Affordable Attorney Marketing

Recently posted in the National Law Review an article by Margaret Grisdela of Legal Expert Connections about Affordable Attorney Marketing. 

“I am a new attorney in the Northeast looking for a way to get clients. My practice areas are Bankruptcy and litigation. I understand the fundamentals of building a referral base and SEO and are implementing the same now, but those are long term strategies. What is a starving attorney to do in the meantime? This is where I hope you can help me.”

This is a question that came into my inbox this week, and it’s a good one. “Affordable attorney marketing” is the quest when you open a new law practice, or need to rejuvenate an existing one.

Here are a few ideas that come to mind:

1. Join a lawyer referral network. Many local bar associations offer a referral network. While you won’t get rich, you should start to get a few cases coming in. This can give you visibility in the courts and among your peers.

2. Use LinkedIn to build your network and stay connected. Use the “Share an Update” feature from your LinkedIn home page to post an interesting item every 1-2 weeks. This will keep you “top of mind” with those you know.

3. Test a small Google AdWords campaign. While this can be expensive, it is possible to set daily limits on your ad budget and focus on a small geographic area. Also, be sure to filter out terms that don’t apply to you with the negative keywords feature.

4. Start a blog. Demonstrate your knowledge in bankruptcy, litigaion, and other practice areas with an educational blog. WordPress or Blogger allow you to start a blog quickly and easily. Actually the set up is the easy part. Write at least 1-2 blog posts per week, focusing on practice area keywords and also relating stories to your geo area of coverage. Feed the blog posts through other social medial (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) using a service like Hootsuite. Select a URL with important keywords to help get online recognition.

5. Consider BNI or similar lead groups. This can help you to meet other professionals and get the word out about your legal services.

Overall, have lots of business cards and network, network, network! Tell everyone you know what you do. Marketing to those you know is your best source of new business fast. Picking a niche for your practice can also help your marketing dollars work smartly.

© Legal Expert Connections, Inc. 

LMA Virginias Chapter – Continuing Marketing Education Conference 10-14-11

The National Law Review is pleased to announce The Continuing Marketing Education program presented by the Legal Marketing Association Virginias Chapter will take place October 14, 2011 University of Richmond’s Jepson Alumni Center, 101 College Road
Richmond, VA 23229.

Client Service needs, new trends in business development, marketing communications, and how to set yourself apart from the pack are all topics included in The Continuing Marketing Education program presented by the Legal Marketing Association Virginias Chapter. This is the first local, full-day program developed for legal marketing professionals. attorneys, students and other industry professionals to be presented in the Richmond area.

We have created a unique program designed to provide a comprehensive look into today’s legal marketing issues as well as provide an outlook into what to expect in the future. Our goal is to have in-depth discussions on key topics as the next phase in continuing members’ education. Sessions will focus on a hands-on approach showing attendees “how to get it done” and leaving them with ideas to take back with them to jump-start their next initiative.

LMA Continuing Marketing Education Conference

Client Service needs, new trends in business development, marketing communications, and how to set yourself apart from the pack are all topics included in The Continuing Marketing Education program presented by the Legal Marketing Association Virginias Chapter. This is the first local, full-day program developed for legal marketing professionals. attorneys, students and other industry professionals to be presented in the Richmond area.

We have created a unique program designed to provide a comprehensive look into today’s legal marketing issues as well as provide an outlook into what to expect in the future. Our goal is to have in-depth discussions on key topics as the next phase in continuing members’ education. Sessions will focus on a hands-on approach showing attendees “how to get it done” and leaving them with ideas to take back with them to jump-start their next initiative.

Embracing Technology of Tomorrow

Posted in the National Law Review an article by Kristyn J. Sornat of Much Shelist Denenberg Ament & Rubenstein P.C.  on what innovative technology will be available in the next five years or by the end of the decade. 

 

Think of what new platforms have become available for marketing in the past ten years —social media sites (including YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn) and the smartphone/tablet with mobile applications and paid search tools, such as Google AdWords. It makes it hard to imagine what innovative technology will be available in the next five years, let alone by the end of the decade. Plenty of gimmicky technology with a significant “cool” factor will be developed by the year 2020; however, the more important trends to watch involve the transformation of legal marketing staples.

