Legal Writers: The Reasons Behind the Importance
Hiring a professional legal writer has multiple benefits.
Accuracy
Legal writers are trained to write for legal audiences. They know how to provide accurate, precise and pertinent material that will be well received by their audience. They have an understanding of the law and an ability to present it in a way that is both interesting and easy to read. Most importantly, they have the experience and knowledge they need to ensure the document you receive is 100% accurate.
Time
Time is the most important element in the legal profession. It’s what separates the good lawyers from the exceptional ones. It’s what allows successful attorneys to keep clients satisfied and willing to continue using their services. Hiring a legal writer gives you more time to spend with your clients, more time to take on new business, and more time to concentrate on other aspects of your practice . You can spend your time the way you choose, instead of chasing down the latest case law or copying the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article.
Better Bonuses
"I took time out of my busy day to research and write this brief/pleading/motion. My client will give you a fat bonus if I win this motion for her."
The reason you won bonuses for winning motions, petitions and similar matters is because your clients wanted you to win for them. Because you hired legal writers to write these documents, you can now pass the bonus along to them. Use the extra money to pay off bills, take a vacation or add to your retirement!
Better Clients
Better documents make better cases. Better cases lead to better clients. Better clients give out bigger bonuses, recommend you to others and refer clients to you. Better clients will praise your work product to friends and co-workers. Your reputation will grow as you give only the best to your clients.
Different Avenues of Legal Writing Services
Legal writers may provide a variety of services. Some assist lawyers with finding the right language to include in legal documents by providing drafting services, whether for court filings or more general documents. This is particularly helpful for drafting legal documents that represent an emerging issue, in which precise language for the issue may be lacking.
Other legal writers create legal content that can be included on websites. These writers can help create webpage content and blogs, as well as aid lawyers with syndicating content through email and social channels. Many legal writers also help lawyers craft "evergreen" content like how-to’s, guides and FAQs.
Finally, many legal writers can assist with research. These legal writers may either help expand existing research to include additional subjects, or may perform "reverse" research in which they focus solely on the question of whether a particular subject has previously been written about.
Selecting the Appropriate Legal Writer
The most important criteria for hiring a legal writer to help you improve your law firm’s blog posts and attorney web site are experience, specialization, and client reviews.
Experience
Many legal writers have only worked in the legal field as law firm marketing professionals, business development managers, or legal marketing directors, and have no experience practicing law. They know a lot about law firm marketing, but not much about the law itself.
Specialization
The best legal bloggers have advanced degrees in their areas of practice or have extensive professional experience working in those areas. If you’re a mid-size law firm that needs legal content written for more than one practice area or one blog, you should hire a legal writer who has experience writing about a variety of legal topics so they can create consistent high-quality content for each of your blog posts.
Client Reviews
Since legal writing requires legal knowledge, most law firms focus on finding legal writers with past writing samples who have already been vetted to write authoritative content. However, if it’s a new practice area for the legal writer, you need to record how well they do within the first couple of weeks by following progress reports on projects and checking in with requests for feedback from them.
Legal Writer Fees and Costs
Hiring Professional Legal Writers: What You Need to Know
Professional legal writers typically charge by the hour just like you do as a lawyer. Many also charge a retainer fee upfront before starting a project for a client. Freelance legal writing rates are usually substantially lower than those of a law firm. However, you’ll still need to get over the sticker shock associated with paying someone to write content. There are a couple of factors that will affect the cost of hiring a professional legal writer . Your geographical area and preferred location for most of your legal writers (if you’re working with them on a regular basis) will come into play. That said, the reputation of the legal writer or writing firm will also influence what they charge. Many considerably bigger or more reputable legal content creators will likely charge several hundred dollars per hour for their time and expertise. On the other hand, there are legal content creators out there who will have their rates closer to the lower end of the scale. To save on costs, you might decide to take the route of hiring a less-reputed firm or a freelance legal writer to start.
Sources to Hire Legal Writers
When looking to hire trusted legal writers, you have a few avenues that can get you pointed in the right direction.
Online platforms of various kinds are probably going to provide the first place to start your search. These will include content platforms such as LawLytics, LexBloggers, and the various blog marketplaces that are out there to put you in touch with someone who edits or writes blog content. In some cases, your firm may be able to find a professional legal writer to bring on part time or full time, though most legal writing will be provided on a contract basis.
Another avenue for professionals will be legal marketing firms. Such firms can be helpful wherever your firm is located, and it’s often going to be beneficial to use someone from outside of your market area. Having someone who knows the ins and outs of your market area, as well as making sure that this person is providing quality content to the local audience you’re after, are going to be top priorities.
Freelance marketplaces can be useful in many cases for finding good legal content production. Menu sites include websites where you post a profile on that site and then wait for offers to come in, or an even easier approach is to just check the listings on the site. It’s often going to be in your firm’s best interests to hire someone you can keep in the stable for an ongoing, long-standing relationship.
As is true with many areas of legal content marketing, you want quality, experienced writers who have a good knowledge of the minutiae of the legal system, and in particular the area of law within which your firm practices.
Quality Considerations for Legal Writing
The quality of the work you receive from a legal writer is usually dependent on two factors: the scope of the work requested by the editor and the expertise of the writer. Editors who communicate their expectations and provide clear direction are most likely to receive quality legal writing. Those who provide "autopilot" assignments generally do not.
Professional legal writers, like many people with specialized knowledge and skills, can be produced efficiently if certain conditions are met. Most importantly, they need input from the person who assigns the work.
Freelance legal writers are as much a product of the editorial process as they are a product of their individual abilities. That is to say that if an editor provides very little direction, an experienced legal writer will take it upon his or herself to exercise creativity and discretion. There is an extent to which that can be done, however, and it often falls short of a product that meets the very specific needs of the editor.
The bottom line, though, is that the right legal writer will make it easy for the editor to determine whether that writer has secured the right outcome. It is the responsibility of the editor, then, to provide a clear description of the work to be done .
There are different ways for the editor to communicate his or her expectations. The most obvious is the "assignment sheet" emailed to the writer. This is nothing more than the scope of the assignment in writing. It can (and probably should) be accompanied by a separate document that addresses a number of issues that are likely to impact a writer’s ability to meet the assignment requirements.
Writers often overlook the editorial process for unique reasons associated with each individual editor. Experienced professional legal writers know which editors are easy to work with. When working with a new editor, they will ask questions. In other words, they will assist in the editorial process.
The platform for communication and feedback between an editor and writer is usually email. Editors can be very creative in their use of emails with professional legal writers. Some editors expect writers to be able to read minds. It is something of a luxury to work with an editor who engages in two-way email correspondence. To be sure, most editors do not have the time to communicate frequently with the professional legal writers who work on their behalf. But when they do take the time to communicate, writers are likely to have a much clearer idea of whether they are on the right path with the material they are producing.