Labour
Websites for labour law attorneys.
A labour practice that acts for both sides has a problem no other practice area has: two readers with opposite interests, arriving at the same page, each deciding whether it was written for the other one. Most firms solve it by writing for the employer and hoping the employee does not notice.
The example website
- Firm
- Audi Alteram Labour Law
- Practice
- Labour
- Pages, all of them working
- 7 pages
The example site
Audi Alteram Labour Law
Labour · Gardens, Cape Town · 7 pages
Three attorneys in Gardens, Cape Town, acting for employers and for employees. Seven pages, all of them working.
The firm is invented — the name comes out of a law textbook — and every page of the site says so at the top. Everything else on it is real: every link goes somewhere, and every page is written.
What a labour website has to do
Answer both sides on the same page, at the same length
Not an employer section and an employee section — the same question answered twice, next to each other, in the same typeface at the same size. Split them into separate parts of the site and each reader assumes the other one got the real answer.
Deal with the conflict question before it is asked
“How can you act for both?” is the first thought either reader has, and a site that does not raise it looks as though it is hoping nobody will. Answering it plainly — never both parties in one matter, and here is how that is managed — turns the obvious objection into the reason to instruct you.
Publish the deadlines, because they are the whole business
Thirty days to refer an unfair dismissal. Ninety for an unfair labour practice. More matters are lost on those numbers than on the merits. A site that puts them on the page is doing the most useful thing a labour website can do, for either side.
Price two different buyers differently
An employer is buying a monthly retainer and predictability. An employee is buying a first consultation they can afford and an answer about whether it is worth it. One column cannot address both, and a firm that tries ends up looking expensive to one and unserious to the other.
Three decisions, and why
Each picture below is a screenshot of a real page on that site, not a drawing of one.
Every rule is set out twice, side by side
Fair reason and fair process, the thirty days, representation at arbitration, what an unfair dismissal is worth — each stated once for the employer and once for the employee, in two columns of the same width, so neither looks like an afterthought. Neither version is the small print, and each reader can see the other one.
Two fee schedules, printed next to each other
Retainers, chairing a hearing, drafting a disciplinary code and the section 189 process on one side; a free first consultation, a referral drafted and lodged, preparing you to run your own arbitration, a settlement offer reviewed on the other. The same page, the same weight, neither behind a form.
The CCMA page names where each side gets caught
The certificate restarts a clock and both sides forget it. Nothing said at conciliation follows you into arbitration. A review is not an appeal. Each written out for both readers — a page only a firm that genuinely acts for both could write.
What it costs
Rebuilding the site you have is R8,500. A new one is R12,500 for a sole practitioner and R18,000 for two to five attorneys. Looking after it afterwards is from R1,950 a month. Every figure is published, so you can hold it against anybody else’s quote without asking us first.
Questions
- We act only for employers. Is half of this wasted?
- No — what carries over is the structure, not the both-sides part. For an employer-only practice the same page becomes your answer with the employee’s position stated next to it, which is more useful to your client than your answer alone. The example site shows the harder version of the problem.
- Employee work comes in small and urgent. Will the site create admin?
- It should reduce it. Publishing the deadlines, the CCMA route and the first-consultation position answers most of what an employee telephones to ask, so the calls you do take are the ones worth taking.
- Does publishing deadlines create a risk for us?
- General information with a date on it, and a line saying it is not advice on your matter, is what every reputable firm publishes. The example site carries that line. The larger risk is being the firm whose site says nothing useful.
- Who owns it?
- You do. The domain is registered in your firm’s name from the first day, the content and photographs are yours, and so is the data the site collects. Twelve months, then month to month on sixty days’ notice.
Read next
Send us your firm’s web address.
We go through it against a written list of 69 checks and email you the six problems worth fixing first, each in one sentence, with what we measured. It costs nothing and we do not telephone you afterwards.