The Demise of Law Firm Scholarships

WHEREAS, helping young people pay for college is generally considered a good thing; and

WHEREAS hosting a scholarship can help a law practice build relationships while also expanding its online presence;

THEREFORE, you would be forgiven in assuming that the internet is full of vibrant law firm scholarships meant to help young college students. However, this is not the case.

Law firm scholarships are not being renewed

We recently Googled “Tampa law firm scholarships“ just to get a feel of what’s out there. The results were not inspiring. We found that eight of the top ten results were to scholarships that expired in 2022 or 2023. It seems as though the fad of creating a scholarship for your law firm has suddenly gone out of style, and now the internet is just full of useless pages for obsolete scholarships.

Are law firm scholarships just a marketing gimmick?

Law firm marketing agencies sell the creation and maintenance of “scholarship programs” to their clients with a simple sales pitch: Your firm’s scholarship can help a student in need while also boosting the search engine optimization (SEO) for your law firm’s website. The assumption is that schools and news outlets will share your scholarship by putting links to your website’s scholarship page on their own well-established sites. Your firm will get incredible link value as well as enhanced web traffic, and Google in turn will reward you with a high page ranking when people search for competent and well-established local attorneys.

Unfortunately, the SEO results from these scholarship programs do not always meet the expectations held by the law firms. Remember, in addition to financing the scholarship’s reward, the law firms are also paying their marketing professionals to develop and promote a never-ending scholarship program. Our simple Google search for “Tampa law firm scholarships“ clearly demonstrates that lawyers frequently cancel these programs when the results don’t justify the monthly fees.

A bad look that’s only getting worse

We predict the internet graveyard of dead scholarships will continue to grow. Why don’t law firms’ website admins just remove the webpages of expired scholarships? This can be explained by the fact that said pages are still showing up highly on internet searches even though the pages clearly state the deadline has long expired (maybe Google and Bing’s “AI” can resolve this soon). Apparently all web traffic is good web traffic.

It’s still great to offer a scholarship

Despite all the challenges, a law firm scholarship program can help students in need while also boosting your law firm’s presence on the internet. However, it’s important to understand the following:

1. It will take a little bit of time for your scholarships to have a positive impact on your firm’s internet presence

2. The SEO value of your program will go up and down over time

3. It’s hard to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for money spent on a scholarship program

Many lawyers are unsettled by that last fact. Marketing savvy law firms often just rather pay for Google Search Ads where they can easily see the ROI for every dollar spent.

Our two cents: Creating a scholarship program is a great way to help others and promote your law firm, but it’s not a magic bullet. Keep your expectations modest and remain persistent.

Coming Up

The second part of this series is scheduled for Tuesday, February 20. It will discuss how marketers run law firm scholarship programs and the challenges faced with these expensive undertakings. Another subsequent post this month will give advice on how to run your own law firm scholarship program.

We thank you for reading! Feel free to reply to this email with any questions, thoughts, or criticisms you may have.

PS: We found Farah & Farah’s up-to-date scholarship page in our above-mentioned Tampa search. The deadline is February 20, so we’ll keep our eyes on it. We congratulate them for putting relevant information on their website; here’s the link: https://farahandfarah.com/scholarship/.