Having a professional lawyer email address is a vital requirement now. A well-chosen email address can help:
- Establish credibility
- Demonstrate professionalism
- Show attention to detail
- Enhance your personal brand
Let’s explore these benefits in more detail.
Enhancing Professionalism and Credibility in Legal Practice
A professional email address, such as yourname@yourlawfirm.com, conveys a sense of professionalism and credibility. It assures clients and colleagues that they are dealing with a legitimate and serious legal professional, which is crucial for building trust and establishing a strong legal brand identity.
Using generic email addresses can undermine this perception and make a lawyer appear less professional.
For example, avoid using:
- @aol.com
- @hotmail.com
- @yahoo.com
- @gmail.com
Building Trust and Legal Brand Recognition
Clients are more likely to trust emails that come from a professional legal domain. This trust is essential for converting prospects into loyal clients.
A professional email address also helps in legal brand recognition, making it easier for clients to remember and associate the email with your law practice.
Professional Email Services
Professional email services often come with additional tools and features that enhance communication and productivity in legal work.
For instance, platforms like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 offer custom email domains along with a suite of tools for legal collaboration and efficiency. This can streamline internal and external communications, making it easier to manage and respond to client inquiries promptly.
Security & Privacy for Lawyer Email Addresses
Having a professional email address can provide better security features compared to free email services, which is crucial for lawyers handling confidential client information.
Professional email services often include advanced spam filtering and malware protection, which are essential for safeguarding sensitive legal documents and communications. Additionally, they offer better control over data privacy and backup solutions, ensuring that important legal communications and contacts are not lost.
Organizational Benefits for Law Firms
Using professional email addresses allows for better organization within a law firm. It enables the creation of specific email addresses for different practice areas or departments (e.g., support@yourlawfirm.com, info@yourlawfirm.com), which can help in directing inquiries to the appropriate staff and improve response times. This also helps in maintaining continuity, as email aliases can be easily reassigned if a staff member leaves or is on vacation.
Marketing and Client Engagement in Legal Services
Professional email plays a significant role in legal marketing strategies.
It helps in maintaining a consistent form of communication with clients, keeping them informed about legal updates, new services, and relevant case law. This consistent engagement helps in building stronger attorney-client relationships and encourages client loyalty.
Bottom Line
Investing in a professional email address is a strategic move that reinforces your professionalism, enhances trust, and solidifies your good reputation. It is not just a means of communication but a reflection of your commitment to excellence in legal practice.
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stop using gmail it violates privilege
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That's because this blog is a personal site. My law firm site lists my firm email address, which is an @svensonlaw domain.
I saw somebody who use @lawyer.com domain name. I asked them how they get this domain. they told me from the site free ‘www.mail.com’ but now this site doesn’t service for ‘@lawyer.com’ domain name. if I want to use this domain. what should I do? Thanks…
Ernie,
I'm in the process of creating my own domain/website/etc and have re-read this post and a few others. However, I can't help but notice that in your own header you list your email with a gmail domain. I've got to ask why you decided to use your gmail account up there, but then denounce that practice in this post. Thanks in advance.
Congratulations on your fabulous post. It sounds interesting. Thanks a lot. I have checked over a few of your other articles and found some great information too.
Most of the layer firms still don’t have there own website. Its not important that they get a email with the firm name. It can be an addon but that does not matter because we are more into contacting lawyer so why would we care about all these things?
Ernie, like you, I am still floored when I find lawyers using email addresses like yahoo and gmail for professional email. If someone told me 10 years ago that there would be a reason for a post like yours in 2011, I would have laughed.
I agree that not having a professional looking email address really sends a wrong message to potential clients.
Have the office email, but also have the mobile me.com and a couple gmail.com for list serve work. Do you recommend I put the office address in the signature block of the others?
It is so easy and so inexpensive to have your email address at your own domain these days, that when I see a “Professional” email address that is “@aol.com” I immediately assume that the person 1) lacks tech savvy or 2) doesn’t care to the point that I don’t care to do business with them.
From a marketing standpoint, firm names are nowhere near as valuable as generic keywords. This is domaining 101 stuff. Svensonlaw.com doesn’t say jack about your practice, so its value is 0 from a marketability standpoint. That said, you don’t _need_ to market your e-mail address (although you can, it doesn’t hurt), but you should market at least one or two domain names related to your practice. I’m not a hugely successful solo, I’m just a part timer, but what work I’ve gotten has been solely because of SEO/SEM, blogging, twitter, and a few personal network referrals.
Great post, I totally agree with you. Firms need to get their own email addresses. I would like to add some tips to the ones already submitted by Andrea in the comment above:
– when you have to decide the domain name for your firm, you can use websites such as https://domize.com or the brand new https://panabee.com/. They will help you to find the right name!
Great post Ernie!
If you don’t have a privately hosted, firm owned domain – you really do need to get one now.
At a cost of around $10 per year for the domain registration – even if you do not build a website immediately, you can have “professional” email.
A few things to keep in mind when domain shopping:
*get the .com – if the domain you want is not available as a .com then keep looking. Yes, you can also register the .net and .org extensions, but your main domain MUST be a .com
*make it easy – to remember (and spell). A domain name should conjure up an image of you or what you do in the minds of your prospects/clients.
*if your name is not available – go with your location or practice specialty (i.e., DallasProbateAtty)