Marketers using webinars for law firm growth are focused on highlighting attorneys’ expertise, answering the questions clients are asking to build trust and familiarity — and generate more leads and referrals.
Highlights
- Webinars put your firm’s expertise — and willingness to share that knowledge — on display, establishing credibility and trust with prospective clients (even if they don’t watch).
- Structuring webinar content around real questions from clients ensures higher engagement and relevance.
- A single live webinar keeps giving well beyond its broadcast date, making both an effective and cost-efficient tool for law firm growth.
Webinars have emerged as one of the most effective and underused tools available to law firms seeking sustainable growth. By combining real-time audience engagement with scalable content, a well-executed webinar can simultaneously build credibility, generate qualified leads and deepen existing client relationships. Just as speaking engagements, podcasts and videos can be repurposed, webinars also produce the raw materials for expanding your content library. And, the relatively low overhead expense of producing webinars, combined with the content opportunities they generate, means webinars can often achieve all these goals at a fraction of the cost of traditional outreach.
Following a few strategic tips will help you get the most out of the webinars to grow your law firm.
Why Webinars? For Law Firms, It’s a Natural Fit
Webinars have a high documented success rate in generating high-quality leads. Across industries, the data are particularly compelling for B2B fields. One of the interesting aspects of the legal profession is that its inherently educational nature sets up law firms to take advantage of the desire for expert tips and topical overviews that often drives interest in webinar registrations and post-event recording views across the board. This is true even in practice areas that cater directly to individual concerns, such as criminal defense or family law.
In addition, the foundation of trust that is central to an effective attorney-client relationship often begins with establishing an impression of trustworthiness with a potential client long before they book a consultation. In many cases, that preliminary feeling that a law firm or attorney is both knowledgeable and reliable can be the deciding factor in how a person in need of legal services decides to make a call, and which firm’s phone number they enter.
Whiule webinars are, obviously, not the sole means of creating this sense of trust, they can be an especially efficient one. Even for people who never personally participate “live” in a webinar your law firm offers, the description of topics and schedule of discussion sessions posted to your law firm’s website and social media accounts (please post this kind of information to your law firm website and social media accounts) can help to foster an initial impression that a) your attorneys are experts in their practice area and b) they are willing to share the benefits of their expertise.
Clients like to feel that any attorney with whom they are planning to work is competent and well-informed, of course; many of them, probably even most of them, also like to feel that the attorney is both willing and able to explain complex legal matters in a way that makes them digestible, without “talking down.” A webinar, or better yet, a series of webinars, gives your firm an ideal opportunity to put that willingness and ability on display.
Types of Webinar by Audience
There are two main types of webinars, divided by their intended audience. The first is a webinar tailored to the interests and concerns of other legal professionals, usually on a niche topic in which you are a true subject matter expert. Keep in mind that this type of webinar offers much more realistic benefit to attorneys who have documented expertise on the webinar’s topic that can be expected to exceed that of most other lawyers working in the same practice area. This reality limits the applicability of webinars aimed at your working peers somewhat; under the right circumstances, however, a collegial webinar can be a valuable tool for increasing the visibility of your profile and generating referrals.
The second type is less rarefied in its qualification requirements and more likely to generate direct bookings and inquiries. This is the kind of webinar you might host to provide a walk-through of common legal procedures in your practice area for curious members of the general public. Informational webinars on topics such as regulatory compliance and estate planning considerations can also perform very well with a general audience, whether they deal with legal procedures directly or only the factors, structured by law, that individuals or businesses may need to keep in mind.
If there have been recent legislative or regulatory changes in your practice area, a webinar organized as a guide on how to transition or how to adjust to the new status quo might serve the same essential function of putting you in front of potential clients in a way that establishes your authority.
From Conversations to Content: Repurposing Content to Maximize Webinars for Law Firm Growth
One thing I really love about webinars as a tool for law firm growth is that they truly are a gift that keeps on giving. With the right preparation and post-event strategy, a webinar can give your law firm leads not just from those who attend, or even those who watch recordings later, but from members of your core client demographic who never engage with the webinar itself. In the hands of an expert communicator, even the fact that the webinar exists can become a highly effective marketing tool.
How to Make the Most of Webinars for Law Firm Growth
To ensure the greatest benefit, start well in advance of the planned webinar event date or dates. Before deciding on format and schedule, strategize by developing questions your webinar will answer, and make sure those questions are based on real questions your law firm regularly receives from active clients or prospects in search of an attorney (not on what you or your attorneys would most like to talk about).
Take a hard look at the list of questions you come up with and consider:
- To understand the answers, what else would clients need to know?
- Realistically, how much of that background information do more than half of your clients already have when they walk through your door? More than three-quarters?
- Combining the questions and the needed background information, how much time would it take for you to provide thorough-but-digestible coverage? Is this a single session, a half-day event or a series of live sessions scheduled over two or three days?
