In this short on Legal Marketing by Spearleaf, Joshua Albanese, founder of Spearleaf, tells an attorney to skip the designer's award list and study the firm sites in their own town: search the case type and town, count taps to a phone number on a phone, note case pages, and skip story-first chat and autoplay video. Narrated with an AI voice clone of Joshua Albanese. Other characters are AI-generated. Every answer is written and checked by the Spearleaf team.
Read the full guide: Best Law Firm Websites: How to Study Them Before You Copy →
Video Transcript
Business owner: Which are the best law firm websites to copy before we redo ours? My designer sent a list of award winners, all big-city firms with video on the homepage.
Joshua: Skip the award list. The sites worth studying are the ones your next client opens in your own town, and you can find them tonight. Step one. Search your main case type plus your town on Google, like "custody lawyer" and your county seat. Write down the firms on the map and the first few results. Those are the websites a scared person in your county actually opens.
Business owner: The firm at the top of our map has a site that looks like it was built a decade ago.
Joshua: Then the look isn't what's carrying that firm. On the map, Google also weighs distance and reviews. Study what the site does, not how it looks. Step two. Open each site on your phone, because that's where a scared client reads it. Count the taps until you see a phone number. Just note the number. Don't actually call those firms. Step three. Note which case types get their own page. If a site there has separate pages for relocation cases and grandparents' visitation, it can match more of what people type. Then ask ChatGPT and Google's AI the same question. Google's AI answers include links to the websites they draw from, so note which firm sites appear.
Business owner: One of those sites has a chat window that pops up asking "what happened?" Seems smart to catch people right away.
Joshua: Don't copy that one. A chat that asks for the story first collects the facts before your conflict check. If that person is the other side in a case you already have, your firm has just heard the other side's facts. If you want a chat, have it ask for names first, then book a consult. The story waits until the conflict check clears. Check your state bar's rules. Also skip autoplay video. A video that starts talking on a phone in a quiet house is the last thing a worried spouse wants.
Business owner: So the designer's award list goes in the trash?
Joshua: Keep it for fonts and photos. From the local sites, copy what helps a caller: the number up top and a page per case type. Step four. Make one short list: how fast the number shows, which case pages you're missing, and the next step a caller sees. The study takes an evening. Writing the missing pages takes weeks, and they can take months to show up in search. Want the Position Zero Guide to Getting More Customers on ChatGPT, Google and Google Maps? Comment "DRIVE" and I'll send it. And follow for more straight answers like this.
Read the full guide on studying the best law firm websites →