Note: I originally wrote this post in 2011. The tools have changed but the concept hasn’t: every attorney needs a professional email address and at least a basic website. The process is even easier now than it was then.
Why Do You Need a Professional Email Address and Website?
Email Address
If you are still using a Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL address for your law practice, stop. Please. A professional email address, meaning one that uses your own domain name like jennifer@yourlawfirm.com, tells potential clients you are serious about your practice. A free email address tells them you might not be. It also tells them, whether true or not, that you seem to not know technology. These days, a lawyer who doesn’t understand technology may well be one that people don’t want representing them.
Ethical Concerns
It is also important to understand that free email addresses often come with ethical problems. Google has integrated its free Gmail with its Gemini AI and it is scanning emails. This is a serious confidentiality problem. Yes, you can turn it off, but who knows when Google will start deciding to scan its free email again. This isn’t the first time. The main thing to remember about free products is that they are free because they are getting something in return, and that normally is something from you.
Easier to Change Email Providers
In addition, if you ever need to change your email service, you can simply point to your professional address. You don’t need to worry about telling everyone you have a new address. What you do have to worry about is telling people who know about your free email account that you have a new address. The easiest way to do that is to forward all email from your old free account to your new business account. You can either then use an away response to tell people you have changed your email address or you can put a note at the bottom of all emails you send out from your new professional address to let people know. Over time, people will naturally use your new address.
What about a Website?
Moving on to your website, you can build your website over time. It doesn’t need to begin as a substantial piece of work with dozens of pages and blog posts. You don’t need anything fancy to get started. What you need is a place on the web where people can confirm you exist, find out what you do, and contact you. Think of it as a digital business card. That’s it. Then, if and when you are ready, you can build something with more detail and take your time to launch for the public only when you are ready.
The good news is you can have both a professional email address and a simple website up and running in a day.
Step 1: Pick and Register a Domain Name
Your domain name is your address on the web, something like yourlawfirm.com. You will register it through a domain registrar. Namecheap and Cloudflare are both reputable and reasonably priced. There are others; just make sure you choose one with a good reputation and transparent pricing. Some registrars lure you in with a cheap first year and then jack up the renewal price, so read the fine print.
Your Domain Name Should End with .com
A few tips on picking a name. It is important to use .com. Yes, I use .net. Lest you think I am a hypocrite, I will explain. When I began my website, it was not supposed to be for a business. I had not yet left my prior employer. When I did leave, I had a partner, and my own site was simply meant to be a location where I could share useful information to lawyers on my own corner of the web. Since neither jlellis.com nor jellis.com, were available, I shrugged and purchased .net. When I went off on my own, .com had become available, so I purchased it and when people type jlellis.com it redirects them here. Problem solved.
Despite all of the efforts to create new TLDs (Top-Level-Domains) none of them have really stuck. .com is for businesses, .net was meant to be used for Internet service providers and hosting companies, and .org is for nonprofits. If you are a lawyer and purchase a .law, domain you will find very confused people trying to reach out to you because they type in whateveryourdomainnameis.com instead of .law. This is a very long way of saying; you are best off with a .com domain name.
The problem obtaining a .com domain name is that it can be very difficult to find one that works for you. All the same, rather than using another TLD, I highly recommend you keep trying different names until you find one that works. Do your best to keep your name short and easy to remember. If you are fortunate enough that the initials of your firm’s name or your firm’s full name is available, that is the best choice. As an alternative you might try your geographic area, phillyyourpracticearea.com for example. Avoid hyphens and numbers if you can; they’re hard to communicate verbally. “Is that the number 4 or the word four?” is not a conversation you want to have with potential clients.
You Don’t Own the Domain Name
Be aware that you are renting, not buying, a domain name. The minimum is one year, and you will need to renew it. You can choose to pay for up to 10 years if you like. Some registrars advertise 100 years, but in reality, they are simply auto renewing every 10 years. This is because the maximum is 10 years per ICANN rules. It is important to set a reminder or turn on auto-renewal so you don’t accidentally lose your domain because you forgot to renew.
Step 2: Set Up Hosting
Your hosting provider is the company that stores your website files and makes them available on the web. For a simple site, you do not need anything expensive. Here is a rough breakdown:
- Budget options like SiteGround or Bluehost run about $5-15 per month and work fine for a basic site. They often include one-click WordPress installation, which makes the setup process much smoother.
- Managed WordPress hosts like WPEngine handle security updates and backups for you, but cost more, usually $20-50 per month. If you don’t want to think about the technical side at all and have the budget, this is the easier option.
If you just want an email address and aren’t ready for a website yet, you can skip hosting for now and go straight to Step 3.
Step 3: Set up a Professional Email Address
You have two main options here. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 both let you create email addresses using your domain name. Both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 start around $7 per month per user. Both give you email, calendar, cloud storage, and the ability to check your email from your computer, phone, or tablet. One of the benefits of either account is that it will sync your email, calendar entries, contacts, and cloud storage across devices. Yes, you can potentially set up free email with IMAP through your hosting provider, but that only syncs email. It won’t sync your calendar, contacts, and files. Nor will it provide cloud storage space.
