Monday

Part 5. How Your Web Site Can Make You Look like a Buffoon


This is the last in our 5 part series.

Last time we talked about the danger of broken links.

The first installment (Make it Hard to Contact You) can be read by clicking here.




Now, here’s the fifth and final installment . . . Rule #5. "Stoopid Speling Erors"

Okay, so now your prospects can contact you easily. Your most important content is on the top of your pages. Your site map is all straightened out. And your links work again.

But did you check the spellilng (pun intended) on all your web site pages? Remarkably, most lawyers don't.

Misspelled words in your content might sound like nitpicking, but it aggravates people who spot them and more people spot them than you think. Worse yet, they are spotted most often by persons with higher education (read, more discretionary cash on hand to hire a lawyer with).

All those nice pages of really good content and it wasn’t proofread carefully enough to avoid the spelling errors? And you didn’t know that the word “there” could end up as “their” in that voice recognition software you dictate with either, did you?

Worse yet, misspelling names of people or places can be highly offensive to some folks. And don’t try to proofread it yourself. After all, you’re the one who made the mistake in the first place.

Lots of studies have shown that writers often miss the same error they made when they were writing the article in the first place. So have a "second set of eyes" do your proofreading. You can use computer programs to spell-check, but there's nothing like a professional reader to catch syntax, grammar and spelling issues for you.

These 5 common problems we've been discussing are not all of the errors that a lot of web sites have, but they are the high points. And if you just fix these, it’ll put you ahead of 90% of the rest of your competition. And that is the whole point.


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Tuesday

Part 4. How Your Web Site Can Make You Look Like a Buffoon

This is the fourth in our 5 part series. last time we talked about how some web sites make it hard to contact you. The first installment (Make it Hard to Contact You) can be read by clicking here. The second installment (Stay Above the Fold) can be read by clicking here. The third installment (Forget About Your Site Map) can be read by clicking here. Now, here's the fourth installment, Broken Links Stink.

Rule #4. Let’s put up links that don’t link.

Sure, everyone just loves to see those “page not found” messages, so let’s have a web site with links that don’t work or pages that aren’t listed in the Site Map at all so the Google spider can’t find them either.

If a prospective client takes the time to find your site and then can’t find what they want in only one or two clicks, they think you could be a buffoon. Check your outbound links to make sure they all work. And then six months later check them again to make sure other people’s web sites are still out there to even be linked to.

And make sure your links are to web sites that are relevant to your site visitors. Links to irrelevant sites can actually hurt you because it can resemble a link farm. And search spiders hate link farms.

A link farm is a web page whose sole purpose is to post outbound links to as many other web sites as they can get someone to pay for. Search engine algorithms don’t like them because they have been programmed to know that it’s just an effort to make them think that the target site pages have more meaningful “real” links to them (from non-farmers) than really exist. In other words, they know a con when they see it.

There are software programs all over the net that check links on your page for free. An easy one to use, which checks the first 60 links on a web page for free is Webmaster's Link Checker. It's quick and easy to use.

So check your links regularley. And that reminds me of another common problem. We'll cover that one next time.

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Sunday

Part 3: How Your Web Site Can Make You Look Like a Buffoon Without Really Trying

This is the third in our 5 part series. last time we talked about how some web sites make it hard to contact you. The first installment (Make it Hard to Contact You) can be read by clicking here. The second installment (Stay Above the Fold) can be read by clicking here. Now, for Rule #3, Forget About Your Site Map.

Rule # 3. Make a web site, but don’t make a Site Map.

You go through all this trouble to create great content, launch the site and then realize that Kevin Costner lied. If you build it, they won’t come.

Well, not all on their own anyway. Visitors need help. That's what search engines are for. What no one may have told you is that search engines need help too, and that's what they use spiders for.

Search engine spiders are what the search engines send out, little programs that crawl through a website and report back to the search engine what they find. You can make their job easier.

Simply put, the search engine has to be able to find you if you want people to find you on search results like yahoo and google and bing, etc.

And one of the fastest and easiest ways for that to happen is to put a Site Map page on your site. Search engine spiders love it. So if you don’t have a site map page on your site, the search engine spiders will stop crawling your site and just give up and go on to your competitor’s web site.

The Site Map page is just a page that lists the names of every one of your web site pages with a link to each one of them too. It is kind of like a map to a city, the city being your web site pages. The site map makes it easy for search engine spiders to find and "index" every one of your pages, meaning to tell the search engine what the content is that is on each web site page.

