Proactive online reputation management is something that all professionals should be considering, no matter what field in which they work. Just take a look back through the archives of the ReputationDefender Blog. Over the past year, we have talked about the importance of reputation management for teachers, realtors, and even contractors. One area we haven’t talked about, however, is the legal field. So, is reputation management important for attorneys? You can bet your Juris Doctorate it is, and today we’re going to explain why.
Attorneys, perhaps more than any other professional besides doctors, rely on their reputations to find success in their career. This is especially true if you are an attorney working in private practice, where your name is literally tied to your professional identity. That being the case, imagine the kind of problems that a disgruntled client or cutthroat competitor could cause if they were to launch an all-out attack on your name. How much business would you stand to lose if the first Google result for your name was an anonymous blog post calling you a liar or a cheat? We’re guessing the answer is a lot.
To prevent this from happening, it is important to promote your positive reputation on the web and develop a strong buffer against cyber attacks. Check out these five tips to help you figure out how.
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1) Own Your Own Domain (Plus Variations)
It’s a good bet that you already have an online presence via your law firm’s website or, if you have a private practice, your own private homepage. If you do have a website already, you should work to leverage it for the maximum reputation management value by filling it with strong, search-engine optimized content about your professional history, education, and experience. You should also consider how your URL (the web address of your website) is constructed. For example, if you are Attorney Joe Johnson and you are operating the private practice Johnson Law Group, LLC, you may use the name of your practice as the URL, i.e. JohnsonLawGroup.com.
However, you should also look into setting up websites for other possible URL’s such as JoeJohnson.com, JoeJohnsonAttorney.com, and JoeJohnsonLawyer.com. If you don’t have time to build out these websites separately, you can simply redirect visitors to your primary homepage. In this way, you can help ensure that your name will be protected in multiple incarnations and be available for multiple search queries.
2) Share Your Expertise
On your way to becoming a licensed attorney, you probably spent a lot of sleepless nights poring over your thousand-page textbooks. Don’t let that effort, nor the money you spent on law school, go to waste when you’re not actively working with a client. Setting up a personal blog, or contributing to other blogs focused on your legal specialty, is a good way of not only demonstrating your expertise, but taking up another position in your Google search results. Additionally, if you can secure a regular position as a commentator at a widely-read blog, or if you can turn your own blog into a go-to resource for legal scholars, you are vastly increasing your odds of bringing in new clients.
The important thing to remember about blogging as an attorney, however, is to be careful about offering specific legal advice. If possible, focus on broader legal analysis related to your expertise. To offer more direct advice, provide a link to your primary homepage, or give your contact information in your byline.
3) Own Your Profile On Lawyer Review Sites
Google ranks consumer review sites very highly, a fact of life that small business owners of all kinds have had to learn. For attorneys with positive reviews, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and could even mean an increase in clients. However, one bad review, especially if it is the only review, can cause significant problems for your online reputation.
As the web has become more and more niche-driven, a number of profession-specific review sites have popped up. For attorneys, some of the most well-known review sites include Avvo, Martindale-Hubbell, and LawyerRatingz.com. Avvo and Martindale both allow attorneys to claim their profiles and add content to help demonstrate their expertise and experience. On Avvo, attorneys can also use the website to answer questions and give general legal advice, which can also help positively promote their reputation online. While it is possible for unscrupulous reviewers to game the system and skew ratings, by joining a review website, you can more effectively manage the blowback from a negative review.
4) Put Those Research Skills to Good Use
In law school you learned how to research. As a licensed attorney, you can use this valuable skill to research your own name on Google and other search engines to keep track of how you’re appearing in search results. Staying on top of news about you online is one of the most important things you can do to help prevent negative stories from spreading too quickly. A simple way of monitoring your name on the web is to set up a Google news alert for your name or the name of your practice.
Of course, there’s more to searching the web than a simple vanity search. At ReputationDefender, we developed MyReputation to scour the web for any and all information about our customers online. If you want to really know what people are saying about you online, MyReputation is the best way of finding out.
5) Don’t Forget to Use Discretion
Assuming that you take our advice and begin proactively using web tools to defend and manage your reputation online, you should always remember that what you put online will be there forever (or at least you should think of it that way). If you are blogging, use discretion about the information you are sharing. Obviously, this means no talking about your clients and doing the best to keep too much of your personal brand from slipping into your professional identity.
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