The Survey of Law Firm eMarketing Practices

Primary Research Group (www.primaryresearch.com) has published a new study — The Survey of
Law Firm E-marketing Practices. Data in the report is based on a survey of 46 (mostly major) law
firms. A few results are presented below:

EDITORIAL CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

The law firms in the sample employ a surprisingly low number of editorial
employees, a mean of less than one writer per firm. Firms with more than 200
lawyers employed a bit less than 1.5 writers per firm or less than one per 300 lawyers
since the mean number of lawyers in the 200+ lawyer’s category was 478.

The firms in the sample employed a mean of less than ½ proofreaders per firm, and
the largest number of proofreaders employed per firm was two.

In many industries, an expanding web presence led companies to hire more editorial
employees and to spend more on content development. This is less the case with the
law firms in the sample. Most have not increased their spending on editorial staff in
the past two years, though a substantial minority say that they have.

About half of the firms in the sample hire freelancers to produce editorial content but
only 13.51% note that they do so frequently.

BLOGS & BLOGGING

A shade less than 20% of the firms in the sample published their own blogs. Firms
with 20 or more distinct practice groups were the most likely to publish blogs, and
nearly forty percent of the firms in this category did so.

The mean number of blogs published per law firm was 0.96 though this figure also
reflects the firms that do not publish blogs.

Only 16.67% of firms have a policy of surfing the web to market the firm’s opinions
and prowess through legal blogs by responding to postings or making commentaries
in such blogs to demonstrate legal expertise or in some way promote the law firm.

More than 37% of the law firms in the sample plan to increase their spending on
blogs as promotional vehicles, although close to 44% have not used blogs for this
purpose.

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

More than half of the firms in the sample hired a consulting firm when they
overhauled (or initially created) their firm’s website. Only a shade less than 12% of
firms in the sample did most of the website design or overhaul work in-house, and
these were mostly smaller firms

Mean spending on website overhauls was $40,583 for the firms in the sample, with
median spending of $27,500.

The firms in the sample received a mean number of 27,462 unique monthly visitors to
the firm website, with a median of 8,000.


E-NEWSLETTER PUBLISHING

Close to 60% of the firms in the sample published e-newsletters, as did nearly 90% of
the firms with 200 lawyers or more.

The mean number of e-newsletters maintained by the law firms in the sample was
7.45; the median, 4.

Mean spending on electronic press release services was also relatively modest, with
mean annual spending averaging just a shade less than $536.00.

OPT IN EMAIL MARKEING

Nearly 58% of the firms in the sample use opt-in email marketing to promote the law
firm.

BANNER ADS AND SITE SPONSORSHIPS

Mean spending by all firms on banner ads and website sponsorships within the past year was
only $2038.50, a figure that also incorporates the many firms that did not spend anything
on banner ads or website sponsorships.

SEARCH ENGINE PLACEMENT

Only 12.5% of the firms in the sample have paid search engines for higher search
engine placement, a practice that was more common among smaller than larger firms.
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A bit more than 32% of the firms in the sample say that it is “likely” or “very likely”
that within the next two years that they will hire a consultant to help the firm to
appear higher in search engine rankings.

PODCASTING & WEBCASTING

Less than 3% of the firms in the sample have ever done a podcast to help market the
law firm.

The study presents more than 175 tables of data describing the use of various
emarketing practices by major law firms. Data is broken out by firm size and by the
number of distinct practice groups.

For more information view our website at www.primaryresearch.com.

James Moses, Research Analyst
Primary Research Group Inc
2753 Broadway,