This is especially true when your offices span the world and your needs for updating photography may be frequent. After all, prospective clients make your website their first stop and presenting them with consistent and professional lawyer portraits isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have.
How to Budget
Of course, factors like disparate office locations, number of offices, and number of lawyer headshots needed means there is no one-size-fits-all budget. There are, however, some common truths to follow to help you plan ahead and utilize your budget wisely:
- Gain efficiencies of scale: This is where planning is key. Bringing a photographer to your location for an organized session day or days where you can capture all of your lawyer portraits at once allows you to maximize budget. Setting up space and lighting once is far more cost-efficient than asking a photographer to come back time and again for multiple sessions.
- Find a single, trusted source: If there’s one easy pitfall, it’s having each office pick and choose their own photographer. The result is headshots that look, well, as if they were all taken by different people! It can also lead to additional, unplanned costs to “unify” the imagery, or fake the appearance of consistency, through retouching. When planning for your next lawyer portrait session, select a photography group with unified photographers across many locations. Ask if the photographers are vetted, trained and coached by the group you’re considering, rather than a group that simply outsources the job. This ensures a single style for your headshots, and clear communication between photographers to capture your lawyers in a consistent manner. And that makes for a consistent website experience.
- Select a complete solution: Part of identifying the right “single source” for photography means looking at the services offered beyond the photography itself. Will they be responsible for lawyer scheduling? Provide tips for what to wear or not to wear to your lawyers? Track who they’ve captured and who they haven’t? And will they provide you with guidance on not only the best individual shots, but what makes for the best comprehensive picture of your lawyers?
- Location, location, location: Forgive the old adage, but location is critical when it comes to the “feel” of your lawyer portraits. You’ll work with your photographer or photography group to identify where to photograph in your office or what backdrop is right. Increasingly, however, law firms are opting for a more modern approach, which could mean varied locations, photographing outdoors, and shooting wider than the headshots of yesterday. Why is this important when it comes to budget? Typically, the desire to capture more locations within a single office setting increases both set-up time and photography budget.
There’s plenty to keep in mind when planning lawyer portraits, from allocating the proper budget to selecting the right photography group to ensuring your photography is implemented on your website to accurately reflect your firm to current and prospective clients, as well as future hires. Take your time and find the right partner for your photography needs—it’s often the first “face” people will see!