Law Firm Marketing Consultant : Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, sales training, practice development, training, marketing consultant, legal consultant, individual lawyer coaching, business development, client team, practice development, business development, law firm coach

It's been 5 years since I took a vacation, so I'm taking one now: a sightseeing road trip from Tucson back to Chicago.

I'll be open for business again on Monday, May 19 at:

691 Wingate Road
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137
630.942.0977
Lbodine@LawMarketing.com
www.LarryBodine.com

Because this is a real vacation, I won't be checking voicemail or email. In the meantime if you need assistance -- with the LawMarketing Listserv, LawMarketing Portal, Webinars, LawMarketing Store or anything else -- please contact my colleague:

Laura Kresich
lkresich@prodigy.net
(773) 966-9273
Click here to see her bio.

If you need a quote or advice on business development, training for lawyers, individual attorney coaching, please contact my colleague:

Debbie Thompson
(708) 203-3424
DThompson@lawmarketing.com
Click here to see her bio.

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Kevin O'Keefe reports that LinkedIn, the largest and most popular professional social network, has detailed firm profiles on each of the largest law firms in the country.

Here's Kevin's of the LinkedIn law firm profiles for AmLaw's top 20 largest firms with the number of their LinkedIn members in just my LinkedIn network. Click on the firm's name to see their LinkedIn profile.

• Skadden Arps: 478 LinkedIn members in my LinkedIn network
• Latham & Watkins: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Baker & McKenzie: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Jones Day: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Sidley Austin: 330 LinkedIn membersk
• White & Case: 337 LinkedIn members
• Kirkland & Ellis: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Mayer Brown: 215 LinkedIn members
• Weil, Gotshal & Manges: 316 LinkedIn members
• Greenberg Traurig: 470 LinkedIn members
• DLA Piper: 500+ LinkedIn members
• Morgan, Lewis & Bockius: 429 LinkedIn members
• Sullivan & Cromwell: 239 LinkedIn members
• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr: 203 LinkedIn members
• O'Melveny & Meyers: 302 LinkedIn members
• McDermott Will & Emery: 307 LinkedIn members
• Shearman & Sterling: 257 LinkedIn members
• Paul Hastings: 334 LinkedIn members
• Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton: 183 LinkedIn members
• Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher: 271 LinkedIn members

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My blogger colleague Josh Fruchter in New York identifies how law firms can get more website responses to:

• Register for an event
• Download a free white paper
• Sign up for an email newsletter

The trick is to eliminate all distractions on the landing page -- especially links -- that take the visitor's eye off the desired response.  "The landing page thus represents the mechanism by which a marketer hopes to achieve a tightly focused objective such as lead generation, event registration, or subscriber growth," Josh writes.

As an example, see the landing page that eLawMarketing designed to generate leads for a free white paper. Prospects arrived at this landing page by clicking on a link in an email newsletter ad: http://image.exct.net/members/7993/technolandingsite.htm.  The words "Download Free Report" jump off the page.

I follow Josh's advice on the subscription page for Originate! The Business Development Newsletter. See http://www.pbdi.org/Originate/users.asp.  Did you notice the big red "Subscribe" buttons?

"This means, for example, landing pages should NOT include links to other pages on your website that will take visitors off your landing page and distract them from taking that critical step you were hoping for," Josh says. "A landing page is about conversion, not branding."

Read his insightful post "How to Optimize Landing Pages for Google Ads, Event Registrations, Lead Generation and Other Marketing Objectives" on the Lawyercasting.com blog.

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Check out the new collection of podcasts by Sharon D. Nelson and Jim Calloway, which includes Electronic Marketing: Harnessing the Web's Whizbang. It includes the following points about how lawyers can use the internet to market their law practice:

1. Put your marketing plan in writing.
2. On your intake form, ask if the new client visited your website.
3. The old ways of marketing, including newspaper ads and yellow pages ads, are not working as well any more. Everything is online nowadays.
4. Content is still king on websites -- not Flash, graphics and style.
5. Reserve the .com, .net and .org versions of your domain names.
6. A Flash introduction takes up a lot of bandwidth and blocks search engines from indexing your site.
7. 2/3 to 3/4 of clients use Google to find their lawyer.

