Part A
You, and the first thing a stranger reads
This is the top of the page. Someone who searched your name is reading it, and so is someone a colleague sent. They decide in about four seconds whether you are the kind of lawyer they are looking for.
Including any form of it you want used, and how it is pronounced if that helps a caller.
Worked example
Nadia Ashcombe. Nadia, never Nadine. ASH combe, the second syllable rhymes with home.
The smallest true description of your practice and where you are. This sits above your name in small type.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
Executive employment and noncompete disputes. Chicago.
What you do and for whom. Write it the way you would say it to someone sitting across a table, not the way it would appear in a directory. If three versions come out, give me all three and I will bring you the strongest one.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
I represent executives when the terms of their leaving are contested.
Who your clients usually are, what state they are in when they call, and what is different about dealing with you rather than with a firm.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
Most of my clients are senior people who have already been told what their agreement means. They come to me to find out whether that is true, and what it would cost to change it. You deal with me from the first call to the last. There is no associate between you and your own file.
Your page carries exactly two asks at the top. One is usually a phone number and one is usually email. Tell me which two, the exact wording you want on each, and what happens after someone does it: who picks up, how fast you reply, whether the first conversation is free and how long it runs.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
- First ask: Call 312 555 0148. It rings on my desk between eight and six. If I am with a client it goes to voicemail and I return it the same day.
- Second ask: Email me what happened. I read every one myself and reply inside one business day.
- First conversation is thirty minutes and costs nothing.
Part B
The introduction video
Answer this part only if you bought the tier that includes a video. If you did not, write NOT APPLICABLE in the first box and move to Part C.
Yes or no.
Sixty to ninety seconds, you talking to camera, no music and no captions over the top of you. What should someone feel or understand by the end of it that the writing on the page cannot give them? You get a one page brief and a full reshoot before any editing starts, so you are not committing to a performance here.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
That I am calm about this. Everyone who calls me is frightened and has been told something alarming by someone in a hurry. If the video does one thing it should show a person who has seen this exact situation many times and is not alarmed by it.
Part C
Three things that make you credible
Exactly three, each one short enough to read at a glance. Facts only: years, admissions, volume, how the work is staffed. No superlatives and no rankings unless you can point to the source.
Worked example
Sixteen years acting for the employee side in executive disputes.
Worked example
Admitted in Illinois and before the Northern District of Illinois.
Worked example
Every matter run by me from the first call to the last. No associates, no handoffs.
Part D
How you work, and who you turn away
The second question in this part is the most important question in the form. It is the only thing on your page that no template could ever produce, and one sentence from it becomes the largest line of type on the whole page.
Walk me through it the way you would explain it to a client on the phone. What you do before the first meeting, what they get in writing and when, how you decide between negotiating and filing, what you need from them.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
- I read the agreement before we speak, so the first call is about your situation and not about the document.
- If I take the matter you get a written assessment inside a week: what your agreement actually restrains, what courts in this state have done with language like it, and the two or three routes open to you with what each one costs.
- I negotiate before I litigate. Most executives want to start the next job on time more than they want a ruling, and a filed case makes the next job harder.
- What I need from you: the agreement, the offer letter, and every message anyone sent you about leaving.
The matters you decline, the clients you are wrong for, the outcomes you will not chase. Be specific and be blunt. This is the line that makes the right person call you and stops three wrong people wasting an hour of your week.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
I turn away matters where the point is to punish. If what you want is a letter that frightens a former employer, someone else should send it. I also never act for a company against a departing employee, in any circumstance, because half of my work is undoing what those letters do.
Part E
Three areas of focus
Exactly three. Not everything you are admitted to do. The three you want more of. For each one, give me the name you would use out loud, one sentence on what it covers, and one sentence describing the situation someone is in the week they go looking for it.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
- Name: Noncompete and restrictive covenant disputes.
- What it covers: agreements that limit where you can work next, who you can call, and what you can take with you.
- When someone needs it: you have an offer in hand and a letter from your old employer arrived the same week.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
- Name: Separation and severance negotiation.
- What it covers: the terms of your exit, including equity that has not vested, the release you are being asked to sign, and what you are permitted to say afterwards.
- When someone needs it: you have been handed a package and a deadline to sign it.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
- Name: Retaliation after raising something internally.
- What it covers: what happens to your role, your review and your equity after you report conduct, and what the law does about it.
- When someone needs it: you raised something six months ago and your position has quietly become impossible.
Part F
The full width image
One image runs the full width of the page, roughly two thirds of the way down. It is the only decorative element on the page and it should belong to you rather than to law in general.
A photograph of your building, your street, your city from an angle you know, your desk, the courthouse you are actually in. If you have a file, say so and attach it to your email. If you would rather I choose, say that instead and I will bring you two options.
