The future of the law firm website: your website will become bigger, more important and more focused on the needs of individual attorneys.

• Author: Algieri, Robert
• Position: Reprint

This article was originally published in The National Law Journal, September 2011.

After a half-century of remarkable stability and steady growth, the legal industry got hit by a ton of bricks called the Great Recession. Several years after the initial shock, it is now clear that this downturn wasn't just a momentary blip; rather, it was a sizable shift in the business landscape. As a result, law firms are being forced to reconsider many aspects of how they do business.

What does all this mean for legal marketing? Lots.

Throughout the past two years, my company, Great Jakes, has studied the Great Recession's impact on legal marketing and law firm websites. Our conclusion is that the law firm website is about to undergo a little revolution. Specifically, we expect law firm websites to:

1. Become more valuable--Websites will rival face-to-face meetings in terms of their importance in business development.

2. Become bigger--Websites will grow to accommodate much more content.

3. Focus more on attorneys--Law firm websites will increasingly cater to the business development needs of individual attorneys.

In short, a law firm's website will no longer be considered supplemental marketing collateral. Rather, it will increasingly be thought of as a marketing platform that is central to all aspects of a firm's marketing activity (online and offline). This may seem a radical notion for some firms. However, it is simply a natural reaction to major changes that have occurred in the business environment Let me explain.

Your Website Will Become More Valuable.

Websites already play a vital role in law firm business development. Numerous studies reveal this fact. However, I strongly believe that they will become even more important--nearly as important as face-to-face meetings. Why? Because face-to-face meetings will happen increasingly less.

A Cultural Shift

The legal business has traditionally been very locally focused, with clients and the firm often located within 25 miles of one another However, that's now changing. The Internet and related technologies have made it much more practical to work long distance. But that's the least of it--our culture is also changing.

One hundred years of the telephone, coupled with 15 years of the Internet and five years of Facebook, has made a large cumulative impact on the way we relate to one another. We've all gotten used to managing long-distance "virtual" relationships--especially the under-40 crowd And as...