The Digital Edge is produced by the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management Section, and lists useful resources (including the blog you are reading now), blog hosting resources, blog content management and podcast resources.

Jim Calloway's Oklahoma accent is wonderful to listen to.  He is the Director of the Oklahoma Bar Association Management Assistance Program. Sharon Nelson is the President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc., a computer forensics and legal technology corporation based in Fairfax, VA.  She was chair of ABA Techshow in 2006, a year after Jim.

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Editors of the ABA Journal selected the LawMarketing Blog as one of the top 100 best websites for lawyers.

Now lawyers are being asked to vote on their favorites in each of the Blawg 100’s 12 categories. To vote, go to http://www.abajournal.com/blawgs/blawg100/toolkit  Voting ends Jan. 2, 2008.

Launched in 2002, the LawMarketing Blog has 600+ entries. It has 400+ comments and attracts thousands of unique visitors per month. The blog aims to help law firms get more clients and generate more revenue.

"Our list of the 100 best lawyer blogs is the cream of the crop from our directory of more than 1,500 blawgs," said Edward A. Adams, the Journal’s editor and publisher.  If you agree, please vote for this blog.

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Lazy law firms can now avoid the bother of writing, building an audience and risks of creating their own blogs, while getting some of the benefits of reaching potential clients.  That's what the global law firm Clifford Chance did when it sponsored the Conflict of Laws .Net blog.

In a statement, the 3,800-lawyer UK-based firm said, "Clifford Chance has considerable expertise and experience advising on complex conflict of laws issues, and recognises that CONFLICT OF LAWS .NET provides an invaluable resource in this area.

"The expansion of the global economy and regulation at a European and international level have increased the importance of private international law... This site plays a significant role in keeping lawyers appraised of new developments and offers a forum for exchange of ideas between practising and academic lawyers in countries whose systems of private international law share common objectives..."

Blog editor and lawyer Martin B. George is, of course, very pleased to have one of the world's leading law firms backing his blog. Neither party has revealed how much money the sponsorship cost, but it can't be more than a year's worth of banner ads.  The blog has a Google PageRank of 5, so I'm guessing the sponsorship cost $10,000 US or less.

Blogger Steve Matthews thinks it could become a trend. But I don't think so (with no disrespect to Steve). Law firms will be leery of sponsoring a blog they have no control over. Besides, it's low-impact marketing -- it's like running an advertisement next to an article in a magazine, when you could have written the article instead.

Following are the most popular legal blogs, according to Blawgsearch.com.  Pick the blog that fits your marketing goals, call the blogger and find out how much he wants for an exclusive sponsorship:

1. Above the Law
2. New York Supreme Court Criminal Term...
3. The Indiana Law Blog (it's soliciting supporters)
4. Sex Offender Issues
5. Wall Street Journal Law Blog
6. Class Action Defense Blog (written by Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro, but I'll bet they'll listen to an offer).
7. Lethal Injection
8. How Appealing written by lawyer Howard Bashman.
9. Biztop News on advertising law.
10. New York Times DealBook

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Kevin O'Keefe observed that a few large law firms are starting to allow users to subscribe to articles via RSS feeds. This is a plus because it's not enough to have a website -- you must drive traffic to it. Kevin takes a dim view of promoting a website with an email alert/newsletter from a law firm.

