Legal Writing

The Annual Review — Searching for Eksellence

Here’s what I find surprising — a large law firm claims excellence in all it does, but there’s a typo, or a misspelling, or a grammatical or logical error in the first line of type on the home page of the firm’s Web site. And it stays there for quite some time, as if no one at the firm looks at the home page, or cares much about errors.

Oh well. Perhaps most corporate counselors who hire large law firms don’t really care if those firms are sincere about their commitment to excellence.

Perhaps I’m more fussy than most, but I won’t hire a lawyer who can’t write well (esp. one who doesn’t even try) to write a license agreement or a contract. No way!

And I’m not alone. There must be corporate counselors out there who are just as fussy as I. There must be those who are not willing to spend $600 per man-hour for attorneys who makes too many obvious errors.

If you want to impress fussy corporate counselors, you need to dot all your eyes and cross all your teas, or they’ll notice, and that’s because they look for small details, the way drill instructors do.

“Does this firm really pay attention to detail? If it does, its Web site won’t say it doesn’t.”
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If you are sincere in your commitment to excellence, then, in addition to the regular attention you pay to detail day in, day out, you’ll find an annual review of your firm’s publishing effort’s central nervous system — your firm’s Web site — worthwhile.

Here’s what I recommend. Each year, check the following:

1. Activity and Error Reports — These reports help you see what visitors are looking at, and what they’re not; they also show what visitors are trying to see, but can’t.
2. Content of Top-level Pages — If it’s been a year since anyone at the firm has read this material, it’s time to review it again, especially for timeliness.
3. Date-sensitive Content — Does the site say your next event happened six months ago? To visitors, that says you’re not on top of things.
4. The Site’s Popularity — Does the site have a better Alexa ranking than last year?
5. The Site’s Functionality — How does the site look on a BlackBerry or iPhone?

This article discusses my recommendations in greater detail.

Full post as published by Set in Style on December 17, 2009 (boomark / email).