What Do The Jurors Think of Your Web Site?

Firm Issues

By Bob Weiss

July 2004: Most law firms carefully craft their Web sites to leave a certain impression with visitors including potential clients, the firm's existing clients, referral sources, employees, and potential employees.

Have you ever considered what sitting jurors might think of your litigators and firm after a visit to your Web site during trial?

Jury consultants lecturing at national conventions confirm what interviews of jurors in recent trials have told our clients-most jurors tour your firm's Web site and read about you and your colleagues, your work, and your firm. And, they do it during voir dire and again during trial.

So your firm's commitments to the community, the way you explain and present yourselves, and how you portray your past successes for people and business are being routinely investigated by those determining the facts (assuming they are not sequestered.)

Defense counsel may want to soften their image of being Goliath's hired guns via the Web. Plaintiff's counsel may want to position themselves as champions of the Davids of the world. (Many personal injury firms explain their involvement in Arrive Alive and underage drinking programs on their Web sites already.)

Whatever you convey on your site should be consistent with the impression you are trying to make to jurors in the courtroom. No jury consultant wants you to develop a credibility issue with the jury during trial.

ALYN-WEISS & ASSOCIATES, INC.
Public Relations | Marketing
1331 - 17th Street, Suite 410
Denver, CO 80202

« Back to Marketing Tips and Articles