Starting a Law Firm | Questions about creating a law firm website

I’ve posted on the topic of creating a law firm website on several occassions already on this blog. However, the lawyer website posts continue to be some of the most visited and frequently asked about posts. So, here is another one!

New Jersey lawyer Jennifer B. Barr Swift sent me an email yesterday and asked for help with her law firm website. I was more than happy to oblige and try to answer some questions. I have spent an inordinately large amount of time designing websites and blogs in the past year. (Probably because I was/am still waiting to be licensed to practice law in in the state I now live in).

Her questions are common to many I have been asked by other lawyers. I asked permission from her to post her question and my answers. I hope they help some people who are trying to start a law firm and design their own lawyer website.

I read your blog about starting a law firm web site, which was quite helpful because I am trying to do the same. I hope you were serious about your offer to lend a hand with creating a web site, because I do have some questions . . . .

I already registered a domain name, but I haven’t chosen a host yet. I think I’m leaning towards either GoDaddy or iPage, both of which seem to be easy to work with a Word Press theme.

I have chosen (but not purchased) the Elegant Theme Premium Word Press themes, because they do look very nice.

So, what do I need to do to now? Do I sign up with a host, install the free Word Press software (which I believe is available through the host), then buy the theme? Am I ready to start editing then, or do I also need the Photoshop software (which is about $300 from what I can tell). Also, for the Elegant Themes, the price is about $40 per year; if I don’t renew after the year do I lose the theme and thus my web site?

Your web site is very nice – great job!

Below is my response:

Thank you for the email and questions. I actually love getting these types of questions from other lawyers. I’ve been amazed at what the blog has done for me in terms of talking with other lawyers throughout the U.S.

. . .

(1) I would choose Hostgator.com for your website hosting. The plans are flexible and, best of all, affordable. A year-long plan is something around $67.00 after discounts. I haven’t found anybody else that cheap. I used Winhost.com and they were a disaster. Bad service, bad support. Additionally, since you are asking for my help, I can be more specific on what to do because I know how to use Hostgator’s software and user-interface. Hostgator installs WordPress very, very easily. It’s almost as easy as the click of a button.

(2) I’m assuming you sign up for Hostgator, but I would guess that most of the hosts have compatible software.

(a) After you pay for the hosting service, they sign you up for a thing called “cPanel”. cPanel is simply their user interface.

(b) In cPanel you can go to “QuickInstall” and, from there, click on “install WordPress.”

(c) The hosting service will then install WordPress, give you a password and a user name, and point you towards a log-in screen. You log in and you now have a WordPress website. It will look very plain and have the WordPress 2010 theme on it.

(d) Now, go to the WordPress “dashboard” in the upper-left-corner. In the WordPress dashboard you need to locate the area on the left hand side of the dashboard called “Appearance” and, from there “Themes”. Once you are in themes, you will want to find the button called “upload theme.”

(e) Assuming you can get this far, you now need to purchase a theme. You said you were going to use Elegant Themes. Elegant Themes has many different themes to choose from. Assuming you sign up and pay for the service, you pick a theme and then download the files to your computer. They will be in a ZIP folder. Leave them in the ZIP folder and remember where they are on your computer.

(d) Open up you WordPress dashboard again, click upload theme, and find the Elegant Theme ZIP folder on your computer. Upload it and then click “activate”. You should now have you own theme and website!

(3) I don’t know what happens if you stop paying for Elegant Themes. I don’t think you would lose your website as the files are on your computer. However, I don’t really know the answer to this question. If you are nervous about it, I suggest you choose a one-time payment theme option like Thesis, Woo Themes, or Theme Forest. My two-cents is that $39.00 is so small that it doesn’t really matter.

(4) Don’t buy photoshop software. You don’t need it. If you really want to edit photos, there are plenty of free services. I use Paint.net and Photoscape. Both are free and both are great. There is a learning curve, but it’s free so who cares? Google either one of those names, find them, and download them. If you don’t like them you can simply delete them from your computer. Also, I get most of my images from Stck.xchng. You have to sign up to use the images, but most of them are free (although you may have to give the photographer credit). I don’t pay for any images. But, I should warn you that you can’t just take images off the internet. You have to use images that have been approved for free use. If you want to know more about this, please ask.

