Every year, the Lawyerist team sets out to find examples of the best law firm websites from our vast community. Once again, this year saw submissions from all over the world, spanning countless practice areas. And, once again, the submissions are becoming increasingly difficult to separate in terms of quality. Obviously, the website, as a marketing tool, isn’t just for Personal Injury attorneys anymore. 

If this year is indicative of anything, though, it’s that we are seeing a crowding market. Things like clear branding, high quality technical SEO, and thoughtful CTAs are table stakes now. Firms must do more than just present an aesthetically pleasing, functional website to grab a potential client’s attention. As such, it was difficult to find ten sites that stood out above the rest. There was so much quality in this year’s cohort, we had trouble deeming certain ones “exceptional” above the others.  

Below are the top eight websites of 2024—and one honorable mention.  

Obviously, our choices are subjective. However, we try to introduce as much objectivity into the process as possible. First, we run each site through a performance and accessibility grader that rates each site from A to F. Then, we rate the highest performing sites based on branding, marketing, accessibility, and technical SEO. This year, we invited judges from the Lawyerist and Affinity Consulting teams and averaged these opinions to come up with the results below. 

Output Law 

Designer: Caleb Ellis 

What Makes Them Special 

It is obvious that Output Law caters to creatives, the design is sleek, sophisticated, and modern. The “Let’s work together,” section pulls back the curtain on hiring a lawyer a bit. 

JVAM Law 

Designer: Firesign 

What Makes Them Special 

JVAM combines the accessible with the aesthetically pleasing. They provide a site that pops off the page while still allowing users to navigate with just the keyboard or a screen reader. 

Filippatos PLLC 

Designer: Postali 

What Makes Them Special 

This site provides multiple ways to travel the same CTA path—contact the firm. Visitors can use the chatbot to get more information or make a call to the firm directly from the website. As a bonus, it’s mobile-first, not just mobile friendly. 

Sobirovs Law Firm 

Designer: GNGF 

What Makes Them Special 

Sobirovs Law Firm makes it easy to see what working with them will be like with loads of educational content. They go the extra mile, however, by making a Fee Calculator front and center for potential clients. 

The Fine Law Firm 

Designer: iLawyerMarketing 

What Makes Them Special 

This site is branded. A visitor knows exactly where the firm is located without reading a word. By the time a visitor gets to the “8 Reasons to Choose Our Firm,” they’re as comfortable as their favorite pair of denim jeans. 

Ruane Attorneys 

Designer: BluShark Digital 

What Makes Them Special 

The Ruane site is a top-quality DUI and Criminal Defense site. What sets it apart, however, is its creative lead magnets. It requires some digging, but users can generate living wills, lease agreements, and even powers of attorney on their own time. 

Nichols Liu 

Designer: Sujai Chandrasekaran 

What Makes Them Special 

Beyond being easy to navigate, and client-centric, the Nichols Liu site uses imagery to its full effect. They obviously help navigate difficult regulatory waters worldwide. You can read more to learn specifics, but you get the idea from first glance. 

Clancy and Associates 

Designer: Katie Clancy and Ruben Digital

What Makes Them Special 

Clancy & Associates is a niche firm—and they know it. It’s obvious that they have experience guiding families with unique and special needs. Their branding says, “we care, and we can help.” 

Honorable Mention – Connecticut Trial Firm 

Designer: Hennessey Digital 

What Makes Them Special 

A few years ago, Connecticut Trial Firm would not have been too big for this contest. But they are now. However, they are still a great example of Personal Injury marketing that shows how they got to where they are. 

Learn More about Law Firm Websites 

If you want to learn more about what makes a law firm website great, check out our Law Firm Website Design Guide. You’ll learn why user experience is important, and how a website fits into a law firm’s overall marketing strategy. 

The post Best Law Firm Websites 2024 Winners appeared first on Lawyerist.

It’s easy to assume that a company we’ve known for years does only that thing we first knew them for. Attorneys know LawPay as the preeminent payment processor for law firms. LawPay is expanding its offerings to include invoicing, trust accounting, time tracking, and expense tracking.

