WEB PAGES OF ST. LOUIS LAW FIRMS - Dennis Kennedy

From Issue #4 of Legal Technology Strategies http://www.nettechinc.com/lts.htm (December 1, 1999)

I thought it would be instructive to look at the forty largest law firms in St. Louis to see how they are using the Web. As a rule of thumb, this list includes firms of about 15 attorneys and above and includes out-of-town law firms with an appreciable St. Louis office.

My method was to run two separate searches on "St. Louis" and "law firm" (both terms in quotes so that the search engines looks for the specific phrases) on the AltaVista search engine. I chose this approach because it seemed like the way most people would look for web pages of St. Louis law firms. One search was done in early November and the other about two weeks later. I looked only at the first 50 results.

The first search surprised me. Only three law firm web pages were included in the top 50 results. Number one on the list was a "white pages" home page for the law office of Michael P. Gunn (http://www.inlink.com/~mpgpc/business.html). This page is not a web site in the classic sense. It has been up for a few years, though, and gives Mike’s address and phone number, but no e-mail address.

The second law firm site, the site of Greensfelder Hemker & Gale (www.greensfelder.com), came in at number 13. This firm is one of the larger firms in St. Louis (roughly 90 lawyers).

Number 14 deserves special mention. It was for Cherry Republic’s gift page. That page contains a quote from St. Louis attorney, James Hullverson, Jr. commenting on how much he liked the cherry products he’s ordered.

The only other law firm site in the top 50 was that of Ziercher & Hocker (www.ziercher.com), a medium-sized firm, and I’m not sure that the page is out of the beta testing stage.

The rest of the top 50 was dominated by St. Louis attorney Brad Young’s columns from the PC Journal (a local computer newspaper). A few of my web pages sneaked in to the list, but most of the hits had little to do with web pages of St. Louis law firms.

As a technical matter that will echo some of my concerns about search engines that I mentioned last month, these results are curious because a good number of St. Louis firms with web sites not listed use meta tags that include both the keywords "St. Louis" and "law firm."

Two weeks later, I ran the same search. Michael Gunn held on to the number one slot. Greensfelder moved up to number 8. Cherry Republic kept pace at number 9. Ziercher & Hocker moved up to 30. At number 40, there was a link to the Missouri Lawyers Weekly (www.missourilaw.com) list of web sites of Missouri law firms – a useful site that needs some updating. Number 45 was the site of The Lakin Law Firm (www.lakinlaw.com/int.htm) in Wood River, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River. Number 46 was the web site of Cynthia B. Louis, P.C. (www.familylegal.com) in St. Charles, Missouri, part of the metro St. Louis area. Number 47 was Thompson Coburn (www.thompsoncoburn.com), the second largest firm located in St. Louis. Number 50 was The Bent Law Firm, whose web page I could not reach.

It was an interesting experiment that you might want to repeat from time to time, especially if you want to test the effectiveness of the placement of your page.

I then put together a list of the 40 largest firms in St. Louis and tracked down domain names and web sites, a surprisingly difficult task.

The Summer 1998 issue of AmLaw Tech magazine indicates that 86 of the top 100 U.S. law firms have web sites. It appears that well over 60% of the National Law Journal’s Top 250 law firms have web sites, based on some statistics that are not too current.

How does St. Louis stack up?

Sixteen (40%) of the top 40 St. Louis firms have web sites. Another five have what I would call a "placeholder", "signboard" or "under construction sign" web page at their base URL. It is reasonable to conclude that those five firms have sites under development. I know at least one other firm with a site under active development without a placeholder page. The remaining eighteen firms have no web site and, in some cases, have no domain name.

Of the ten largest firms in St. Louis, I found seven firms with web sites.

From earlier research I’ve done for seminars, I am aware of roughly twenty smaller firms and solos in the St. Louis area with web sites.

With the notable exception of some of the out-of-town firms with St. Louis branches, the larger St. Louis law firms have web sites that date back, at most, to about one year ago. Also, with a few exceptions, most of the St. Louis law firm sites are first generation sites.

But enough statistics, let me give some awards. Here are my first annual awards for St. Louis law firms using web sites. Envelope, please.

Best Large Firm Web Site: By a large margin, Thompson Coburn (www.thompsoncoburn.com). This site grew out of the firm’s intranet site, an interesting and effective approach. They were able to work out some ideas on the intranet and develop content before coming to the Web. They also involved their marketing people in the site – a wise move. Interestingly, the site was designed first as a site for recruiting. The recruiting area is a pretty good model for the recruiting section of your site. The site has good content and seems to be updated regularly. There is, however, plenty of room for improvement. E-mail links are hard to find and articles are not linked to authors. While there are newsletters, there appear to be no e-mail versions of the newsletters. Text is a little hard to read on the pebbled background and graphics are slow on a 28.8 modem. Surprisingly, they link to Martindale Hubbell biographies rather than using custom biographies, limiting the amount of biographical information provided and, more important, allowing anyone who clicks on a bio link to leave the site without having an apparent way to get back (other than the back button in your browser).

Best Small Firm Site: Christine Gilsinan (www.solaw.com). Add a generous helping of content to a nice design and definite focus and you have a winner. While it might be help to have a son at Harvard designing and maintaining your page, content is the key here. Chris has her articles and seminar materials on the site. She also has helpful links to resources. The site is a valuable resource on appellate issues, which Chris wants to focus on, and gives you plenty of reasons to consider her an authority and hire her. Good design principles throughout.

