Legal Technology Archives - Page 14 of 24

10 Insights You Want to Gain from Your Social Media Monitoring

If you are participating in social media for your law firm, you should also be monitoring whether or not your time investment is paying dividends.

You should be creating Google Alerts or searching on Social Mention for the name of your law firm and the names of your attorneys at least once a month. Create alerts for the areas of law you practice as well. The social media blog site Buffer recommends you keep these 10 insights in mind when reviewing your results:

Sentiment — Are mentions generally position, neutral or negative?

Questions — Look for questions people may have that you can provide the answers to in your social media posts or blogs.

Feedback — If you see feedback on Avvo or Yelp or some other site that directly affects your firm, you need to listen and respond appropriately.

Links — keep track of who is retweeting or reposting your content and keep track of who is linking back to you.

Pain points — absorb what people are talking about online that is of concern to them and use that information to inform your future posts.

Content — this is where your alerts for your practice area come in handy. Use these to mine for topics of interest to your target market.

Trends — recent court decisions or trending news in your practice area should be included in your posts so it is clear you are on top of all the trends.

Media — journalists spend a lot of time online so pay attention to the areas they are covering that might provide you with an opportunity to reach out as a spokesperson on those subjects.

Influencers — are there certain individuals who keep popping up in your feeds? They may be someone it would be advantageous for you to know as an industry influencer.

Advocates — monitoring is a great way to find and recognize those people who are talking positively about you online.

Article By:

Stephen Fairley

Of:

The Rainmaker Institute

Making These 3 Errors in WordPress Makes Your Law Firm’s Blog Less Effective

Here are three common WordPress mistakes that will make your legal website less effective than it should be:

Posting content that is not unique, engaging or well designed. Unstructured information, filler materials and overly general articles do not motivate a user to interact with the site. Your goal should be to create content that users want to share or bookmark or research further by following your in-text links.
Getting caught up in finding the perfect WP template and design. Many inexperienced website authors expend all their energy before even considering content development. A lot of sites use generic content that reads like it was added as an afterthought. It is hard to schedule time to generate good content but when most people say, “Oh, I’ll come back to improve that later,” they never do.
Failing to design each page for its intended purpose. Out-of-the-box WordPress themes use similar forms and sidebars on every page. It is important for the design (as well as the content) to serve the page’s purpose.

Article By:

Tanner Jones

Of:

Consultwebs.com, Inc.

Tips for Growing Your Fan Base on Facebook

One of the biggest challenges for anyone seeking to have a large social media following is growing your audience to a healthy level. Sometimes it almost feels like we’re back in grade school, looking for other kids to like us!

Inbound marketing firm Hubspot has a number of informative presentations on Facebook marketing, but this quick slide guide with five tips on how to grow your audience is particularly useful since it visually walks you through the steps you need to take on your Facebook page to reap the rewards from each tip:

Inbound marketing firm Hubspot has a number of informative presentations on Facebook marketing, but this quick slide guide with five tips on how to grow your audience is particularly useful since it visually walks you through the steps you need to take on your Facebook page to reap the rewards from each tip:

5 Quick Tips For Growing Your Facebook Audience from HubSpot

Article By:

Stephen Fairley

Of:

The Rainmaker Institute

Social Media Ethical Guidelines: What Lawyers Need to Know

Don’t let your online activities land you on the bar discipline docket.

The New York State Bar Association’s Commercial and Federal Litigation Section has published a set of Social Media Ethics Guidelines that provide useful guidance for all lawyers (not just New Yorkers) on the use of social media. While the Guidelines set forth a broad outline for dealing with social media, lawyers will still need to think hard about their particular situations. Below are some of the guidelines that lawyers and law firms should keep in mind.

