Lawyer - News

By now everyone on planet earth and maybe even other planets, like the one Paris Hilton is actually from, has heard that she checked herself into jail Sunday night to start serving a 23 day sentence for violating probation.  The sentence was originally 45 days. 

 And now… SHE’S ALREADY OUT.  After just 3 days Paris Hilton was released from jail to house arrest… for 40 more days.

Her Mug Shot

This got me thinking, her Lawyer Richard A. Hutton from Hutton & Wilson, a supposed preeminent DUI Firm in Los Angeles must have seen a surge in prospective clients due to the publicity.   

Or did he… receiving a 45 day sentence for a violation of probation after she was caught driving on a suspended license is hardly what I would call a successful DUI representation (Original DUI charge in September). I know many people that have had similar cases or even more serious charges that did not even sniff the interior of a jail cell.

So the question this poses from a marketing perspective: Is it worth it to take on a celebrity or high profile client, whether it be Pro Bono or not, in order to get free publicity even if you LOSE THE CASE?  I know many people would revert to the cliche “There’s no such thing as bad press”.  Of course it works for Paris, but what about her Attorney?

ps. I promise I will never mention Paris Hilton ever again on LawFirmBlogging.com…

These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are
things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and
now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm
while these exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
_______________________________________________________
_____________
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you
forgot?
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that
morning?
WITNESS: He said, “Where am I, Cathy?”
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in
voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his
sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he’s twenty-one.
________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shittin’ me?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh…. I was gettin’ laid!
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Are you shittin’ me? Your Honour, I think I need a
different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Now whose death do you suppose terminated it?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Guess.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a
deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on
dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you
like to rephrase that?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go
to?
WITNESS: Oral.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was
doing an autopsy on him!
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh….are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________
And the best for last:
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check
for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you
began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive,
nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and
practising law. 

I enjoy a little photoshopping myself.  This was inspired by a Billboard in LA during the Scott Peterson trial. A Radio station was trying to get poll votes for the verdict.  This rendition is for the divorce lawyer in YOU:

You can lease a Billboard like this in El Cajon, California with a Daily Effective Circulation rate of 60,720 people.  It will set you back about $4300/month. 

This is funny, I’ve heard Texas really is the wild west for Lawsuits. This pretty much sums up that theory:

Ahh the old cliche’… something about lawyers and lips and lying.

Now… I’ve actually had martini-based business discussions with out of town Texas-based personal injury lawyers before. They were here in Metro Detroit on a “meso” (asbestos caused cancer) case.  They really do think they’re rock stars in a sense.  I saw a little bit of George Bush cowboy in each one of them.  But when they told me how much money they were spending on leads… My jaw dropped.  I told them I was an “internet guy” and thier jaws dropped.  They asked:  “Can you get me to the top of Google?  How much does that cost? I could make you a LOT of money!”

I think one of the best attributes of using wordpress for your blog is the inherent SEO properties that can easily be harnessed with a few tweaks.  One of the first things I noticed about this site in particular was that the Title tags on every single page were identical.  There’s lots of good content on this site but none of it was really optimized to be found in the search engines, which to me is the holy grail of internet marketing.  It’s not only free organic targeted traffic, but it also converts into leads, clients, sales and revenue the best.

One of the most important things you can do is optimize your URL’s and Titles.  Always use permalinks so every blog post will appear in the URL itself: http://lawfirmblogging.com/index.php/2006/10/19/are-law-firm-blogs-advertising/  < -- "Are law firm blogs advertising" is IN the URL string

You also want the Titles of the posts to appear in the Titles of your page. This is paramount. With a few lines of code you can rearrange your titles to be powerful and search engine optimized:

< ###title>< ?php wp_title(' '); ?>< ?php if(wp_title(' ', false)) { echo ' &middot###; '; } ?>Law Firm Blog dot com< ###/title>

Now, instead of every page having the same title:

“lawfirmingblogging.com Helping law firms market on the web”.  

They now show: 

“Blog Post Title” :: Law Firm Blogging :: Legal Blog marketing

That single little tweak will probably TRIPLE the traffic to this site.  You will also notice that I used “Law Firm Blogging” instead of “lawfirmblogging.com”. Unless you’re a huge brand that needs to show off your domain, you should always seperate your keywords to be the first attribute in the title tag.  A search engine spider DOES see the difference.  In fact within a few hours of changing that tag I saw a jump in the serps (search engine ranking pages).  As a test, by also rearranging the existing secondary title keyword “helping law firms market on the web” to “Legal Blawg Marketing” I was able to get the top 2 rankings in less than 24 hours!

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=legal+blawg+marketing&btnG=Search

Today I changed it to a more competitive phrase “legal Blog Marketing”, as soon as the search engines index the new title tag changes, it should start ranking for those keywords. Fortunately this site has a decent keyword rich domain, it has “Law”, Firm” and “blogging” in it which makes things much easier.  Now, if you’re a drunk driving attorney in Miami but your domain is JWSwisserPLLC.com you won’t get any bonus points for your domain.  This makes it all the more important to have your title tags in order, in this case they should be “Miami DUI attorney JW Swisser”, there is absolutely no reason to have the domain name in the titles.  On all blog post articles, titles should read something like this: “New Dade County DUI laws draining bank accounts :: Miami DUI attorney JW Swisser”.

