Throughout the Covid pandemic, I’ve been delighted to see how usually legal professionals write alerts and newsletters to tell shoppers and prospects of latest instances and developments. Having had the chance to learn dozens of such supplies throughout practices and workplaces, I’d wish to supply 5 prime suggestions that would considerably enhance their worth, impression, and reader engagement:
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Write like Folks journal, not a treatise.
Even refined readers desire a lightweight skim to a dense slog. Use brief sentences, brief paragraphs, small phrases, colloquial language, no legalese or case citations. Write such as you’re explaining the difficulty to a sensible center schooler and also you’ll have happier, extra engaged readers. Assist them skim with informative headings, daring kind, and so on. This is applicable to all advertising communications, together with weblog posts, LinkedIn articles and standing updates, and so on.
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Hold it brief.
Immediately’s Web readers need one web page, max. Supply easy, sensible recommendation to assist them get monetary savings, keep out of bother, or do their job higher and so they’ll sit up for your subsequent alert. Think about―they don’t want official case names or citations, or the prolonged formal title of the court docket or district it’s in. And don’t repeat numbers in parentheses, like “three (3).”
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Seize them with a easy, daring headline.
Seize their consideration and creativeness with a brief, highly effective, helpful headline. Your readers are busy, and so they might get 100+ emails a day and 50 different legislation agency alerts and newsletters. Your alert is an interruption, the headline and Topic line should compel them to cease what they’re doing instantly and skim our materials. Suppose Buzzfeed.
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Get to the purpose.
In the event you don’t seize them within the very first sentence, they received’t learn the second. Inform them what you’re writing about and why they need to care. Make the primary sentence so easy, clear, and informative that readers exclaim, “Hey, this seems to be actually helpful―I wish to preserve studying!”
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Present evaluation, not data.
Don’t merely repeat or summarize what occurred―inform them exactly what they need to DO about it. Keep in mind, you’re a legislation agency, not CNN, the Tribune, or Nationwide Regulation Journal. Our goal shoppers can acquire the essential details a few new court docket resolution or piece of laws extra rapidly and totally from a significant print, TV, or on-line information supply. We’re the authorized specialists, we should present particular, clear, actionable recommendation. That is the worth we offer.
© 2021 Fishman AdvertisingNationwide Regulation Evaluation, Quantity XI, Quantity 188