WOULFE, a former journalist, serves as the digital public relations manager for Androvett Legal Media in Dallas. She develops and manages social media and public relations campaigns on behalf of lawyers and law firms across the country.