How many times have you gone to a law firm’s website and seen statistics that come from seemingly out of nowhere? No sources, no hyperlinks, nothing to back them up.

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon in the legal marketing industry. This is such a competitive field, and the drive to get more content out day after day often leads to marketing firms allowing less than stellar content to go to their client’s website. It is crucial to have not only well-written content on a law firm’s website, but also well-researched content. The data and statistics used on a law firm’s website matter, and they cannot come from out of nowhere.

At Blue Seven Content, we want to share our process for finding solid sources for content. We strive to provide good data for every law firm practice area page and law firm blog post that we write.

What Sources Should You Avoid?

We might as well start this short article with a discussion about what to avoid. Now, if you are a regular content writer for law firms, you will inevitably end up on websites like Nolo, FindLaw, AllLaw, Enjuris, and others.

Here’s the thing – these are not what you need to be citing in YOUR law firm blogs or practice area pages.

Why?

Well, first, there is always the chance that your readers will click your external link, end up on Nolo or one of the other pages, and never come back. We want you to understand that those pages exist solely to guide readers towards the attorneys listed on THEIR page. These other attorneys pay to have their pages linked to Nolo et al. If you aren’t paying to have your pages listed with these services, don’t give them YOUR potential clients. The readers who came to your page might get stuck in the labyrinth of those paid services.

So, can you just use their data without attribution?

No. That’s just wrong on many different levels. Many of the writers at Blue Seven Content come from research backgrounds, and we never take information without attribution.

Do you know what you can do, though?

On most Nolo, AllLaw, and FindLaw pages, you will see that they source their material. Sometimes this is through hyperlinks, and other times they provide sources at the bottom of the page. You can use this to go directly to their source. If their source is solid, use it for your page.

The same can be said for using other law firm’s statistics and data. Again, the last thing you want to do is provide a link on your law firm’s pages to another law firm. That would defeat the point altogether. However, if the other law firm has content writers that do their job well, you may be able to find the sources that they used to come up with their data.

Where Does Your Information Come From?

At Blue Seven Content, we encourage our writers to infuse their writing with data and statistics that back up the content. We know that this is not always going to be possible for every single page. For example, while it may be easy to find how many car accidents happened in the state of California during a recent reporting year, we also know that California does not publish its divorce statistics. That said, just about every law firm landing page, law firm practice area page, and law firm blog post will give writers the ability to include data and statistics.

When our writers are looking for sources to use for their pages, we encourage them to only use information obtained from reputable places. You can usually not go wrong when you are using .gov, .org, and .edu websites. Statistics from government organizations, research organizations, or universities are usually well researched and good to source from. Additionally, legitimate news agencies are also good sources to use, particularly if you are looking for current events to mix into your law farm’s blog posts. That said, we understand how polarizing the use of news agencies is in this country right now. You’ll have to use your discretion about whether or not to include information from certain news agencies.

Let us suppose we have to write a car accident page for Philadelphia. A good place to start would be a quick Google search for “Pennsylvania car accident statistics.” One of the first results that pop up outside of the ad section at the top of the page is from www.penndot.gov. This is the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s official website. When you click that, you will see a list of all of the annual reports dating back to the 1980s for PA. When you go into the most recent report, you will find a plethora of data that can be used for your car accident pages as well as your pages related to truck accidents, pedestrian accidents, bicycle accidents, motorcycle accidents, drunk driving accidents, and more. Just about every state has annual reports just like this one.

Citing Your Sources

We have previously written about the debate surrounding external links on a law firm’s website. Our team has no problem including external links so long as they go to reputable sites that back up the information that we are putting out there for readers. We think this increases the authority of your page, and we do not believe the naysayers who claim that this will drive readers away from your law firm.

In general, hyperlinking your source into the page will be sufficient. You can do this by highlighting keywords that relate to the topic inside of a sentence, right-clicking your mouse, and scrolling down to the “link” button. You should see the link that you have copied show up there. It is important to choose which words you hyperlink carefully, and we always encourage our writers to avoid hyperlinking the first word of a sentence. For example, number one here is how we typically hyperlink our sources. Number 2 here is what we try to avoid:

  1. During the latest reporting year across the Commonwealth, 299 people died as a result of alcohol-related crashes, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
  • During the latest reporting year across the Commonwealth, 299 people died as a result of alcohol-related crashes, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

Reach out to Blue Seven Content Today

The team at Blue Seven Content has extensive experience handling all types of content needs for law firms, including the following:

We can help craft the content that draws readers to your page and keeps them there. You can contact us for a free consultation by clicking here or calling us at 843-580-3158. Our team is ready to talk to you today.

Written by Allen Watson – CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Seven Content

Published by Blue Seven Content

One thought on “Finding Statistics and Data for Your Law Firm Blogs and Practice Area Pages”

  1. Pingback: A Law Firm Blog Post Strategy - Will It Provide Value? - Blue Seven Content

Leave a Reply