The legal industry, however, still has some catching up to do. According to the American Bar Association, only about 24% of law firms use videos for legal marketing.
By tapping into videos and integrating them into your overall law firm marketing strategy, you may effectively engage your audience, solidify your brand, and ultimately, get more clients.
That being said, video marketing for lawyers requires a different thought process and strategic approach, creatively speaking. In this guide, we’ll break everything down by discussing:
- Brilliant Examples of Video Marketing for Lawyers
- Video Marketing Best Practices for Attorneys
- The Business Impact of Video Marketing
Brilliant Examples of Video Marketing for Lawyers
A little inspiration can go a long way.
If you have limited experience with video marketing, start by looking at the successful efforts of other law firms and attorneys.
This will help you understand what you’re up against, the level of quality you should strive for, and how you can make your videos stand out.
To that end, we’ve curated some of the best video marketing examples from the legal world below.
Crisp Video’s Legal Brand Videos
Crisp Video offers high-level video marketing services for law firms.
By combining powerful storytelling and high production value, they create impactful brand videos that bring real business results for their clients.
In fact, Crisp Video claims that attorneys who produce with them experience a 2-10X increase in their average case values.
Here are some examples that reflect their quality standards.
Tyrone Law Firm
An effective brand video, in the simplest of words, is one that communicates your firm’s values, what you do, and why you do it in an engaging way.
The video above — made for Tyrone Law Firm (specializing in birth injury law) — ticks all of those boxes.
It starts off by highlighting the core family-centric values upon which the practice is built. This immediately forges a connection with their target audience: parents whose newborns were injured at birth by medical professionals.
It then moves on to acknowledging the pain, sadness, and anger stemming from their ordeal, followed by a short client testimonial and what the firm can promise.
To cultivate trust and further strengthen that bond, the high-quality video features actual attorneys of Tyrone Law Firm — a key characteristic shared by all the videos produced by Crisp Video.
The Law Office of William Bly
William T. Bly is a criminal defense attorney in Maine.
This brand video (made for his law office) starts with ominous music, perfect for the topic at hand: describing the devastating outcomes of criminal charges and how difficult they can be to fight.
The choice of words, coupled with the emotional music, may hit close to home for someone struggling with the same potentially life-altering problem. It gives them something to relate to, hooking their attention and compelling them to continue to watch.
From there, the video sheds light on how hiring the right attorney can help you get rid of those charges, leading to what William T. Bly can do and a testimonial from an anonymous client vouching for his expertise.
The Derrick Law Firm
For a variety of reasons (some arguably valid, many not), attorneys have always received a bad rap.
A Gallup poll revealed that only 3% of people rated the honesty and ethical standards of lawyers as “very high.” Consequently, all attorneys need to put in extra efforts to cultivate that trust. The video above strives to do just that by shedding light on the life of attorney Dirk J. Derrick — owner of The Derrick Law Firm — describing what he learned from his father, his experiences, and the process he follows to help his clients in the best way possible.
In classic Crisp Video fashion, it also features an emotional testimonial from a happy client. All in all, the video truly captures the family values that are deeply embedded into this law firm.
Elk & Elk
Every law firm comes into existence with a goal in mind — a long-term vision that explains why you do what you do.
Elk & Elk’s brand video starts off by describing their vision of providing the same level of justice to everyone in the footprint of the state of Ohio.
It then tells the story of the values they grew up with and how Elk & Elk has developed and evolved over the years to the benefit of their clients.
authenticWEB’s Case Stories
authenticWEB is a digital advertising agency that caters to a range of industries and the dynamic case stories they make for legal firms are worth looking into.
These low-cost, yet highly impactful, assets feature audio recordings of real clients who tell the story of their cases and how they found success with their attorneys.
Below, we’ve gathered some good examples.
Veliz Law Firm’s Videos
Let’s start off with this animated case story for Veliz Law Firm:
The video features actual audio of a client who starts off describing the situation they were in. In doing so, it drives the audience to empathize with the person and makes them curious about the end-result.
The client then breaks down their journey and overall positive experience with the law firm, resulting in an evergreen source of referrals.
Here’s a similar example:
If leveraged properly, Veliz Law Firm can use these case stories to potentially get more clients than they can handle.
The Law Office of Stephen Z. Williamson
This emotional video testimonial for The Law Office of Stephen Z. Williamson — a firm specializing in injury law — is a good example of storytelling done right.
It features a physical therapist narrating the story of an unfortunate turn that resulted in a car crash. Despite only including stock images (and a few snapshots of the attorney himself), the video is highly engaging and impactful.