CRMs Will Be Easier to Use

Not only will CRMs be more useful, attorneys will be required to use them! By the year 2020, there will be no more excuses as to why attorneys cannot use their firm’s client relationship management (CRM) system to support business development efforts. The most common complaints I hear about our CRM are the following: “It’s too hard to use;” “The process of entering and maintaining my information is too cumbersome;” or “I don’t have time to learn it.” However, I’ve noticed that since the economic downturn (which necessitates working smarter and harder on business development) it has been a lot easier to get the late adopters on board. However, these users still struggle with the functionality of the product.

Over the past decade, software providers have made great strides in improving the user interface of CRM products, and they have gotten smarter by incorporating it into what attorneys do every day — check email. The leading CRM providers in the legal market now allow attorneys to access their products via their email client. Companies like CRM4Legal developed their product with this in mind while others, such as LexisNexis InterAction (with version 6.0), have finally integrated the majority of their main product functionality into Outlook. This integration will make future CRM versions much easier to use. Over the next decade, these companies will take this trend a step further. Not only will using the product be more intuitive for attorneys, but the amount of information automatically pulled into the system will be greater than ever before. In addition to looking up who at your firm “knows” a client, you’ll be able to see what the client was billed in the last year, what practice groups were utilized, where the growth opportunities are and which of your other non-internal contacts have a connection to the client. There may even be access to “personal” preferences for the client (like music and food), and best of all, attorneys will not have to enter this information into the database themselves. Firms have used portal technology to facilitate bringing information into one place, but CRMs will differ from portals by tapping into third-party resources, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and news sources, to deliver unprecedented, one-step access to information that can be useful in pitching a prospect or servicing a client.

The Demise of Email Marketing

In the year 2020, firms will have shifted their efforts from mass email marketing campaigns to other online distribution channels. The effectiveness of email marketing is already on the decline, and over the next decade email clients will become even stricter about the types of information they allow through their spam filters. Compounding this issue, users are now relying on tools like social media, RSS feeds, blogs, search engines and other resources, rather than email, to find the information they need. Firms will no longer have the luxury of knowing they can inform their clients of emerging legal issues just by sending a monthly newsletter or weekly alert. They will need to find new ways to get this information to clients and prospects, preferably through a myriad of distribution channels. To prepare, firms should concentrate on using search engine optimization (SEO) for their websites (especially on pages that tend to get a majority of visitors from email distributions) and encourage attorneys to use social media to proactively share their articles and experience in specific practice areas.

Also, targeted online advertising, such as on LinkedIn and paid search, can be used to promote practice groups and help supplement the lack of exposure for these groups through email alerts. For example, firms can advertise their healthcare practice group to LinkedIn users in the healthcare industry, who have General Counsel as a title and live within 50 miles of the geographic area to which that practice group targets. Another paid search tool that may be useful is Google Remarketing, which allows firms to target ads to users who’ve previously visited their websites. Through this technology, users that find healthcare articles on a firm’s website through Google would later see an ad for the firm’s healthcare practice as they visit other websites or check their Gmail accounts. Legal alerts will still be written, but firms will rely more heavily on searchable syndication services, such as Martindale.com’s Legal Library or The National Law Review’s searchable database. Firms would be wise to prepare themselves for the inevitable by scaling back now on the amount of information they send to contacts through mass email messages. They should start tracking article clicks, opens and other performance data and use it to eliminate contacts from mailing lists. For example, if a contact only opens healthcare alerts or clicks on healthcare articles, a firm should only send them email distributions having to do with healthcare. In the future, if a firm wants anyone to open their email messages, they will need to condition their recipients to expect relevant information in every distribution.

Design for Mobile First

Mobile devices are everywhere, and they are fast becoming people’s primary access point to the Internet and email. In the past five years, although mobile devices have been a consideration when firms design websites and email messages, it hasn’t been a necessity to design for them first. By 2020, mobile devices (including tablets) will play the role which PCs do today. It’s important that firms start preparing for that shift now by creating a pared-down mobile version of their websites if all the pages of the site are not already mobile-friendly. Firms working on a website redesign should make sure they are giving mobile devices and PCs equal consideration. For example, if there is a search section for articles, more search buckets with dropdown choices should be created so that mobile users will have to rely less on typing in search terms. If Flash is utilized to emphasize important information on the website, there should be an alternative way to get that information across to iPhone users, who cannot view Flash animation. Although designing for mobile may inhibit creativity, it is better for mobile users to be able to see and use a highly functional website than to become frustrated by (or unable to view) a beautifully designed website. Mobile apps (currently a hot topic in legal marketing circles) will also be important, just not the way we think of them today. Many firms that have taken advantage of this new technology have focused on providing information that is already accessible on their websites and in other places. In the future, successful law firm apps will have two purposes: to aid users in things they are doing every day and to provide better service to clients. For example, Latham & Watkins has already realized this trend and released a useful app that allows people to search a glossary of legal, business and financial terms. How will apps help firms better service their clients in the future? They may allow clients to view hours billed and balances due, or search a firm’s attorney experience database based on specific criteria for a new matter. As firms develop ideas for apps, they should keep usability in mind so they don’t end up with an app that clients download out of curiosity, but then fails to entice them to come back again.

