PGFM: Highlighting people skills

The web can be used to enrich reputation-building material.

The Site

Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy (PGFM) is a long-established US law practice with large offices in Atlanta and Washington DC. Between them the two offices house 305 partners and associates. The firm’s website lets clients, potential clients – or rival attorneys – research detailed professional biographies of all of them.

Accessible in the People section of the site, biographies are searchable via an alphabetical index or a dedicated search engine that allows filtering by name, practice group, language, bar & court admittances and location. Each biography includes a photo, e-mail and telephone contact, downloadable vCard (an electronic business card) and, where appropriate, links to publications or papers written by the individual. The profiles can also be printed off or e-mailed.

The Takeaway

In the professions, knowing who you are doing business with and having faith in their skills is a decisive factor in a client’s choosing whom to go or stay with. PGFM shows how, in a profession that has more convincing to do than most, the web can be used to enrich reputation-building material.

While many law firm’s websites have similar features, PGFM’s confident use of the medium is more comprehensive and accomplished than most. It employs the limitless capacity of the web not only to publish a full directory of staff (which has sections for non-legal staff too), but also to provide detailed individual biographies that link to extra ‘evidence’ such as published articles along with electronic and non-electronic dedicated contacts. Online indexing and searchability add dimensions of usability that print could never match.

What PGFM is doing illustrates as well how the web can help even a large firm maintain the ‘personal’ feel that in an era of networking and customer relationship management is an important asset to all organisations.

First published on 29 April, 2004