By Sara Skiff | Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Coming today to TechnoFeature: Google is like Hollywood. There's an A List, B List, etc. Law firms on the A List appear on the first search results page for keywords relevant to the legal services they provide. These firms receive many inquiries from prospective clients at virtually no cost. Money for nothing. Meanwhile, law firms on the D List are virtually invisible. In this TechnoFeature article, technology consultant Seth Rowland explains how to get on Google's A List using nothing more than common sense and a content management system.
How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Mazyar Hedayat | Monday, June 29, 2009
Originally published on June 22, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.
Last month I wrote about what happens when too many demands vie for the time and attention of your prospective clients, and referred to it as the recommendation economy. For this second installment, I promised you tips on how to use Twitter to establish a compelling presence online, resulting in press coverage and new clients. Here we go.
Twittermania Means Software Developers Are Busy
Getting the inside story from a trusted source can prove invaluable. That's why Twitter's ability to capture the public zeitgeist is priceless. Used in conjunction with its ever-growing list of free third-party applications, Twitter enables you to monitor multiple conversations at once, send and receive files instantly, limit conversations to a few participants or throw them open to the world, create instant communities, and more.
It would be easy to dismiss Twitter as kid stuff, but that misses the point. By inspiring an entire ecosystem of extensions, applications, and mash-ups, Twitter has motivated developers to create applications that enable:
With so many applications to choose from and more on the way, it's only a matter of time before you find one that suits you. I've compiled an ongoing list of lawyer-friendly applications on my blog.
How Many of You Are There?
Once you've decided which applications help you tweet better, it's time to show off. Start by reading what others have written. Once you find a discussion or post that interests you, offer an opinion or pass on a post by someone else. Follow tweeters that you like. In no time, you will have created a community of people who write about, or are interested in, what interests you.
But what about prospects, you ask? Meeting prospective clients on Twitter is even easier than exchanging views with other lawyers because the minute you offer relevant information and solutions to their problems, they will find you. Better yet, be proactive — search Twitter for keywords relating to your practice area, and then follow those tweeters. It could be that your niche is just waiting for you to fill it.
The only catch to all this Twitter happiness is that you need to decide which audience you want to address or at a minimum you'll need to separate your tweets so that you're not boring your colleagues or confusing prospective clients with jargon. Personally I use multiple Twitter identities to keep my discussions separate. Increasingly, other lawyers are doing the same, creating a personal identity for friends and family, a professional identity representing their office, and an identity within a group so they can seek advice from other members of the profession.
Keep These Tips in Mind — and Remember to Breathe
Despite the potential of it all, don't try to conquer Twitter in one sitting or even one week. Give it time and build your follower-base one interesting person at a time. While you're at it, here are some of my suggestions to keep things interesting:
- Consider a "secret identity" to find out what people really think.
- Mix it up — private conversations versus public ones (which work better?).
- Broadcast your professional accomplishments and cheer on your followers.
- Create a firm "identity" on Twitter consistent with your Web site and blog.
- Use your Twitter background as a business card, a news source, a wish list.
- Use your Twitter background to promote causes that deserve your support.
- Post questions and then post answers — prospects will appreciate your advice.
- Search for your name, your firm, and phrases related to your practice area.
- Be generous with less experienced users — be fast to cheer and slow to criticize.
- Don't just make friends, make the right friends; numbers don't tell the whole story.
- Follow the leader, but not too close. Soon enough you will be the leader.
There Is No Wrong Tweet
Ultimately there is no "wrong" way to use Twitter. Whether you want to take advantage of its hyperactive network to gauge the public mood about a politician, share files, brag about your favorite Ska band, or find killer dim sum, Twitter can meet all your needs because it is what you make it. By the same token, you can be whatever you want on Twitter — but be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.
How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Friday, June 26, 2009
Coming today to
Fat Friday: Mark Raby reviews his first week using the Palm Pre, YouLaw columnist Gerry Oginski reviews Avvo from a lawyer's perspective, Philip Franckel discusses running Dragon NaturallySpeaking on Linux, Ann Byrne discusses Microsoft Response Point and Aastra telephone systems, and Harvey Ash shares some news about the new Palm Pre's ability to sync with iTunes. Don't miss this issue.
How to Receive Fat Friday
Our most serendipitous offering, Fat Friday consists of unsolicited contributions by TechnoLawyer members. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The Fat Friday newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Friday, June 19, 2009
Coming today to Fat Friday: Rob Foos reviews the new Palm Pre, Lane Trippe responds to a recent BigLaw issue on the "assignment memo," Morris Tabush reviews the BlackBerry Bold and his favorite apps, paralegal Leigh Crawford points to an article about how her small firm survives in a big city, and David Gulbransen compares Dimdim to WebEx for online collaboration. Don't miss this issue.
How to Receive Fat Friday
Our most serendipitous offering, Fat Friday consists of unsolicited contributions by TechnoLawyer members. You'll no doubt enjoy it because of its mix of interesting topics and genuinely useful knowledge, including brutally honest product reviews and informative how-tos. The Fat Friday newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Neil Squillante | Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an online marketing service for law firms (see article below), a Web-based replacement for Microsoft Exchange, two Outlook plugins that prevent you from making embarrassing mistakes, and an iPhone app for editing Word documents. Don't miss the next issue.