These new LawPay Pro features will “round out your billing management,” according to Leiasa Horanic, senior product manager at AffiniPay. LawPay continues to offer the features you know and love. The added tools of LawPay Pro put more relevant information and actions in one place.

Invoicing

LawPay Pro expands on the existing “Quick Bill” feature with the ability to create invoices with individual line items in five easy steps:

1. Select a contact to receive the bill or create a new contact directly from the invoicing screen.
2. Optionally, select a case to attach to the invoice. You can invoice without adding cases.
3. Select the bank account you want the funds deposited into.
4. Set the payment terms and due date.
5. Add line items to the invoice. Each line item has seven fields:
   • a) type of entry, which can be a time entry, expense, or flat fee amount;
   • b) the date for that item;
   • c) activity type, chosen from a customizable list;
   • d) note or description;
   • e) the hourly or flat rate;
   • f) the quantity, such as the number of hours; and
   • g) whether the item is non-billable.

Saving the invoice creates a draft for the user to preview and then send to the contact. The invoice includes payment options the firm makes available in LawPay. The firm can set the default text for the message accompanying the invoice, which users can edit on a per-message basis.

The contact receives the invoice via email, with a PDF version attached, and can click a “pay now” button or pay by scanning a QR code. Clicking the email link or scanning the QR code takes the contact to the payment page for that specific invoice rather than the firm’s “generic” LawPay page, saving the firm additional tracking and reconciliation work.

Finally, LawPay Pro allows firms to record payments on behalf of contacts, like when a client calls with a credit card to pay an invoice. LawPay notes how each invoice is paid, so the firm can look back and see which clients pay by which method. And, of course, invoices can be paid from a trust account.

Trust Requests

With LawPay Pro, the firm can issue new trust requests and trust replenishment requests. When making a trust request, the user answers six questions:

1. Select a contact to receive the trust request.
2. Enter the amount requested.
3. Enter a due date.
4. Select a trust account to receive the deposited funds.
5. Optionally, allocate the received funds to a particular case.
6. Enter the email text to accompany the request. The firm can set default text.

From the client’s perspective, the experience upon receiving the trust request is similar to receiving an invoice.

The Billing tab is the central place to track the statuses of invoices and trust requests. Users can see whether the recipient has viewed the invoice or trust request email. Each invoice and trust request has a complete history of when it was created, sent to the client, paid, and by what method.

Time and Expense Tracking

Entering the Time and Expenses

LawPay Pro includes time and expense tracking, so users can enter events and record expenses as they occur. At month’s end, the firm can generate an itemized invoice for the contact.

Expense entry is handled similarly to time entry, except users can attach receipts to expenses. At any point, one can go to the Billing tab and select Time Entries or Expenses to see all open and invoiced time entries or expenses.

Invoicing from Recorded Time and Expense Entries

At billing time, go to the Billing tab, then Invoices, and click Create Invoice. LawPay Pro prompts the user to select a contact and then a case. Once the user selects a case, all non-invoiced entries, both for time and expenses, associated with that case appear as “pre-filled” line items. The user can change any line item or add items not previously entered. Finally, the user can include a discount, either by dollars or percent, off the invoice.

More “It’d Be Great If” Features

For current LawPay firms, Pro is a superset of the existing product. In addition to the new billing tools, LawPay Pro enhanced the payments, contacts, and reporting features.

Payments

LawPay Pro’s Payments tab contains a running list of all transactions. Users can filter by bank account, both operating and trust accounts, see open invoices and trust requests on a per-client basis, and collect payments from clients who phone in credit cards or who use offline payments.

Contacts

The Contacts tab benefits from the added invoicing features of LawPay Pro. Contacts can link to cases for basic tracking cases associated with a given contact. Time tracking also benefits from this linkage since most lawyers think of entering time for a case rather than a contact, especially for any having two or more cases. The contact’s billing tab is the gem. It displays a contact’s entire trust history, trust requests, invoices, trust allocations, and scheduled automatic payments in one place.

