A successful law firm needs to understand how potential new
clients locate lawyers to represent them. In order to do that, a law firm
should recognize the types of searches that prospective clients conduct of
their business and that of their competitors. If they understand what is driving their
recognition, it will ensure they remain competitive moving forward.
To answer the question of what drives searches of law firms,
I decided to compare the Google search history for Verrill Dana, Bernstein
Shur, Pierce Atwood and Preti Flaherty.
These searches represent four of the biggest law firms in Portland that
are in direct completion with one another.
Each firm has a longer name but I chose these particular search terms
because they are the most likely choice of searchers. The search location is
the United States since most of these firms also practice in other states in
addition to Maine. I used a 12-month
duration, to try and identify the cause of particular spikes, along with the
trends since 2004, in an attempt to see any long term influences.
In the graph above you can see these law firms are very
comparable in terms of the amount of searches.
Pierce Atwood is the most searched but not by a huge margin. There also appears to be no particular trend
that is apparent. Each firm has a
particular time when they are the most searched and a time when they were not
searched at all.
At closer investigation, it appears that the peaks are
directly related to news stories published about the firms or certain cases.
For example, Bernstein Shur was the most searched of these terms from September
25th through October 21st 2016. This is due to their firm’s involvement with
the Wells Fargo fake account scandal.
The spike that Pierce Atwood received between July 9th and
July 22nd 2017 is directly related to the news story about Governor
LaPage hiring their firm to representing him with respect to his decision to
pardon a dog that was ordered to be euthanized.
The next graph shows the trends of these search terms since
2004. As you can see, the searches of
all of these terms has declined dramatically in the past thirteen years. All of
these terms declining at the same rate indicate that there is a trend that is
affecting the industry as a whole. Since
the demand for legal representation should stay relatively constant over time,
the decline in searches suggests that customers are finding these law firms in
different ways.
As indicated by the first graph, it seems like now the only
times these terms are searched is when they are related to a headline. In the early 2000’s this does not seem to be
the case. Clients are now finding firms
to represent them by using means that did not exist back in 2004. Websites like
www.linkedin.com , www.bestlawyers.com , www.benchmarklitigation.com, www.chambersandpartners.com
are now where many clients identify potential lawyers to hire. These sites give insights that you cannot get
through a normal Google search and that is showing in the number of searches.
For example, these websites contain peer reviews and rankings that are not
available by simply searching the name of the law firms.
Law firms can use this information in several ways in
improving their marketing efforts. First
and foremost, a firm needs to make sure they are well represented on all sites
where potential clients could be searching.
If law firms rely on the old avenues of marketing, they will fall behind
their competition. The firms also need
to do whatever they can to be shown positively in the media. As the research shows, people search the firm’s
name even if the name only receives a brief mention in an article. Google trends is a very important tool that law
firms need to understand and utilize.
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