(5) Designing the website and including content is, obviously, solely at your discretion. Designing the logo is a bit tough and I’m no expert; however, I think it’s fun. Adding content is fairly easy as well. However, every “theme” has its own way of uploading pictures and content. You’ll have to play with it.

Finally, there is a learning curve to all of this. It takes time. I’ve screwed it all up enough times that I know how to make it work. If you want specific help with anything, please ask. I enjoy this stuff.

Good luck.

I hope that helps answers questions people may have. As I’ve stated, I’m no expert and all of this takes time. However, building your own website is not that difficult.

For anyone who is interested, you can find my website at www.flanderslawfirm.com.

If others have questions or would simply like some help, please email me at jflanders@flanderslawfirm.com. Seriously, I’ll email you back.

November 8, 2011November 8, 2011

Book Review: “The Big Red Fez, How To Make Any Website Better”, by Seth Godin

Disclaimer: this “book” is nearly ten years old. Furthermore, it probably shouldn’t be qualified as a “book” given that it is really an “ebook” with a new cover slapped on it. But, it’s worth a read if you – like me – are developing a lawyer website and starting a law firm.

I’m no guru and I’m still learning about building a markatable website. It’s fun, but I’m a newbie. I’ve learned some stuff and I’m going to share it – FREE! (did i sell you?).

Here is another marketinging technique – summing up the book in one easy sentence: “when designing a website, make it simple, right leaning, and show the viewer where you want them to go.” Essentially, as Mr. Godin posits: show the monkey where to find the banana.

Every website has a theme of some kind. Most lawyer website are designed to be quasi-informational but, more importantly, call the potential client to action. Thus, the banana of lawyer websites (generally) is the “call me” or “contact me” portion.

To be fair, some lawyer websites are less about selling the “call me” banana. For instance, I would guess that big law isn’t all that interested in people calling them off the street. Rather, they would like to show off there impressive website with the listing of lots of impressive looking attorney names. Maybe that is the prestige banana?

As I stated, Mr. Godin originally wrote the ebook in 2002 or thereabout. The ebook then became a real book which can now be bought. However, in 2002, many websites were just getting off the ground. A lot of them were bad. Furthermore, there was no concern about sizing the websites so they were easily viewable by smartphones.

Basically, the banana has changed a bit. It may be true that Mr. Godin’s book influenced website designers to such an extent that many websites are now much better at selling the banana than they were in 2002. I think back to some of the websites I used to visit ten years ago and I can’t help but laugh.

In sum, if you are designing a law firm website without professional help (like me), you can’t go wrong by reading this book. At the least, it makes you think in terms of proper design and clearly selling what you want to sell. The book costs $4.00 used, so you don’t need to worry if you buy it and realize it’s a little soft on the substance.

November 7, 2011May 16, 2012

Creating a Law Firm Website: Part II

I’ve promised this post for a couple weeks and I’m finally getting to it. Better late than never.

My Minnesota lawyer website is up and running. It is not finished and I am still adding content, but the homepage is almost done. In the main, I’m satisfied with it but I keep tinkering. Most importantly, it loads fast.

From what I have read, a law firm’s landing page is the most important aspect of the website. My current homepage setup is directed towards getting hits from potential clients. It should make a strong sell with my phone number and free case evaluation “call-to-action” in the upper right-hand corner. If potential clients come to the website, they should know right away what I ultimately want them to do: call me.

I thank lawyer website developer Karin Conroy for commenting on this blog in my previous lawyer website post and clueing me in to the important of the call-to-action. My website is meant to be informative to all potential clients, but it is also meant to sell my legal services and how the client can ask for those services. Thus, the phone number.

How did I get the lawyer website set-up?