Reports

LawPay Pro builds on LawPay’s current reporting infrastructure. New or improved reports for Pro include:

• an aging invoice report showing overdue invoices;
• an accounts receivable report;
• a monthly transactions summary;
• a trust account summary;
• a trust account activity report; and
• a user time entry report.

See It All on the Dashboard

LawPay Pro’s dashboard, available on the Home tab, pulls everything together and gives users an overview of the firm. This one-stop-show shows key firm metrics regarding invoices, transactions, and time entries. To learn more about LawPay Pro, visit lawpay.com/introducing-lawpay-pro.

LawPay Pro Demo

The post Track and Bill Time with New LawPay Pro appeared first on Lawyerist.

Great brands produce an immediate, visceral feeling. If you see the Apple, Coke, McDonald’s, or Nike logo, you know what it is and have an instantaneous association with it. Apple makes high-end digital devices. Coke makes soda. McDonald’s is fast food. Nike is athletic performance. You can dispute those descriptions, but there’s a shared understanding of what the company makes and who its target market is. That’s branding.

Most law firm branding is vague. With 1.3 million attorneys in America, it’s difficult for a firm to stand out in a saturated market. Postali helps your firm get noticed by the right clients.

Law Firm Branding Guide

Postali is a digital marketing agency working exclusively with law firms. Unlike many digital marketers, Postali doesn’t start the conversation with a sales pitch about SEO or website design, although they offer both.

Postali begins by working with the firm to define its brand. That process culminates in a branding guide, whose principles and specifications govern how the firm presents itself internally and externally. Postali’s branding guide engagement distills the amorphous concept of branding into two concrete products: written assets and visual assets.

Written Assets

While logos, colors, and fonts—visual assets—are obvious public expressions of a brand, those visual assets draw inspiration from something. FedEx’s logo has an arrow between “E” and “x” because FedEx believes its mission is to ship packages that absolutely, positively have to be there overnight. The “smiley arrow” on Amazon boxes reinforces its mission as a store selling everything from A to Z. Visual assets flow from an understanding of the business.

That’s why Postali starts by fashioning five written assets. These serve as the firm’s compass for decision-making and the lodestar for creating visual assets. Written assets include:

1) Target Audience: Define the firm’s ideal clients by demographics and behaviors. Knowing this target group affects the “where,” “when,” and “how” of marketing. It also helps with client intake and identifying who would be a good client once they first “touch” the firm. Understand who the firm aims to attract.

Sam Ballinger, Postali’s design director, offered an example: “Our ideal clients are well-informed and typically do their own research before making the decision to hire us.” The demographic is “well-informed,” and the key behavior is “do their own research.” 

So, what does that mean? If they do their own research, the firm’s materials should emphasize substance and details. They should downplay background explanations or “fluff” because well-informed people have already researched the basics.

2) Position Statement: A good position statement contains three elements: (a) it tells what the product is, (b) who the product is for, and (c) why one should use the product. Sam’s example: “We are pioneers in the field of nonprofit law…[for] cause conscious clients…[to] support, guide and execute their realization.”

The product is the firm’s services, but uniquely presented—the attorneys are not simply “attorneys” or “nonprofit attorneys,” but “pioneers in the field.” The product isn’t for every nonprofit, but for “cause-conscious clients.” The firm doesn’t merely meet a need, but “support(s), guide(s), and execute(s)” the client’s vision.

Sam encourages active, vibrant language that resonates with the firm internally and clients externally.

3) Mission Statement: This is an easily communicated and easily understood expression of the firm’s purpose. Sam’s example: “To use the law to stand up for our clients, be the voice for their children, and offer families a brighter future.”

A mission statement serves as the firm’s North Star. Every business decision should support, or at least not impinge on the mission. Does a prospective hire impress in the interview that bettering children and families motivates them? What sponsorship or community service opportunities introduce the firm to its target audience while improving families?

4) Core Values: These should not enumerate all the firm’s favorable characteristics. Instead, core values should examine what is foundational and fundamental. Core values should feel cohesive with the other written assets. What values are shared by the team and, ideally, with clients? Core values could be simple virtues like honesty and teamwork. The firm’s personality or mission may warrant pithy, action-oriented values like “be heroic.”

