I’ve spent some time these past few days reading website copy on a bunch of law firm sites. Most of it is very well done. It’s clean and professional. It communicates a wealth of information. It’s grammatically correct with lots of citation to authority.

Unfortunately, it lacks humanity. It’s not just professional, it’s overly professional. It sounds like it’s written for a scholarly journal. It’s not fun to read – much of it is the anti-fun. It’s boring.

Unfortunately, lots of effort gets expended without gaining much benefit. The content is being read by people, real people, with real lives and feelings. The writing doesn’t take advantage of that fact.

Most of the writing feels like it’s written for the crowd. It’s designed to speak to everyone without offending anyone. It’s generic.

I understand the need to write for everyone. None of us want to write in such a way that we offend anyone and eliminate a prospective client. The problem is that, by writing for everyone, we end up writing for no one. We end up without an audience because our audience drifts off.

You’ve got to write for one person. Successful copywriters develop a persona to whom they write. They visualize one person. They write directly to that person. It changes everything. Their writing goes from sounding like a dissertation to sounding like a personal letter or email. It’s night and day.

In family law it’s especially important for us to write like we’re talking to real people – since we are. We don’t write for generic people, or corporations. We write for people in crisis, people in a raw emotional state. It’s critical that our writing really connect with our audience.

Think about your audience and pick out one person. Find a picture on the web of someone that person would look like. Print it out and tape it about your keyboard. When you work on website copy make sure you write to that person. Write to him or her like you care, since you do. Write like you would if you’d known that person for a long time and are concerned about his life and his feelings. You want your reader to know that you understand.

Sure, you might turn off some of your readers. But, isn’t it better to turn-off a few than to turn off them all?