Communication Media & Internet Archives - Page 25 of 66

Content Marketing Idea: Create a Year-End Email and Social Media Post

I have an idea for you to engage with your clients and prospects this time of year – send them a year-in-review email.

An effective year-in-review email strengthens confidence in your business, shows your growth while reinforcing your market position.

Think of your year-in-review email like an annual review of your company’s top highlights over the past year and a recap of your best blog posts, articles, webinars and other client-centric content.

Many brands use an annual report to brag about their successes, and that’s why they fall flat.

You’ll have so much more engagement if you keep the content client centric and not boastful.

This is not the place to tout your rankings or brag about why you are the best. Always ask yourself “why would my audience care about this piece of content?” “does it educate or help them?” and if you can’t answer that, omit it.

If you provide a product solution, use the email to remind your audience how much your product or service helped them achieve success and inspires them to accomplish even more next year.
You can also share stats and facts that show milestones and how you’ve grown, such as: reached x customers, welcomed x new team members, opened a new location, moved to a bigger office, product and partnership launches, mergers, anniversaries, a rebrand or lateral growth. You can also highlight specific clients. Just avoid vanity metrics.
Take a look at your behavioral data and identify trends within your audience, like top-selling products, most popular blog posts and client alerts, most shared social media posts, etc.
Consider recapping some top stories or interesting stats of the year in your industry and for each one, share a brief reflection, action you took or a relevant tip.
You can also look ahead to 2022 – discuss industry trends, highlight upcoming 2022 events or upcoming launches.
Add personalization, if possible – pull stats unique to each customer and incorporate into the content.
At the end of the email, thank your readers and make it easy for them to share the content with others.
Create a call to action depending on your business goals. Drive readers back to your website, promote sign-ups for your newsletter or encourage following your social channels.

Year-in-review emails are great for generating leads and conversions, engaging your audience, and retaining clients and are often overlooked.

Article By Stefanie M. Marrone of Stefanie Marrone Consulting

For more articles on social media, visit the NLR Law Office Management section.

Hiring and Marketing in the Legal Industry with Roy Sexton of Clark Hill Law and Legal Marketing Association [PODCAST]

Thor’s hammer, “Mjollnir!” Attorneys with dogs! Superman t-shirts! Roy Sexton leads a lively discussion about how the little quirks make your law firm more attractive to new hires, current staff, and the audience of your marketing efforts. He shares his career anecdotes and Clark Hill Law‘s recent branding revamp while being frank about the need for a new type of law firm culture. Learn more about the Legal Marketing Association here.

We’ve included a transcript of our conversation below, transcribed by artificial intelligence. The transcript has been lightly edited for style, clarity, and readability.

INTRO 00:02

Hello, and welcome to Legal News Reach, the official podcast for the National Law Review. Stay tuned for a discussion on the latest trends in legal marketing, SEO, law firm best practices, and more.

Rachel & Jessica 00:15

I’m Rachel. And I’m Jessica. We’re the Co-Hosts for The National Law Review’s Legal News Reach podcast.

Rachel 00:22

In this episode, we’re excited to talk to Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing for Clark Hill, about hiring and legal marketing. Roy would you like to introduce yourself?

Roy Sexton 00:30

Sure, I think you’re gonna regret having me as a guest. But I’m Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing. I’m also an active volunteer with the Legal Marketing Association, recently named President-elect for 2022, and President in 2023. Again, probably something they will live to regret. But I’m very honored to have been tapped in that way.

Rachel 00:50

Congratulations. As I mentioned earlier, one of the topics that we really want to dive into here is hiring and marketing trends in the legal industry, I think there’s been a lot of interesting hiring and sort of labor/employment topics to come out out of the pandemic. In particular, specifically, how it’s getting harder to hire people, you know, retaining people that we do have, and just how COVID maybe long term will affect labor in this country and employment and hiring and all those things. In terms of the difficulty that midsize firms are finding it hard to hire lawyers on their legal staff. Is that a trend that you’re seeing? And if so, like, how can offices really remedy that issue?

Roy Sexton 01:30

Yeah, obviously it’s a trend we’re seeing in the industry. But fortunately, we’re not seeing it at Clark Hill. I had a recent opening in our team. And it’s for an events role. So presumably there are a lot of people out there that in the event space that we’re looking so I’m not going to put you know, you got to think about what, again, each submarket of the hiring market, right, and what’s influencing that, but in this case, we had like 85 applicants all pretty strong. And when I’ve had positions posted before I get me like 2030. So again, it’s an event so that’s probably driving that as well. I think we as a firm have really pushed culture, we launched our new brand in May. And my boss Susan Hearn, who’s a genius and wonderful because performance reviews are coming up soon. I love you. She, you know, she had the wisdom with our chief HR officer Kathy Sullivan, to say, when we launched that brand, let’s take the values that we usually keep for internal purposes and make them the spotlight on the brand. So we push that hard. And we did a lot of video asset creation about the firm generally the culture we are because we knew our clients and prospects would say that’s a nice place. Those seem like good people, I want to work with them. And I think we now that our second phase of the brand launch, launched about a week or so ago was a talent brand specifically. And we have Kathy with a video that’s gotten like 60,000 views on our social media so far, talking about, “these are our values, we believe in them.” And at Clark Hill, everyone has an equal footing. I mean, I think we know law firms struggle with that kind of upstairs-downstairs thing. If you’re not an attorney. Well, you’re just you’re dispensable and you don’t be treated with the same level of respect. I think clerk Hill has tried to intentionally take a different tack in that regard. And the attorneys are there with us. I mean, it’s not like we’re trying to sell them on an idea that they themselves don’t believe. They are there already. So we’ve fortuitously pulled from the culture, we already had clerk Hill has grown through acquisition. So we had a lot of different regions that came together to be Clark Hill. And it was important for us to go forward or the brand that told the firm story, elevated, everyone, and said, “I’m part of a bigger family here.” And I think, knock-on-wood, our recruiting efforts have benefited from that kind of message. So you know, I don’t want to, you know, spoil the secret sauce. But for those firms that are facing that conundrum, everyone always says, Oh, we’ve got a great culture. Well, show it, demonstrate it, use video, use photos. This is my home, I’m in the basement. My husband sent me down here 19 months ago, and I haven’t come back. But you know, we in the early days of pandemic, I had my dog here beside me the whole time and my social media person, Tommy said, Hey, let’s do a four-legged coworkers campaign. And we did and we got so much response from that we were posting dogs not and you’re like oh, and Facebook, right? I think LinkedIn. Interestingly, a year later, LinkedIn now has dogs of LinkedIn. Have you noticed this? They promoting that and I’m like they stole our idea. After we went through about six weeks to this one person in the firm said, should we be doing that? That doesn’t really seem like something we should be promoting. I said Well, too late. It’s over. It’s said to people, this is who we are. We’re human beings. We do good work showing our humanity does not detract from our ability to do good work. It enhances it. And I think that’s what the pandemic has hopefully shown people that are willing to listen.

Rachel 04:47

I mean I dunno about Jess, but I’m all for more dog photos in general.

Jessica 04:52

Yes. Spoiled pets!

Roy Sexton 04:54

I also benefit as a manager from previous experience. I worked in healthcare for a decade and that’s fraught with its own challenges in the healthcare system I worked at had a Leadership Academy and I took every class I could and I loved it. And it was very much about, listen to your team, help them succeed. Find you have a job description, you have the talent, but find the path for them. So they see they have a career and potential. One of my early management memories is I had taken over marketing at this healthcare system, and they had an outboard Remember, you’re too young to remember those. It was like, it was a whiteboard, and it had little magnets or like I’m in, I’m out. And I had an exceptionally talented person who did our radio show all this stuff. She loved working from home, this is about 15 years ago. And I said, Fine, you can work from the moon, I don’t care. If you’re doing good work. I don’t care. Now look where we are. Well, she would always like to write on the board. I am working from home. So a colleague came in, who managed the quality and accreditation and was that kind of busy body of the of the health system. And she looked at that in whiteboard. And she kind of made a mental note and walked away. And later she goes, Roy, I got a call on the hotline. Do you have people working from home? I’m like, Maureen, you did not get a call on the hotline, you saw that board. So what I did is I walked out of my office and I said, “Hey, Barb, does this come off the wall?” And I ripped the whiteboard off the wall, I said, Yep, comes off the wall. So I solved for the problem a little differently. Lisa continued to work from home, I’m sure it was in violation of some policies and processes, but she was doing good work. And to change that, because someone was being a busybody in the organization was going to hurt the outcomes of the organization. You know, I’m not advocating people ignore the rules of their organization, don’t get me wrong, but understand your talent in what they need. And if they shine in a certain environment, let them be there. And don’t worry about what time they’d showed up. And because they’re gonna give you more than you ever expected, but if you manage for style and time and what they were, and when they showed up and how many hours they were in, they’re only going to give you that they’re not going to give you any more.

Rachel 06:59

I think that level of trust is really important. I think when they feel they can be trusted to sort of do that in their own way. And yeah, in the way that makes them work better. I think that’s something I hope many industries learn from this pandemic.

Roy Sexton 07:15

I don’t want to seem ageist, I do think we have generational issues. And it depends on your leadership and what they’re comfortable with. We are used to our cell phones and zoom in all these different ways that I can, you know, for 15 years now, I basically could do my job remotely, wherever and whatever I was doing, because there are those tools. So their assumption is, we all know what we know, they assume nobody’s doing anything because you’re not here in a suit and tie. No, it’s a little harder for a manager. But it’s so much more rewarding to focus on the outcomes. So you learn your talent, you learn their limitations, you help them fly, you don’t overly critique them until they’re ready. You can calibrate but let people get the foundation, let them be safe, folks who want to be here in a suit and tie if that’s what you want, you come in, but don’t expect that of everybody. You have to focus on the individual. And if they have talent, where are they going to shine the best, and it’s a job. And I appreciate that I work in a culture that has its rules, they follow the protocols, they ask you to commit to well, what are you doing to create a culture that people want to be part of, and it’s going to solve itself?