And when the search engine knows what is all over your web site, that increases the odds that your content will be fully considered when someone runs a search to find you and your content. That means you rank higher in search results and all of your pages get put into that great Mr. Googler in the sky who answers all the search inquiries (or Ms. Yahoo, or whatever they want to call it).

Why make it hard for search engines to read your content when you can make it easy?

If your web site doesn’t have a Site Map, you look like an unorganized buffoon and that’s worse than looking like an ordinary buffoon (not that there’s much difference anyway).

And the links on the Site Map remind me of another common problem, but we’ll talk about that next time in part 4.

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Part 2, How Your Web site Can Make You Look Like a Buffoon Lawyer Without Really Trying

This is the second in our 5 part series. last time we talked about how some web sites make it hard to contact you (to read the first installment on Rule #1, click here).

Since then, coincidentally, I was in Novi, Michigan on a trip and needed to contact a lawyer who had just entered a case so I searched and found their web site and started looking for a phone number. Not on the front page, which is where I thought it would be. Not on this page. Not on that page. So I looked for the "contact us" link, clicked, and there it was finally.

Now it may seem obvious that the phone number would be on the contact us page, but to the average consumer looking for an attorney's help, if your phone number isn't right out in the open on every page, if it takes several clicks to find your phone number, then you are just putting roadblocks between you and that prospective client. Why do you want to do that? Consumers don't want to waste time looking for something they can't easily find.

I noticed something else about that website too. It violated rule #2, Stay Above the Fold. The front page just went on and on and on, scrolling down for what seemed like forever.

When you look at a newspaper you can see that the headline is at the top and grabs your attention. When you unfold the paper you see the rest of the front page. The top half is called "above the fold" and the bottom half of the page is what's called "below the fold" in the newspaper business.

Well, your website page has a "fold" too. Above the fold is whatever shows up on the screen when your web page loads. The stuff you have to scroll down to read? That's all "below the fold" and that's where your problem is.

Your important contact info, name, phone number, maybe your location or logo - the important info about you should NOT be below the fold for one simple reason.

You've got "15 and 2" to sell yourself to that surfing potential client. In other words, after landing on your web site, that prospective client will likely spend no more than 15 seconds and 2 mouse clicks, max, to decide if you are what they are looking for. They may not bother to scroll all the way to the bottom of the web page to find your phone number - if it's there at all. And they certainly won't click around in search of it either - or anything else they are looking for.

If you put any important info (like your phone number) below the fold, and your web site visitor doesn't take the time to scroll down to find it, they won't call you at all.

Now, we aren't saying don't go below the fold with more info at all. Indeed, there's a lot of value in having content that is complete, whether it goes below the fold or not. Just be careful what you put where on your web pages.

Below the fold is where lawyers and law firms often put their normal "business" type links, such as About Us, Site Map (you do have one, don't you?), Terms of Use, etc. And that reminds me of Rule #3, but we'll get to that next time.

For now, make sure your most important info on your web site pages is above the fold where your visitors can find it and read it quickly and easily.

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Monday

Small Law Firm Break-Even Analyzer

With a tip of the hat to Texas attorney Jim McMillen, a Consumer Law attorney in Houston, we just learned about the Small Business Break-Even Analyzer program. It's free and it takes info about your small business and generates a month by month table for the next five years that can predict when a business can reach a break-even point.

While not intended for lawyers starting out on their own, the program can be used for it and can help young lawyers put on their entrepreneurial hat and plan their business future much better than the old pen and paper approach.

It's just one of several online services you can get free from Small-Business-Ideas.net. You can comjpare different scenarios, see what happens when you increase (or decreas) your income or expenses, and it reminds you of the categories of expenses that you have to account for.

We highly recommend every young lawyer try it out before you strike out solo on your own.

Ron Burdge
Helping lawyers run their business, since 1978.
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Saturday

How Your Web Site Can Make You Look like a Buffoon Lawyer Without Really Trying


I was looking for a specific attorney in another state the other day to call them with a referral to send and noticed a problem on their web site that irritated me. The site was okay, but I had to click 6 times to find their phone number. That reminded me... there are some simple tips that can help your web site make it easier for clients to find and contact you. Here's the first of five.

Even a top notch lawyer can put off prospective clients with a web site that creates friction. That’s anything that slows down moving the shopping prospect to a retained client status. Here’s some common problems.