It shows you exactly why you don’t necessarily need to invest in high video production value to make an impact.
TV Videos
TV commercials, despite the takeover of online marketing, will always remain relevant, especially in the legal space.
They provide a medium to instantly reach the masses, resulting in significant brand awareness and a potentially higher number of leads.
Here are a few TV videos from the legal world that caught our attention.
The Brough Law Firm TV Commercial
Produced by Crisp Video, this TV commercial for The Brough Law Firm ticks all the boxes of an effective TV commercial:
- It’s to-the-point and conveys the message in a short timeframe
- It includes word of mouth from real clients
- Finally, it includes a call-to-action towards the end with contact details of the law firm
Given its length and quality, an ad like that can also be repurposed for social and Google Display Network ads.
Harris Personal Injury Lawyers Super Bowl Commercial
This Super Bowl TV commercial starts off by highlighting one of the Central Coast of California’s greatest assets: its people.
After appealing to the main target audience and earning their attention, it then highlights the values of Harris Personal Injury Lawyers and what they do, ending with a call-to-action.
YouTube Videos
If you want to establish a strong online following using video content, you can never go wrong with YouTube marketing.Not only can you use it to strengthen your legal brand and get more clients, but also earn some serious cash through monetization in the process.
Below, we’ve shared a few examples of popular attorney YouTubers who are doing a great job.
LegalEagle
LegalEagle — a YouTube channel run by attorney Devin Stone — is a source of insightful, often entertaining videos that break down the American legal system.
From discussing current affairs through a legal lens to creating entertaining (yet, still highly informative) content, LegalEagle is easily one of the best law channels on YouTube.
By remaining consistent, Devin Stone has created a strong online brand that boasts 2M+ subscribers and 311M+ views on YouTube today.
Nate The Lawyer
Owned by Nate Broady, who is a practicing attorney, a law enforcement officer, and a professor, Nate The Lawyer offers expert commentary on the hottest issues.
Every video breaks down a popular topic of interest in the context of law. Here’s an example:
Through these videos, Nate helps his audience think like lawyers, cementing his expertise and thought leadership.
As of now, the channel has over 7.7M views and 121K+ subscribers.
Video Marketing Best Practices for Attorneys
Getting started with video marketing can be scary at first, but with the right approach, your law firm can reap its benefits.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t necessarily need a hefty budget for effective video marketing. While production value is important, that alone won’t help you achieve your marketing goals.
Here are some actionable tips and best practices that can help with the planning and execution of your video marketing efforts.
Create a Video Marketing Strategy
Before you begin planning a viral video for your law firm, take a step back to create a comprehensive video marketing strategy.
You can’t create a handful of videos, publish them on different channels, and hope to get results.
Effective video marketing requires proper planning. The strategy you create will act as a blueprint for your efforts and should integrate and support your broader marketing strategy.
This entails specifying:
Goals
A strategy is incomplete without clear business objectives that it hopes to accomplish. Ask yourself the exact goals you want to achieve. Is it greater brand awareness? More revenue? Higher intake? Specifying your goal(s) will enable you to plan your videos accordingly.
There are no wrong answers here. You know how to scale your law firm better than anyone else. Just make sure that it aligns with your marketing goals.
For clarity, tie a number with your goal to measure progress. For instance, your goal could be to increase your firm’s revenue by, say 30% in a year with video marketing.
Budget
Next, set a budget for your law firm’s video marketing strategy.
For reference: on average, it can cost anywhere from $1,200 to $50,000 to outsource the production of a single video. Keep in mind that this doesn’t include promotion and distribution.
That being said, you don’t necessarily need a big wallet to reap the benefits of video marketing. Depending on the type of content you’re creating, all you need is your smartphone and an idea.
Start small, and once you start getting results, scale your budget.
Formats
From animated explainers to personal vlogs, video content takes on many shapes and forms.
Depending on your goals and budget, determine the type of videos you would want to create for your law firm.
This will help you decide if you want to outsource production, handle everything in-house, or a combination of both.
Channels
Finally, decide what channels you’re going to use to publish, distribute, and reach your target audience. Attorneys usually publish them on their own websites, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social media accounts.
If you’ve invested in a TV commercial, you can repurpose it into online video ads, as well.
Tell a Story That Your Audience Can Relate to
With a robust strategy in place, the next step is to work on the creative aspect of video marketing.
Ask yourself what you can include in your content that grabs the attention of your target audience.
One thing that’s highly effective, especially in the legal space, is captivating storytelling.
People are naturally drawn towards a good story. We empathize with the characters, imagine ourselves in those situations, and root for the protagonist — which in this case, is you, the attorney.
