Legal Writing

Go Fish

As I do each day, I’m reviewing the activity log for Set in Style.

I’m surprised to find that a two-year-old post got lots of hits yesterday. I wonder why.

I review the old post, which is about not wasting readers’ time — it’s good advice for attorneys who tend to use far more words than necessary.

The old post contains this link to a client alert published by O’Melveny & Myers LLP, but the link is outdated and no longer works. Click it, and you’re presented with this fruitless message:

The page you requested was not found. Please check the URL path and try again.

Well, you can check the URL all day if you like, but it won’t help you find what you want.

The problem?

The firm revised its Web site last year, but a piece of engineering was left undone.

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O’Melveny (which now has an Alexa rank of 329,819) publishes quite a few client alerts (and press releases): it’s published seven alerts in the past two weeks (and three press releases in the past five days).

Publishing so frequently helps the firm attract readers. For instance, if someone (esp. a potential client or a journalist) is looking for information on the Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act of 2009, then there’s a fair chance that he/she will discover O’Melveny’s recent alerts on that act.

The more readers they attract, the better (lower) their Alexa ranking.

And that’s why law firms publish client alerts: not for better rankings, but to attract readers, especially the potential clients, or those who know or can influence potential clients, among them.

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When the firm revised its Web site, it gave all its alerts new URLs, but it skipped a step, and that meant people looking for the alerts could no longer find them.  If they used the old URL, they were presented with this message:

The page you requested was not found. Please check the URL path and try again.

On seeing a message like that, most people will just give up, even the corporate counselor who’s doing some research. A very few people (like corporate counselors who are researching an issue and looking for help) will persist in finding that alert.

Those that do are most likely do use the firm’s Web site’s search function to find what they want. In this case — the alert was titled “Rambus Indicted in Europe” — they might search for Rambus. But that doesn’t work.

Whoever’s doing this research (perhaps a potential client, or someone in close contact with one) is more likely to find a client alert published by some firm other than O’Melveny, perhaps a firm where the IT folks have the time and the resources to do what’s best for the firm.

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Here’s what I recommend:

Check your site’s error logs on a regular basis (at least once a day).

Here’s why: Suppose there’s a client alert posted at the site. If someone looking for information clicks a link to the alert, an error is generated just before the fruitless message is posted.

Now, suppose many people are clicking that link one day. Instead of finding what they want, they get a message advising them to act insane, and so they leave.

Each click of that link is recorded in the error log. If the error log goes from recording 100 errors a day to 1,000 errors a day, you should know it right away.

Oh. And when you if ever again revise the filing system for your firm’s site, set up a redirect table. That way, when someone clicks an old, outdated URL, an updated URL is used. The person searching for information finds it.

Isn’t that why firms publish client alerts.

Full post as published by Set in Style on December 16, 2009 (boomark / email).