The scope of coverage and the time investment feasible for both you and the participants will help you structure the webinar format. Another factor to consider is whether your law firm has multiple subject area experts. Scheduling a series of short sessions to showcase the individual expertise of your associates can be a useful way of organizing webinar topics and scheduling, if that framework fits your law firm’s roster. If you run a solo practice, then a series of sessions is still an option, but the showcase of multiple perspectives is not, unless, of course, you bring in referral partners such as accountants, consultants or other experts on your topic.
Once you have your topic, it’s time to bring in your audience. Here are a few webinar marketing basics to consider.
Best Practices to Advertise Your Webinar and Drive Growth
Your webinar’s success will not necessarily depend on the number of live participants. Watching webinars after the fact, on demand, is extremely common, especially in B2C contexts where many interested would-be registrants in the primary client base will likely not be able to take the time to participate during business hours. That said, most people who give presentations of any kind find it helpful to have at least a few people in their audience, and one of the “selling points” of a webinar is the opportunity it affords for those who do attend live to get their own questions answered in real time.
Most webinars start advertising 4 to 6 weeks in advance, and increase marketing in the two weeks leading up to the scheduled live webinar date. Place information about the upcoming event repeatedly on your law firm’s social media accounts and periodically via email newsletter.
Fee vs. Free
To actually get those live registrations, you need to advertise the webinar as an “upcoming event.” The fee-no-fee determination will be only one element in deciding how to present your upcoming webinar. Still, it is important because it helps determine whether the registration page needs to connect to a payment portal.
Consider whether you can feasibly charge a nominal registration fee, or if it will turn off potential clients. There is a case to be made that charging a fee may help to signal value (free resources, as you probably know, are all too often “gimmicks” that provide little to no practical benefit to their recipients). Collecting and documenting registration fees, however, can be cumbersome if your billing software is not set up to handle this kind of non-legal-service activity. Also, the rules of professional conduct for some state bar associations may place restrictions on when and how attorneys can, or cannot, charge for access to an educational event that is also their own advertising opportunity.
Linking and Hosting Notes
You definitely want to add a page for the webinar on your law firm website. This page may remain static until you are ready to upload recordings after the event, but it should include:
- When the live event will take place — date, day of the week, time and duration. (Don’t forget to specify time zone, especially if your firm handles federal issues!)
- Highlights of what will be covered (in each session, if applicable).
- An agenda (or link to an agenda) if warranted.
- How to register in advance.
- When and how the webinar recording(s) will be available to watch after the live event is over.
Make the Post-Mortem a Marketing After-Party
One of the many benefits of a webinar for law firm outreach is that it easily creates its own content (in the form of event recordings) and, at the same time, it is a source of multiple pieces of new, related content that can appear across multiple digital platforms. This kind of “double-dipping” is great not just because it is efficient in terms of content creation, but because it helps to ensure cohesive messaging by running the same thematic threads through your law firm’s presence in each place you use a piece of webinar-based content.
Some options I like for repurposing webinars as content include:
- Blog posts. With access to the slides you used for webinar talking points, your content team can create a series of blog posts building on your answer to each question your webinar addresses.
- Infographics. Most webinar presentations include statistics, checklists or other types of information that lend themselves well to infographics. Their visual nature makes infographics a compelling choice for social media posts. (Tip: Make sure your digital marketing agency or specialist is prepared to take a unified approach and schedule the infographics to run in your content calendar alongside other content that picks up on similar themes a few times per week, for at least two or three months from the date of your webinar.)
- Video clips. Full-length recordings of the live webinar (which you absolutely should have) are not the only way to use webinar video. Let your digital content team select clips and distribute them across your social platforms. Keep in mind that different platforms prioritize different lengths for video distribution, so your team may need to construct platform-specific clips. Even if this strategy adds to the video editing budget, it can still be more cost-effective than avoiding video or setting your account up for an algorithmic distribution penalty later on.
- Newsletter. Assuming you have already advertised the upcoming webinar through your law firm’s newsletter, webinars are a great tool for zero-party data collection. So, the week following the event is a good time to put all those new email addresses to use and put your law firm back on attendees’ radar with a follow-up “thank-you” and even a summary of high-engagement points. Be sure to email your full “subscriber” list, and include a link to the webinar page with recordings and instructions interested individuals might need for accessing the recorded content.
Some of your post-event content may generate responses that ask for clarification or pose follow-up questions. Substantive responses may or may not be feasible, depending on the complexity of the questions and the format of the platform in which they are submitted, but be sure to keep a tally of these questions to pass along to your digital marketing team. This kind of direct communication can often inspire new content that you already know will be of interest to your potential clients.
Track Results and Refine Your Strategy for Law Firm Growth
The lessons you learn from a webinar can help inform both future webinars and your overall strategy for law firm growth. Take a few minutes, the day of the event if possible, to jot down the aspects of the event that you feel went especially well, any questions you received that you wish you’d incorporated into your presentation, and any consistencies in the live audience responses. After a few weeks have gone by, review the communications you have received since, by email or social media, and take note of whether any patterns are emerging in response to the post-webinar content your law firm has been posting.
Use these data points to start brainstorming your next webinar to establish a cycle of preparation, presentation, feedback, refinement, and ultimately continued growth.
Law Firm Content Strategy FAQ
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