On-Line Advice: What should you do if a Facebook friend posts a legal question? Answer it? Have you created an attorney-client relationship? Do you owe a duty to all of your friend’s Facebook friends who will see that advice and possibly rely on it? The New York Guidelines suggest that you should keep any reply broad and general. “A lawyer may provide general answers to legal questions asked on social media. A lawyer, however, cannot provide specific legal advice on a social media network because a lawyer’s responsive communications may be found to have created an attorney-client relationship and legal advice also may impermissibly disclose information protected by the attorney-client privilege.” (Guideline 2.A). Great social media advice, but the Guidelines do not say when a “general answer” becomes “specific advice.” A good rule of thumb would be – if the request is specific and includes specific information about your friend’s situation – do not answer the question on Facebook.

Advertising: The Guidelines also say that if you use your social media profile primarily for your law business – think LinkedIn – it is subject to the rules governing attorney advertising and solicitation. (Guideline 1.A). When using Twitter to market your practice, the Commentary to the Guidelines says that you may “utilize commonly recognized abbreviations for information that is required in attorney advertisements.” The Guidelines thus suggest that you will need to devote some of your 140 characters to complying with advertising rules, but they don’t say exactly what content would make for a compliant Tweet.

New York’s Rule of Professional Conduct 7.1(f) requires all lawyer advertising to say “attorney advertising.” Presumably, then, attorneys can say “Att’y Ad” or something similar in their Tweets. The Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct do not require “Attorney advertising” but do require that any advertising “include the name of the lawyer, group of lawyers, or firm responsible for its content.” Mass. R. Prof. C. 7.2(d). Thus, Massachusetts lawyers may have a few extra characters in their advertising Tweets than New York lawyers, though they should Tweet under their own names – not a clever screen name.

That said, the Massachusetts rules could still raise compliance issues for lawyers who use social media – particularly concerning Rule 7.3 which governs solicitation of professional employment. For example, the Office of Bar Counsel has previously advised that “bulletin boards, which display information in cyberspace and allow people to post and respond to messages, … do not involve real-time, live interaction between lawyers and prospective clients” and are thus in-bounds for lawyers to advertise and solicit clients. On the other hand, “solicitation through … interactive computer-accessed chat rooms is prohibited as in-person solicitation” where the chat rooms “offer conversation that is live, interactive and conducted in real-time or near real-time.” On this rationale, a lawyer who finds herself in a “real-time” Twitter or Facebook conversation could unwittingly breach Rule 7.3(d) (prohibiting “in person” solicitation).

Among the other useful tips from the New York Guidelines:

If someone posts a statement to your social media profile that does not comply with advertising guidelines, you may have an obligation to remove the post. (Guideline 1.C);
“A lawyer may view the public portion of a person’s social media profile or public posts even if such person is represented by another lawyer,” including in situations where the person’s account tracks the identities of the viewers. (Guideline 3.A);
A lawyer may request permission to view the restricted portion of an unrepresented person’s social media website or profile. However, the lawyer must use her full name and an accurate profile, and she may not create a different or false profile in order to mask her identity.” (Guideline 3.B);
The situation is different if the person is represented. “A lawyer shall not contact a represented person to seek to review the restricted portion of the person’s social media profile unless an express authorization has been furnished by such person.” (Guideline 3.C);
You can advise a client to “take down” a post, although the client may have an obligation to preserve the information removed. (Guideline 4.A).

The Guidelines are not universal, however, and the drafters caution that there are numerous conflicting opinions and rules around the United States. For example, a recent New Hampshire ethics opinion has a different take on Guideline 3.B, finding that a lawyer must disclose her involvement in a matter when sending a “friend” request to an unrepresented witness to view restricted portions of the witness’ profile. “[S]ending a Facebook friend request in-name-only constitutes a misrepresentation by omission, given that the witness might not immediately associate the lawyer’s name with his or her purpose and that, were the witness to make that association, the witness would in all likelihood deny the request.” N.H. Bar Ass’n Ethics Advisory Comm., Op. 2012-13/05.

As you incorporate social media into your practice, you must research the law, understand the capabilities of the social media platforms you use, and carefully consider your online activities in connection with the Rules of Professional Conduct. In Massachusetts, if in doubt, you could contact the Office of Bar Counsel’s ethics hotline and ask. The hotline is available between 2 and 4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Fridays at (617) 728-8750. Ultimately, your best defense against stepping into a social media ethics landmine is to stop and think before you click.