Website Overhauls

Websites will be vastly different by the end of the decade —not only will they be designed with mobile devices in mind, but they also may incorporate technology that delivers a different homepage experience to each user based on past visits. For example, tailored article and event feeds might display, based on previous visits to practice group descriptions, attorney bios or the user’s past site searches. Other website areas that will be affected will be attorney bios, practice group descriptions and resource centers. Firms should begin thinking about attorney bios more like social media profiles (maybe even connecting LinkedIn profiles with attorney pages), because the lines between websites and social media will be even more blurred. Video will be as important as text in getting marketing messages across on practice group pages, and firms will use articles and descriptions of experience to show practice group expertise rather than just “say”they have it in a lengthy practice group description. In the resource area of the website, firms will add more information that is useful to visitors. CLE webcasts may be a way to drive users to the website, much as articles do today. However, the trick to adding CLE resources will be figuring out how to give people their credit and comply with ethics rules for each state. Firms need to start preparing for what is to come in marketing technology — by 2020, tactics and processes will have evolved into a connected, mobile machine. To embrace this technology of tomorrow, firms should keep an eye on trends involving CRM systems, email marketing, mobile technology and websites, while maintaining caution from being distracted by a high “cool” factor that may not deliver real value to the firm or its clients.

This article was first published in ILTA’s June 2011 issue of Peer to Peer titled “Law2020TM: One Year In” and is reprinted here with permission. For more information about ILTA, visit their website at www.iltanet.org.

© 2011 Much Shelist Denenberg Ament & Rubenstein, P.C.

Intensive One-Day Workshop for Law Firm Practice Group Leaders – Chicago, IL Aug 16th

Firing On All Cylinders: An Intensive One-Day Workshop for Law Firm Practice Group Leaders 16 Aug 2011 The University of Chicago – Gleacher Center Chicago, IL 

You should attend this  program if it is your challenge to:

  • Create a strong cohesive group out of a collection of bright, intelligent, autonomous individuals
  • Identify how, as a practice leader, you add value and what specifically is it that you can do, that is likely to actually affect the success of the group you lead
  • Positively impact and enhance client satisfaction – turning client needs into growth opportunities
  • Find a way to develop a strategic direction in an intensely competitive marketplace and have your colleagues actually want to work together
  • Lead effective meetings that result in some action plans being formulated and your colleagues taking responsibility for actually doing something

For more information and to register – please click here:

 

NLRB A 'Twitter Over Employers' Social Media Policies

Recently posed at the National Law Review by Laura M. Lawless Robertson of Greenberg Traurig, LLP – updates of the National Labor Relation Board’s (NLRB’s) recent recent scrutiny of  employer’s social media policies for compliance with the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA):  

The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) recent scrutiny of social media policies for compliance with the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) has alarmed many employers – including non-union employers. Two recent developments in this area add fuel to an already heated debate over employer actions based on employees’ use of social media.

The first case is Lee Enterprises, Inc. d/b/a Arizona Daily Star. The Daily Star newspaper did not have a social media policy, but urged its reporters to use social media, including Twitter, to disseminate information to the public. After deciding that its crime/public safety reporter had gone too far with his unprofessional, sexually inappropriate, and pro-violence tweets, including one in which he called the reporters on a local television station “stupid,” the newspaper’s managing editor admonished him to refrain from engaging in any further social media postings. The reporter was later terminated, after which he filed a charge with the NLRB, contending that his termination violated the NLRA.