Worked example
The Dirksen federal courthouse from the plaza, shot low. I am in that building constantly and anyone in this city knows the building on sight. I do not have a photograph of it.
Part G
Three selected matters
Exactly three. Written so that nobody could identify the client or the other side. Three or four sentences each: the situation, what was at stake, what happened.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
A regional sales director resigned to join a competitor and was told a two year nationwide restriction barred him from the entire sector. He had an offer with a start date five weeks out. The restriction was narrowed by agreement to one state and six months, with no litigation filed, and he started on the original date.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
A chief operating officer was presented with a separation agreement and seven days to sign it. Two years of equity was due to vest eleven weeks later and the agreement was silent on it. The final agreement carried the vesting date and a reference commitment in writing.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
A finance director reported a revenue recognition practice to her audit committee and was moved off her team within the quarter. The company's position was that the move was planned before her report. The matter resolved before deposition on confidential terms.
Part H
Two endorsements
Exactly two. One from a referring lawyer carries more weight with the reader than two from clients, because a lawyer sending you work is staking their own relationship on you. For each one I need the words, who said them, their role, and confirmation that they have agreed in writing to being quoted by name.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
- Words: She read the agreement, told me in one call what it actually said, and settled in two weeks the thing I had been arguing about for four months.
- Who: a former client, chief operating officer of a logistics company.
- Named or not: happy to be named by role, not by name or company.
- Permission: yes, by email, 4 June.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
- Words: I send her the matters I cannot take, and I have never had one come back to me.
- Who: partner, corporate practice, Chicago. Refers three or four matters a year.
- Named or not: full name and firm, both fine.
- Permission: yes, by email, 11 June.
Part I
Credentials
Four short lists, side by side. Lists, not sentences. Everything here should be checkable by someone who wants to check it.
Worked example
- Illinois, 2010
- Northern District of Illinois, 2011
- Seventh Circuit, 2015
Worked example
- JD, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, 2010
- BA Economics, University of Michigan, 2006
Worked example
- National Employment Lawyers Association
- Chicago Bar Association, Labor and Employment Committee, vice chair 2021 to 2023
With a link where one exists. If you list a ranking or an award, give me the awarding body and the year, because your page names the source alongside it.
Worked example
- What the 2024 amendments changed for Illinois executives, Chicago Bar Record, March 2024
- Annual noncompete update, Chicago Bar Association CLE, 2022 to present
Part J
How someone reaches you
This part builds the contact section and the contact card a reader can save to their phone in one tap.
The one you want ringing. Say whether it should also be reachable by text.
Worked example
312 555 0148. Voice only, no text.
Worked example
nadia@ashcombelaw.com
Some practices publish a full street address, some publish a city only. Tell me which, and give me the full address either way.
Worked example
Publish it in full. 200 West Madison Street, Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60606.
Worked example
Nadia Ashcombe. Ashcombe Law LLC. Attorney at law.
Part K
Your footer notice
The notice at the bottom of the page. What it has to contain is set by your jurisdiction and by your own judgment, never by me. Give me the exact wording you want to run.
Paste it as it should appear. If you use wording already running on another site of yours, that is the fastest source. Things lawyers commonly cover here: whether the page is advertising, whether past matters predict anything, and whether sending you an email creates a relationship.
Worked example
This page is attorney advertising. The matters described are illustrative and no result is a prediction of any other. Sending an email through this page does not create an attorney client relationship, and nothing sent before a relationship exists is treated as confidential.
Part L
Domain, portrait, and anything off limits
The last three. Your page goes live on a domain in your own name, on accounts in your name, and it moves with you.
What you want it to be, and whether you already own it. If you own it, tell me where it is registered. Nothing touches your domain until you have approved the page in writing.
Worked example
ashcombelaw.com. I own it, registered at Namecheap, currently pointing at nothing.
One photograph of you carries the top of the page. Tell me what you have. If it was taken more than three years ago or it is a cropped group photograph, say so, because the specification I sent with this form covers what is needed and a new one is usually quicker than arguing with an old one.
Worked example
I have a headshot from 2019 taken at my old firm, and the firm logo is on the wall behind me. I would rather shoot a new one.
Former firms you do not want named, matters you do not want described, a photograph you never want used again, a word you dislike, a claim you will not make. Anything you list here is off limits and does not come back.
Bullets or prose, your choice.
Worked example
- Do not name my previous firm anywhere.
- Never the word aggressive. Every employment lawyer in this city uses it and it attracts exactly the clients I turn away.
- No dollar figures on any outcome.
Optional. If something about your practice matters and no question above got at it, put it here.