Article By:

Thomas W. Kirchofer

Of:

Sherin and Lodgen LLP

The One SEO Rule You Need to Know About Alt Tags for Images

Wikipedia says alt attributes (alt tags) are used in HTML documents/Web pages “to specify alternative text (alt text) that is to be rendered when the element to which it is applied cannot be rendered.”

To optimize your website’s content for search, remember one simple rule for image alt tags: An image’s alt attributes should describe the visual. Including keywords in alt tags is a good practice as long as it’s not spammy. Alt attributes used to have a larger SEO impact in Google searches before the company changed its Google Image search design. Traffic has decreased considerably from image search since then.

Article By:

Tanner Jones

Of:

Consultwebs.com, Inc.

The Right Way To Get Free Publicity

There’s a saying that goes “any publicity is good publicity,” and while I’m not so sure about that, I do know that positive publicity can do wonders for your law firm. But do you know what’s even better than positive publicity? FREE positive publicity. That’s right, you can get great publicity that won’t cost you a single penny and I’m going to tell you how:

Contact your local TV news station. Email, fax, or call your local news station and introduce yourself. Tell them who you are and what you do, and don’t forget to mention what you specialize in. Tell them that you are available if they ever need an expert to speak on a legal topic, especially in your niche. Do this once a month until they contact you to be interviewed. If you do a good job, they’ll keep coming back to you and your face will continue to be broadcast on local television for free.
Notify different mediums of the media. Once you’ve been interviewed on TV, let your local radio stations and newspapers know. They will see you as a leading expert in your field and they will follow you and want to ask you to interview with them. This way, you can recycle interviews and information without being redundant.
Clip and recycle. Once you have been interviewed on TV a few times, you’ll want to compile all of your interviews into one video that you can share online and use on you website to show potential clients that you are the leading expert in your field. With an easy editing software, you can clip the highlights of all your interviews and recycle them into one powerful, credibility-building video.
Testimonials. If you host an event or seminar, bring a cameraman along with you. After the event, have your cameraman politely ask attendees if he can interview them about their experience. If you’re a great lawyer, then I’ll bet you can host a great event, so you know that everyone who agrees to do an interview will do nothing but rave about you and the knowledge you possess. Take these testimonials and upload them to YouTube, your website, and social media so everyone can see how awesome you are.
Be educational. The best way to show that you are a credible expert in your field is to prove it rather than just advertise it. In order to prove this, you need to be the source of information for all questions and topics in your field of law. So, you should blog, write articles, make videos, and even publish books on your wealth of information that you have about your practice area(s). When you hand someone a book that you authored instead of a flimsy advertisement with your face on it, you are creating great publicity and credibility for yourself and your firm.

Article By:

Ben Glass

Of:

Great Legal Marketing, Inc.

To Satisfy New Search Algorithms, Legal Websites Need Quality Content

The success of a law-firm website is determined by how many clients and potential clients visit the site, spend time there and take action based on what they discover.

Over the years, law-firm marketers focused on keyword and link strategies to enhance search engine results and increase traffic to their websites. While these are still valuable tools, recent developments in the search universe have shifted the emphasis to content strategy.

Quality content includes well-written articles, blog posts, videos, webcasts, presentation slide decks, infographics, eBooks and white papers. Quality content addresses client needs.

Sixty-seven percent of the time, online searchers use Google to find what they are looking for. To provide the best results, Google is constantly tweaking its search algorithm. (An algorithm is a process or set of rules to be used by a computer in calculations or other problem-solving operations.) These algorithms are designed to maintain search engine integrity and punish violators.

Sara Downey Robinson and Chris Davis discussed the changing landscape of digital marketing and search engine optimization at the monthly meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association, held May 13 at Guard and Grace in LoDo Denver.

Davis is business development director at Burns Marketing, a full-service B2B marketing agency that combines traditional and digital marketing to help clients drive demand. Robinson is marketing coordinator at Inflow, a top inbound-marketing firm specializing in search.

Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird

Panda and Penguin are two major changes to the existing Google algorithm made in 2011 and 2012, respectively. In 2013, Google released a totally new algorithm called Hummingbird (which incorporates and enhances the updates made by Panda and Penguin). These three developments have completely changed the way law firms must look at search.

“Law-firm sites that regularly showed up on page one now find themselves on page 20,” said Robinson. “Since searchers rarely go beyond the second page of results in an online search, this is a real problem.”

Google Panda focuses on keywords. Sites with keyword “stuffing” are demoted or flagged as spam. Panda also penalizes low-quality content, thin content, duplicate content and the amount of advertising compared with the amount of useful content on a site.

Google Penguin focuses on links. It focuses on “black hat” tactics like links that come from poor-quality sites, from sites that aren’t topically relevant to a target market, paid links, and links where the anchor text is overly optimized (exact-match anchor text). Use natural language in your links, and vary it.

“Quality inbound links are not found at garage sales, “said Robinson. “Steer clear of link farms. A few high-quality, carefully developed links perform much better than a large number of weak, irrelevant links. It takes time and perhaps a dedicated staff person to develop and nurture quality links.”

The new Google Hummingbird algorithm looks for a steady stream of high-quality, relevant content and natural language on webpages – and rewards those who provide it. Hummingbird attempts to decipher a search engine query by using the context of a question rather than the specific keywords within the question. Thin content, keyword stuffing and lack of relevant content will cause significant demotions.

“Content marketing is a technique that creates and distributes valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience,” said Davis, “with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Identify client personas and clarify their needs

Before a law firm can create relevant content, it needs to know with whom it is communicating. In marketing talk, this is called the “user persona” – or target market.

“In user-centered design and marketing, personas are user types that might use a legal service in a similar way,” said Davis. “A small law firm might target one user persona. A large law firm will target numerous user personas.”

One law-firm user persona might be high-income individuals going through divorce. Another might be small businesses in need of venture capital. Another might be large medical equipment manufacturers facing product liability lawsuits. The more specific the persona, the more specific a law firm’s content can be. Relevant content will answer the questions these users are asking, using natural language.

A user personal is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from user interviews.

“An effective law firm website will focus not on the firm’s capabilities, but on the identified needs of a persona or personas,” said Davis. “It will use industry- or interest-specific terminology within a context familiar to the targeted persona.”

Create relevant content

Law firms that want to prevent or correct loss of search engine result page rankings and traffic should publish meaningful, original content on a regular basis. The goal is content that will establish a firm, practice group or lawyer as a though leader in an area relevant to a user persona.

“Take the time to discover the common questions your clients have, and provide the answers to these questions,” said Davis. “Relevant content can be written, but it also can and should be visual. Video content posted on YouTube (which is owned by Google) is particularly powerful as ‘Google juice.’”

Instead of using keywords like “car accident,” use more specific terms like “car accident lawsuit” or “car accident insurance”, or better yet natural language terms like “What should I do if I am sued for a DUI car accident?” or “What should I look for when buying car insurance for an older vehicle?” Think in terms of full-fledged questions that a person might ask Siri on a smartphone.

Once search brings users to a law firm’s site, there must be a way to create and nurture a relationship and convert the potential client into a real client over time. Each item of posted content should contain a call to action – some way for the user to interact with the site so that the firm can capture data. This could be a way to comment on a white paper or download information about an upcoming event.

Use analytics to measure success

“Take advantage of Google Analytics to collect data that can be used to improve the quality of your webpages – adding more of what works and eliminating what does not,” said Robinson. “In Google Analytics, which is currently free, law firms can set up specific goals to study how users are entering and interacting with your website.”

Google Analytics lets a law firm know which content is most-viewed and acted upon, so that similar content can be added. It lets the firm know which content is ignored, so that it can be eliminated or improves. It lets a firm know the exact path users take through its site, so that adjustments can be made to create a better user experience.