I posted about my efforts to create a lawyer website previously. However, since that post, I’ve learned a lot and I hope to share some of that with my readers. Below are the three main tools that I used to create my website:

WordPress.org. Wordpress is a wonderful, user-friendly, and FREE resource. It is a web design platform that focuses on aesthetics and ease-of-use. I love it. The learning curve isn’t overly burdensome and, once you learn how to use it, the rewards are great.
Thesis Theme by DIY Themes. I’m still a little undecided on this one. I like it, but I don’t think the look of the theme is quite as good as other themes I have sampled. I should, however, give kudos to Lawyerist.com for cluing me in on the Thesis Theme. It cost $164.00 for the developer’s license. I plan to use it for multiple websites so I went with the more costly developers license. A single-use license costs half as much, at $87.00.
Winhost.com. Winhost is a website hosting provider. I signed up for the “max” plan at $4.95 a month with two months free. I don’t think I needed the max plan and could have gone cheaper, but I’m just starting out and wanted room to grown. Winhost is a shared hosting service and this means a lot of different things – namely there are a lot of other people using the server and your website load times can be slow as a result. This also means you better know something about website optimization if you want to build your own site and use a cheap, shared-hosting providers like Winhost, Godaddy, or Hostgator. Winhost allows you to purchase a domain name (usually about $8.00 to $10.00 a year for a domain name). Winhost also has a nice, user-friendly control panel that was easy to learn and navigate. My favorite part about Winhost is that it was very easy to install WordPress through their “application installer”. Just follow some simple steps and your website is up and running in under an hour (if you know what your are doing).

That’s the list. Essentially, you only need these three basic things to get a lawyer website up and running. I didn’t say it would look good or load fast, I just said you would have a website.

After choosing a domain name, hosting provider, and setting up WordPress, you then need to figure out how your new website is going to look. Once you get it up, WordPress installs a “default” theme which is basically a blog format. You are not going to want to use a blogging format for your website.

Choosing a Law Firm Website Theme

I talked about using “themes” in my prior posts on blogging and creating a law firm website. There are many themes to choose from and I haven’t sampled half of them. Do a quick Google search on “lawyer wordpress themes” and just try and make a decision. The three I have tried and like are:

I ultimately ended up sticking with the DIY, Thesis theme because I perceive it to be the most user-friendly, reasonably nice-looking, and it has top-notch support. Without a doubt, DIY has the best support forum that I have used. Most of my design questions were answered very quickly with good, solid advice.

In my opinion, Elegant Themes are the most aesthetically pleasing. Elegant Themes is also very reasonably priced. I paid $39.00 for a year-long subscription with no other contracts or other long-term deals. Plus, if you use Elegant Themes, you can choose from an array of high quality Themes – not just one. The ability to use multiple themes is a great feature – especially if you are going to develope multiple websites for your law firm. I may still use an Elegant Theme for another website, but, for now, I am using Thesis.

The last option I have tried is StudioPress. StudioPress has nice looking themes. Their support was good for the short time I used the theme. However, I like Thesis and Elegant Themes better and I didn’t need the extra expense. My mistake. Check out StudioPress, you may really like them.

So, after you get a WordPress website started, you simply need to follow the WordPress instructions and upload your theme. I know if sounds hard, and there is a learning curve, but it really isn’t that difficult. Best of all, you should be able to get a very nice looking website up for under $200.00 using this method.

There are many other discussion points like website optimization. There many good tools to use, but I particularly like YSlow, GTMetrix, and Pingdom.com. These websites give you scores on how your website is designed. The scores directly influence page-load times. Many of these tools relate directly to a things with names like “Cascading-Style-Sheets (CSS)”, “HTML”, and other programing tools. I know enough about some of them to be dangerous, but if you are going to get serious, you should probably talk to a website developer. I learned a lot of this on my own and bought a CSS book but I don’t necessarily recommend doing this unless you have a lot of free time on your hands. One additional website optimization tool I use is JPEG Mini. It is free and it allows you to greatly reduce your website images before you place them on your website. Optimizing images is very important for speeding up your website. I could write an entire post on choosing website images and optimizing them.

Finally, if anybody wants help navigating the process of creating a law firm website, I would be happy to lend a hand. Seriously, just shoot me an email at jflanders@flanderslawfirm.com and I’ll do what I can to explain what I have learned and what has worked (and not worked) for me. Cheers.

October 24, 2011

Starting a Law Firm Update, Various Odds & Ends

I apologize for not posting for a while. Still here, just a little busy. Blogging for legal business can be a real task master. Think twice before getting into this whole blogging game. You had better like to write.