Here are some quick tips to help you nail your video’s story:
- Tie the story with a pain point of your target audience. This will enable the people watching your video to relate with the story (or at least think about it).
- Follow up with how your firm can help overcome this pain point, preferably with examples of real cases that you’ve helped resolve.
- If possible, use captivating visuals to keep your audience engaged.
Finally, to build trust, it’s common practice for attorneys to make an appearance in their videos.
Get Testimonials from Real Clients
As pointed out earlier, people oftentimes are reluctant to trust lawyers.
Furthermore, when faced with a legal obstacle, they need to make sure that the attorney they hire is competent, welcoming, and above all, has their priorities right.
For that reason, they may do extensive research and read client reviews to assess your expertise. To convince your leads, we recommend creating video testimonials from actual clients and publishing them on your channels.
Watching a real person talk about your law firm and vouching for your expertise might just be the thing that makes them take action. As we saw in the examples above, you don’t necessarily need to reveal the face of the client giving the testimonial. They can also simply record their review, which you can place over a slideshow. This approach can be just as effective as recording a traditional video interview.
Remember: your leads don’t want to see gimmicks or necessarily care about slick production work. They want to know about your experience, process, and success rate. That’s what your video testimonial should focus on.
Educate Your Audience
Video marketing isn’t only about promoting your practice.
Your audience has questions about the legal world — terminologies that they don’t understand and legal issues that they’re not equipped to handle on their own.
As an attorney, you should capitalize on that knowledge gap by educating your audience with your videos.
Do keyword research to find out relevant topics that your audience is searching for and create informational video content on them.
You can publish them on YouTube, LinkedIn, and other platforms (TikTok, Vimeo, etc.) and start cultivating a loyal following.
By producing top-level educational content around what you do, you may eventually position yourself as a thought leader in your practice area. At that point, you’ll be the first choice of your viewers in case they ever need legal assistance. The Business Impact of Video MarketingThe purpose of video marketing isn’t just the appeal and hitting other vanity metrics.
If executed properly, it can result in serious exposure and growth for your legal practice.
Hence, investing in video marketing is definitely worth it from a business perspective. Here are some reasons why.
Higher Return on Investment
At the end of the day, your legal practice is a business.
Like any other business, you want to make sure that the money you invest brings in positive results. This also includes video marketing.
According to Biteable, 74% of marketers say video has a better return on investment than static imagery.
Those returns could be higher leads, more cases, increased revenue, or something else — this depends on the unique strategic goals mentioned in your law firm’s video strategy. Make sure that your strategy includes key performance indicators that help you quantify and measure the impact of your efforts.
Whatever the case, considering so many marketers vouch for the ROI for video marketing, it’s safe to say that it could work wonders for your practice.
That being said, remember that video marketing alone won’t bring you results.
The trick is to integrate it with a holistic and robust content marketing strategy.
Increased Traffic
In this digital, competitive world, as an attorney, you must use every channel at your disposal to attract leads and convert them.
The biggest channel through which you can attract prospective clients, engage with them, and (to some extent) automate your legal intakeprocess is your law firm’s website.
With an effective search engine optimization (SEO) framework in place, you can consistently rack up online traffic.
One way to do that is through video marketing. According to a survey by Wyzowl, 86% of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website.
However, keep in mind that in order to get that traffic, you must optimize and distribute your videos accordingly. For instance, if you’re uploading your videos on YouTube, make sure to leave a link to your website in the description. To learn more about how to scale organic traffic to your law firm’s website, check out our extensive guide on SEO for lawyers.
Build Trust with Your Audience
Last but not least, investing in law firm video marketing can help you build trust with your audience — a much-needed thing in the legal space.
In a world where it’s easy to hide behind a screen, being able to actually see the face(s) of your law practice for a change will be refreshing for your audience. Plus, watching video testimonials of actual clients recommending your legal services will be a lot more compelling than self-produced copy on your website.
All of the above, in turn, may also help establish a bond of trust.
From there, that bond will only continue to strengthen if you stay consistent, educate your audience, and share insights and compelling case stories through your video marketing efforts.
Make an Impact with Videos
In conclusion, by adding video marketing into the mix, your law firm can potentially experience phenomenal growth in the long-run.
Producing quality videos to entertain, inform, and/or educate your target audience consistently can help you improve your brand traffic, get more clients, and much more.
However, do remember to take a strategic approach. Tie your video marketing efforts to measurable goals to avoid burning cash and getting no results.
Finally, if you have the budget for it, consider outsourcing production to a video marketing agency, preferably one that has a track record of helping law firms and attorneys succeed.