Sit Back, Relax, and Grow Your Law Firm Practice
Law firms interested in growing must engage in marketing. That is a fact. Marketing dollars are moving online, primarily because it's cheaper and more measurable than traditional marketing. That is a fact. But popular online advertising vehicles such as Google AdWords favor businesses with the expertise and resources to leverage their many intricacies. That is unfortunately a fact as few law firms can play this game. Instead, law firms need more of a set-it-and-forget-it approach to online marketing.
ExpertHub Online Legal Network … in One Sentence
ExpertHub Online Legal Network (ExpertHub) is an online marketing service designed to funnel prospective clients to law firms in a wide variety of practice areas.
The Killer Feature
ExpertHub consist of a network of legal sites such as LawFirms.com, AccidentAttorneys.com, BankruptcyLawFirms.com, TechnologyLawyers.com, and many others. These sites contain a growing collection of articles and other information about their respective areas of law.
Thanks to a combination of content, site architecture, and some alchemy (a.k.a. trade secrets), ExpertHub's legal sites appear on the first page of Google for searches such as "personal injury lawyer" and "bankruptcy filing." As a result, the sites receive lots of traffic from people seeking legal services.
ExpertHub transforms this traffic into qualified leads for your law firm using a questionnaire. When a prospect's legal needs match your law firm's profile, you receive their name, email address, and telephone number. ExpertHub tells us that it delivered more than 14,000 leads last month.
Other Notable Features
To get started with ExpertHub, you use the expertPLANNER proposal generator to figure out what type of subscription would best suit your firm and its marketing goals. Before you spend a dime, expertPLANNER will tap into ExpertHub's historical data to predict the number of leads you'll receive and how much it will cost. You can run "What Ifs" to see how changing geographic location, practice areas, case types, etc. impacts these numbers.
While you can simply create a profile and then sit back and collect leads, more proactive firms willing to do a little work can take advantage of ExpertHub's expertSYNDICATION service through which you can publish articles on ExpertHub's sites and also link to these articles in your profile.
ExpertHub does not charge for its expertSYNDICATION service so it costs only your time. The articles add depth to your profile and can also generate more leads. If you're too busy to write articles, ExpertHub can write them for you for a fee.
Once you start working with ExpertHub, you can track performance using the expertSTAT dashboard, which shows you profile and article views, lead volume, and more.
What Else Should You Know?
ExpertHub's subscription prices are based on historical lead volumes for your geographic location(s) and practice area(s). Learn more about ExpertHub.
How to Receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Mazyar Hedayat | Monday, June 1, 2009
Originally published on May 25, 2009 in our free SmallLaw newsletter.
How did you pick your last office computer? Your doctor? Both decisions can have serious consequences, but one was probably preceded by research and comparison shopping, while the other was based on faith.
In fact the only thing these decisions probably had in common was that they most likely involved guidance from colleagues, friends, family, trade publications or, you guessed it, the Internet.
Welcome to the recommendation economy. Don't think for a moment that professionals can't be talked about, recommended into success or criticized into infamy. In the recommendation economy anything goes, and usually does.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Guess
Even the most independent among us constantly takes cues on how to behave, what to wear, and who to trust. Some cues arise organically from the environment. Others are specifically placed by companies to influence our decisions. The most influential cues of all come from ordinary experience with people who seem the most like us. It's a fact that most people who agree with us seem smart, and most who disagree seem stupid.
For instance, how do prospective clients choose a lawyer? Rates? Win/loss ratio? Articles published or seminars given? Most small firms and sole practitioners observe a "don't ask don't tell" policy on this point. And maybe that's best, because even when asked most clients don't know, aren't sure, or just lie about how they made their choice. So if you can't trust client answers, where can you go to get the straight story? Don't worry — the Internet is here to help.
Behold the Power of the Crowd
If the Internet is an ocean, Twitter is a raging, white rapids river of real-time impressions and feedback. It is also the rawest of feeds from the largest group of voluntary participants on the Internet. You might wonder (as I did) how this all came about. It's simple, really:
- 25% of Twitter users are voyeurs.
- 25% of Twitter users are exhibitionists.
- The other 50% heard about it on Oprah.
In fact, since Oprah's announcement last month the service has grown at an annualized rate of over 1000% per year. Never mind that most of these new users will be casual at best and most likely move on to something else in a month. The point is that Twitter is becoming the focal point for a nation of increasingly vocal consumers that share, and expect, instant feedback. Reputations can now be made or lost in days instead of years.
Go ahead and try a search in Twitter.
Instant Karma's Gonna Get You
Of course your last client probably didn't learn about you on Twitter. Instead, they most likely got your name from friends or neighbors. Maybe it came from another lawyer, a family member, or a Google search.