Which one should you pick? If you’re already comfortable with Gmail, go with Google Workspace. If you’re an Outlook person, go with Microsoft 365. Both are solid. The important thing is that you end up with an email address that looks like yourname@yourlawfirm.com, not yourname@gmail.com. I will mention though, if you plan on purchasing Microsoft 365 for Business so you have the various Microsoft applications on your computers and in the cloud, you are best off with Microsoft 365. If you plan on using Google for your word processing and other applications, go with Google Workspace. The point is it is best to stay in one environment for everything.
Step 4: Build Your Website
I recommend WordPress for your website, even a simple one. WordPress powers a huge portion of the web, it’s flexible, and you won’t outgrow it. Most hosting providers offer one-click WordPress installation.
You don’t need to know how to code. WordPress has thousands of free and paid themes that give you a professional-looking site without touching any code. Pick a clean, simple theme, and then you’ll need to spend some time setting things up. For example, if you want more than one page, you will need to add pages, configure menus, and set up a contact form. You also may need to install a few plugins, which increase the functionality of the site without coding. It’s not difficult, but it does take some time and patience. One thing you might want to do is install a free website building tool such as Elementor. I use Elementor pro (the paid version) to build many of my websites. In addition, there are plenty of tutorials online, and if you get stuck, WordPress has a large support community.
If WordPress feels like too much, platforms like Squarespace offer an all-in-one solution where hosting and website building are combined. It is a bit more limited than WordPress in the long run, but for a simple business card site it works fine. You can always move to WordPress later on, if you want to start on Squarespace or a similar platform.
You might be wondering if you can use artificial intelligence to build your website. The answer is a lawyer’s favorite two words, it depends. The main thing to remember about AI is that it can make mistakes, and it doesn’t understand attorney ethical rules. There are, however, many tools that can help you use AI to build a website. If you use an AI tool, always review the generated content carefully. Make sure it’s accurate, reflects your brand, and, if you’re a lawyer, complies with your jurisdiction’s Rules of Professional Conduct.
Within WordPress, tools like Elementor AI, SeedProd, and 10Web can generate page layouts, write content, and even create entire sites from a simple description of your business. WordPress.com recently launched an AI assistant that works directly inside the editor to help with design and content decisions.
Outside of WordPress, platforms like Squarespace and Wix offer their own AI website builders that can generate a complete site from a few prompts. They’re easy to use, but remember, with those platforms, you don’t own the underlying site, and you can’t take it with you if you leave. I have had quite a few clients come to me after paying a lot of money for a website that was professionally built on Squarespace or Wix only to be surprised when they find out they cannot just export the site and put it somewhere else. With WordPress, you get the same AI building capabilities while keeping full ownership and control.
What to Put on a Business Card Website
For a business card website, the key is to keep it simple. At a minimum though, you want to include the following:
- Name of your firm or business
- Names of the attorneys or individuals in the firm
- Physical address
- Phone number
- Your professional email address
- A proper disclaimer for your jurisdiction(s)
You may also want to include:
- A professional headshot. Your headshot should be no more than 5 years old, and you should retake it every 5 years or so. The key is you want people to be able to recognize you when they see you.
- A brief bio (Your bio should not read like a resume. Focus on why people should hire you for the services you provide.)
- Your practice areas
- A link to your sites that contain details about you, such as LinkedIn or SuperLawyers®
Make sure you have checked your jurisdiction(s) rules on advertising and follow them. For example, New Jersey has very specific requirements for listing awards.
That’s it. You don’t need 15 pages. One or two pages with the information above is plenty to start.
Step 5: Claim Your Google Business Profile
This step didn’t exist when I first wrote this post, but it is now one of the most important things you can do for local visibility. Go to business.google.com and claim your business listing. This is what shows up when someone Googles your name or your firm and sees that information box on the right side of the search results with your address, phone number, hours, and reviews. It is free and it makes a real difference in whether local clients can find you.
If I Claim My Google Business Profile People Might Leave Bad Reviews
Some attorneys are afraid to claim sites on which reviews are written, but be assured, people can leave reviews for you regardless of whether you claim your Google Business profile or claim your profile on other review sites. In fact, you might want to do a search for yourself and see if there are any reviews already out there. It is better to seek reviews from happy clients ahead of time, so you have a good number of happy reviews for the inevitable occasion when someone leaves a bad one. I encourage lawyers to ask every client they are certain is happy to write a review on Google at the end of representation. Write a form email and send it out with instructions. If you aren’t sure or the client is unhappy you should still ask for a review, just ask on paper or via email, without a request for an online review. The paper/private email review provides two benefits. First it lets you know where you can improve, and we can all improve. Second it allows the client to vent, which hopefully will make them less likely to write a negative public review.
You’re Done
You now have a professional email address and a business card website. Search engines will begin to pick up your site over the next few days. You won’t be at the top of the search results right away, but people will be able to find you. Make sure to add your website URL to your LinkedIn profile and any other online profiles you have. You now have a professional home on the web and a place to send potential clients.
Is it going to win any design awards? No. But it tells the world you exist, you’re a real attorney (as opposed to a likely scammer), and you can be reached. That is more than a surprising number of attorneys can say.