So, my wife and I took an overdue trip to Paris and Luxembourg a couple weeks ago. We skipped a real honeymoon because I didn’t want to make the partners at my old law firm upset that I was taking vacation during my first year as an associate. Now that I’m no longer at the firm, I guess I can take vacation. I’ll say this: I’ve gained a little perspective about what I want out of life since my first year of marriage and my first year as an associate attorney. Marriage is much more important. Is it any wonder that I am starting a law firm?

Anyway, I’m back and still trying to blog. As I’ve posted, I’m still working on getting licensed in Minnesota. This obviously creates a dilemma as far as writing many practice-related blog posts. To be honest, I feel a little out of the game. I am not hustling like I used to and I miss it. But, there are many, many things to get done before officially hanging out my own shingle. I’ll talk about that stuff instead.

In the main, I am concerned with two main things: (1) office space and (2) my website. Both of these things relate to my effort to focus a bit more and get my law firm start-up business plan in better shape. I am going through my old business plan and re-thinking things now that I have relocated to Minneapolis from Indiana. I have had an opportunity to scope out the market and competition a little better. Naturally, that changes the plan a little.

I’ll post more on this stuff tomorrow, but I wanted to get a post out to say sorry and I’ll try and to better. In the meantime, I’d appreciate any comments on my new website: flanderslawfirm.com.

I’m still working on the website and I know that the picture of me is terrible. I’ll get one up just as soon as somebody takes a professional looking picture of me that I like. Also, if anybody goes to my website, would you mind leaving a comment here on exactly how long it took you to get there? As in: how long did it take to load?

Thanks.

May 12, 2011November 4, 2011

Starting a Law Firm | Website “Call to Action”

In trying to build and start a law firm in the best way possible, I have obviously been thinking a lot about law firm websites optimization and how to get client to my website. A recent post on Lawyerist about designining a website “call to action” is very relevant to my law firm website goals.

As many of you many know, the Lawyerist is an excellent lawyer blog that has quite a few contributors. It is a good site with good content. I suggest you check it out. Today, there was a post about having a “call to action” on your website. The call to action, as I understand it, is getting the client to click on what you want them to click on – your name, number, and contact information.

I’ve thought of this before, but I’ve realized that I need to me more diligent about it. My idea was to offer a free consultation and get phone calls that way. People always call more if they think they aren’t going to have to pay for the lawyer phone call. Thus, the free consultation button. I don’t intend on working for free, but I have found that I can usually consult with someone for ten to fifteen minutes about their problem over the phone. If it is a case I think I can handle, the client and I get along, and I think the client will pay their bill, that is usually when I try and make the sale.

But, is that enough? I don’t really think so. I have realized that I need to have more on my website to get people to actually pick up the phone or shoot me an email. I’m going to work on it. My law firm website currently has a logo section. That logo is something I’m going to focus more on. I also intend to include more information in the footer of the website for people to contact me when they are seeking legal services.

From a practical, marketing perspective, starting a law firm is all about getting the phone to ring and getting people in the door. Being a good attorney and practicing in an ethical fashion are equally important. I don’t intend to wait and I want to call all my potential clients out there to call and seek my legal advice and skill.

May 11, 2011

Starting a Law Firm | Law Firm Website Update

As an update to my effort to start a law firm, I wanted to let everyone know that my law firm’s website is up and running. It’s located at flanderslawfirm.com.

I am not completely satisfied with it and I plan to make some much needed changes. But, it is up and it isn’t too bad. The best part? I did it mainly by myself. If anybody actually reads this and goes to my website I would appreciate any comments.

I ultimately got my law firm website up and running through a lot of trial and error. To me, starting a law firm is all about trial and error. Why should it be any different with a website?

The first trial was hosting. As I explained in my law firm website hosting post, there are a lot of choices but I chose Winhost.com. To this point, I have been very happy with Winhost and I have no complaints. However, it is early and we shall see how it goes. Through many hours and a lot of head-banging, I was able to read the help forum and “knowledge base” articles on Winhost and figure out how to set my law firm website up using these main, FREE ingredients:

(1) Webmatrix

(2) FileZilla FTP

(3) Internet Information Services (IIS 7)

(4) WordPress.org

The Winhost forums have moderators who answer many questions from all kinds of people with similar difficulties. There are posts about how to use your hosting service for all of these free tools. Again, creating a law firm website isn’t easy, but if you have the time and the gumption you can do it. Those are the free tools and they are great.

