The Question
Should I hire FindLaw to do my law firm’s internet marketing?
My Answer
I’m going to say the absolute answer is 100% no. Do not hire FindLaw to do your internet marketing.
A Conversation With A Findlaw Employee
A couple of months ago, somebody from FindLaw who actually is in their internet marketing department reached out to me and they messaged me because they wanted to find out about referring clients to me.
I wish I had recorded the conversation. I’d like to reach out to this guy again and see if he’ll do an anonymous conversation with a FindLaw employee. He said he had clients that he’s developed relationships with and he knows how bad FindLaw is and how they just absolutely do not do a good job for their clients.
The Evidence
And if you don’t believe me, search your “city”, followed by “DUI attorney” or “personal injury attorney” or “divorce lawyer,” and take a look at all the pages on the first page of Google. And 99 times out of 100, there’s not a single FindLaw site to be found… because they’re crap. They suck.
What Findlaw Does
FindLaw, is one of those companies that promise you the world. They put your website on a proprietary platform. So if you leave, you have to pay them to take your website with you even though, you’ve already paid them to build the website and design it.
A lot of times, they have duplicate content and we’ve gotten clients out of FindLaw contracts because of this. We ran one of those clients’ website through Copyscape. He was in Orange County, California, and we found another law firm in St. Louis or somewhere that had his exact website content, word for word.
The only thing different was the law firm’s name and his name. It was just ridiculous. And he had paid a lot of money to have this content written.
And by the way, a lot of times, you’ll pay a lot of money to FindLaw and have content written and then find out later when you try to leave that you don’t even own the content.
So they’re just a horrible company to work with. They’ve got thousands and thousands of clients and there’s no way that they can give you what you need to actually be successful.
What The Insider Told Me
And as I said, I had a conversation with this FindLaw employee, and he was telling me that his managers, who oversee the SEO side of things, have absolutely no clue what they’re doing with SEO.
There’s no strategy. It’s just thrown together, and most of their clients don’t get results. So now he has FindLaw clients that he works with that he’s trying to refer to other people because he’s developed a relationship with them and he doesn’t want them to get screwed.
How My Company Came About
That’s the same reason my company even exists. My partner used to work for, not FindLaw, but a company that’s now owned by FindLaw. She used to be the national sales director.
When she realized how bad their products were, she had a moral epiphany. She decided, “Yeah, I’m finished, I’m not selling this garbage to lawyers.”
I think the last straw was when she sold some ten-thousand-dollar package and she realized that this guy was never going to get a return on his investment.
And she’d been doing that over and over again and not realizing that. But once she realized that, she actually refunded his money, his $10,000 — which I can’t imagine they were happy about. It’s criminal what they do. It’s ridiculous. So, do not use FindLaw. Absolutely do not use FindLaw.