Legal Marketing & Consulting

Billboards near music festival site offer law firm’s services to arrested concert-goers

A concert promoter is sounding off about law firm billboards by his music-festival site that offer legal services to those arrested at the concert. Event promoter Jay Goldberg acknowledges that programs for the Summer Camp festival in Chillicothe, Illinois, have included ads with a lawyer’s name and phone number. But…

May 16, 2014 2:58 PM CDT

Huge portrait above lawyer’s downtown offices spurs review of legality

The downtown offices of Bangor, Maine, lawyer Stephen C. Smith are easy to spot. Hanging above Smith’s offices is a large cutout of his likeness, BDN Maine reports. Also on display is his phone number: 1-888-8ATTACK. The newspaper interviewed passers-by, who described the larger-than-life photo as “glowering,” “imposing,” “hilarious” and…

May 9, 2014 12:48 PM CDT

Visual law services are worth a thousand words—and big money

Daniel Lewis was midway through his second year at Stanford Law School when he became convinced there was a better way to do legal research.

The thought came to him while doing work for a nonprofit in 2011. He was trying to understand where his issue fit within a broad group of cases his research had found. In his mind he pictured a view of his issue triangulated against the most important cases at the center and all the other, less important cases circled around them.

May 1, 2014 10:40 AM CDT

Silicon Valley lawyer creates another social network for lawyers

Move over Avvo, JD Oasis, Legal OnRamp and WireLawyer, there’s a new kid in town: Foxwordy. This spring, Palo Alto, Calif.-based lawyer and entrepreneur Monica Zent debuted Foxwordy, her entry into the array of legal social networks. Zent acknowledges she’s entered a crowded field—and one that has not exactly yielded…

May 1, 2014 9:30 AM CDT

MoFo starts Twitter feed to promote its female lawyers

What do you do when you want to highlight your firm’s “deep roster” of talented female lawyers? Tweet it, of course. This spring San Francisco-based Morrison & Foerster launched @MoFoWomen to show how much effort the firm is devoting to women in the legal field, says Mika Mayer, a Palo…

May 1, 2014 9:20 AM CDT

Responsive websites may not be the way forward for firms

A well-promoted solution for the wide variety of screen sizes law firm websites must accommodate can end up being more trouble than it’s worth. Responsive websites, which automatically sense a device’s screen size and respond by reconfiguring text and graphics to fit, can render desktop PCs with ridiculously large text…

May 1, 2014 8:10 AM CDT

Lawyernomics attendees learn about SEO, effective Web marketing

Small firm and solo practice lawyers don’t need to break the bank to maximize their Internet presence: The good news is that there are already plenty of online tools at their disposal if they wish to promote themselves and their brands. On the final day of Avvo’s Lawyernomics conference in…

Apr 28, 2014 11:00 AM CDT

NU football union vote today | How to turn down a client | Does it matter what car a lawyer drives?

Last month, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Northwestern University football players are employees and can unionize. The players’ vote is scheduled for today, and 76 active football players are eligible to cast their ballots. However, the ballots won’t be counted until the full NLRB deliberates on an appeal,…

Apr 25, 2014 1:45 PM CDT

Branding and storytelling help lawyers find and keep clients

Peter Shankman. Photo by Jacob Kepler. Lawyers can use personal branding, storytelling and even romance (in a metaphorical sense) to create a base of loyal clients that will help bring in additional clients and work. On Thursday, the second day of Avvo’s Lawyernomics conference in Las Vegas focused on how…

Apr 25, 2014 1:16 PM CDT

The marketing benefits of being nice will be touted at Lawyernomics conference

There’s an oft-quoted maxim that “it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” For many lawyers those two concepts can go hand in hand when it comes to generating business and burnishing credentials. Lawyers attending Avvo’s fifth annual Lawyernomics conference will learn all about why they…

Apr 22, 2014 6:09 PM CDT

People looking for a lawyer are turning to the Internet first, survey finds

Once upon a time, the first thing that an overwhelming majority of people in need of legal representation would do is turn to relatives or friends for personal referrals. Some would consult the Yellow Pages or the local bar association, while only a small handful would use the Internet before…

Apr 21, 2014 8:17 PM CDT

‘Law Tigers’ lawyer is reprimanded because referral website didn’t comply with testimonial ban

An Indiana lawyer has been reprimanded because he was affiliated with a referral website that posted testimonials. The lawyer, who was not named, contracted with the American Association of Motorcycle Injury Lawyers for exclusive use of the “Law Tigers” name in his Indiana territory and for referrals through its website,…

Apr 16, 2014 10:45 AM CDT

Should you self-promote in your blog posts? | Finding a lawyer via Google vs. social media

Real Lawyers Have Blogs’ Kevin O’Keefe noted a post at Business 2 Community titled “10 ways businesses can blog better.” Tip No. 7 was that business blogs should append a “call to action” at the end of every blog post—a “call to action” being a sentence or two describing your…

Apr 11, 2014 1:35 PM CDT

How lawyers can get the most out of Facebook’s paid status updates (podcast with transcript)

ABA Journal reporter Stephanie Francis Ward speaks with our guests to hear about their experiences and get tips on how lawyers can best utilize their Facebook accounts to attract clients.

Apr 7, 2014 1:59 PM CDT

ReInvent Law’s message is change for the client’s benefit

Lawyers need to embrace technology, can’t be afraid to try new things, and must focus primarily on improving their clients’ experience. Those were the main takeaways from the ReInvent Law conference held in New York City in February. More than 800 lawyers, academics, business owners, students and others in the…

Apr 1, 2014 8:20 AM CDT