1. Make it hard to contact you. For some reason, lawyers get so enthralled with putting together a great web site with lots of content and slick graphics that they forget the purpose of the site. Some tend to think that their web site only needs to have one place where your e-mail or phone number might appear so that the prospective client can contact you. And then they hide it.

That's not only wrong, it's silly too.

If you went thru the trouble of building a great site so it would get noticed by the search engines, and the client went through the trouble of searching for your web site and then found it, you should make it easy as possible for them to become your client.

Think of it this way: Click, Call, Mail, Stop by. That’s how easy it should be for people to contact you.

At the very least, your phone number and e-mail link should be on every web page. And not at the bottom of the page, either.

We'll continue this series with four more tips so subscribe to our coaching blog or stop back soon to read the rest of our tips on how your web site can look its best and do its best to attract new clients for you. These won't be all the common problems a lot of web sites have, but they are the high points.

And if you just fix these 5 problems we will point out, then it’ll put you ahead of 90% of the rest of your competition.

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Thursday

Spyware Disguised as Fake Security Warnings


There's nothing worse than to lose all your hard drive contents to a virus infection you didn't even suspect was coming at you. Attorneys don't have time to wrestle with computers.

Here's some tips to recognize some of the viruses, spyware and other nefarious computer programs that try to get installed on your computer by fooling you into thinking they are security warnings, often requiring some kind of "update" to a program that sounds legitimate.

"Windows has detected a virus" Nope. Microsoft Windows doesn't do that. It can display a warning if your virus software is out of date or not turned on, but it does not scan your computer on its own.

"The Surprise Program" If an anti virus program appears on your desktop and you didn't install it, get worried. Then get rid of it. A security warning that comes from a program you didn't install is a ruse intended to fool you.

"Sounds Right" Sometimes an impressive sounding program name is a tip that the program is not legitimate. Like "Antivirus 2010" or "Spyware Detector" etc. If you don't know what it is, don't trust it.

"Download this Norton Virus Update Now" Real anti virus programs don't prompt you to download anything. They get rid of a virus without having to go get an update to do it. They won't prompt you to get an update in order to remove a specific virus threat.

"The Living Color Message Box" Legit programs don't waste time using flashy, colorful boxes to tell you something. If the message box is fancy, then it's probably fake. It should be a simple, clear and small box. If it's in living color, your computer soon won't be.

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Monday

Is there marketing help for lawyers?


There's a nice article over on Law.com's Small Firm Business page by Kimberly Rice titled "How Can law Firms Help Their Lawyers with Marketing?" with some great tips.

Kimberly discusses the basics of practical business development and notes that just throwing time at marketing is not a good use of an attorney's time or skillset. She's well qualified to talk about marketing too, judging from her marketing website.

She wisely points out that "One of the most valuable lessons firms can learn from this recession is that their overall health depends upon attorneys who are well educated and disciplined in the nuances of the business development process."

Take a minute to read the article and you'll likely find it worthwhile for your own practice too.

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Why LinkedIn Should Matter to You: Using Social Media

For the new generation of lawyers and law firms, using social media will be a key part of their marketing strategy. That is particularly true of LinkedIn since it caters to professionals.

The Legal Intelligencer has posted a short, less than 5 minute, introductory video to the use of social media that marketer Gina Rubel presented at a seminar. Nicely done, it gives you a brief overview of LinkedIn and other social media.

It's well worth the watch. You can view it here: http://www.law.com/jsp/pa/PubArticlePA.jsp?id=1202461733777&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=The%20Legal%20Intelligencer&pt=TLI%20AM%20Legal%20Alert&cn=TLI_AM_LegalAlert_20100621&kw=Why%20LinkedIn%20Matters%20for%20Law%20Firms

One click back in the url will take you to a list of other informative videos that are worth a look, each on different topics. While the site is heavy on the home town lawyer scene of Pennsylvania, it has lots of articles and posts that apply to the legal industry in general. It's "Today's Headlines" feed is one of my regular subscriptions and the entire site is worth a look-see.

Ms. Rubel is right to tout the advantages of LinkedIn and other social media. Learning to use it well is the one great advantage that young lawyers and upstart law firms have in the ever-competitive legal services industry.

Ron Burdge
Helping lawyers build their success since 1978.
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Sunday

11 Ways to Avoid Being a Workaholic

Yesterday we talked about where Father's Day came from, with a big thanks to Ernest Oriente for the feed on that.

Today reminded us that too many long work days prevent too many fathers from appreciating what they are blessed with every day, so we're going to suggest all you fathers out there take a look at these 11 Creative Ways to Avoid Becoming a Workaholic from Tammy Strobel of Rowdy Kittens.