"But if these large law firms, and their web site providers truly understood how to harness RSS, they'd be using blogs to disseminate their content," O'Keefe writes. Here are his reasons he identifies:

1. Content on a website is much less likely than blog content to appear high in search engine results when relevant searches are performed by in-house counsel, execs, the media, and other interested parties.
2. Website content must be promoted. Word of a blog with valuable content spreads across the Internet by virtue of news sites and other blogs citing the content.
3. Website content is generally seen only by existing clients. Blogs, akin to an online magazine on a niche subject, are read by clients of other firms, lawyers at other firms, the media, and other bloggers.
4. Over 20% of senior execs in this country read one business blog a week and the number is growing. How many execs read law firm articles?
5. Measure of influence is quickly becoming of critical importance for web content by places like Google Blog Search. Influence is determined in large part by being cited by other blogs and news sites with RSS feeds. Law firm articles will not be cited.
6. Innovative companies, large law firm's targeted clients see blogs as innovative. Law firm articles/alerts, whether including an RSS or not, are looked at as more of the same. 'All law firms do that.'

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I joined the Chicago Bar Association, which asked me to record a couple of podcasts on how to get more clients and make more money.  They are as follows.  Click the link to hear them.

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I've known blogger Bob Ambrogi for 20 years and respect his opinion. He's a is a Massachusetts lawyer, writer and media consultant. He is author of the book, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web. He also writes the blog LawSites,  Media Law, co-writes Legal Blog Watch and cohosts the legal affairs podcast Coast to Coast.

So when he comes out with his list of the 10 best legal blogs, I take note and so should you.  In his own words, they are:

• SCOTUSblog. I regularly cite this as the best demonstration of blogging's potential as a legitimate source of news and commentary.
• beSpacific. Sabrina Pacifici knows her topic, knows her audience and knows her sources, allowing her to deliver day in and day out.
• MyShingle.com. Anyone who thinks I choose Carolyn Elefant just because she's my co-blogger at Legal Blog Watch would be way wrong. Carolyn saw a need way back when for a blog that spoke to solo and small-firm lawyers, and she ran with it.
• LawBeat. Mark Obbie has staked out a blogging niche at the intersection of law and journalism, where he never writes a dull post.
• Real Lawyers Have Blogs. Kevin O'Keefe watches over trends in legal blogging with a combination of insight and attitude.
• f/k/a .... Some bloggers shoot from the hip, but never David Giacalone -- his posts are always thoughtful and, like the poet he is, he finds universal truths in daily events.
• Legal Profession Blog. The stories reported here of ethical and professional misconduct never cease to amaze me.
• Overlawyered. Rarely do I see eye-to-eye with authors Walter Olson and Ted Frank, but darned if they don't write one interesting blog.
• TalkLeft. Jeralyn Merritt keeps fighting the good fight against criminal and political injustice.
• How Appealing. Howard Bashman is the Energizer Bunny of legal blogging.
  

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Have you been seeking law-related blogs to follow, or to add to your subscription list in your news aggregator?  Look no further than Monica Bay's blog, The Common Scold, where she lists the blogs that are "Simply the Best."

Monica Bay is editor-in-chief of Law Technology News, a widely read magazine about innovations in technology for the legal profession.  It's the one magazine I read the moment I see it in the daily mail.  I'm honored that she reached down from the mountaintop and included this humble blog in her top ten list, which is:

• Robert Ambrogi's LawSites (Nobody knows Web 3.0/4.0/5.0 better than Bob).
• May It Please the Court (J. Craig Williams' always amazing site.)
• Where's Travis McGee (Bradley Parker, who is posting amazing dispatches from Afgahistan about his JAG work).
• Anything John Tredennick writes, including the ABA's Law Technology Today (OK, technically not a blog, so sue me.)
• K&L Gates' Electronic Discovery Law  (One of the first EDD blogs and terrific)
• Al Nye the Lawyer Guy (soooo New England)
• Overlawyered (Never disappoints.)
• Larry Bodine (is there anyone he doesn't know?)
• Ernie the Attorney (the soul of New Orleans)
• Sports Law Blog (Did you have any doubt about that one?)

Runners up: Patent Baristas, BLT, CalLaw's Legal Pad, Greatest American Lawyer, , Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, and of course, our own brand new blog, EDD Update.

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