The NLRB General Counsel’s Office acknowledged that, “in warning the Charging Party to cease his inappropriate tweets, and then discharging him for continuing to post inappropriate tweets, the Employer made statements that could be interpreted to prohibit activities protected by Section 7 [of the NLRA],” but nevertheless concluded that the newspaper terminated him for violating workplace policies and disregarding its repeated warnings to cease his unprofessional tweets. The General Counsel’s Office concluded that “it would not effectuate the purposes and policies of the [NLRA] to issue a complaint where the statements were directed to a single employee who was lawfully discharged,” and recommended dismissal of the charge.

If employers presumed, based on the Arizona Daily Star outcome, that the NLRB had backed down from its aggressive stance regarding employers’ social media policies, they would be mistaken. On May 9, 2011, the NLRB issued a complaint alleging that Hispanics United of Buffalo, a nonprofit social service agency, unlawfully discharged five employees who complained about their working conditions on their Facebook accounts. After one employee questioned how hard the staff worked to help the agency’s clients, several employees chimed in on her Facebook status, defending their job performance and blaming workload and staffing issues for any unmet client needs. After learning about the posts, Hispanics United fired all of the employees who participated in the flame war. The NLRB issued a complaint, alleging that the Facebook dialogue was protected concerted activity under the NLRA – a discussion among coworkers about the terms and conditions of their employment and undertaken for mutual aid and protection. The case is set for a hearing before an administrative law judge on June 22, 2011, absent settlement (which seems to be the trend in these sort of cases).

These two cases illustrate that employers may discipline employees for social media misconduct, such as disclosing confidential and proprietary information, engaging in “textual harassment,” or libeling competitors, but must scrupulously avoid instituting or enforcing social media policies that impinge on employees’ rights to discuss the terms and conditions of their employment, e.g., wages and working conditions. One thing is for certain…we haven’t heard the last of this topic from the NLRB.

©2011 Greenberg Traurig, LLP. All rights reserved.

Just JDs — Business Development Strategies for Lawyers – June 8th Chicago, IL

Looking for new ideas on how to grow your client base?  Trying to determine if social media is a time waister or a great way to reach new audiences or stay in touch with current business contacts? Looking for CLE Credits before the June 30th Illinois Deadline?  The National Law Review  would like to bring your attention to a unique opportunity designed for attorneys by the legal marketing authorities (LMA).  

Just JDs — Business Development Strategies for Lawyers is a one-day program is designed exclusively for lawyers at firms of all sizes who want to build their personal books of business or have responsibility for practice or firm business development efforts including marketing partners, marketing committee members and administrators.

LMA members: Refer attorneys from your firm and they can register at the member rate, a savings of $100.

Click Here For More Details & to Register Online Today
$395 for LMA members
$495 for nonmembers

New Ways of Navigating Today’s Legal Market

Recent Business of Law guest blogger at the National Law Review Marcie L. Borgal Shunk of BTI Consulting Group posted some great tips for staying ahead of the legal business development curve.

Savvy law firm leaders can define new ways of navigating today’s legal market by drawing on a combination of proven tactics and innovative best practices including:

  1. Systematic client feedback every 18–24 months
  2. Quarterly in-person meetings with each attorney’s top 5 clients
  3. Client-specific profiles on the firm intranet, replete with preferences from communication-style to level of detail included in invoices
  4. Brief, relevant highlights of anticipated changes and how they impact your clients distributed online, by email or social media
  5. Draft invoices to share with clients before submitting them for payment
  6. Targeting precise areas of growth within your practice (e.g., Securities Litigation with Energy companies or opportunistic mergers in the Telecom industry — read BTI’s Litigation Outlook 2011 and BTI’s Premium Practices Forecast 2011 for more ideas)
  7. Monthly and event-driven client team meetings to discuss changes in client’s goals, objectives and business needs and identify at least one specific growth opportunity

©2011 The BTI Consulting Group Wellesley, MA

Today March 4th – Last Day for Significant Early Registration Discount(s) for 11th eDiscovery Summit April 27-29th in San Francisco, CA

As Electronically Stored Information continues to proliferate and courts and investigators demand more from businesses, pressure to cut costs are just not going away.