Rachel 08:23

You touched on this a little earlier in terms of bringing people into new roles, training them. And we touched a little bit on hiring, one of the things that we wanted to ask you about is what are your thoughts on hiring professional staff with like no experience in the legal industry, and what are the advantages and the disadvantages of that?

Roy Sexton 08:41

I think people get very linear and they’re like, Well, you only have these criteria, you don’t qualify for this. You don’t have to talk to the universe of people, some people just aren’t the right fit, but look at their personalities as much as the background they have. And I think you gain a lot. Somebody should at least have lawyers in their family. If you’re going to work for a law firm, you got to fit the personality is unique. Doctors have a unique challenge in that they love risk, but they love data. So if you’re working in marketing with doctors go in with enough data that they see you. You did some scientific method of this. Yeah, sure. Okay. Great. With lawyers, I went to I went in with data, because that’s what I knew from healthcare, oh, I barely left the room alive, because all they saw was risk and possibility. They want to avoid risk. You know, there’s some things you learn about the culture quickly, that that’s the only thing I would say if you’re going to hire somebody. And you have a very difficult law firm culture, a very demanding group of attorneys, you might want to grab somebody who’s at least worked with lawyers in some aspects. I don’t need to know the nuance of what the litigator is doing. But I need to know why it’s important, what audience you’re trying to reach. And then trust me to figure out the channels, the mechanisms and all that to do and sometimes attorneys jump into that they want to tie your hands and say I want to sponsor this rodeo because I’m going to get all this stuff out. I’m like, That’s a stupid idea, I can’t say that, I have to say, well, they could do that. Or you could do this, I don’t think you need to have a law firm background, at least for roles like mine. I hate it when people say it’s not rocket science, what we do is difficult, let’s not minimize that it is as hard as rocket science. Because it’s people, it’s relationships, and you never know what you’re getting when you walk in the door with somebody. But if you have some emotional intelligence, you have the chops to communicate to right, you understand the digital channels that are available to us. And you have the sensitivity to appreciate. This very busy person who has an attorney is very stressed out, and they’re not mad at you, they just don’t know what you’re talking about. And you have to have the patience and the calm and the kindness to understand what’s important to them, you can work very well. So that’s kind of what I look for when I’m interviewing people. I don’t get hung up on if they’ve worked in a law firm before. But if I feel like they’re a bad culture fit, and they haven’t worked in a law firm, and they don’t have the skills, and I said to somebody yesterday, you don’t want to work in a law firm, you’ve worked in retail, most other places don’t do it.

Rachel 11:07

That focus on interpersonal skills is something that I think, in the past has been undervalued. Yeah, sort of going off of what you said earlier, in terms of you know, you’re in college, you had an arts degree, I mean, think just my both have parts degrees, in some sense. And I also have a partner that has a STEM degree. And you know, there’s sort of like this dichotomy of like, those very hard math and science skills like, yeah, aren’t always what you need to succeed, a lot of times it is learning how to talk to people and form relationships and things like that.

Jessica 11:36

So when we think about the increasing conflation of a firm, like their operations that are changing- your cultural changes, what do you see as the role of a marketing professional in the market that exists now?

Roy Sexton 11:51

I think we’re in a unique opportunity, and a really strong one, you know, people, people fixate on the AI as an abstraction versus something that just needs to be the reality. When you think about the AI, or when you think about wellness or any of these topics, that confluence of law firms are struggling, we need to fix our culture, we need to have representation, we need to have legitimate, you know, put people in leadership roles that look like us on this call, you know, there are people of color there, you know, so people see themselves in the leadership ranks, and they’ll stick around. So if you make that change, now take the victory lap for marketing, tell people about it don’t don’t suddenly get shy. I’m celebrating a leader who’s creating great change. I’m celebrating young people who are being seen, their friends and family are like, wow, that’s a neat organization. And, again, you have to see that larger, you know, Disney, Apple, those companies do a good job of creating an environment you want to be part of, if you can steal some of that, as a law firm, don’t get so focused on I want a case tell everybody I won that case, it’s going to get me business. Okay, maybe. But if they see what kind of organization it is the culture change that’s happening, the fact that good work is coming out of that organization, then you’re going to attract talent, you’re going to attract customers, you’re going to have a sustainable model. And I do think sometimes people are just so linear in their thinking they miss that that broader storytelling, opportunity. So you know, I think we’re in a unique place. I also think the other side of the coin, I’m going to get real, technical, we have so much data available to us right now. We have so many tools. It is a marketer’s dream right now that we have to work with, we don’t have to go to outside agencies, sorry, service providers to do stuff. Use data in that way, again, to drive change in the culture to drive engagement. And these digital channels, you’re, you’re using them beautifully. I mean, I really, when I saw Jennifer Scholler, at ALM, she was overwhelmed with the response that has come from your platform. In recent months. This is it’s off the charts, because you got good content, you’re reaching people, you’re putting it out there in smart and clever ways. And you have a following. And people then gravitate, you know, they gravitate to where there’s a following, so.

Jessica 14:10

I’m so glad you mentioned how the legal industry does have the weird, high walls around it. Sometimes I think there’s such a particular hierarchy in a law firm in general. So the fact that you know, we all know people want to connect with people. So if you keep just having these tall walls of legality, I guess. Preventing people from wanting to connect with you. That’s why I mean, over and over. If we beat anything into this podcast, it’s that people want to know a law firm. They want to know the people. That makes them want to go to you in the first place.

Roy Sexton 14:47

I switched my LinkedIn picture the other day and I switched it back but I had one of me and a Superman t-shirt. Somebody took me I loved it. And I got so much great response to that but I got some people inside from like, Do you think that’s really the professional look you want to be going for and I second-guessed myself, I changed the picture. And then I resented myself for it, finding those moments of authenticity. That’s what people respond to. And I think we get so worried in law firms are rife with this law firms want to be first to be second, like, they don’t wanna be the first one to do anything, in case it’s too risky. But they want to be right there at second, we’ll be the first, no one’s paying that much attention anyway, you’re not going to, you’re not going to ruin your organization, anybody who comes at you with a phrase, you need to be taken seriously run away from them, because they’re worried about the wrong, none of us need to be taken seriously. We need to do good work, we need to be accessible, we need to have fun and enjoy the lives that we’re living. And those people who say those things to you, they’re nervous themselves, they want to be out of their own shell.

Jessica 15:46

It’s just that old environment, like what you’re saying about employees, you know, there are the ones who want to wear the suit and come in, and that’s fine. But that’s because that’s who they are. Yeah, and you should be okay with that, if that’s what you want to do. You know, but also the same has to go for people who want to work remote, and yeah, have Thor’s hammer behind them. You know what I mean? Like, I just feel like, I’m hiring the attorney that posts dog photos. That’s something I can connect with. And yeah, I think that attorneys in particular, so before this, I was a paralegal for a couple of years. So I’ve worked around attorneys a lot. And I think the, it’s that competition with each other, you know, you got to be the best you got to put up your Super Lawyers because people won’t take you seriously. I don’t know why that idea persists.

Roy Sexton 16:32

So I realize it come into a room. And it’s easy for me to say I don’t need to worry about being taken seriously, because I have the latitude to have Thor’s hammer behind me. And it’s colorful, somebody else who’s coming maybe and nobody knows I’m gay unless I tell him but I tell everybody, I have the latitude to be a little more myself. And I appreciate that some of what I’m saying may not work for people who have been in marginalized groups or who have felt, I’m speaking to two women. And so I’m going to mansplain back to you the experience you’ve had my husband, I were talking about this last night, he had a colleague who posted something about I’m part of this women’s group, and I’m so grateful for their support. And my husband’s kind of manager who literally does not see gender color. He just sees talent. He’s a wonderful human being in that regard. He goes, does that do people really need those groups still, I go, honey, you’re different than everybody else. A lot of women have had to go through hell. We saw it in the “Me Too” movement, things that we never knew or heard about. It happened behind closed doors, slights that happen, the marginalization that happened. So I realize there is an element sometimes if I wear the outfit everybody else is wearing, it gives me entree to then be myself, try to help us try to break down that need in an environment. If you knew the hurdles you had to overcome to get into your role, break them down for other people don’t let that continue. Because it’s unnecessary.

Jessica 17:57

I want to know because I’m sure law firms now with all these changes are getting so…not frightened- that might be too strong of a word, but they’re very cautious about things in general, you know, the risk, the risk management part of that is definitely a little bit. But when it comes to how you’re doing things with marketing, you know, how are you using like numbers to show that the work you’re doing is effective? You know, how are you doing that to reassure firms that yeah, you know, the necessity of it.

Roy Sexton 18:32

So we use Power BI as a sort of a baseline, we’re doing a lot of analysis through what we use sprout for social media. I’m not I’m not advertising to these people. I’m just saying that’s what we use. We’re working with ALM right now sorry, on some direct advertising. And and, and that’s giving us that ability to target and figure out who we’re reaching when we’re reaching and how we’re reaching them. Were really, with the new launch of the new website and brand, we stepped up our SEO, and we’re working with a partner there that isn’t just doing the SEO for us. They’re teaching our team how to do it correctly. So we have a monthly report that we send out to the firm, that’s more anecdotal. But he always take those laps, put yourself back in front of the firm going, here’s everything that happened this month, half of them read it, we get some nasty grams too long, didn’t read fonts too small, that kind of stuff. But mostly they’re like, we’re here. And now on a weekly basis, we send another digest, like, here’s how many alerts went out. Here’s how many events. So those are your kind of leading indicators that people go, there’s some kinetics happening and social media is really helpful that way.

