Why Do Most Attorneys Hide Their Stories?

Most legal services are sold on relationships. You call a lawyer because someone recommends them, or you met them. So why are most attorney’s web sites, and legal marketing in general, so impersonal? It’s as if showing us who they are as people is somehow unprofessional. Well, I was fortunate enough to have a law-firm client who understood that the more effectively the firm connects with prospects, the more likely they were to land the client.

We interviewed each principal of the firm and had them tell their stories in full-page profiles. Though present, their education and experience was de-emphasized. Rather, we had the attorney tell us what motivated them, and why they did what they did. Wolfgram & Associates is a personal injury firm. Personal injury law involves, as I learned, delving into people’s problems. Medical problems. Personal problems. Frankly, I found it really depressing. So if you’re going to do personal injury law, and be effective at it. You really have to want to help people. Because every day when the attorney picks up the phone, they welcome tragedy into their offices.

Like magnets for misery, personal injury attorneys attract regular folks in the worst of circumstances. By definition, personal injury clients have demonstrable, compensable losses. Moreover, personal injury clients have more often than not been wronged by arrogant insurance companies, disrespected or dismissed by indifferent hospital administrators, abandoned by friends and spouses. You meet crippled, brain-injured, suffering children. You comfort people in the cold face of losses so profound and untimely that I hope you and I will never know them. Yet, as a personal injury attorney you must rise to the occasion each and every day and be a comfort for humble people in such circumstances.

At the same instant you as an attorney must be a fighter to get respect from in-house council and insurance adjusters who see your client as an acceptable loss, as a data point in a numbers game. ‘Fight every claim no matter the merits or they will all come knocking,’ is opposing council’s attitude more often than not.

In the face of all this, personal injury attorneys simply must have a fire in their bellies for justice and something in their DNA that drives them to help people. Otherwise, they would become casualties themselves.

And all this became clearly evident in the stories the attorneys told, about themselves, their clients, their cases. This was done with sensitivity and without coming close to violating any standards of conduct. Attorneys are, after all, people with feelings and emotions. And when clients sense your humanity, they will be drawn to you. Because they know that you care, and that you will fight for them, they will hire you.

Check out the site Wolfgram & Associates, and decide for yourself if feelings, emotions and stories are consistent with professional communication.

Small Stories Follow and Big Stories Lead

Stories with a small ‘s’ are the tradecraft by which you coax people into adopting or even “stealing” your ideas. In your role as a communicator, you must learn how to spot good stories, and what type of stories will work for your purposes. For example, inspirational stories generally fall into three genres:

• The Challenge Plot: David & Goliath
  


• The Connection Plot: Good Samaritan or Mean Joe Greene/Coke
  


• The Creative Plot/ mental breakthrough: That eureka moment like rigging Apollo 13 to save the astronauts, the apple falling on Newton’s head, or every episode of MacGyver
  

If you have selected relevant stories, then you are showing—rather than telling—how your ideas are relevant to your listener’s world. Yes, stories are anecdotal. And thus they have the power to coax listeners to fill in gaps and make connections from their world, to yours. Your job is to select the stores that reflect your core message, your agenda. You must tell the right story at the right time and tell it artfully. Your listener will do the rest.



Think of Stories with a big ‘S’ as the Big Story, the future that we all want, such as more resources and less work, a more prosperous, less uncertain future, a safe and sustainable environment. CEO’s, presidents, and leaders offer us a positive future, their vision…that is what makes them appear to us as leaders. But the best leaders show a path to the future with concrete steps and the other foregoing elements. In so doing they evoke emotion and move us to action. Big stories in and of themselves do not prompt people to take action. But big stories bolstered by lots of small ones, each built with the elements above, do move us to action.

Your best content is never about you

Want to get found on the Web? Want prospects to relate to what you’re saying? If what you do is new, what makes you think prospects are searching for it? Rather, consider what prospects are thinking, and typing, at the time when they are in a frame of mind to care. Otherwise, your site may become just one more lonely corner on the Internet.

Only much later will it be time to differentiate your product from all the others. Remember; connect first. Show-and-tell later, much later, maybe never. There are better ways to connect.
First prospects have to know that you have been listening to them, that you understand their concerns, their needs and wants. That’s why great marketing content is never about you. It’s about them. But that’s hard to write. Right?

Click here to learn more, or call us at (314) 772-1185.

Great content is often missing from lead-generation programs.

In our last newsletter we wrote about techniques for getting people to your site, known as search engine optimization. When you get them there, site visitors need a reason to care, and a reason to click around. For that to happen, your content needs to click with them.

In the art of copy writing for Web, you must dole out content in spoonfuls, leading visitors one click at a time until your goal for their visit has been achieved; for example, when they have volunteered their identity to you and agreed to receive your messages.

Despite the reach of on-line marketing, most sales still originate off-line because very few companies effectively relate to their audience on-line. Most organizations write about themselves, which presents a competitive advantage for those who know better.

Originally published November 14, 2006, as an e-mail sent from the BentonsEdge web site. Written by Dan Davison.