Database-driven and API content can make your website easier to manage. But automation won’t work in every situation. Maintain control by implementing a few key manual override features.
Many large law firms rely on automated content to keep their websites fresh and up-to-date.
The benefits?
- Reduces manual updates on volume content
- Allows you to easily maintain consistency and accuracy
- Leverages existing databases from other departments (HR, IT, operations)
Automated content typically comes in two flavors
Database-driven content
Database-driven content is a common way for modern websites to deploy articles, news, people, and events to relevant pages.
Let’s say you have an IP practice page. A database-driven website will allow you to tag all of the news, events, attorneys, and thought leadership with an IP tag, and that will push that content to the IP page automatically.
API-driven content
In non-technical terms, a website that uses API content is being fed information from other systems and
places it onto various pages of the site. This is most commonly used to populate attorney bios: HR, directory, and intranet systems feed names, phone numbers, email addresses, office location, and possibly other data to the website, and the website populates attorney bios with it. The data is managed by HR or whoever in the internal system, and updates automatically flow onto your public-facing website.
So what’s the problem?
Automated content is great for volume, but it can’t account for every situation.
Well, automated data is great for 95 percent of your information, but there are always exceptions, special requests, and sensitivities that automated content processes can’t account for.
The solution?
Build manual overrides into your website.
Give yourself a way to step in and override the automated content without drama or hassle.
Manual override #1
The ability to prevent fields from updating automatically
Let’s say you’re building your website to automatically pull in HR data to populate certain attorney bio fields. It’s a pretty common approach for big law firms.
But one of your partners is Jenny Smith. She’s a renowned private equity attorney with an established track record. She’s a marquee name in this space.
But your firm’s HR system lists her as “Jennifer,” so “Jennifer” is what appears in her bio.
How do you manage this conflict between legal HR info and a brand name in the market?
Similarly, what if your attorney needs two offices listed? Or wants to hide their contact information due to security concerns or spam endemic to their area of law? What if one of your partners is also the firm’s general counsel, and he wants both titles to be listed on his bio?
You can’t change the HR data. That’s tied to tax records and bank accounts and other things the marketing team shouldn’t touch.
So you need a way to change the data for the website only, stepping in after the API has pulled it into your CMS. And then you’ll need to prevent the API from changing it back to what it is in the HR system.
This is easier on some platforms than others, but you should have this conversation with your developer early in the process so you can be as comprehensive as possible in identifying the overrides you’ll need.
Some of the most common:
- Name fields (first, middle, last)
- Email (including hiding it altogether)
- Phone (including hiding it altogether)
- Job title (for attorneys who may be a partner and a pro bono chair, for example)
Manual override #2
Allow formatting on automated content fields
The default for most databases is “store raw, display pretty.” But many fields in a website CMS don’t include the “display pretty” part of this.
What if the name of an event includes a book title? What if an attorney graduated summa cum laude? Or what if you just want to italicize for emphasis?
Talk to your developer early. It’s usually easy enough to build in fields that can be formatted, but better to identify your needs and let them know early in the process.
Examples of formatted content:
- Bio education fields (honors, law journal titles)
- Content headlines (legal terms, news outlet names)
- Event titles (book titles, legal terms, news outlet names)
Manual override #3:
Control display order on automated lists
Websites that are dynamic—with fresh, relevant content across all pages of the site—are the most effective for professional services firms trying to reach (and persuade) clients and potential clients.
Automated processes are key to making this happen. Recent publications and events appear on attorney bios. Practice leaders and team members appear on practice and industry pages. And related practices and industries appear on blog posts, news items, and event pages.
But how do they appear? When you have more than one relevant item, how do you determine the order they should appear?
There are some obvious approaches.
For example, attorneys appear in alphabetical order by last name. Thought leadership appears in reverse chronological order by the date the items were published. And upcoming events appear in chronological order by the date of the event.
For 90 percent of your site, that will work just fine.
But what if you want practice leaders to appear first on your practice page, with the other team members appearing after in alpha order?
What if you want to prioritize certain pieces of thought leadership because they reflect a development you want to respond to or an area of expertise you want to highlight? Or one of your events is closed to the public and should be hidden from the public event lists but available as a live URL you can share with invitees?
These situations can cause problems for your automated content lists.
The solution? Have your vendor build in a manual override field for these page components. These should allow you to display in default order, manually select items to appear out of order, and allow you to suppress low-priority items in favor of others.
Places where you may need this:
- Your homepage! You’ll want the greatest level of control on your homepage so you have the ability to manually set all dynamic content to reflect firm priorities, developments in the industry, and timely areas of expertise.
- Practice leaders and team members on practice and industry pages.
- Thought leadership (blog posts, articles, white papers, etc.) on attorney bio and practice pages.
Manual override #4
A way to interrupt automatic workflows
For law firms with data-rich websites and larger teams of content editors, automated workflows are incredibly useful tools. But just as with other automated features, automated workflows can’t anticipate every possible situation and can cause you headaches if you don’t have a way to interrupt or override them.
For example, you may set up your website to automatically publish a basic attorney bio as soon as the person is officially in your HR system. Or you may want to automatically push events or publications to the live site as soon as they are posted to your internal calendars or library system.
For the most part, that can be fine.
But there may be occasions where you won’t want something to automatically publish (say, for example, a new lateral who is part of a larger group you want to announce all at once).
The solution?
Have the API automatically push items into the CMS, but as a draft, not a published web page.
That is a good solution for some content types, such as attorney bios, where volume does not outweigh strategy.
For items like events or publications, the volume may be too much, and the manual publish functionality can become a bottleneck.
You’ll have to weigh the risks and specific sensitivities for your firm.
Common workflows that require manual interruption or notification options:
- Page drafting, reviewing, and publishing across the site
- Attorney bio creation and publishing
- Imagery, abstracts, and SEO content for thought leadership items
Planning to use automated content on your website?
Talk to your developer early in the project about building in manual overrides.
There are so many tools available to make your website easier to manage, more consistent, and—most importantly—accurate and up-to-date.
But to make them effective, you want to think through how they’ll be used—and the situations where they might cause issues—well before launch. Building in manual overrides and methods for you to take control of your content will save you tons of time, stress, and money later.