She's got some very good pointers on why you shouldn't work constantly, even when you think you need to. It's very easy to think that the task at hand, any job task, is a crisis that needs all your attention at the moment. The reality is, we suspect, that every crisis is only a crisis because someone else says so.

It's never too late to get ahold of your life and slow down to enjoy the joys that exist around you. Today's a good day for that. Tammy Strobel's article can help you get a grip on every day so we heartily recommend it to all you workaholics out there.

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Friday

Where Father's Day Comes From


The post below is with our thanks to Ernest Oriente, a long time friend and mentor and coach, for this reminder on where the day came from, on which we honor our fathers.

The idea for an official Father's Day celebration came to a married daughter, seated in a church in Spokane, Washington, attentive to a Sunday sermon on Mother's Day in 1910-two years after the first Mother's Day observance in West Virginia.

The daughter was Mrs. Sonora Smart Dodd. During the sermon, which extolled maternal sacrifices made for children, Mrs. Dodd realized that in her own family it had been her father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran, who had sacrificed-raising herself and five sons alone, following the early death of his wife in childbirth. For Mrs. Dodd, the hardships her father had endured on their eastern Washington farm called to mind the unsung feats of fathers everywhere.

Her proposed local Father's Day celebration received strong support from the town's ministers and members of the Spokane YMCA. The date suggested for the festivities, June 5th, Mrs. Dodd's father's birthdays were three weeks away-had to be moved back to the nineteenth when ministers claimed they need extra time to prepare sermons on such a new subject as Father.

Newspapers across the country, already endorsing the need for a national Mother's Day, carried stories about the unique Spokane observance. Interest in Father's Day increased. Among the first notables to support Mrs. Dodd's idea nationally was the orator and political leader William Jennings Bryan, who also backed Mother's Day. Believing that fathers must not be slighted, he wrote to Mrs. Dodd, "too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the relation between parent and child."

Father's Day, however, was not so quickly accepted as Mother's Day.

Members of the all-male Congress felt that a move to proclaim the day official might be interpreted as a self-congratulatory pat on the back.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson and his family personally observed the day. And in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recommended that states, if they wished, should hold their own Father's Day observances. He wrote to the nation's governors that "the widespread observance of this occasion is calculated to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children, and also to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations."

Many people attempted to secure official recognition for Father's Day. One of the most notable efforts was made in 1957, by Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who wrote forcefully to Congress that "Either we honor both our parents, mother and father, or let us desist from honoring either one. But to single out just one of our two parents and omit the other is the most grievous insult imaginable."

Eventually, in 1972-sixty-two years after it was proposed-Father's Day was permanently established by President Richard Nixon.

Historians seeking an ancient precedent for an official Father's Day observance have come up with only one: The Romans, every February, honored fathers-but only those deceased.

In America today, Father's Day is the fifth-largest card-sending occasion, with about 85 million greeting cards exchanged. Don't forget to send a card and make a call. Every day matters, but especially this day.

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Thursday

Resources for Lawyer Entrepreneurs

Being your own boss can be tough. But there are resources that can help you run your law practice and here are a few, alphabetically listed.

American Marketing Association, www.marketingpower.com. Marketing seminars, advertising tips, and free online resources.

Attorney Fee Survey Data, www.consumerlaw.org/feesurvey. Find out what attorney fee hourly rates are in your area, along with other data, and you can participate in the current fee survey too.

Benefits Link, www.benefitslink.com. Info and resources about the laws and regulations governing employee benefits. Educational seminars too.

Business Plan Center, www.businessplans.org. Sample business plans for all sorts of businesses, as well as software and guidelines for your business.

Club E, www.clubenetwork.com. Podcasts, interviews, and forums. And it's free. Plus, there's info on live local meetings.

Entrepreneur, www.entrepreneur.com. Guides, tips, articles, columns from experts for every type of business.

Entrepreneur Connect, www.econnect.entrepreneur.com. An online community of business owners who post questions, discuss answers, and share business experiences.

Independent Community Bankers of America, www.icba.org. Sometimes a local community bank is easier for an entrepreneur to work with than those large, multistate banks with Wall Street boards to report to. Here, you can find a smaller, local bank near you.

Score, www.score.org. A non profit organization whose members use their decades of experience to help new entrepreneurs (and any business person) with mentoring and counseling on business issues and problems.