Rachel 19:31

For our next topic, we want to focus in more on what Clark Hill has been doing in recent months, like you mentioned specifically earlier that the firm, create a new brand and focused on you know, the sort of value in the culture-aspects of it. How did that process go and what can law firms learn from?

Roy Sexton 19:48

The pandemic served us well, it gave us more time. We had a very aggressive timeline that I don’t know that we would have hit before. It gave us more months to dig in, and really what we had done in the development of brand- we worked with One North on the brand and the website. And we had a lot of listening and learning outposts. That was important to me. And it was important to my boss. And so we had a survey of everybody in the firm, not just attorneys, and we got like an 80% response rate with like, a shortlist of questions. What do you think the brand is? What do you hear that? You know, because we were bringing a culture together too. And then we went externally, we did client interviews, what do you think of the brand? What do we do? Well, what don’t we do, we baked all that together. So we did the discovery piece of it to then move to well, What messages do we think are a reflection of who we are, and then what’s our stretch to what we want to be, and we took the time to go through that process. And then we landed on a brand, we then with the pandemic, we had the moment to step back and go, Okay, we didn’t think we’re gonna be able to go through all the content on the website like we wanted to, we do. So let’s use the Education own moment here. Rather than just marketing, go rewrite everything and put it up. We use this as an educational opportunity with our BD folks and everybody to divvy up all the bios, we had a new structure to it, we had a headline, we did that intentionally, like let’s create a structure that forces a rewrite of the BIOS. So then we had the time to do a bio project. And Alex, France and Tommy on our team, they, they set it all up, they put a video together, we went to each business unit said, This is what we’re trying to do, the voice we’re trying to capture. We got pushback, we got people that didn’t want to do it for mostly though people. And the attorneys themselves took a swing at it. We use the development of the brand and the website very collaboratively, we delegated everybody got some time in it. We worked with all the operational areas in the brain lunch, we had an extensive process. Cheryl Kravitz helped us with a timeline of HR, you’re doing this, it you’re doing this, it’s not just only marketing things, everybody gets a piece of this. And at the end of it, we had a celebration, everybody got a swag box, we wanted to make sure everybody wherever they were got a box of new branded stuff, we had a wonderful video that tells studios put together of who we are telling our story. I’m an opportunist, and I’m cheap. So I’m like, we want to do a video that will work internally. And then I can slice it up and put it externally people didn’t understand what the hell I was talking about until we did it. They were like, well, this is for we want to talk about internal things. They go no, no, just inspire people. We can have some framing stuff from our leaders, but just inspire people. And then we’ll have that out in the world. We had like 370,000 views of that video, when all was said and done. It was thrilling. And we told our story, but we took time to have everybody feel like they were part of it. So when we launched the brand, not many people had seen it. But they felt like they were part of it when they saw it. And that made all the difference with all the other random stuff that comes our way on a daily basis to do this correctly, and make it launch where you don’t have 1,000 knives in your back. Give yourself two years and really open up the process where you can have people feel like they were part of it.

Rachel 22:51

Yeah, I think what you’re saying how the pandemic helps move things along is not uncommon. In terms of like the interviews we’ve done so far. I think a lot of law firms have said that the pandemic really pushed them to make these changes. And these changes were something that were in the pipeline for a while, and they just forced to move forward with them because they didn’t have any other choice. So that’s sort of that sort of leads into my next question here, when you were doing this and doing this branding and all this other stuff, and you launched it, you know, what has really been the response that

Roy Sexton 23:25

It was overwhelming. They were minor hiccups. And what I love about my boss is just a Roy, just take a pause, it’s fine, don’t don’t catastrophize it’s gonna be fine. Just We’ll get through it. It’s not a big deal. So sometimes you gotta listen on the things that don’t matter, really like the font of that email, and give. And then you have the big win. And by God, everybody loved the stuff that mattered the brand, they were so hungry for it. They had felt included, we done enough lead up to it, they knew it was coming, they loved the look, they felt elevated, that’s what you want with a brand. They felt like the brand that they’d had and inherited. And again, these were four or five different separate firms that have come together, Clark Hill inherited an old Clark Hill brand that even Clark Hills unlike anymore, seven felt like they needed new clothes for school. They so you gave them something fresh. And the video that was embedded with all these faces from all over the country, again, my boss’s wisdom, because I was like, well, let’s just have two or three people. Let’s make this easy. And she was No, no, Roy, we got to figure out how to get to six different locations and have a lot of people interviewed. She was right. Because people saw themselves in the story. And the response we got internally was exactly what we wanted. People quieted down. Their obsession was signage and all this stuff that they were driving us all crazy because they were like, Oh, you have this in hand. It gave us the credibility and all the other things to like, Oh, you guys actually know what you’re doing? Yeah, we do. And then the external response was, like I said with the video itself had 300 I think 375,000 views and the response from people outside the firm, because lawyers will never tell you that they’ll tell you when someone Outside the firm is teasing us. But they don’t tell you when they hear the good stuff. But I know they did. I know they heard from people outside going, Wow, you guys woke up, you’re doing interesting stuff. And and that’s what we wanted. You know we’re having a record year again, many law firms are having a record year again. So I can’t chalk it up to the brand and the website necessarily, but I feel like we landed a market and brand message just when we needed it at the right time to galvanize the organization to help us move forward. With strong leadership. Our CEO has been there every step of the way and supportive he was part of the brand launch, she has reinforced the things we needed him too. He’s challenged us when we needed to be challenged. My boss has seen the long game. I’ve had an incredible team of people whenever Anderson, she I feel like I’m giving an Oscar speech came in under budget way under budget, and on time, which is unheard of, and I’m very proud of that

Rachel 25:51

We spoke a little earlier was the importance of diversity and creating diverse teams. Can you speak a little bit about you know, what Clark Hill has done to do that, and like why it’s important?

Roy Sexton 26:01

Part of the DNA of the organization, our Texas offices that came online a couple years ago, Strassburger, they had a really robust program, they called it bold thrive and pride. I think we’re sort of evolving. I think affinity groups are important, but sometimes they almost think they also do some disservice. It’s like, I feel this way, sometimes all you gay people get together and go do stuff and talk and it’s like, Well, okay, but we need to, we need to demonstrate to everyone else, we have value. But those are that we brought those in and again made them part of this launch that we had attorney leaders now, not just in Texas, but across the country who are driving those efforts. Pride is obviously for our LGBTQ community. Thrive is for people of color. And then bold is our women’s initiative. But somewhat, they’re all a bit inwardly focused, because you’re trying to provide talent, tools, resources, and commiseration to people who are in those groups that work for the firm. But we’ve also started to extend that out to say, well, what are the programmatic offerings we can provide to demonstrate we’re committed to this, the education pieces, it’s, it’s gonna sound like small potatoes, but it was a big impact. Alex France on my team, she looked at the calendar and all of the events that are important both as recognition months, as well as the holidays, based on faith and culture and all those things. And so we have a an intentional message that goes on, we have an editorial calendar against that. And we’ve also used as an engagement strategy with our HR folks. So for, for example, Asian Asian American Pacific Islanders month, we had Alex and glory pack who was with us at the time, they put together little placards, we put on our social media with a story or a video component with people in their own words. And again, we didn’t live in it to attorneys, it’s paralegals, it was office managers, it was legal assistants, anybody who was in that category, or felt strongly about that and wanted to had something to offer, we made sure we were telling their stories on our digital channels. And then we circulated that internally. Now that all feels a little window dressing, you know, to get to the substantive issues our leadership team is actively looking at, how are we recruiting? Who are we putting in what roles how are we promoting and actively assessing that data to say, you know, are we using the Mansfield rubric, we don’t have enough hear or in some cases, we’ve actually been pleasantly surprised, because I think you always feel like you’re not doing enough. And then you look at some of it, and you’re like, Oh, we’re actually we’ve been more intentionally we even realized. So Linda Watson, who’s one of our attorneys has been leading that effort with HR, and they’re relatively early in that journey. But you know, they’re taking it quite seriously. When I was in health care, we went, we did something called the Malcolm Baldrige assessment, which is a quality piece, and some people do it just to win the award, we did it to actually improve. And Clarksville is doing that same thing with Mansfield, it’s like, of course, we want the recognition. But we want to use the criteria to get better. And I’m thrilled to see that, you know, I’m not involved in it other than this communication stuff I talk about, but what I’m seeing the firm do, I’m really pleased about. So

Rachel 29:03

I think it’s just great to highlight those things on this podcast, I think being able to learn from what others have done and be able to apply it to actually helps make change.

Roy Sexton 29:12

Well, and that’s why I’ve always loved being part of LMA. I mean, I don’t know if the attorneys know this. But when we all get together we tell everybody what we’re doing. Right? Don’t do that. Well, it’s there’s what you do, and there’s how you do it. So it’s it’s always good to see what other people are doing. Because then you can take that idea and build on it. And then they can build on your idea and you just get better. You know, there’s always live in abundance, not scarcity. And so you’re right, look at what other people are doing. go think about that. We should do some of that. But let’s do it our way. Let’s take the idea and do it in our style. And then you’re not stealing from anybody so

Rachel 29:47

Excellent. So yeah, we’ve had a great conversation with you today. Right. We really appreciate you joining us. A special thanks to Roy Sexton from Clark Hill for joining us today.