5) Value Proposition: A firm’s value proposition is the above-the-fold headline or news story lede. Why should the buyer pick this firm? Brevity is key. Spark enough interest in the prospect for them to take the next step.

Sam’s example is a personal injury firm advertising “a painless way to get legal help.” The proposition’s flexibility allows the sufferer to imagine many forms of painlessness, such as a painless intake process or a painless customer experience. A powerful proposition says a lot in a few words.

Visual Assets

Postali’s branding guide comprises three visual assets: a logo, color palette, and font families.

While the logo is inherently individualistic, Sam offers guidance on colors and fonts. A firm’s color palette consists of four to six colors. Each serves a primary or secondary role (e.g., title versus headings or body text). Font choices may be traditional or modern, depending on the firm’s personality and target market. Sometimes, Postali mixes traditional and modern fonts to reflect a long-established firm offering novel solutions.

The Process

Postali divides the creative process into four stages. First, clients complete a questionnaire to help Postali understand the firm’s personality and the “why now” of wanting to brand. Second, Postali’s creative team and the firm hold a discovery call, with the questionnaire guiding the discussion. Third, Postali refines agreed themes. Fourth, Postali produces draft is written and visual assets, which undergo client consultations and revisions before culminating in a finished branding guide.

The Take-Away

The branding guide is the firm’s to keep. Postali provides the whole panoply of digital marketing services, but there’s no obligation to contract for those services as part of producing a branding guide. Once created, a firm can use its branding guide internally to create its own website, messaging, and marketing content.

Lawyerist Interview with Postali

The post Postali Distinguishes Law Firms Through Branding appeared first on Lawyerist.

I’ve spoken with a lot of lawyers who want to make their own software. In fact, as a creditor’s rights attorney, I knew quite a few who developed platforms for their own use. Many of them entertain the idea of selling these platforms to others. Yet, few of them try, and still fewer of them are successful.

What is it, then, that allows some lawyers to tap into this alternative income stream? And why are others left simply dreaming of what they could do? Software development for lawyers is about selling processes. The firms that have good processes to sell will find success. Others will not.

Impetus for Building Software

Lawyers often find themselves wishing that a platform would do something more. Nothing ever works perfectly for the systems they have in place. Which makes sense. There are countless ways to practice law within the practice of law. So, unless a lawyer is willing to adjust their processes to fit the system, the system will never be enough.

Commonly, this leads a firm to build their own product based around their own systems If a firm has the need and the means, it’s not a bad idea to build something bespoke that fits their firm perfectly.

Although this is a great reason to build a product internally, it’s not a great reason to sell the product externally. 

Selling Processes Rather than Software

As stated earlier, no product will be perfect for a firm unless the firm is willing to adjust its practices and procedures to fit the product. This is true for any software. Yes, some tools fit well into a firm’s procedures, but they don’t generally fit everything. 

This was true for Greg Siskind, a Lawyerist Community member and renowned immigration attorney. With his team from Siskind & Susser, he has designed an immigration-specific practice management platform. They are co-developing it with FastCase, using the NextChapter software.

From his perspective, this platform is a natural extension of a book that his team has published for decades. They refer to it as the Immigration Cookbook, and it helps other attorneys learn proper practices and procedures for immigration cases.

With this new software, practicing immigration attorneys won’t need to adjust their systems and procedures just to use it. They’ve already done that when buying into the Cookbook. Here, Greg and his team have already sold the processes. The software is simply a way to use current technology to implement those processes.

Developing Software as an Attorney

Software development for attorneys, then, is not really about building software. It’s about building processes. And, frankly, it’s about building better processes than the next attorney. Then, and only then, can a firm develop a successful application. Future users will have to see a need to use the system upon which the software is built. Otherwise, they may just develop something on their own.

Further Reading

Check out our Healthy Systems resources to learn more about developing processes and procedures for your firm. There, you’ll see how to build processes, document them, and implement them into your particular practice.

The post Monetizing Your Firm’s Internal Processes appeared first on Lawyerist.