As it turns out, these sources are only once or twice removed from your Twitter reputation. Each of them is influenced by, and influences, the service. And as Twitter and its spin-offs gain traction in every corner of search-engineland, their impact is felt still more. The result is a vicious or virtuous cycle — depending on whether you are the recipient of good publicity or bad.
Just imagine: more search engines returning more Twitter-related posts about a given lawyer, which reach more people than ever, who in-turn are free to Twitter about their experience, and so on. The "I told two friends" shampoo commercial of our youth is now more like "I told 10,000 followers."
The result is unmistakably viral. Those who "get it" shoot up and up faster than ever, while those who don't are buried further and further in the rankings at light-speed. Twitter doesn't leave much room for "in between" or "middle-of-the-road" reputations.
So, how can you elicit recommendations rather than criticism? Provide your clients with quality work of course. But beyond that obvious strategy, I've developed some others that you and the other readers of this column can use to harness the power of Twitter and other tools to influence prospective clients before they pick up the phone. Stay tuned, and may the Tweets be with you.
Written by Mazyar M. Hedayat of M. Hedayat & Associates, P.C.
How to Receive SmallLaw
Small firm, big dreams. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, SmallLaw provides you with a mix of practical advice that you can use today, and insight about what it will take for small law firms like yours to thrive in the future. The SmallLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Coming today to TechnoFeature: Geography can often get in the way of your firm's plans for world domination. But thanks to technology, you can overcome such hurdles. In this article, technology consultant and practice management expert Seth Rowland discusses several innovative law firms, ranging from a solo practitioner to a mega-firm, that have embraced some aspects of virtual law practice. He explains the technology they use to "cut the cord" and expand beyond the "four walls" of their physical office.
How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Thursday, May 21, 2009
Coming today to Answers to Questions: Bill Baldwin compares Copernic Desktop Search to Windows Search and Google Desktop, Maxine Aaronson reviews MozyPro, and Andrew Feldstein shares some tips for pasting unformatted text in Word.
How to Receive Answers to Questions
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? In Answers to Questions, TechnoLawyer members answer legal technology and practice management questions submitted by their peers. This newsletter's popularity stems from the relevance of the questions and answers to virtually everyone in the legal profession. The Answers to Questions newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Neil Squillante | Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers eDiscovery review software (see article below), a mobile cellular WiFi router, a document and records management system, electronic billing middleware that connects law firms to their corporate clients, and a Web clipping utility for Firefox. Don't miss the next issue.
Document Review Minus the Drudgery
No matter how advanced technology gets, using document review software will never compare to dining out with your family or friends. Or watching the ball game. Drinking a fine bottle of wine. Driving on a twisty road. But such software can shorten review time, and deepen your insight. And get you home in time for the national anthem.
Kazeon Analysis & Review … in One Sentence
Kazeon Analysis & Review 4.0 is a browser-based software program for reviewing electronic discovery documents, and managing the review process and the reviewers.
The Killer Feature
Document review used to entail looking at every document, though law firms would often outsource the first pass for coding purposes (dates, names, etc.). Nowadays, you can start the review process by searching for a particular name or issue to create a subset of documents.
Recognizing this nonlinear approach, Kazeon beefed up its search technology. Kazeon Analysis & Review displays the number of results and other data in a chart. As you add or remove terms or apply filters, the chart changes in realtime. Speaking of filters, you can apply an unlimited number. You can also conduct concept searches.
When you finalize a subset of documents, you can save a report showing the exact query that produced the set of documents.
Other Notable Features
Once you start looking at documents with Kazeon Analysis & Review, you'll find time-saving features such as one-click issue tagging, metadata clustering, and highlighted search terms.
When reviewing email, Kazeon Analysis & Review groups messages into chronological threads so that you can review related messages together even if they were written weeks or months apart.
If you're the person managing a review project, you'll find many reports at your disposal, enabling you to see who's reviewing what, analyze their performance, and much more. You'll also find an audit trail for every action taken by reviewers.
What Else Should You Know?
Kazeon Analysis & Review can scale to accommodate any size case. You can use it solely on site or online across multiple locations. If needed, Kazeon also offers two related products — Kazeon Collection & Culling and Kazeon Legal Hold Management. Learn more about Kazeon Analysis & Review.
How to Receive TechnoLawyer NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The "In One Sentence" section describes each product in one sentence, and the "Killer Feature" section describes each product's most compelling feature. The TechnoLawyer NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Coming today to TechnoFeature: Hollywood loves mentor movies. But don't count on seeing "Westlaw Practitioner" at a theater near you. Westlaw Practitioner is an online service that collects primary and secondary resources by practice area, essentially eliminating the need to create or use a law library. How well does it work? To find out, we asked Houston business and patent lawyer Al Harrison to dive into the practice areas in which he works every day as well as those in which he doesn't and report back to us. Before you take the plunge, read Al's review.
How to Receive TechnoFeature
Our flagship newsletter never disappoints thanks to its in-depth reporting by leading legal technology and practice management experts, many of whom have become "household names" in the legal profession. It's in TechnoFeature that you'll find our oft-quoted formal product reviews and accompanying TechnoScore ratings. The TechnoFeature newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