Roy Sexton

Thank you for having me.

Article By Rachel Popa and Jessica Scheck of The National Law Review / The National Law Forum LLC

For more articles on the legal industry, visit the NLR Law Office Management section.

SEC Rejects Listing of Two Bitcoin ETFs

The SEC rejected two proposals to list and trade shares in two Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”).

The SEC rejected a proposal from NYSE Arca, Inc. (“Arca”) to list and trade shares of the Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund. The SEC also rejected a proposal from CBOE BZX Exchange, Inc. (“BZX”) to list and trade shares of the Kryptoin Bitcoin ETF Trust.

The SEC assessed whether the exchanges (i) had a comprehensive surveillance-sharing agreement with a significant, regulated market, and (ii) could effectively prevent fraudulent and manipulative activity. In the rejected proposals, the SEC noted its concerns over the abilities of the exchanges to adequately meet the requirements under SEA Section 6(b)(5) (“Determination by Commission Requisite to Registration of Applicant as a National Securities Exchange”) in protecting investors and the public interest by preventing fraudulent and manipulative practices.

The SEC rejected Arca’s argument that (i) liquidity, (ii) price arbitrage, and (iii) frameworks to value assets would be sufficient to mitigate potential manipulation.

Similarly, the SEC rejected BZX’s proposal, concluding “that BZX has not established that it has a comprehensive surveillance-sharing agreement with a regulated market of significant size related to bitcoin,” and “that BZX has not established that other means to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices are sufficient to justify dispensing with the requisite surveillance-sharing agreement.”

As a result, the SEC found that both exchanges had failed to prove that they could meet their burdens under SEA Section 6(b)(5).

Article by Steven Lofchie with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP.

For more articles on cryptocurrency exchanges, visit the NLR Financial Securities & Banking.

BREAKING: Seventh Circuit Certifies BIPA Accrual Question to Illinois Supreme Court in White Castle

Yesterday the Seventh Circuit issued a much awaited ruling in the Cothron v. White Castle litigation, punting to the Illinois Supreme Court on the pivotal question of when a claim under the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (“BIPA”) accrues. No. 20-3202 (7th Cir.). Read on to learn more and what it may mean for other biometric and data privacy litigations.

First, a brief recap of the facts of the dispute. After Plaintiff started working at a White Castle in Illinois in 2004, White Castle began using an optional, consent-based finger-scan system for employees to sign documents and access their paystubs and computers. Plaintiff consented in 2007 to the collection of her biometric data and then 11 years later—in 2018—filed suit against White Castle for purported violation of BIPA.

Plaintiff alleged that White Castle did not obtain consent to collect or disclose her fingerprints at the first instance the collection occurred under BIPA because BIPA did not exist in 2007. Plaintiff asserted that she was “required” to scan her finger each time she accessed her work computer and weekly paystubs with White Castle and that her prior consent to the collection of biometric data did not satisfy BIPA’s requirements. According to Plaintiff, White Castle violated BIPA Sections 15(b) and 15(d) by collecting, then “systematically and automatically” disclosing her biometric information without adhering to BIPA’s requirements (she claimed she did not consent under BIPA to the collection of her information until 2018). She sought statutory damages for “each” violation on behalf of herself and a putative class.

White Castle before the district court had moved to dismiss the Complaint and for judgment on the pleadings—both of which motions were denied. The district court sided with Plaintiff, holding that “[o]n the facts set forth in the pleadings, White Castle violated Section 15(b) when it first scanned [Plaintiff’s] fingerprint and violated Section 15(d) when it first disclosed her biometric information to a third party.” The district court also held that under Section 20 of BIPA, Plaintiff could recover for “each violation.” The court rejected White Castle’s argument that this was an absurd interpretation of the statute not in keeping with legislative intent, commenting that “[i]f the Illinois legislature agrees that this reading of BIPA is absurd, it is of course free to modify the statue” but “it is not the role of a court—particularly a federal court—to rewrite a state statute to avoid a construction that may penalize violations severely.”

White Castle filed an appeal of the district court’s ruling with the Seventh Circuit. As presented by White Castle, the issue before the Seventh Circuit was “[w]hether, when conduct that allegedly violates BIPA is repeated, that conduct gives rise to a single claim under Sections 15(b) and 15(d) of BIPA, or multiple claims.”

In ruling yesterday this issue was appropriate for the Illinois Supreme Court, the Seventh Circuit held that “[w]hether a claim accrues only once or repeatedly is an important and recurring question of Illinois law implicating state accrual principles as applied to this novel state statute. It requires authoritative guidance that only the state’s highest court can provide.” Here, the accrual issue is dispositive for purposes of Plaintiffs’ BIPA claim. As the Seventh Circuit recognized, “[t]he timeliness of the suit depends on whether a claim under the Act accrued each time [Plaintiff] scanned her fingerprint to access a work computer or just the first time.”

Interestingly, the Seventh Circuit drew a comparison to data privacy litigations outside the context of BIPA, stating that the parties’ “disagreement, framed differently, is whether the Act should be treated like a junk-fax statute for which a claim accrues for each unsolicited fax, [], or instead like certain privacy and reputational torts that accrue only at the initial publication of defamatory material.”

Several BIPA litigations have been stayed pending a ruling from the Seventh Circuit in White Castle and these cases will remain on pause going into 2022 pending a ruling from the Illinois Supreme Court. While some had hoped for clarity on this area of BIPA jurisprudence by the end of the year, the Seventh Circuit’s ruling means that this litigation will remain a must-watch privacy case going forward.

Article By Kristin L. Bryan of Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP

For more data privacy and cybersecurity legal news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

Patch Up – Log4j and How to Avoid a Cybercrime Christmas

A vulnerability so dangerous that Cybersecurity and Infrastructure (CISA) Director Jen Easterly called it “one of the most serious [she’s] seen in [her] entire career, if not the most serious” arrived just in time for the holidays. On December 10, 2021, CISA and the director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency (NSA) began alerting the public of a critical vulnerability within the Apache Log4j Java logging framework. Civilian government agencies have been instructed to mitigate against the vulnerability by Christmas Eve, and companies should follow suit.

The Log4j vulnerability allows threat actors to remotely execute code both on-premises and within cloud-based application servers, thereby obtaining control of the impacted servers. CISA expects the vulnerability to affect hundreds of millions of devices. This is a widespread critical vulnerability and companies should quickly assess whether, and to what extent, they or their service providers are using Log4j.

Immediate Recommendations

Immediately upgrade all versions of Apache Log4j to 2.15.0.
Ask your service providers whether their products or environment use Log4j, and if so, whether they have patched to the latest version. Helpfully, CISA sponsors a community-sourced GitHub repository with a list of software related to the vulnerability as a reference guide.
Confirm your security operations are monitoring internet-facing systems for indicators of compromise.
Review your incident response plan and ensure all response team information is up to date.
If your company is involved in an acquisition, discuss the security steps taken within the target company to address the Log4j vulnerability.

The versatility of this vulnerability has already attracted the attention of malicious nation-state actors. For example, government-affiliated cybercriminals in Iran and China have a “wish list” (no holiday pun intended) of entities that they are aggressively targeting with the Log4j vulnerability. Due to this malicious nation-state activity, if your company experiences a ransomware attack related to the Log4j vulnerability, it is particularly important to pay attention to potential sanctions-related issues.

Companies with additional questions about the Log4j vulnerability and its potential impact on technical threats and potential regulatory scrutiny or commercial liability are encouraged to contact counsel.

Article By Philip J. Bezanson, Brittney E. Justice, Claire E. Cahoon, and Seth D. DuCharme of Bracewell LLP

For more cybersecurity legal news, click here to visit the National Law Review.

Ohio Votes to Legalize Sports Betting

Ohio lawmakers have reached an agreement that will legalize sports betting for those 21 and older. House Bill 29, which was passed by the Ohio House of Representatives and Senate on December 8 and is expected to be signed into law by Governor DeWine in the coming days, will allow licensed gaming operations to begin accepting wagers as soon as April 1, 2022.

Since the Supreme Court of the United States struck down federal law prohibiting state-sponsored sports betting in 2018, 33 states and Washington D.C. have passed legislation establishing regulated markets for wagering on sports. Ohio now becomes the 34th as it hopes to curb the flow of its residents’ entertainment and tourism dollars into neighboring Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana and West Virginia, all of whom have already legalized sports betting.

Oversight. The Ohio Casino Control Commission (“OCCC”) will be responsible for regulating and monitoring all sports gambling activity in the state. Once the bill is signed into law, the OCCC is required to establish a licensing process, consumer protections, advertising guidelines, and financial requirements for licensees. As an enforcement agency, it will also be given the authority to create other administrative rules it deems necessary to carry out its oversight duties.

Licenses. The OCCC will being accepting license applications on January 1, 2022 and can begin issuing a limited number of licenses on April 1, 2022. The law provides guidance as to how the OCCC will evaluate applicants, and establishes three classes of licenses: (1) Type A licenses for casinos, racinos and sportsbooks operating online and via mobile app; (2) Type B licenses for brick-and-mortar sportsbooks, which will be distributed throughout the state based on county population; and (3) Type C licenses for betting terminals to be placed in restaurants, bars and the like that possess D-1, D-2, or D-5 liquor permits.

Taxes. A 10% tax will be placed on the new industry’s revenues. Combined with the fees and fines collected by the OCCC, most of this money will be earmarked for distribution by the Ohio General Assembly to public and nonpublic K-12 education programs and a state-sponsored Problem Sports Gaming and Addiction Fund. The bill also creates certain tax incentives for licensed operators beginning in 2027.

