Anatomy of the Perfect Attorney Biography Design
By Stephanie Ashman on January 23, 2023 in Web Design
Create the Ideal Attorney Bio for Your Practice
Attorney biographies are a great opportunity to make a strong first impression and connect with potential clients. Depending on your target client-base, the design style you choose may vary. However, there are several key components across the board that should be included to create the perfect attorney bio. With a well-designed biography, you can introduce yourself in a manner that gives a complete picture of your practice areas, your experience, and potentially shared interests and values that could be the deciding factor for a potential client to reach out for your services.
The best biography designs deliver content cleanly while optimizing the use of space and imagery to appeal to your target client. You can see some of our top 50 attorney bio designs here. You may prefer a simple and straightforward design for ease of navigation, or you may opt for a bolder, more visually captivating design to stand apart from your competition. Regardless of the style you choose, focus on delivering the key content elements that matter most to your potential client, while remaining consistent with your brand.
Check out an example of one of our favorite attorney bio designs – with a step by step breakdown of the elements and what makes it so successful overall- to get a sense of how to create your quintessential attorney bio design. The sample attorney bio is from the site we created for the BMK Attorneys.
Attorney Photos
Choose a photograph that captures who you are and how you want to be perceived by clients. The location, style, and general impression that you want to portray with your picture will likely depend on the type of law you practice and who you generally serve. Whether you want to appear professional or more casual, intimidating or approachable – one thing is consistently important: it is worth the investment to have professional photographs taken for your website. Put your best face forward to connect with a potential client.
Your photo style is also an important choice. Our most commonly used styles are boxed, wide shot or a cutout photo. The versatility of a cutout photo makes this option one of our more popular photo styles. There are opportunities to change the background behind the attorney photo and even for the photo to be used on a variety of mediums, including print and social media.
Contact Information
Perfecting your vCard is an important step for presenting potential clients with your contact information. However, it should not be the only step taken. It is important to make it as easy as possible for a potential client to get in touch with you and your office. This could mean providing your assistant’s name and contact information (email address, phone extension, etc.), or it could mean providing your email address to reach you more directly. In addition, including your contact information at the very top of the page takes the guesswork out of locating the best way to get in touch.
vCards
A vCard, also known as a VCF (Virtual Contact File), is a virtual business card. Whether you are trying to connect with other attorneys who may become referral sources or potential clients who want to be able to easily contact you at a more convenient time, a vCard is the key to accessibility. They can be imported effortlessly and electronically into address books via an icon or link for downloading. Your vCard link should be easily noticed by someone scrolling your attorney bio page, and all of your vCard information should be up to date, accurate, and clear for importing purposes.
Print PDF
A much needed add-on, the Print PDF option allows users to download a PDF version of your entire attorney biography page. While you can simply click the print button, the structure of the webpage may be lost. With the Print PDF functionality, a perfectly laid out version of the attorney biography will be exported for easy sharing and printing.
Biographical Narrative
Headlines and imagery catch the attention of your potential client, but the meat of your bio page – the biographical narrative – is what keeps their attention and turns interest into action. The narrative gives your prospective client an overview of who you are beyond bullet points of things you’ve done and places you’ve been. Treat the narrative as your first chance to communicate with a potential client during their vetting process.
It’s important to touch on your background and some select accomplishments, but you should also include information that will speak directly to the needs of your client. This will differ, depending whether you work in consumer-focused practices (i.e., personal injury, family law, etc.) or predominantly with institutional clients. If you are speaking to consumers, use the narrative to show them what you are like to work with and how you have been able to serve clients in the past. If you are speaking to more sophisticated, corporate clients or even other attorneys, your narrative should emphasize your accomplishments, legal philosophy, and even your roots and connections in the legal community.
Practice Areas and Industries
There are a variety of ways to present your practice areas and industries served. However you choose to do it, linking practice areas and industries to the attorneys who service them is an easy way to increase the likelihood that a potential client will choose to hire you for their specific legal needs. You are offering a service, and helping a potential client to better understand the services you provide is a great way to establish confidence in your knowledge, experience, and skills.
Credentials
You are a human being, not a list of achievements, and a potential client needs to see that in your bio. That said, they still need to know that you have the necessary credentials to represent them. They don’t need to be front and center, but your education and admissions may be relevant to a potential client and should be visible or easily referenced in your attorney bio. Clients will want to know that you are admitted to try cases in the relevant jurisdiction, and some may even be persuaded to hire you specifically because you share an alma mater.
Activities
Another list that may be useful at convincing a potential client to take the next step to contact you is what you do outside of the office or the courtroom. “Activities” can include so many things and come under a variety of headings and subheadings (professional activities, community service, civic activities, and speaking engagements – just to name a few). You may prefer to keep it brief and simple, or you may want to list out all of the activities you engage in that may build confidence in you our connect you to your potential client outside of their immediate legal need. What you choose to include will depend on your target client base, as well as your level of engagement both in and outside of the legal community.
Cases
In some cases, specific examples of your work may help tip the scales in your favor with a prospective client. Including brief descriptions of representative matters, recent or notable settlements or verdicts, or noteworthy transactions will show a potential client that you have the experience and past success to instill confidence that you are the best choice to represent them in their legal matter. This can be included as a tab on your main attorney page or as a section within the main attorney page (at the bottom, off to the side, etc.).
Overall
It’s important to make sure that your page is cohesive, easy to navigate, and appealing as a whole – not just in parts. Take a look at the full attorney bio page for Michael R. Williams:
Though the dissected analysis above captures the key elements of a successful attorney bio page, there are a number of other creative steps you can take to make your attorney bio pages stand out from the rest, while remaining consistent with your firm’s brand. For example, this can include bold graphics or pictures, 24/7 chat or support options, or accomplishment badges (like the Super Lawyers badge included on the page sample above).For more ideas on how you can tailor your attorney bio pages to best fit your practice, check out our review of some of our favorite biography pages that we have created for clients.
