The Practice

New Marketing Email List

I have a new product for you, but its free. Who can complain about free?

For the last several years, I was running a marketing list with limited membership. That list will stay that way. But, due to popular demand, I am opening up a second list to anyone who wants to join. And what will it cost? Nothing. That's right - here is an opportunity to share marketing ideas with other attorneys and learn what has worked, what hasn't worked and what may work. And all it takes is signing up.

Click to join sololawyermarketing

Come join my list.  And tell your friends to join as well.

An Open Letter to TheLaw.net

I get that companies need to market and advertise. However, I don't get spam. I especially do not get spam when I just asked to be taken off of their list on Monday and sent a letter to their president. So, now, here is my letter to him. Maybe some public humiliation and shame will get them to stop spamming people. (Nope, it is not just me. Others have contacted me about them as well.)

Dear Mr. Whitney:

Recently, an attorney contacted me for support on how to get rid of spammers who do not follow their own policies. I felt like it was a beautiful day, the sun beat down.

In less than one minute, I could answer the question "Who are you?" Yes, I knew it was TheLaw.net. Of course, I did not know that TheLaw had its own website. I was curious if the dictionary, the antonym, and the synonym also had their own websites. Surprisingly, they do. Suddenly, the Al Gore created place for information has been overrun by various parts of language.

Using the Veg-O-Matic and Mr. Microphone, I attempted to build a local list of people who hated parts of the English language owning domains as much as me. It turns out that when sorted by Billy Mays and James Dyson, the biggest turn off was people who took these domain names and then tried to make themselves sound important.

Of course, unlike some people, you do not claim to be a "head guru," however, it is my understanding that you may be overrun by the delightful kids from down the lane. In that case, a call to Numbuh One should be sufficient to resolve your problems. In fact, I am guessing that the trouble is not with tribbles, but that the tribbles caused the trouble. At least if that were the case, you could say you were not violating CAN-SPAM, but you may still have a problem with a tasty snack that you may eat too much of and then throw up.

Hence, my suggestion would be to develop a new SMARTMarketing strategy. I would highly recommend you look into it.

Jonathan

PS Look for the pop culture references!

Spam and the practice of law

Interesting - we all know that spam can get the spammer in trouble. But, it seems like the spam gets worse - not better. And the worst spam - spam to lawyers about legal services.

Let me see if I get this right. You want me to use your service, yet you can't seem to follow a little thing like a federal law? Hmmm......that sounds like something I want.

Recently, I was contacted by two services. One was a marketing company and one a legal research company. I have been asking these folks (who shall remain nameless, but if they spam me again, its on) to remove me from their lists for at least 6 months. And what do they do? They keep spamming me. So, last week I hit my breaking point - I responded to the president of the marketing company, or as he likes to call himself the "head guy who can't figure out the law," er, "head guru." Sorry, you can see how I could get those confused. I write him a lengthy, well thought out reply that was, in my humble opinion, quite funny. No response. I then sent one to the president of the legal research company - still no response.

Why does this bother me, especially with these two companies? If you are a marketing company and you are spamming me to use your service, what does it say about your service? It clearly says you do not understand how to properly email someone and that means to me if I hire you, I face a potential liability. Thanks, but no thanks. It also says that your program is not very good. Notice that Ben Glass at Great Legal Marketing or Mark Merenda at SmartMarketing don't spam attorneys. They don't need to - their program works!

If you are a legal research company, it makes me question your ability to research. Seriously - did you miss the CAN SPAM act when you were trying to figure out how to market? If you did, your research skills may leave out other important documents, say the US Constitution. If you did find it, why are you spamming me? Do you think it does not apply to you? Lisa Solomon at Question Of Law never spams me and she can find the CAN SPAM act. I know - I asked her!

I think there may be a more basic problem. They know that most of us, especially sole practitioners, are too busy to sue them over this nonsense. So, they figure they can get away with it. Sad, but probably true. Of course, do they really get business from spamming us? I hope not. Please, when you get spammed by a service provider, do not give them your business. Maybe that will start to clean up this mess!

Solosez

I have written in the past about Solosez and how it can be a great resource. I took some time away from Solosez, but am back on it now. What benefits do you get from solosez? Here are my top 5:

1. Friends. I have met a lot of good friends on solosez. Its always a good thing!
2. Learning new practice areas. There are a lot of posts, but you can always pick up something in a new practice area. Or, if you have started a new practice area, there is someone who will have tips to help you.
3. A virtual water cooler. Okay, so this may not always be a positive, but you do get a chance to talk about current events, jokes, etc... just like if you had colleagues in an office. Of course, if you read too many of these, you may not get your work done.
4. Service provider locator. You can find an expert or a process server anywhere in the country (and probably the world) with a short post to solosez.
5. Technology abounds. The folks on Solosez have more ideas about technology and how to use it than any other group I have been around. You may need to even get out a book on technology to understand some of what they talk about!

Solosez is not perfect. But, if you are a sole practitioner, it is a good way for you to get up to speed, make some contacts and provide a service to your clients by expanding your capabilities.

New Medmal Service

Dr. David Frankel from Iowa State and the Cambridge Economics Group has unleashed a new tool for plaintiff's attorneys handling medical malpractice claims. The program, MedMal Express, is an interactive website that allows you to figure out what a case is worth.