Be Ready. Businesses affected by legalization, whether pursuing a license, contracting with a license-holder or being indirectly impacted, need to stay vigilant as Ohio’s sports betting regulatory framework develops. From financial reporting to employment practices, failure to understand and implement processes to comply with the forthcoming regulations could result in significant fines or even criminal penalties.

9 Tips for Better Email Management for Lawyers

Email management for lawyers and professionals across most industries is a constant uphill battle. In fact, the average professional spends 28 percent of the workday reading and answering emails, according to McKinsey. A lawyer has to pay special attention to their inbox because they often receive lucrative client and business information. However, they’re also overloaded with industry updates, bar association newsletters, and civic engagement emails.

For a professional who bills by the hour, sifting through hundreds of emails is not only time-consuming but unprofitable. Email can also be a distraction and inhibit effective time management.

Here are some practical tips for email management for lawyers.

Take Advantage of Email Management Features and Shortcuts
Use Filters to Keep Inboxes Organized
Schedule Email Correspondence
Priotize Emails
Switch Internal Communication to Other Platforms
Clear the Clutter
Unsubscribe to Miscellaneous Emails
Disable Social Media Notifications
Embrace Legal Technology Solutions

1. Take Advantage of Email Management Features and Shortcuts

Email platforms have tons of features and shortcuts to make work more efficient and improve email management for lawyers. Unfortunately, most people don’t take the time to learn about them and use them to their fullest.

For example, Gmail has a feature that allows you to mute conversations in groups and keep them from popping up at the top of the inbox each time someone contributes. Gmail also offers task management and reporting tools to maximize efficiency.

2. Use Filters to Keep Inboxes Organized

Lawyers’ inboxes become cluttered from questions and correspondence from non-clients. For example, law firms may have an inefficient onboarding process that leads new team members to direct questions to anyone available, including lawyers.

The best way to address this is for law firms to put rules in place to ensure that emails go to the appropriate recipients – in the onboarding example, that would be the onboarding team. Inboxes can also be sorted using separate folders and filters, such as clients, bar association, and so on, to make it easy to identify high-priority emails.

3. Schedule Email Correspondence

Email provides a tempting distraction for lawyers. While waiting for an important email reply for a case, a lawyer may compulsively check email to see if it came through. That leaves them open to other distractions, such as the industry newsletter with a provocative subject line. Before they know it, hours have passed and most of it was spent scrolling the inbox.

Lawyers should designate a few times throughout the day that are for checking the inbox and responding to emails. These times can be first thing in the morning, before or after lunch, or before leaving for the day. The timing doesn’t matter as much as keeping the schedule consistent and sticking to the rule of only checking email during those scheduled periods.

4. Prioritize Emails

Email prioritization is a simple way to manage an overflowing inbox. Lawyers should divide emails into sections for emails that require follow-up, emails that can wait, and emails to archive.

Follow-up emails are emails that need responses in a timely fashion, such as client emails. These are the most important emails in an inbox and should have priority. Emails that can wait may include emails that need further work or research before a response, such as internal emails from management teams. Email archives should only have emails that are finished and require no further communication but may need to be referenced later.

5. Switch Internal Communication to Other Platforms

Inboxes can become cluttered from internal communications, which isn’t ideal for anyone at the firm. If possible, law firms should switch internal communications from email to other communication tools, such as chat tools or document review software.

This not only keeps email inboxes focused on crucial client or business correspondence, but ensures that the law firm has streamlined communication to keep everyone on the same page.

6. Clear the Clutter

Most people, not just lawyers, have a fear of hitting the “delete” button. Everyone convinces themselves that they’ll need that email in the future and it should be saved, but that just leads to an overloaded inbox that mixes important emails with internet junk mail.

Like anyone else, lawyers have emails that have been lying unattended in the inbox for months or even years. In all likelihood, the sender has forgotten about the email, yet the recipient holds onto it “just in case.”

The practical choice is for lawyers to sort through the inbox and delete any email that’s been sitting for ages, all with the intent of responding or following up someday. Any emails that are undecided can go in the archives, so they’re around if needed, but don’t take up space in the inbox.

7. Unsubscribe to Miscellaneous Emails

Lawyers get spam emails, too. If left unchecked, spam email can overtake an inbox with irrelevant promotions. Lawyers may subscribe to an email list deliberately, then no longer need the information, or accidentally while searching for information in a rush.

Ideally, lawyers will only subscribe to email lists they want to receive information from. It doesn’t always go that way, however, so lawyers should set aside time each month or every few months to identify emails that go unopened and hit the “unsubscribe” button.

8. Disable Social Media Email Notifications

Social media is a distraction in and of itself, especially with email notifications. Inboxes can become overloaded with social media notifications for every like, comment, or share, leading lawyers to not only check their inboxes but sign on to social media accounts.

None of these notifications is important to a lawyer’s workday. Many law firms have social media teams, but if they don’t, it’s more efficient to schedule time in the day or week for social media engagement and leave the rest of the time focused on priority emails.

Lawyers should log in to each social media account and deactivate email notifications, as well as any other platform that has email app notifications. This could rid an inbox of thousands of emails each month.

9. Embrace Legal Technology Solutions

Law may be a traditional industry, but legal technology options have incredible benefits for streamlining efficiency and maximizing productivity at law firms – including email.

Several tools are available to sync with email and assist with inbox management, such as solutions that integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and MailChimp to sync emails, view contact information, and create tasks.

Make Email Management for Lawyers Simple

Email can be a significant distraction and time waste for lawyers and law firms, but many technology tools are available to help. PracticePanther helps lawyers stay on track with automation tools and relevant app integrations to prioritize client emails, create new contacts, and manage tasks to keep your practice organized.

Article By PracticePanther

For more articles on legal technology, visit the NLRLaw Office Management section.

In the Coming ‘Metaverse’, There May Be Excitement but There Certainly Will Be Legal Issues

The concept of the “metaverse” has garnered much press coverage of late, addressing such topics as the new appetite for metaverse investment opportunities, a recent virtual land boom, or just the promise of it all, where “crypto, gaming and capitalism collide.” The term “metaverse,” which comes from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash,” is generally used to refer to the development of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies, featuring a mashup of massive multiplayer gaming, virtual worlds, virtual workspaces, and remote education to create a decentralized wonderland and collaborative space. The grand concept is that the metaverse will be the next iteration of the mobile internet and a major part of both digital and real life.

Don’t feel like going out tonight in the real world? Why not stay “in” and catch a show or meet people/avatars/smart bots in the metaverse?

As currently conceived, the metaverse, “Web 3.0,” would feature a synchronous environment giving users a seamless experience across different realms, even if such discrete areas of the virtual world are operated by different developers. It would boast its own economy where users and their avatars interact socially and use digital assets based in both virtual and actual reality, a place where commerce would presumably be heavily based in decentralized finance, DeFi. No single company or platform would operate the metaverse, but rather, it would be administered by many entities in a decentralized manner (presumably on some open source metaverse OS) and work across multiple computing platforms. At the outset, the metaverse would look like a virtual world featuring enhanced experiences interfaced via VR headsets, mobile devices, gaming consoles and haptic gear that makes you “feel” virtual things. Later, the contours of the metaverse would be shaped by user preferences, monetary opportunities and incremental innovations by developers building on what came before.

In short, the vision is that multiple companies, developers and creators will come together to create one metaverse (as opposed to proprietary, closed platforms) and have it evolve into an embodied mobile internet, one that is open and interoperable and would include many facets of life (i.e., work, social interactions, entertainment) in one hybrid space.

In order for the metaverse to become a reality, that is, successfully link current gaming and communications platforms with other new technologies into a massive new online destination – many obstacles will have to be overcome, even beyond the hardware, software and integration issues. The legal issues stand out, front and center. Indeed, the concept of the metaverse presents a law school final exam’s worth of legal questions to sort out. Meanwhile, we are still trying to resolve the myriad of legal issues presented by “Web 2.0,” the Internet we know it today. Adding the metaverse to the picture will certainly make things even more complicated.

At the heart of it is the question of what legal underpinnings we need for the metaverse infrastructure – an infrastructure that will allow disparate developers and studios, e-commerce marketplaces, platforms and service providers to all coexist within one virtual world. To make it even more interesting, it is envisioned to be an interoperable, seamless experience for shoppers, gamers, social media users or just curious internet-goers armed with wallets full of crypto to spend and virtual assets to flaunt. Currently, we have some well-established web platforms that are closed digital communities and some emerging ones that are open, each with varying business models that will have to be adapted, in some way, to the metaverse. Simply put, the greater the immersive experience and features and interactions, the more complex the related legal issues will be.

