By now, every lawyer has a website.
Every website has photographs.
Every website tells how great you and your firm are.
But how do you really distinguish yourself from all the lawyers who compete with you on a daily basis?

In most jurisdictions, including New York, you are not permitted to badmouth any other attorney. Nor can you compare yourself to another law firm or attorney by name. How then can a prospective consumer make an educated decision about which attorney is right for them if attorneys cannot objectively compare themselves to other similar attorneys?

If you haven’t guessed by now, the answer is with “Video.”
Video allows you to be yourself. It allows the viewer to see you, hear you, and begin to trust you before they even pick up the phone to call you. So how will that distinguish you from everybody else? Simple. Just be yourself.

In the “old days” a lawyer would distinguish themselves in the yellow pages by offering the following:
“Free parking,” “Easy credit card payments,” “Free consultation,” “No fee if we don’t win,” “We’ve recovered millions.”

After a while, all yellow pages ads said the same exact thing. From a consumer’s standpoint, it would be difficult, if not impossible to distinguish one lawyer from another simply from reading those ads.

Video allows you to explain.
Video allows you to ask questions and to answer them.
Video allows you to educate your potential clients. No other form of media allows you to do this as cost efficiently as video.

Conclusion:

If you truly want to distinguish yourself, get onto video today.

About Gerry

Gerry is a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer in practice for over 20 years. He has produced and created over 170 educational and informative videos to help consumers understand how lawsuits work in the State of New York. Gerry created the Lawyers’ Video Studio to help laywers get onto video. If you’d like help getting onto video, give me a call. I can help you. If you simply need guidance and help with creating your own video, I’m available for consultation on an hourly basis. If you want an all in one turnkey system, I can do that too. What are you waiting for? Take that first step to star in your own video today. It will be the best return on investment you can make. I guarantee it.

To get onto video, call me at 516-487-8207 or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com- I welcome your call.

The next blooper in a series of attorney bloopers. Out-takes during video shoots. Some lions and monkeys thrown in too.

I get requests every day to follow someone I have never heard of on Twitter. I then scroll down to see how many followers they have and how many people they are following. Many of these people have followers ranging from 5000 all the way up to 75,000 followers.

Here’s my question: these people don’t know me, and I certainly don’t know them. When I tweet about attorney video, I am 100% certain that they will never read my Tweet.

The race to accumulate as many followers as possible and compete with the next person to see who can have the most followers, solely to claim the “prize” of saying you have the most followers in any particular field serves absolutely no purpose from an attorney marketing standpoint.

I strongly believe that if you are going to develop a regular following, you need to offer quality content and not seek to compete on quantity. The number of people following you has no bearing on your success.

Want to be popular? Go ahead and click that “follow” button. Just remember most of those people don’t want to know what you have to say nor do they care what you have to say. Focus instead on quality.

I like when a lawyer gives helpful information in their title. It encourages me to click on their video. Before watching the video however, I look to the sidebar to see how they describe their video. Attorney Mark Humphreys gives limited information, but still provides his phone number and Web site for easy contact.

As soon as the video starts to play, he introduces himself. I like that and he’s off to a good start. “If you or your business has been harmed by a big insurance company, there’s a good chance we can help you make it right.” Ok, I’m listening.

“Keep in mind that insurance companies make money when they don’t pay a claim.” Interesting information. He then offers viewers five tips on what to do when your claim is denied. Even better. So what’s the problem with the video?

Click here to find out.

Technolawyer publisher and online video producer Neil Squillante has some interesting comments about this video:
“If he regularly beats insurance companies, he should have enough money for a well-tailored suit.” Read the full review to find out what he means.

I see people creating attorney “videos” with nothing more than a slide show with accompanying audio. Many times these glorified slide shows don’t even show a picture of the attorney who is talking. Instead, they show photos of crashed cars, people in wheelchairs, the outside of a hospital, an ambulance or a police car.

If you really want to create a bond with your website viewer, you’ll skip the slide show and create a real, honest-to-goodness video of yourself. Using a real camcorder.

A viewer does not want to see non-descript photos, with some voice in the background. They want to see the lawyer, they want to hear the lawyer, and they want to feel confident that you know what you’re talking about. A slide-show animation with your voice in the background just doesn’t cut it.

Your best bet? Use the web to your advantage. Use the video; use the audio; and give your viewer what they want to see and hear. Doing that will far surpass any slide show.

I see people creating attorney “videos” with nothing more than a slide show with accompanying audio. Many times these glorified slide shows don’t even show a picture of the attorney who is talking. Instead, they show photos of crashed cars, people in wheelchairs, the outside of a hospital, an ambulance or a police car.

If you really want to create a bond with your website viewer, you’ll skip the slide show and create a real, honest-to-goodness video of yourself. Using a real camcorder.

A viewer does not want to see non-descript photos, with some voice in the background. They want to see the lawyer, they want to hear the lawyer, and they want to feel confident that you know what you’re talking about. A slide-show animation with your voice in the background just doesn’t cut it.

Your best bet? Use the web to your advantage. Use the video; use the audio; and give your viewer what they want to see and hear. Doing that will far surpass any slide show.

I am amazed at the volume of traffic on Twitter about people who market to attorneys, and attorneys who actively market using the same old screaming method and jargon found in 30 second TV commercials that lawyers have always used.

Here are some examples as of 6/24/09
“Lawyer marketing with Twitter”
“Lawyer marketing with Facebook and MySpace”
“Injured? Call me”
“The Little Black Book” of lawyer marketing”
“A Lawyer’s Guide to Creating a Marketing Habit in 21 Days”
“Should Your Firm be Tweeting? Social Media Marketing 101 4 Attorney Marketing Online”
“New York personal injury lawyer marketing (press release)”

I don’t get it. If all these lawyers are busy marketing to potential clients, who is left to practice law and work on cases that are already active?

I also don’t understand why these lawyers who are actively promoting themselves continue to shout the same annoying message that have turned off the public for years. Stop yelling about your services. Instead, tell your viewers how you have helped others. Then, when you’ve done that, put it in a video.

Ken Hardison

North Carolina Personal Injury attorney Ken Hardison and President of the Personal Injury Lawyers Marketing and Management Association interviewed Gerry about why video for lawyers is so important. When the audio podcast is available I’ll post it here.

Just had an article published (June 2009 edition) in the Nassau Lawyer titled “How Lawyers Can Use Video Effectively.”

You’d think all I did was create attorney bloopers. Not. These are bite-sized misspoken words as I’m trying to get my marketing message onto video.

It’s a neat little 32 second diversion.