<b>Op-Ed</b>'Something Old, Nothing New, Everything Borrowed, Shades of Blue'

I think law firm marketing is in a “funk.” Recently I've been doing some research on law firm Web sites and have noticed that the look, the feel and yes the content of many of these sites is virtually the same. In a couple of instances, the exact wording from another firm site was used to describe a practice area. Could this be a coincidence? I don't think so. I even looked at firm histories and frankly most of the larger firms started the same way and ultimately have merged and purged to get to the size they are today … so what's so exciting about that? Corporate America does it all the time and the only time they tell you about it is in an annual report. Must we read about it every time we click on a site. I find law firm Web sites to be colorless, odorless and tasteless. Thank God most of them have eliminated Flash and Shockwave animated graphics. But what's with the blue coloring on the sites. I counted over 20 sites of major firms that have some shade of blue in their logo and as the backdrop for their homepage. Blue is soothing. Blue is one of the two colors of choice for hospital scrubs (the other is green … same feeling and stop thinking it's good to be green because it is color of money.). Could it get any worse? And then there are the firms that do their sites on the cheap and utilize the basic color palate … blue, red, orange, yellow that are taken right from the “auto font” color chart. Don't you know that it's the first impression that counts? Get with it … spend some money – that's “some” money; not an amount equal to the national debt. And for goodness sake, don't let your nephew create your site.