Contemplating the metaverse, these are just a few of the legal issues that come to mind:

Personal Data, Privacy and Cybersecurity – Privacy and data security lawyers are already challenged with addressing the global concerns presented by varying international approaches to privacy and growing threats to data security. If the metaverse fulfills the hype and develops into a 3D web-based hub for our day-to-day lives, the volume of data that will be collected will be exponentially greater than the reams of data already collected, and the threats to that data will expand as well. Questions to consider will include:
- Data and privacy – What’s collected? How sensitive is it? Who owns or controls it? The sharing of data will be the cornerstone of a seamless, interoperable environment where users and their digital personas and assets will be usable and tradeable across the different arenas of the metaverse. How will the collection, sharing and use of such data be regulated? What laws will govern the collection of data across the metaverse? The laws of a particular state? Applicable federal privacy laws? The GDPR or other international regulations? Will there be a single overarching “privacy policy” governing the metaverse under a user and merchant agreement, or will there be varying policies depending on which realm of the metaverse you are in? Could some developers create a more “privacy-focused” experience or would the personal data of avatars necessarily flow freely in every realm? How will children’s privacy be handled and will there be “roped off,” adults-only spaces that require further authentication to enter? Will the concepts that we talk about today – “personal information” or “personally identifiable information” – carry over to a world where the scope of available information expands exponentially as activities are tracked across the metaverse?
- Cybersecurity: How will cybersecurity be managed in the metaverse? What requirements will apply with respect to keeping data secure? How will regulation or site policies evolve to address deep fakes, avatar impersonation, trolling, stolen biometric data, digital wallet hacks and all of the other cyberthreats that we already face today and are likely to be exacerbated in the metaverse? What laws will apply and how will the various players collaborate in addressing this issue?
Technology Infrastructure: The metaverse will be a robust computing-intensive experience, highlighting the importance of strong contractual agreements concerning cloud computing, IoT, web hosting, and APIs, as well as software licenses and hardware agreements, and technology service agreements with developers, providers and platform operators involved in the metaverse stack. Performance commitments and service levels will take on heightened importance in light of the real-time interactions that users will expect. What is a meaningful remedy for a service level failure when the metaverse (or a part of the metaverse) freezes? A credit or other traditional remedy? Lawyers and technologists will have to think creatively to find appropriate and practical approaches to this issue. And while SaaS and other “as a service” arrangements will grow in importance, perhaps the entire process will spawn MaaS, or “Metaverse as a Service.”
Open Source – Open source, already ubiquitous, promises to play a huge role in metaverse development by allowing developers to improve on what has come before. Whether or not the obligations of common open source licenses will be triggered will depend on the technical details of implementation. It is also possible that new open source licenses will be created to contemplate development for the metaverse.
Quantum Computing – Quantum computing has dramatically increased the capabilities of computers and is likely to continue to do over the coming years. It will certainly be one of the technologies deployed to provide the computing speed to allow the metaverse to function. However, with the awesome power of quantum computing comes threats to certain legacy protections we use today. Passwords and traditional security protocols may be meaningless (requiring the development of post-quantum cryptography that is secure against both quantum and traditional computers). With raw, unchecked quantum computing power, the metaverse may be subject to manipulation and misuse. Regulation of quantum computing, as applied to the metaverse and elsewhere, may be needed.
Antitrust: Collaboration is a key to the success of the metaverse, as it is, by definition, a multi-tenant environment. Of course collaboration amongst competitors may invoke antitrust concerns. Also, to the extent that larger technology companies may be perceived as leveraging their position to assert unfair control in any virtual world, there may be additional concerns.
Intellectual Property Issues: A host of IP issues will certainly arise, including infringement, licensing (and breaches thereof), IP protection and anti-piracy efforts, patent issues, joint ownership concerns, safe harbors, potential formation of patent cross-licensing organizations (which also may invoke antitrust concerns), trademark and advertising issues, and entertaining new brand licensing opportunities. The scope of content and technology licenses will have to be delicately negotiated with forethought to the potential breadth of the metaverse (e.g., it’s easy to limit a licensee’s rights based on territory, for example, but what about for a virtual world with no borders or some borders that haven’t been drawn yet?). Rightsholders must also determine their particular tolerance level for unauthorized digital goods or creations. One can envision a need for a DMCA-like safe harbor and takedown process for the metaverse. Also, akin to the litigation that sprouted from the use of athletes’ or celebrities’ likenesses (and their tattoos) in videogames, it’s likely that IP issues and rights of publicity disputes will go way up as people’s virtual avatars take on commercial value in ways that their real human selves never did.
Content Moderation. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) has been the target of bipartisan criticism for several years now, yet it remains in effect despite its application in some distasteful ways. How will the CDA be applied to the metaverse, where the exchange of third party content is likely to be even more robust than what we see today on social media? How will “bad actors” be treated, and what does an account termination look like in the metaverse? Much like the legal issues surrounding offensive content present on today’s social media platforms, and barring a change in the law, the same kinds of issues surrounding user-generated content will persist and the same defenses under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act will be raised.
Blockchain, DAOs, Smart Contract and Digital Assets: Since the metaverse is planned as a single forum with disparate operators and users, the use of a blockchain (or blockchains) would seem to be one solution to act as a trusted, immutable ledger of virtual goods, in-world currencies and identity authentication, particularly when interactions may be somewhat anonymous or between individuals who may or may not trust each other and in the absence of a centralized clearinghouse or administrator for transactions. The use of smart contracts may be pervasive in the metaverse. Investors or developers may also decide that DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) can be useful to crowdsource and fund opportunities within that environment as well. Overall, a decentralized metaverse with its own discrete economy would feature the creation, sale and holding of sovereign digital assets (and their free use, display and exchange using blockchain-based payment networks within the metaverse). This would presumably give NFTs a role beyond mere digital collectibles and investment opportunities as well as a role for other forms of digital currency (e.g., cryptocurrency, utility tokens, stablecoins, e-money, virtual “in game” money as found in some videogames, or a system of micropayments for virtual goods, services or experiences). How else will our avatars be able to build a new virtual wardrobe for what is to come?

With this shift to blockchain-based economic structures comes the potential regulatory issues behind digital currencies. How will securities laws view digital assets that retain and form value in the metaverse? Also, as in life today, visitors to the metaverse must be wary of digital currency schemes and meme coin scams, with regulators not too far behind policing the fraudsters and unlawful actors that will seek opportunities in the metaverse. While regulators and lawmakers are struggling to keep up with the current crop of issues, and despite any progress they may make in that regard, many open issues will remain and new issues will be of concern as digital tokens and currency (and the contracts underlying them) take on new relevance in a virtual world.

Big ideas are always exciting. Watching the metaverse come together is no different, particularly as it all is happening alongside additional innovations surrounding the web, blockchain and cryptocurrency (and, more than likely, updated laws and regulations). However, it’s still early. And we’ll have to see if the current vision of the metaverse will translate into long-term, concrete commercial and civic-minded opportunities for businesses, service providers, developers and individual artists and creators. Ultimately, these parties will need to sort through many legal issues, both novel and commonplace, before creating and participating in a new virtual world concept that goes beyond the massive multi-user videogame platforms and virtual worlds we have today.

Article By Jeffrey D. Neuburger of Proskauer Rose LLP. Co-authored by Jonathan Mollod.

For more legal news regarding data privacy and cybersecurity, click here to visit the National Law Review.

Colorado Privacy Act: New Protections for Consumers in the Centennial State

On July 1, 2023, the Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) will go into effect as the third state law generally governing consumer data privacy and was the second enacted in 2021. If you do business with consumers in Colorado, regardless of your location, you should begin familiarizing yourself with the requirements of the CPA now. While the CPA is similar to the California Privacy Rights Act (CRPA) and Virginia’s Consumer Data Privacy Act (VCDPA), certain elements distinguish the Colorado law from its counterparts. Unlike the California law, the CPA does not apply to personal data in the employee or business-to-business relationship. This client alert provides a breakdown of the general requirements and obligations on businesses and key distinctions with other state data privacy laws.

Covered Businesses and Applicability

Covered Controllers. The CPA applies to any business, called a “controller” under the statute, who “alone, or jointly with others, determines the purposes for and means of processing personal data,” and “conducts business in Colorado or produces or delivers commercial products or services that are intentionally targeted to residents of Colorado” and:

Controls or processes the personal data of 100,000 consumers or more during a calendar year; or
Derives revenue or receives a discount on the price of goods or services from the sale of personal data and processes or controls the personal data of 25,000 consumers or more.

There are a number of exemptions to the applicability provision that should be considered as part of the analysis of applicability. First, the definition of consumers does not include “individual[s] acting in a commercial or employment context, as a job applicant, or as a beneficiary of someone acting in an employment context.” Second, the Act does not apply to certain types of personal data, as defined by the type of data, such as patient data, or as defined by the statute by which the collection and use of the data is regulated such as Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Third, the Act does not apply to certain types of businesses, such as air carriers, public utilities (as defined by Colorado Law), or those subject to Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Notably, there is no revenue threshold requirement, meaning an applicability analysis begins by looking at the number of records processed.

Covered Individual. To reiterate, the CPA does not apply to employee data, which, like the VCDPA means a consumer is a Colorado resident acting only in an individual or household context.

Personal Data. The CPA defines personal data as “information that is linked or reasonably linkable to an identified or identifiable individual,” but does not include “de-identified data or publicly available information,” including data “that a controller has a reasonable basis to believe the consumer has lawfully made available to the general public.” This definition is similar to the VCDPA.

Controller and Processor Obligations

If the CPA is applicable to a controller then they, and their processors (a person that processes personal data on behalf of a controller) must adhere to a set of obligations. The CPA sets out an analysis for determining whether a person is acting as a controller or a processor.

Obligations and Duties of Controllers

Under the Act, controllers must:

Implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to the risk;
Comply with the duty of transparency by providing notice of the sale of personal data and the ability to opt out and by providing “a reasonably accessible, clear, and meaningful privacy notice” that includes:
- Categories of personal data collected/processed;
- Purpose(s) of processing;
- How consumers may exercise rights and appeal controller’s response to consumer’s request;
- Categories of personal data shared; and
- Categories of third parties personal data is shared with;
Respond to the consumer’s exercise of their rights;
Comply with the duty of purpose specification;
Comply with the duty of data minimization;
Comply with the duty to avoid secondary use;
Comply with the duty of care that is appropriate to the volume, scope, and nature of the personal data processed.
Comply with the duty to avoid unlawful discrimination;
Process sensitive data only with the consent of the consumer. Sensitive data is “(a) personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, a mental or physical health condition or diagnosis, sex life or sexual orientation, or citizenship or citizenship status; (b) genetic or biometric data that may be processed for the purpose of uniquely identifying an individual; or (c) personal data from a known child;”
Perform data protection assessments before beginning processing activities that present a heightened risk of harm to a consumer – certain situations of targeted advertising or profiling, selling personal data, and processing sensitive data are activities that present a heightened risk of harm; and
Engage processors only under a written contract, which shall include the type of personal data processed and other requirements under the CPA.