By tweaking the URL’s and Titles to show the prominent keywords of each page to the search engines, the traffic and visibility increases you can acheive are amazing.  You’ve spent all the time writing informative content, why not give yourself every opportunity to let people find it?

Hello readers!

I’d like to introduce myself as the new webmaster of Lawfirmblogging.com.  I’d like to thank Nathan for the opportunity to take over a great site.

My name is Stephen Palmer and I’ve been building and marketing websites since 1998.  It’s hard to believe it was almost ten years ago when I realized that working exclusively on the internet and ACTUALLY making a living from it was what I wanted to do.

It will be my goal here to provide my personal insight and methodologies on internet marketing and development that I’ve spent the last 10 years learning.

Things to come:

A new site theme- I’ve already started a new design template which I think everyone will enjoy.
Additional Services- Time permitting I will be available to select clients for design, development, SEO and law firm marketing consulting.
Law Firm Directory- The addition of a search engine optimized law firm directory will not only help this site grow, but all of our readers, clients and partner’s websites grow.

You may have noticed some tweaks I’ve made to the site already, In my next post I’ll explain what I did and why it’s so crucial to your success.

-Steve-

A list of 15 rules for clients. This is brilliant.

The last month has been tough. I’ve been facing what I could refer to as “The Blogger’s Paradox”- I’ve been getting so much work that I simply haven’t had time to write anything meaningful. I’m not saying that this blog has generated so much business that I cannot find a few minutes to post anything. That’s not the case exactly. But I have had enough work to keep me from really dedicating the time I feel necessary to come up with quality posts.

Which brings me to the question: With blogs, should frequency of posting trump the quality of posts?

In some senses, I think so. First, frequency of blogging is often tied into attracting a following. I know that personally, as I tend to visit blogs that are updated daily (or at least a few times a week) over blogs that are infrequently updated yet have quality posts.

However, in the end, it is the quality of posts that make the blog. If the information I’m reading isn’t interesting and informative, it could be updated every hour- I’m not coming back.

So, I think there’s a balance. Keeping a blog that is updated regularly even when the author does not have a completely original, informative post. But at the same time, I truly believe bloggers should stay away from “forcing it.”

To me, “forcing it” happens when you do not have a topic to write about, yet you try to produce a post anyway. When that happens to me, I usually just link to something else I’ve found interesting. If I’m really uninspired, I’ll go into photoshop and make a picture of something ridiculous and post it without any explanation. Like this:

Hugh McLeod of GapingVoid has a manifesto by Chris Houchens called “Marketing by committee.“

From it:

If one person can produce ineffective crappy marketing, imagine what a committee can do.

On LexBlog, Kevin O’Keefe points to a study by my alma mater, Northeastern University, on “What Makes a Successful Corporate Blog?“

The study identified five factors as important to the success of a blog:

1. Culture- If you’ve got culture traits that are interesting to people (think Google) or if you’ve got culture problems (think Dell or Microsoft), showing what your company’s culture is really like is a great reason to blog. With the Google scenario, you’re giving customers a glimpse into a fascinating company, and giving behind-the-scenes info on a universally loved brand. On the other hand, when you’re dealing with consumer distrust or bad PR, blogging (if done correctly) can help repair a tainted reputation.
2. Transparency- Blog readers want to read authors they can trust. They don’t want to read blog posts by a company that is trying to take a thinly veiled approach at hawking their products. It really is a balancing act. Sure, your company’s blog can help sell products/services. But at the same time, you don’t want to seem like like you’ve got too much of an agenda.
3. Time- It takes time and research to write a worthwhile blog.
4. Dialogue- You’ve got to talk with your audience. You’ve read the cliche “Blogs are a conversation.” Well, they are. And successful blogs are conversations between the audience and the writer(s).
5. Entertaining writing- When the blogger brings a unique style to the blog, it makes the blog so much more interesting.

How does this relate to law firm blogging?

Culture- I don’t see how law firms would offer a glimpse inside their inner workings on a blog. Unlike Google or Microsoft, law firms aren’t trying to persuade the masses  to use their products. A law firm’s target is much more narrow in scope, and would not likely benefit from showing how business is conducted (not to mention issues of confidentiality).

Transparency- Law firm bloggers have seemed to do a great job with transparency. Rather than having huge, blinking ads saying “BE A CLIENT!!!!!! WE’RE THE LAW FIRM FOR YOU!!!!!!!”, attorney blogs are best when they establish the author as an expert on an issue. And since that expertise is essentially the service clients are purchasing, there is more benefit in the content and the writing than advertising the firm. Am I saying attorney bloggers should get rid of any mention of their firms, or get rid of links and contact information for their firms? Absolutely NOT. That’s the point. But the idea is to gain trust, then gain the clients.

Time- This is a big issue with law firm bloggers. When the time you spend writing can be so easily calculated into opportunity cost figures, the question of “is it worth it?” will always come up.

Dialogue- For the most part, law firm blogs are good at encouraging conversation. When the attorney is an expert on an issue, they’re likely to embrace discussion.

Entertaining Writing- Without style, reading a law firm blog, regardless of the expertise of the author, can be, well, boring. But when you have a writer that can make a sterile subject seem interesting, you’ve got something.