Over the years, we’ve built our websites with the help of a mixed group of employees, contractors, consultants, and agencies.

Only one was terrible.

Some of our folks were local, some were on the other side of the world, and some were living out of suitcases and drifting wherever the wind took them.

Each of them added something useful and interesting to the mix. They all contributed in one way or another, and the site got better and better. We’ve continuously improved the content, design, and usability of the site.

The terrible one snuck in without my knowledge, and the hiring of this vendor violated one of my cardinal selection rules.

Rosen’s Cardinal Rule of Vendor Selection

From the earliest days, I’ve known to stay away from website vendors who specialized in helping lawyers.

The very first vendor we used was a firm that worked with a variety of businesses. It did great work for us and then used us as a reference to get other law firms as clients. It was fascinating to watch the quality of the firm’s work decline as the client base shifted toward more law firms and fewer other businesses.

Eventually, the firm became a big name in the law firm website world. We had to go elsewhere.

Website vendors specializing in law firms don’t have to do much to get the business. They mostly have to tell law firms they work for other law firms. That’s the primary criteria used by many firms in picking a vendor: they follow the pack.

Unfortunately, most website vendors fall into a pattern. They produce sites that look pretty much like most of the rest of what they produce. They develop an approach and a certain style, and you can often tell that one vendor created a bunch of very similar-looking sites. They all look like they’re part of a family. That’s part of the explanation for why so many law firm websites look like all the other law firm websites.

If you’re looking for a website that stands out and gets noticed, then you’ve got to break from the pack. You can’t expect law firm vendors to have it in them to do something unique and different. They’re likely to produce something that looks much like what everyone else is doing.

The terrible vendor we used was someone who worked primarily for law firms. I didn’t realize we’d hired her. I found out after I saw the results and wondered how we’d ended up with a mockup that looked like most every other law firm. Then I found out we’d hired someone who specialized in law firms.

We pushed and prodded and tried to talk her into doing something different. We tried to get her to do something that might stand out. Unfortunately, she didn’t have it in her. She was stuck in her law firm ways.

We threw her work away. It went into the trash. It couldn’t be used.

How to Choose a Vendor

Don’t let that happen to you. Hire someone who works in other industries and for other types of businesses. Avoid the vendors who tell you they do lots of work for law firms. That should throw up a big red flag.

If your marketing is going to work, it needs to stand out. It needs to set you apart. It needs to tell the world that you’re different. Why pick you instead of the other firm if you’re all the same?

When you build a website, you need to strive for something unique. You need to be different. You need to try something new. You’re going to need help from someone who doesn’t see the world through the law firm filter.

That’s not going to happen if you hire someone who’s well versed in doing work for lawyers. They’ve spent most of their time building the same old thing. They’ve been tweaking the same design in slightly different ways, but they’ve lost their talent for coming up with new ideas.

If they build websites for lawyers, you should go somewhere else.