From formality to strategy: transforming lawyer email signatures into marketing tools

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Lawyers exist in an interesting world when it comes to communication. On the one hand, they must provide a professional appearance to courts, judges, law enforcement, and fellow lawyers. There are many examples of professional communication being cherished and immortalized in cultures worldwide. Having a poorly formatted letter or email harms the reputation of a lawyer.

On the other hand, lawyers and firms need to market services to target customers. That requires a lawyer email signature with clear contact information to grow the business and gain new prospective clients.

An email signature is a surefire way to keep communication flooding the right platforms, email boxes, telephone numbers, and more so that all the legal documents and client leads go to the right person.

Let’s review some tips, examples, and processes for creating highly effective lawyer email signatures for you and your team.

What is a lawyer email signature?

Near the bottom of every email sent or received is a concise element providing the sender’s contact information. For a lawyer, this could include key details for securing services, all the way to legal disclaimers over privacy issues.

Your team needs a universal email signature for lawyers to ensure a smooth stream of leads, communication, and networking. Whether you’re cultivating a new relationship with an expert for future witness testimony or reaching out to prospective clients.

A lawyer email signature pushes all recipients to the CTAs (calls to action), phone numbers, web addresses, or other crucial information to move forward.

What should be included in a professional lawyer email signature?

Professionalism and clear communication are crucial to a lawyer email signature. Before you decide to include big images, crazy branding, or other elements that may distract your audience, start with the basics, including:

• Full professional name used on legal documents
• The title or position you hold in the firm or legal field
• If you are part of a firm, use their name
• A bar or license number, if required
• Phone number, WhatsApp contact, or DM (direct message) name
• Email address you use for business
• Website for your personal information or company firm
• Legal disclaimers for confidentiality

You’ll usually find a lawyer email signature to use easily convertible fonts like Times New Roman, Calibri, or plain Arial. This ensures it looks similar on all devices your recipients use.

Advertising in the legal world

It’s important to note that some regions do not allow lawyer advertising. In others, maintaining a billboard or using TV ads is not cost-effective for the operational budget of your firm.

Email is easy to use, widely accepted, and incredibly budget-friendly. You get a direct line to your clients with no additional fees or steps beyond clicking the “Send Now” button.

That being said, you may need to include some branding elements inside your lawyer email signature. This could be a headshot that builds trust with your clients, or a branded logo or image reflecting your firm.

If you are a lawyer working in a firm, double-check for legal parameters, industry norms, or company branding issues before creating your lawyer email signature. That way, you avoid potential mistakes and ensure a fully compliant piece of information that delivers quality contact details and information for your target audience.

Beyond that, a quality email signature for lawyers can help point readers where you want to increase leads and clicks. For example:

• Internal blogs with helpful information and CTAs.
• Podcasts or videos that inform clients about procedures of crucial legal issues.
• Consultation forms to intake new clients and partners.
• Referral forms if the reader has a friend, family member, or coworker needing legal aid.
• Social media platforms celebrating recent wins or legal insights.
• Calendars for upcoming events, appointments, or consultations.
• And more.

Different styles of email signatures for lawyers

Lawyer email signatures come in all shapes and sizes. It can be a little overwhelming to decide what style best matches the needs of your firm or team. Continuity is a big deal, as you want a uniform outward appearance to support your professionalism and ease of communication.

Here are five examples to help you get started.

Branded email signature

Branding is everything when it comes to running a business, and a legal practice is a business. You want to stand apart from the competition while also maintaining an easy-to-understand format that clearly provides your contact information.

In this example, you can see all the necessary details (name, address, phone, website, etc.) as well as a logo and icons for social media – all of which are clickable.

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Marketing email signature

A lawyer email signature is also a marketing tool. As such, you want a CTA that directs traffic to social media profiles, legal services, consultation forms, blogs, and more.

This example shows a clickable banner that sends readers to the law firm’s podcast. It is clean, doesn’t distract from critical contact info, and is in a natural location that funnels the eyes toward clicking.

Professional email signature

Many lawyers must stick to a more professional setting with their email signatures. This could be because of local regulations or to ensure streamlined communication with partners, judges, and other law enforcement professionals.

The example below shows how only using the essential contact details without any extra branding elements allows for a minimalistic and professional marketing opportunity.

Accessible email signature

Accessibility is equally essential in the legal industry. Many clients will be on mobile devices or prefer to use specific communication pathways outside the norm.

An excellent way to ensure they have reliable ways of reaching you for their case is to emphasize icons, addresses, or other mediums in simplified and highly structured formats like the example below. Having something that is mobile-responsive is also an accessibility factor.

Disclaimer email signature

As a professional lawyer, you probably need to provide some form of disclaimer at the bottom of any email. This could be to inform a recipient of privacy issues or notes about confidentiality.

At Bybrand, we have a fantastic video about adding a disclaimer block to any HTML email signature, or you can use an internal disclaimer email signature template. However, most firms will have a universal disclaimer to lessen liability or leaking information to the wrong party.

How to create a lawyer email signature

We provide comprehensive videos about creating a clickable HTML signature for a lawyer and email signature templates for lawyers that can make the process extremely easy.

These are quick and easy tutorials that also provide tips on enhancing your lawyer email signature with crucial features like:

• Social media icons that direct readers to TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (formally Twitter), Facebook, and more.
• Calendar links (i.e., cloud-based software apps like Calendly) to clients can directly schedule a consultation aligned with any CTA or clickable banners.
• Colors, graphics, or other brand elements that match the brand style guides of firms or agencies.
• Streamlined photos and images of people on your legal team, including yourself.

Using a cloud-based lawyer email signature solution like Bybrand helps standardize all the communication coming from your team. This saves you time from building individual formats for each team member and adds consistency, so all contact details are the same.

Conclusion

Like many other professional careers, the way you represent yourself online says a lot about your professionalism. Having a streamlined, cloud-supported lawyer email signature demonstrates to anyone else in your network you are serious, trustworthy, and dedicated to providing legal services.

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