Obligations of Processors

Under the Act, processors must:

Assist controllers in meeting their obligations under the CPA;
Adhere to instructions of controller and assist controller in meeting those obligations, including security of processing and data breach notification;
Ensure a duty of confidentiality for each person processing personal data; and
Engage subcontractors pursuant to a written contract and only after providing the controller an opportunity to object.

Rights of Consumers

Like the VCDPA and CPRA, the CPA includes a suite of rights which consumers may request with respect to their personal data:

Right of access;
Right to correction;
Right to delete;
Right to data portability;
Right to opt out, including specifically of targeted advertising or the sale of personal data; and
Right to appeal, including the right to contact the attorney general if the appeal is denied.

Within forty-five days of receipt of a request, a controller must respond by (a) taking action on the request, (b) extending the time for taking action up to an additional forty-five days, or (c) by not taking action and providing the instructions for an appeal. Information provided under a first request within a 12 month period must be at no charge to the consumer. Controller’s may implement processes to authenticate the identity of consumers requesting rights.

Enforcement of the CPA

There is no private right of action under the CPA with enforcement authority delegated to both the Colorado attorney general and district attorneys. The CPA doubles the cure period granted to controllers provided under the VCDPA and CPRA to 60 days; however, the entitlement to a cure period will sunset on January 1, 2025. Under the CPA a violation is a deceptive trade practice under the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, such that while the CPA does not specify a penalty amount, the Colorado Consumer Protection Act specifies a penalty of up to $20,000 per violation.

What’s Next

If the CPA is the first data protection legislation applicable to your organization, the time to transition your team– IT, marketing, legal – is now. Delays in implementation are likely and could be costly.

This article was written by Lucy Tyson, Brittney E. Justice and Matthew G. Nielson of Bracewell law firm. For more articles regarding privacy legislation, please click here.

Content Management & Technical SEO with John McDougall [PODCAST]

Skeptical of your marketing efforts and wonder if all that work is really worth it? Rachel and Jessica get some great background on SEO from John McDougall, President of McDougall Interactive. Spoiler alert: good SEO practices can catapult your business to the next level.

Read on below for a transcribed version of our conversation, created by AI. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

INTRO 00:02

Hello, and welcome to Legal News Reach, the official podcast for the National Law Review. Stay tuned for a discussion on the latest trends in legal marketing, SEO, law firm best practices and more.

Rachel 00:15

I’m Rachel, the Editorial Manager for the National Law Review.

Jessica 00:18

And I’m Jessica, a web content specialist for the National Law Review. And we’re the co-hosts for Legal News Reach.

Rachel 00:25

In this episode, we’re excited to talk to John McDougall, president of McDougall Interactive. John, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?

John McDougall 00:32

Yeah, sure. So welcome, everyone, and appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys today. And I started in 95 at my father’s ad agency selling websites. So I kind of fell in love with it early on and have been doing SEO ever since. So now, I just started a class called Talk Marketing. In addition to the agency, McDougall Interactive, we do coaching and teaching.

Rachel 01:18

Excellent, we’re excited to get your perspective on SEO. So just sort of moving into our first topic here, with how much Google’s has changed, and how much people’s habits with, you know, searching tends to change, why is it so hard to do SEO now?

John McDougall 01:34

Oh, it’s just so much to do. I mean, it’s like you need a small army to do it, you need organizational skills, and early SEO, you could just fly around and go to some conferences and do some, you know, pull it off yourself. I don’t know, somewhere in the 90s, I made a hearing aid website over a weekend I did the logo, design, the website, built it and hand coded in HTML, wrote the pages for different brands of hearing aids, and launched it over the weekend. And then it was ranking and Yahoo, like number one for hearing aids, and then a company bought my client. And then I started working for that company. So it was that easy, almost back in the day. And now, I mean, my God, we’ll get into it more as we go here. But there are just 1000 different things that can influence your SEO.

Rachel 02:23

So moving more into legal industry specifics, is there a different approach for different types of law firms? So personal injury, or maybe more business-oriented law firms in terms of like website marketing?

John McDougall 02:37

I don’t have to sell a personal injury attorney on the idea of SEO, right, they’re there, they know that their customers are out there searching, you know, if you get bit by a dog or injured by a dangerous drug or medical device, you don’t necessarily even want to ask someone for a referral, if it’s embarrassing. Or if you’re in a rush, or you know, whatever it is. So you’re going to search Google, it’s a no brainer. On the other side, with business lawyers, there are some very big companies that, you know, business attorneys will say they’re just not going to search Google for me. And that may be true, but later they tell you, but if they do search for this certain niche kind of thing, I’d like my thought leadership content to be there at the top of Google. So ironically, I think that sometimes having good content that search optimized is maybe not as important as the obvious thing with personal injury, like I said, but pretty close to similar importance, right? So if it’s intellectual property, or international law, different things that are really important, if you’re going to impress the General Counsel, or some really high level people, they might want to see that you’re in search, not just in conversations with them and, and even if it’s not so much, they’re searching Google, when they get to your site, there should be an active, either a blog on your site, or separate off site blogs on niche topics that really just show highlight your thought leadership. So my argument would be if you if you have to do that anyway, because you want to show your thought leadership, at least put some effort into a fast loading website, good title and meta tags, consistent content, if weekly, if not, at least monthly. So some of the same things that you would tell a personal injury lawyer really do apply to business lawyers just at a slightly less exaggerated pace. You might not go out and do link building or like you probably will do PR but maybe not PR for link building like you would with personal injury potentially. A lot of spreading your thought leadership content should involve good quality content that is optimized for the internet. You know that a lot of that is his research some of its or social media. But, you know, so a lot of the same rules apply at different levels of exaggeration,

Rachel 05:10

Right. And so once lawyers really get their feet into creating this really great content and optimizing SEO, how do they then keep up with all the changes that Google makes to its algorithm?

John McDougall 05:23

They have to either hire an agency who keeps up with it, or to help them and spoon feed what’s most important to them? That would be one way. The other way, if they’re going to be more do it yourselfers or the marketing department wants to keep up. I just have to keep reading things like search engine land Search Engine Journal, you know, HubSpot blog, things like that, you’re going to really need to keep up. And an agency has the benefit of testing across lots of sites. So for as an example, in 2012, I had 27 clients or something like that. And Google Penguin hit, which was an algorithm, Google designed to discredit low quality links. One day, I was looking at my ranks, and I said, Geez, this doesn’t look good. Something’s going on here. And I asked a guy that was a subcontractor of mine, he said, No, I’m not seeing anything unusual. He’s like, wait a minute, let me call you back. He goes and looks at his rankings across, he had hundreds of clients, he had a lower price point and the strategy of more clients, and he said, Oh, crap, we’re seeing like, significant drops consistently across all clients, it turned out that Google had just dropped the bomb of Google Penguin on people. And I think, later, they maybe regretted it, I’d like to think that they went too fast with it. So, you know, by having multiple clients, and asking a subcontractor to read lots of clients, we were able to see that this is not a made up trend. This is not my imagination, you know, this is how we’re keeping up with trends is networking with peers. And then of course, it broke within hours or days on search engine, journal, and Search Engine Land and things. But we were we were seeing it in multiple clients’ data. So if you’re a law firm, you have one site, just be aware of that, that, you know, you should be looking to others that have multiple clients are certainly at least the top, you know, SEO media magazine sites online, and you so that you can see what the trends are.

John McDougall 07:35

I think an editorial calendar is key. At the National Law Review, you have huge amounts of content, but you need to think like a magazine/ And if you don’t, you won’t be consistent. So that’s at the heart of it. And then find ways to either the attorneys involved, or the agency involved with the attorneys to generate content around topics. And we can get into that more in a minute.

Jessica 08:13

We were going to ask you about each social media type, mostly because so many law firms now are realizing if they didn’t before, which they probably didn’t. But I think law firms and clients in general are realizing we can make the internet and like social media work for us. And they’re paying attention to what those numbers mean now. So I want to know, you know, I want to tack each type that we’re seeing more common output with so like podcasts. How does that help with SEO?

John McDougall 08:42

Yeah. And so I would tie that again, back into the last question, because I think it’s critical that people understand that you can do s SEO driven content through podcasting, and video, if you’re not using transcripts, for your podcasts in your videos, you just probably not getting as much mileage as you could. And a lot of people will make like a show note for your podcast. And that’s good, you know, a little couple paragraphs or something in this episode, you’ll see this in some bullet points. But in addition to that, having the transcript as an option, you can even make it so it can disappear and appear on the page. So the search engines can still read it. But having content with attorneys that are thought leaders isn’t always easy to get with having them write, you know, some of them are going to be rock stars they’re going to write, some of them just aren’t. And you might have categories that well, the intellectual property lawyer is writing just fine. But the international law or whatever law is the person’s amazing speaker but a terrible writer are just lazy or just doesn’t have time to write whatever it is. If you want SEO and consistent content, you can just do shorter ones, because every minute of podcasting, we get 130 words, even a 10 minute, say 12 minute podcast, you can get like 1500 words, that’s a really robust, deep piece of content. And the attorneys just talking, you know, they do that all the time, they’re good at it. So if your marketing team handles that, and just knocks those out to be consistent, you got to let go a little bit. And maybe occasionally do the half hour, the hour podcast, you’re gonna get a lot of consistent content, then you can turn some of that into short YouTube videos, or do remote YouTube videos, or in person YouTube videos that are like a minute, two minutes, you know, what is this particular law? You know, What is Brexit, even, you know, cover some of the things that if you’re a search engine algorithm, it’s going to be good to see on your website that you dispute, you know, ask the question, like, What is Brexit? Maybe somebody on their into Amazon Alexa, or Google Home is like, hey, Alexa, What is Brexit? So if you’re going to cover all of the gamuts of the way people are asking questions, you’re going to need lots of content. And if you’re waiting around for, you know, attorneys to write that aren’t necessarily writers. Sometimes it works great.

