The Local Legal Directories initiative has been developed to raise awareness of specialist expertise and professional accreditation amongst the legal sector in Yorkshire and promote local law firms to the right clients through legal specialism.
The initiative, pioneered in conjunction with Leeds Legal – an alliance of the city’s law firms – Leeds Law Society and the regional law firm guide www.yorkshirelawyer.co.uk, provides local law societies with an online portal for each town, city or region with an integrated social media platform for news stories, articles, press releases, case studies and video guides. Access is also given to professional accreditation organisations.
For law firms, the service includes entries in the legal directory with comprehensive firm , departmental and fee earners profiles and access to the Local Legal social media platform which focuses on reaching local communities via Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Local Legal news portals and an approved lawyer search application on Facebook all of which is covered in a low annual administration fee.
According to Local Legal Directories founder Justin Lister, said: “The initiative is designed to raise awareness of specialist expertise that Yorkshire legal professionals deliver and empower law firms and individual solicitors to take full advantage of online channels including social media.”
Mr Lister continues: “The absence of a joined up initiative for law firms keeping up with the pace of online development and marketing over the last decade has almost certainly been costly for many firms in terms of missed opportunities and a shift to referral schemes that have built a strong internet presence. We believe that through web 2.0 technologies and social media there is a strong opportunity for that balance to be redressed back in favour of local firms.”
“Our goal is to facilitate the shift through a low cost, easy to access comprehensive service that does not carry a large resource overhead for individual firms to use and complements the marketing activities of firms of any size. We have proven the model to work for sole practitioners and mid and top tier firms and our search service processed over 30,000 enquiries in Yorkshire alone in the first 12 months.”
Working with organisations such as Leeds Legal highlights the effectiveness of collaborative local initiatives to promote the legal expertise that cities like Leeds provide.
Deborah Green, Leeds Legal director, said: “The initiative presents an opportunity to provide a beneficial service to the local community to make local lawyers more accessible through online channels.”
“The Local Legal Directory service will help members of the public and local businesses identify lawyers who specialise in the area they require. The concept of referring to a specialist is not always recognised when seeking legal advice as it is in the medical world for example, so this initiative makes real sense for local communities to be signposted to specialists in their region.”
The service is being widely adopted by local law societies and law firms across the Yorkshire region through www.yorkshirelawyer.co.uk, and other regional sites across the country are now available.
For further information and for local law societies or law firms wishing to register their interest, please email justinlister@locallegaldirectories.co.uk