If observation and analytics show that a law firm website is not getting the results it wants, an audit can help determine the source of the problem, take steps to fix the problem, measure the results of these steps, and look for any others areas that could be improved.

“Increasing inbound traffic to your website is not magic – it is a combination of art and science,” said Robinson. “You should select any agency that makes you feel comfortable and uses language that is easy to understand. You should never feel intimidated.

“At the same time, do not expect miracles,” said Robinson. “Go into the process with reasonable expectations. It takes time to make changes, add quality content and wait for the search engines to find and reward this content. Each day, more than one million pieces of new content are posted to the Internet. It takes time to rise above the fray.”

A law firm that has experienced worsening search engine results in the wake of Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird can take positive steps to restore performance. Google will continue to reward webpages with strong content marketing efforts, including answer-driven content. It also rewards sites that generate social media buzz – especially an active presence on its proprietary YouTube and Google+ platforms.

Article By:

Janet Ellen Raasch

Of:

Strategic Writing And Ghostwriting

The National Law Review is Going Back to the Future. New website coming up soon!

The National Law Review is honoring its roots as one of the country’s first nation-wide legal journals by returning to a more journalistic style. At the same time, we’re adding enhanced features to help our readers more quickly find the nation’s breaking legal news and analysis.

Look for changes over the next few weeks.

Launch date soon!

Getting Lawyers Up to Speed: The Basics for Understanding ITIL®

As more clients use ITIL^®—a standard for best practices in providing IT services—IT lawyers who are unfamiliar with the standard should familiarize themselves with its basic principles. This is particularly important as clients are integrating ITIL terminology and best practices (or modified versions thereof) into their service delivery and support best practices as well as the structure and substantive provisions of their IT outsourcing and services contracts.

Most IT professionals are well versed in ITIL and its framework. They will introduce the concepts into statements of work and related documents with the expectation that their lawyers and sourcing professionals understand the basics well enough to identify issues and requirements and negotiate in a meaningful way.

With this in mind, it is time for IT lawyers and sourcing professionals to get up to speed. Below are some of the basics to get started:

ITIL—which stands for the “Information Technology Infrastructure Library”—is a set of best practice publications for IT service management that are designed to provide guidance on the provision of quality IT services and the processes and functions used to support them.
ITIL was created by the UK government almost 20 years ago and is being adopted widely as the standard for best practice in the provision of IT services. The current version of ITIL is known as the ITIL 2011 edition.
The ITIL framework is designed to cover the full lifecycle of IT and is organized around five lifecycle stages:
1. Service strategy
2. Service design
3. Service transition
4. Service operation
5. Continual service improvement
Each lifecycle stage, in turn, has associated common processes. For example, processes under the “service design” stage include:
1. Design coordination
2. Service catalogue management
3. Service level management
4. Availability management
5. Capacity management
6. IT service continuity management
7. Information security management systems
8. Supplier management
The ITIL glossary defines each of the lifecycle stages and each of the covered processes.

ITIL^® is a registered trademark of AXELOS Limited.

Article By:

Barbara Murphy Melby

Of:

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP

LMA P3 Conference – The Practice Innovation Conference, June 12-13, Chicago, IL

The National Law Review is pleased to bring you information about the LMA P3 Conference to be held in Chicago June 12-13, 2014.

When

Thursday – Friday, June 12-13, 2014

Where

Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile
633 N. Saint Clair St.
Chicago, IL 60611

Dig deeper into project management, pricing and process improvement.

The 2013 LMA P3 Conference set the bar high with fantastic breakout sessions, partner presentations and networking opportunities, but this year’s conference looks even more promising.

Join us for P3 – The Practice Innovation Conference, where pricing, project management, and practice innovation experts will discuss the use of various tactics to explore solutions to real issues face by law firms today.

This execution-focused conference will have attendees roll up their sleeves and collectively work out solutions. Click here to view the full conference schedule.

There is still time to register! Register now!

Category: Legal Technology

The One SEO Rule You Need to Know About Alt Tags for Images

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The Right Way To Get Free Publicity

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