From Dr. Frankel:  The program lets the user see expected settlements in up to 20  medical malpractice cases (or case scenarios) in real time. Our predictions are tailored to the trial's location and to other specific case features. One advantage of the service is that a user can easily try out  different scenarios (e.g., to drop a defendant; to stress one accusation over another) to see what would happen if a Plaintiff's condition were to change.

I tried the program and like it. I received a report that provided me with information to help me evaluate a case. It looks nice and has useful information.

Dr. Frankel is offering a free two week trial. Just go to his website and you can sign up. After that, it is only $95 per month.

The Video Venue

WOW! Lisa Solomon is at it again. I am waiting for her to write a book on how to practice law AND run a side business or three. Here is Lisa's latest: The Video Venue!

The Video Venue, a new niche video website featuring humorous law-related videos, is hosting a contest to name the funniest legal video on the web. The Billable Hour Company, which sells humorous gifts and greeting cards for lawyers and legal professionals, operates The Video Venue and is sponsoring the contest.

The Video Venue, at www.video.thebillablehour.com, aggregates funny law-related videos from various web video sites (including YouTube, Revver and Google Video, among others). Videos are grouped into playlists organized by topic (such as law school, jury duty, court reporters and paralegals), practice area (such as contracts, torts and criminal law) and type of video (such as music, movie clips and commercials). Site visitors can also create their own playlists to personalize their viewing experience.

"So many of the law-related videos on sites like YouTube just bash lawyers," observes Billable Hour Company partner Mark Solomon. "But The Billable Hour Company’s success has proved that lawyers and legal professionals appreciate content—like the articles and poems featured in The Timesheet (our monthly e-newsletter)—and products—like our greeting cards and our CDs by groups with names like the Bar & Grill Singers and Bob Noone & the Well Hung Jury—that find humor in the law without attacking lawyers. That’s what TVV is all about." Solomon and his partner, Lisa Solomon, are both practicing lawyers as well as entrepreneurs.

Visitors can contribute to the site by suggesting videos that are already posted on the web, uploading videos, or even recording webcam videos. The Solomons review all submitted videos for content and quality before the videos are posted to TVV.

The widget can even be configured to display videos from a specified playlist. Tech-savvy lawyers can follow the site in their feed readers by subscribing to its main feed (for all recently added videos), or to feeds for individual playlists.

To encourage visitors to The Video Venue to actively participate in making TVV the best site for law-related videos on the web, the site is running a contest to name the funniest legal video on the web. The winner will receive a $50 Billable Hour Company gift certificate.

Site visitors can enter the TVV Funniest Legal Video on the Web contest by posting a video, or reviewing, commenting or tagging any video already on the site. One participating TVV community member will be chosen at random to win a $50 Billable Hour Company gift certificate. The highest rated video will be featured in the Timesheet as February's Video of the Month.

The contest runs through January 31. The winner will be announced in the February issue of The Timesheet.

Great new blog

I like outside the box thinking. Outside the box marketing works. Outside the box soccer. Outside the box anything.

Well, here is an outside the box blog from an attorney. New York attorney Richard Jaffe has a new blog. It is a very good read. I highly recommend you take a look.

How friendly is your website?

Lisa Solomon, famous for Question of Law and The Billable Hour, sent me this website that will help you figure out how friendly your website is.

The Customer Focus Calculator tells you how consumer oriented your website is. From their website:

As proud as you may be of your company and your product or service, most customers only care about how well you can help them meet their wants and needs. If you want more of them to buy, your focus has to be on your customer. How do you communicate that to them? With the words you use on your site. Are you talking mostly about them and their needs or are you talking mostly about yourself?

To help you answer that question, we've developed a unique and free analysis tool that counts certain words on your site that are key indicators of whether your focus is on the customer or not. As you use it, keep in mind this is nothing more than a handy, but rough guide that will help you focus on something important. There are lots of variables and also remember there are no shortcuts to writing great copy.

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From me, again: I checked this out. Interestingly, my website is more focused on the customer than my blogs. And some pages turned out better than others. No surprise that my "About You" page was the most customer focused.

Give it a shot. It really is a useful tool.

Top 25 + 1 more! (Plus some books)

I can't believe I left AccessLaw off my list. Thankfully, Julie Goren of Litigation By the Numbers reminded me.

By the way, if I were putting together a list of books you need, I would tell you that you need:

1. Litigation By the Numbers;
2. Rules of the Road;
3. Ball On Damages;
4. Ben Glass' Great Legal Marketing (not really a book, but reading materials).

Enjoy!

Top 25 + 1

Okay, in my research I missed one product. Now, I could debate why I missed it: not enough marketing, not marketing to the right groups, it slipped through the cracks or I wasn't looking for it. But, alas, I missed it.

The Daily Case Report is a website you want to see. These guys, two attorneys in San Jose, CA give updates on California slip opinions - via video! And you can get MCLE credit for it. How cool is that? From them:

Daily RSS feed announces all new Slip Opinions.  Subscribers also get Slip opinion alerts by email that they can personalize to notify them only of new cases in the areas of law that they practice.  And, best of all, when you watch 15 minute video programs discussing the new cases, you earn MCLE credit. If you find something interesting only once every 2 and a half weeks, you can easily earn all the MCLE you need, just by keeping current on the cases that matter to your practice.

Hey, its free and it looks pretty cool. Give this a spin and let me know your thoughts. I like it!