Best Content, Large Firm: Senniger Powers Leavitt & Roedel (www.senniger.com). Both for the content itself and because the site focuses on content. The site has FAQs (sets of "frequently asked questions" and answers) for a number of areas of intellectual property law. The background makes the text a little difficult to read, unfortunately, and I’d like to be able to e-mail the authors of the FAQs directly. Good, focused content, generously given.

Best Content, Small Firm: Tie between Christine Gilsinan (www.solaw.com) and Crowe & Shanahan (www.crowe-shanahan.com). Crowe & Shanahan has great resources on Social Security disability issues. Chris’s seminar materials and other resources are quite helpful. Both sites, by the way, illustrate how a highly focused site can really help your practice and give you a reputation as an expert.

Best of the Rest, Large Firms:

Armstrong Teasdale Schlafly & Davis (www.atsd.com) – A very strong debut that appeared in the last few weeks. It has "Legal Guides" on a number of subjects. Graphics load slowly, but it is generally a text intensive site. Pretty good content, with plenty of ways to evolve. How about putting the firm’s address and phone number on the front page?

Bryan Cave (www.bryancavellp.com) – This site has improved over time and gives the sense of being worked on regularly. Decent content, but needs a search engine in its current configuration. Navigation and usage seem a little difficult. E-mail links are used very sparingly. For example, there is a "Technology Client Service Group," a big plus, but no direct e-mail link, an annoying minus. I also quibble with some of the design decisions. Bryan Cave is one of the larger firms in the country; I’m surprised that they don’t opt for something better than the fuzzy black-and-white photos on the attorney biographies. As I said, though, this is a site that seems to improve over time.

Evans & Dixon (www.evans-dixon.com) – To be fair, I know that there is a major revamping of this site underway, possibly to a database-driven site. The design ideas, content and execution of this site are quite good. It’s just fallen out-of-date and visibly so. If it were current, it would have given Thompson Coburn a run for the money.

Senniger Powers Leavitt & Roedel (www.senniger.com) - Content is king. IP firms have a little higher standard to reach than the rest of law firms. Plenty of room for improvement, but a good content-based site. Bonus point for wisely changing domain name to Senniger.com from splr.com.

Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal (www.sonnenschein.com) - A Chicago-based firm with a major St. Louis presence. The overall site is good. Info on St. Louis or other branches is too difficult to find. One reason people visit a law firm web page is to get an address or phone number. Good content. Lots of articles, but no linkage to and from authors. A danger to avoid: promoting the firm’s Y2K conference on the front page is a huge plus; keeping it on the front page for two weeks after it is over and still referring to it in the future tense undercuts all the benefit.

Honorable Mention, Large Firm: Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin (www.bspmlaw.com) – Blackwell Sanders, based in Kansas City, was one of the early pioneers on the Internet, with a significant web page at least three years ago. After the recent merger with the St. Louis firm of Peper Martin, the web site is being revamped and I couldn’t judge it. In the past, they have had a pretty solid page (Redstreet (www.redstreet.com) gave it a rating of 15 out of 30). My assumption is that the revamped page will rate in the upper tier. The current site has a clever animation promoting their mergers & acquisitions practice. The first time I saw it, it was painfully slow. The next time, not too bad.

Honorable Mention, Large Firm: Gallop Johnson & Neuman (www.gjn.com) – Gets a special mention for making the effort to promote the page with a large mailing to St. Louis attorneys. Remember: a page does you no good if no one knows it’s out there. The current site is clearly a first generation site. There are some good ideas, but some of the design and layout should be rethought.

Best of the Rest, Small Firm:

Crowe & Shanahan (www.crowe-shanahan.com) – Could use some updating, but you always win with me on content.

Kramer & Frank (lawusa.com) – Don Kramer is a St. Louis Internet pioneer who had the foresight to buy banner ads on search engines that came up every time a search was made using the word "lawyer" or "attorney". Very smart. His firm’s site focuses on collections and is a well-done brochure site with access to some interesting services.

The Lakin Law Firm (www.lakinlaw.com): From the other side of the river (Mississippi River), this site has been around for a while. It’s more commercial than informational, but the heavy use of pictures make it seem so personal and friendly.

William T. Quick (icon-stl.net/~quick/) – A good solo practitioner site. Good focused content for family law with the promise of more to come.

Steinberg & Steinberg (www.steinberglaw.com) – Alan is a regular here and I’ll admit to a little bias, but he and Les, his son, have had this site for several years and it’s a solid example of a small firm site that can promote you and your legal practice. When you do articles and seminars, you have instant content for your site. Alan may still be the only St. Louis attorney to use sound on his site.

Lessons to Learn

Here are a few lessons I learned from this survey:

1. The bar is still low. As Armstrong Teasdale shows, you can still debut a web site that will comfortable make it into the top tier of law firm sites.
   
2. There is a need to move to second generation web sites. Too many sites look like afterthoughts and are not integrated into a total marketing approach.
   
3. There is a lack of client focus in the sites. Contact information is generally not readily available and e-mail links are used far too sparingly.
   
4. There is too much focus on graphics and not enough on content and making that content usable and valuable.
   
5. With the exception of a few regions in the country, my guess is that someone duplicating my survey in other metropolitan areas would find similar results, although I’d expect to find a few more truly innovative sites.

And there you have it. The first comprehensive look at St. Louis web sites. It’s always important to know what’s out there and how to improve on it. I look forward to seeing how sites develop in 1999 and to seeing some more firms out there.

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