Legal Writing

On Looking for a Lawyer

It’s 7:35 AM*.

I’ve got a cup coffee and I’m watching one of those morning news programs. Actually, it’s a semi-news program that leads with the fires in South Carolina and the Taliban in Pakistan, but ends up offering advice on how to choose a butcher or a mechanic or some such.

In any event . . . .

The topic is girls and eating eating disorders. There’s a video of some beauty pageant and there’s a young lady in a bikini ? her bones are nearly protruding through the thinnest slice of muscle and fat there could be.

The commentator tells us how dangerous eating disorders can be, and how bad it is (i.e., how harmful it is to girls and young ladies, in  particular) that fashion cameras seek images of protruding bones.

Why don’t they seek (i.e., why aren’t girls drawn to) other images? Don’t they see beauty in the comforting curves at the center of Playboy magazine?

Back on topic — there are more videos of more movie starts and models, and so many protruding bones invoke images of those who barely survived the Holocaust.

For some, a meal at McDonald’s IS very nutritious.

The commentator tells us we’ve got to alter our ideals; we’ve got to stop telling school girls that starvation yields beauty.

That would be better, he says, because then middle-class girls in middle school wouldn’t be suffering from malnutrition right here in the U.S.

But the girls the commentator is talking about . . . where are they?

Look at a group of modern-day, middle school girls. Do they seem more like a flock of gazelles, or a herd of hippos?

When it comes to school girls, should we be worried more about their devotion to fashion, or their nutrition?

____________
When it comes to attracting clients, image is important. It can be extremely important.

Often enough, it is what is MOST important. And that’s because how clients select lawyers is (most usually) not a very logical process.

Most often, what prompts a client to select one attorney over another is as well reasoned as what gets a cat to meow.

____________
Clients do select one attorney over others (at least, in part) because of the impression that attorney makes on them, and the overall impression is influenced in the greatest way by the first impression — the one based on appearance and dress, size and demeanor, accent and tone, etc.

So . . . if the very first impression a client has of you or your firm comes from your firm’s Web site, it had best be designed in such a way as to make the most favorable first impression.

You certainly don’t want it to seem as if you can’t afford to eat.

____________
* Those who follow me on Twitter know I start my day early. I’m usually at work by 6:00 AM. But I take a break to catch the news and have a bite to eat.

Full post as published by Set in Style on April 24, 2009 (boomark / email).