The 11th eDiscovery conference April 27-29th in San Francisco, CA will provide strategies for ediscovery professionals to minimize costs, risks and challenges with ediscovery, and include:

  • Organize an effective records program by tapping into existing resources
  • Determine judges’ priorities when eDiscovery conflicts arise
  • Align the interests of IT, in-house and outside counsel
  • Handle eDiscovery via social media sites and other new sources of ESI
  • Address the tension between preservation and effective data lifecycle management
  • Control the cost of review while maintaining defensibility
  • Save money by employing
  • Early Case Assessment tools and new technologies
  • Compare the Federal rules regarding ESI versus international laws and regulations
  • Explore how the states have emulated Federal rules and how they differ

Early Bird Discount – Register and pay by March 4th 2011 and save $400 to $1,247 off on conference registration(s). Click Here for More Information and to Register.

5 Ways to Focus a Law Firm Marketing Strategy

Recent  National Law Review Business of Law Guest Blogger Margaret Grisdela of Legal Expert Connections provides some quick tips on how to focus a law firm’s marketing strategy: 

Clearly targeting law firm clients is one of the key concepts of the Courting Your Clients legal marketing methodology. You will lower marketing costs, increase response rates, and build greater brand visibility with a narrowly defined market niche. Here are 5 ways to focus your law firm marketing strategy:

1. Geographically.

The majority of small to mid-sized law firms simply focus on developing new business located within a 50 to 100 mile radius of an office location. Proximity gives you the benefit of convenient face-to-face meeting opportunities, personal networking, and strong local referral sources.

2. Demographically.

Attorneys who serve a consumer audience in particular (like family law, trusts and estates, or immigration) can focus on known characteristics such as marital status, income, the presence of children, and/or zip codes.

3. By Industry.

Lawyers who serve a business clientele are likely to target specific industries that are well suited to their practice. Examples include intellectual property attorneys who work in the entertainment field, municipal lawyers who serve county officials, or corporate law firms who favor technology companies.

4. By Job Title.

A purchasing agent or key decision maker focus – like the HR Director for labor & employment lawyers or the General Counsel for corporate attorneys  – ensures that you target your business development efforts on the person who can sign your engagement letter and check.

5. By Trigger Events.

Transactional attorneys need to find clients with a highly defined need. This could be a personal injury attorney looking for car accident victims, or a corporate lawyer who helps business owners with mergers and acquisitions.

Marketing campaigns will be determined by the focus you bring to your law firm. Of course, there may be multiple parameters that are relevant to your marketing definition, like HR Directors within retail companies located in a specific metropolitan area.

Focus not only helps you to invest your marketing budget wisely, but it also enables attorneys and staff to refine their personal business development efforts in a way that aligns with the firm’s strategy.

© Legal Expert Connections, Inc.

Social Media Posts by a Third Party: Florida Bar Rules

From Business of Law Guest Blogger at the National Law Review Margaret Grisdela of  Legal Expert Connections – a great quick  overview of those tricky Florida State Bar rules concerning social media:  

Ethics in Blogging was the topic of a presentation I made this morning at the Broward County Bar Association, with co-presenter Alan Anthony Pascal, Esq. of The Florida Bar.

Posts to a lawyer’s social media page by a third party was one of the topics we covered. Below please find some highlights from the Florida Bar Guidelines for Networking Sites, which applies to Florida attorneys as well as lawyers from other states who are soliciting business in Florida.

Third Party Posts

“Although lawyers are responsible for all content that the lawyers post on their own pages, a lawyer is not responsible for information posted on the lawyer’s page by a third party, unless the lawyer prompts the third party to post the information or the lawyer uses the third party to circumvent the lawyer advertising rules.”

Removal of Non-Compliant Information from a Lawyer’s Page

“If a third party posts information on the lawyer’s page about the lawyer’s services that does not comply with the lawyer advertising rules, the lawyer must remove the information from the lawyer’s page.”

Request for Removal of Info on a Page Not Controlled by the Attorney

“If the lawyer becomes aware that a third party has posted information about the lawyer’s services on a page not controlled by the lawyer that does not comply with the lawyer advertising rules, the lawyer should ask the third party to remove the non-complying information. In such a situation, however, the lawyer is not responsible if the third party does not comply with the lawyer’s request.”

Lawyer Social Media Pages are Exempt from Filing

“Finally, the Standing Committee on Advertising is of the opinion that a page on a networking site is sufficiently similar to a website of a lawyer or law firm that pages on networking sites are not required to be filed with The Florida Bar for review.”

Page references in these guidelines can include a LinkedIn profile, a blog comment, Twitter profile, Facebook page, etc.

Read the Florida Bar Guidelines for Networking Sites here.

© Legal Expert Connections, Inc.