Now, the non-free tools I used were:

(1) Winhost website hosting (Cost: $114 for a year of hosting)

(2) NameCheap domain names ($10.00 for a typical domain name)

(3) Elegant Themes templates ($39.00 a year).

That’s it. Easy right? I also think those prices are pretty darn reasonable and I did pay a web designer anything.

Once I figured out how to use these tools, I was able to customize my law firm website. It takes some knowledge of html coding and cascading style sheet (CSS) language, but I picked it all up on the fly.

If anybody needs any help out there on how to start a law firm website, post a comment.

April 30, 2011

Starting a Law Firm | Creating a Law Firm Website

I wanted to share with everybody what I have learned about building a website for starting my own law firm.

As I posted previously, I have been doing a lot of searching and reading about law firm website hosting. There are way too many web hosting options to list here. Suffice it to say that I can’t recommend one or another. Everybody wants to host your lawyer website.

So, where to begin? Do a google search and you will find many choices. I chose winhost.com. I’m not making a plug, I am just letting your now what I chose. I could have made a mistake, who knows.

I chose Winhost for two reasons: (1) the price and (2) the functionality. The price I chose was a monthly “Max” plan at $10.00 a month. They have a cheaper plan, but I wanted a plan with enough functionality for me to expand and add things like more website content and email users. The functionality compares with, if not better than, many website hosts out there. The “Max” plan has quite a bit of hosting space and other options that I frankly don’t know how to use. I will say this, I did quite a bit of research and I didn’t see this much functionality at places like Godaddy.com. The price is the same, but I don’t think you get as much. (Caveat, I’m a lawyer, not a web designer, and I really don’t know what I am doing.)

So, onto the lawyer stuff. I have decided to develop a law firm website right now. That way, I can build up links and get some traffic to the website before I officially open up my law firm doors in Minneapolis. Also, since I have more free time on my hands than I am used to, I figure this is the best time to learn this stuff.

Now that I have chosen a host, I have to figure out how to get a website up. This is where the real fun begins. I have no website building experience and I just learned how to set up a blog. I’ve put a lot of time into it, but there is a lot more to learn. As I am on a budget when starting my law firm, I don’t want to pay for a web designer. I’m trying to do it on my own.

Here are the tools I have used so far:

(1) Winhost.com (the website hosting service)

(2) Microsoft WebMatrix (a web development tool)

(3) WordPress.org (free blog and CMS website hosting)

(4) Various business and/or law firm templates.

Those are my current tools in more or less the order that I am using them. Again, not a plug for any of them, but that it what I have found so far.

On Winhost, there is a control panel which allows you to set up a database and it also contains domain information like your server address, url address, etc. This is all voodoo to me, but it is necessary to connect with the next step, WebMatrix.

Download WebMatrix and then learn to use it. Did I mention that it is free? There are plenty of tutorials on the Microsoft site. It isn’t the most user friendly software, but, then again, it isn’t that difficult. In WebMatrix you can choose a number of different website building options. There are templates pre-installed, but I recommend either buying a template or finding a free law firm template and loading it into WebMatrix. If you choose a pre-built template, you can load it into WebMatrix and then connect WebMatrix to your server (e.g.: WinHost). This is where the voodoo comes in. I struggled for hours to get WebMatrix to properly connect to and recognize WinHost. But, in the end, I got it to work. Again, instructions are all available via online tutorials and help forums. Also, you can load WordPress.org through WebMatrix if you want to use a WordPress design for your law firm website.

If you do use WordPress, there are many different free templates that you can use for your law firm website, or you can pay for and install a law firm theme for WordPress. I haven’t done this yet, but I am planning to go this route. Wordpress’ functionality and SEO optimization tools are easy, free, and, best of all, they look good.

So, that is my hackneyed explanation on what I am doing to create a law firm website. I’ll unveil the site on Solo in Minneapolis when it is ready. Let me know if any of you have questions on this process. I’d be happy to share what I have learned anybody wanting to build a website when the are starting a law firm.