Jessica 12:12

It’s really interesting that you mentioned podcasting and combining video with that, because that’s what we are doing. But it’s also like having the transcript for a podcast episode is the web content accessibility guideline that you’re supposed to have on a website, you’re usually supposed to have to be ADA compliant. Yeah. So it’s it to know it helps SEO is always good. So I’m sure would tell people listening to this, that, hey, that extra work actually does help you and you know, the people who need to access your site.

John McDougall 12:45

Yeah. So exactly like all this just for SEO, it’s a big pain in the butt. All of your content should have an alternative version, even an image should have as you hover over it an alt tag. And that was true in the 90s, and I think it’s part of the future of SEO and it’s been there and you really can’t ignore it anymore.

Jessica 13:55

I think the pandemic especially made that very loud realization for so many people, not just the compliance part of a website, also, just with this SEO, all these numbers and tactics you have to use now on your site, because that’s where people are going. I mean, when the pandemic happened, you weren’t going into a place you were going to their site. So how has SEO changed? Besides like those couple of things? Are there any other characteristics you’ve noticed since the past year? So

John McDougall 14:25

I’d say the competition level is huge because of the pandemic. My father who had the ad agency, sent me an article six months or a year ago, the Wall Street Journal said that essentially the Mad Men era is done, exacerbated by SEO and Google ads. More and more important, I think podcast ads have taken over more than radio ads after the pandemic. It’s like the nail in the coffin. Now, most of advertising is controlled by the big Google, Facebook, Amazon for products, right? Because Amazon’s basically a search engine for the products. So those three alone, I mean, Google’s top five company and, you know, the old control that ad agencies had is basically gone. The Wall Street Journal saying basically, advertising is controlled by digital now. And what does that mean? That means there’s a crazy amount of competition. So if you’re doing SEO, like I was a long time ago, the hearing aids just cram it into the title and meta tags. And throughout the page, you’re done. You know, that’s not the case anymore. Now, type in something like Phone X, hearing aids or series, Siemens hearing aids online or something, and then see the page that ranks what is there, and it’s probably, you know, God knows how many SEO agencies have helped hearing aid companies make like the ultimate page, the ultimate guide to hearing aids, you know, this, like 10,000 word article? That’s, that’s a big change. And, you know, we can go in more into some of the specifics. But that’s more broadly, what I think is changed as competition is up, and it’s not going away anytime soon. I mean, what are you guys seeing with SEO? Overall? Are you seeing big changes? Or it’s harder than ever? What are you seeing?

Rachel 16:43

I would say, probably one of the biggest things that we’ve seen make an impact in terms of like our clients content, when we see things do particularly well, it’s that they have, you know, really great keywords. So, you know, headers posed as questions, the articles are long, so they have like about 1200 words. Timeliness also seems to be a big contributing factor to content success. So if it comes to us, you know, around noon, rather than like, 5pm, on a Friday, those articles tend to do way better than ones that are short, you know, that don’t have like, you know, really great bullet points, really great formatting. I think in terms of people who are looking to sort of do well on our website, and things like that, it’s important to make your content really great for search engines. So you know, and also really readable for people. Yeah, so having really great headers, you know, thinking about what people who want to find your expertise, like what are they want to know about, and including that in your headers and things like that.

Jessica 17:53

Definitely, that content competition is huge. Now, I mean, we already get a lot of content just because we have so many clients that we want to, you know, put out their information. You know, if we have a Supreme Court decision, that’s huge. I mean, we’ll get like multiple pieces on the same thing. And it’s kind of a game of like, who the slightest difference in formatting or word choices, keyword choices can really like make some articles do really well, as far as viewership just staying on the page and not bouncing versus other pages that for some reason, even on the same topic, maybe you just didn’t quite do the same level, you know, not as many views.

John McDougall 18:32

Historically, SEO people like myself will be more focused on the backlinks than on the social shares. Sometimes one helps the other. So one of my best case studies, we wrote an article for a bank, and it got on to NerdWallet. NerdWallet interviewed us to link to the content. But it was all started with just sharing it on Twitter and Facebook. So we were we were sharing the content. We were doing social media, but we weren’t holding our breath for to do that much except hoping we would get some people to link to the content. And we got backlinks from NerdWallet, which is like a massive financial website with a huge amount of credibility. Another one was lobsters, we ranked number two in Google for the single word lobsters. And I wrote an article because I have lobster traps and do fishing and things. And so I wrote an article 100 Fun Facts About lobsters and it got shared by the Huffington Post and a bunch of places no, suddenly, this little restaurant near me got hundreds of 1000s of views on a, you know, a silly page about lobsters with some historic photos and, you know, these crazy facts. Sometimes we’ll use social media to get links, you know, just getting the visibility out there and I agree that you know, if you can get it out there faster, you’re more likely to get all that to happen. And you can look at your top pages and look by top pages by social shares and top pages by backlinks. So I would just recommend to the audience and you guys, if you’re not doing it, check out where you rank in search. Are you like number four, or five, or God forbid, number six, because Top Five is where I forget, it’s like 67% of the eyeballs go, used to be want to be top 10 In Google. Now, really, top five is key. And a number one, of course, gets, you know, a huge amount of the lion’s share of eyeballs and clicks, you get a lot of leads, do you think from social media? Or is that part of the process?

Rachel 20:53

The vast majority of our traffic does come from SEO and from Google. But we definitely see a connection between the social outreach that we do we have a pretty robust social media strategy and process where we try to, you know, use certain hashtags that are relevant, and also tagging specific people who we think would find the content to be specifically interesting to them. Social is definitely a big part of it. But it’s sort of like the larger picture of it’s just one of the things that we do, I think SEO is more important, but I think social kind of can tie in SEO in a way that the relevant people are finding it on a different channel

John McDougall 21:32

One of the things I speak to and I’ve done this with Jennifer, actually on a webinar is the seven main factors of SEO that I believe people need to think about, like technical SEO, which is a really a booming trend right now, a fast loading website is going to rank way better than a slow loading website. Because even if you do everything right, SEO wise, if it’s slow loading, Google is not going to give you as good a ranking. Number one is technical SEO – you can’t have too many broken links, no duplicate titles, and meta descriptions all over the place. And it’s not like it used to be, but it’s still on page SEO, and then content, fresh content, blogging, content, depth of content is important. And then off page SEO, or what we call link building, which is essentially PR. You need to get media sites or even small blogs, to link to you and link to individual pages. And then number four is user signals, and user experience. And then user signals are more like if you search Google for, you know, personal injury lawyer Boston. Seven is branding. So instead of just doing SEO, law firms should really be building a brand that’s known for something. And you guys are known in at least if you look at your backlinks and your social shares, again, Brexit, I think it was constitutional amendments, you guys get a lot of backlinks for that. So build your brand and be known for something and then have some content that you really stand out for. That is more the future of SEO is you can’t just do SEO, ironically, you need to be part of a brand.

Jessica 24:08

The purpose of SEO and those tactics are good for people, because I think it makes the content more relevant. I think it makes things on the internet more valuable to people who need it. You know, everybody goes on the internet for information now. And now companies and websites are forced to make sure that they’re actually valuable. They’re not just filled with links for no reason and, you know, short little things that aren’t going to help someone so I think yeah, I don’t know if everybody agrees with that. But I think it actually makes it better for the audience that’s reading it and going to your site anyway. Personally, I think it’s good

John McDougall 24:42

Google is better at enforcing those things now. So that was sort of the goal always with the Internet. But because we could just game the system, you know, certainly low end SEO companies back in the day, just get crappy links build stupid pages that meant nothing. Those tactics should be dead. Unfortunately, it’s like, wow, no, it’s so hard. Like you didn’t have to go that far. Take some of those TV dollars or, or print dollars or event dollars. And actually, whether you pay agencies or do it internally, really train up and do it right. There’s a lot of proven workflows for this stuff. You just have to trust the three of us and other people doing this stuff, are people we’re not just making stuff up, you know, where we’re doing all those things we just discussed, and it takes time, each one of them. Add snippets to the site, you know, go into figure out Google Analytics for you know, use Google Search Console every week, you know, use SEMRush to use a draft. All this stuff is more time consuming now, but I like it. I think it’s more developed. It’s, you know, you have to be more aggressive. It’s not as easy. I mean, there’s certainly a lot to do. So. That’s the good news is, there’s stuff to do that does work if you keep at it. But yeah, if you’re not consistent, it’s never going to work. You get those social shares and even sometimes backlinks from very relevant partners or related people and Google can’t miss that, you know. So yeah, it’s all a win win. Yeah, I could go off way off on that one. But sounds like you guys are really doing the right thing with it and repurposing that content.

Rachel 26:32

Yeah. It’s been a lot of fun. And we’ve had a great conversation with you, John, thank you so much for joining us.

Article By Rachel Popa and Jessica Scheck of

The National Law Review / The National Law Forum LLC

For more articles on legal marketing, visit the NLRLaw Office Management section.

Category: Communication Media & Internet

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