Small Business Administration, www.sba.gov. Yes, it's the government. But they've got tons of info, business tools, plus grants and loans, lots of business tips, and links to Small Business Development Centers nationwide. And, since it's the government, it's free too.

Strategy Stew, www.strategystew.com. Practical marketing strategies for small business. Perhaps technically a blog and not a website, it's still got great ideas and lots of fun to read.

There are other resources that you may be able to dig up, but this list covers the basic resources that any lawyer entrepreneur should check out when you are looking for free help with the business side of your law practice.

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Friday

Chicago Seminar Links May 2010

The following are links to articles discussed or used at the Chicago & Columbus Seminar Series in May 2010 on Consumer Law Issues. This list is in no particular order at all. Each link is followed by a description of the document found at the link. Also, you will need to cut and paste the link to your web browser (the links are not "active" from this list for security reasons). Should you find any link not working for you, please contact the author, Ron@TheLawCoach.com, and the article can be sent directly to you. This link list will be deleted on or after May 30, 2010.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/A%20FORM%20Corr%20Atty%20Fin%20Settlement%20Only%20032509.pdf

This is the link to the form letter advising financiers of a settlement offer being made under the FTC Holder Rule.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/FTC%20Rule%20Explained.pdf

This is the link to the citation and definitions applicable for the FTC Holder Rule.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/2%20Running%20a%20Successful%20Practice.pdf

This is the link to the article on Running a Successful Law Practice.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/8%20How%20to%20Strengthen%20Your%20Claim%20for%20Atty%20Fees%20041610.pdf

This is the link to the article on How to Strengthen Your Claim for Attorney Fees in a fee shifting case.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/Practicing%20Six%20Sigma%20Consumer%20Law%20to%20Achieve%20Better%20Fee%20Awards.pdf

This is a link to the article on efficiencies in law practice.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/1%20FORM%20I%20dont%20believe%20that%20you%20and%20I%20have%20dealt%20with%20each%20other%20before%20Clause%20072107.pdf

This is a link to the clauses of the first settlement letter to a new defense attorney that has no experience with you firm and who you want to warn that the settlement offers in your fee shifting practice is not handled like a personal injury practice.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/1%20FORM%20Ron%27s%20Timeslip%20Revised%20011110.pdf

This link is to a standard all-inclusive time slip form for law office use.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/A%20FORM%20Startup%20Time%20Sheet.pdf

This link is for the time lip form used at case start up in a law office, to record on one form all start up activities.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/PROCESS%20How%20to%20Write%20a%20Letter%20to%20a%20Client%20041408.pdf

This link is to an article on How to Write a Letter to a Client, intended for new lawyers but useful tips for more established lawyers too.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/The%20Spartan%20and%20the%20Trial%20Lawyer.pdf

This link is to an article on the value to a trial attorney of never giving up, even in the face of a strong defense.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6160661/US%20Consumer%20Law%20Attorney%20Fee%20Survey%202008-9%202nd%20Ed%203.pdf

Link to the latest version of the national US Consumer Law Attorney Fee Survey report, including more detail and data than is found in the regional reports that are separately published on the NCLC website.

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Dropbox is Cool Tool for Syncing Docs on Multiple Computers

If you have a file on your desktop that you want to be able to work on from your laptop, or you want to be able to review from your smartphone, what do you do? Print it off and take it with you? That is just so 1990's. Well, there's an app for that, of course. It's called Dropbox and it works simply and beautifully.

The last few weeks we've been working on some presentation materials for some seminars coming up. Sometimes working at home, sometimes at the office, and sometimes while waiting for a court session to start. And every time, we were working on the same document and didn't need to update the copies that were stored on different devices or computers. That's what Dropbox does.

Dropbox is an internet service that has only one job. It will synchronize the contents of a single folder on multiple computers so that the contents of that folder are always the same. If you save a file in the Dropbox at work, it will show up on every other computer where you have installed Dropbox.

And if you left your laptop at home, you can use any laptop to access your Dropbox over the internet. Of course, there's an iphone app for it too.

The service is free and has a moderate cost above 2GB. But 2GB will hold a lot of documents, powerpoints, spreadsheets, etc. Folks, if you move around a lot and need to have portable docs with you that are up to date, this is one perfect way to do it.

Ron Burdge
Helping Lawyers Helping Their Clients, Since 1978
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List of Social Networking Sites for Lawyers


While the jury is still out, so to speak, on the actual value of social networking for lawyers on professional sites, it is still something to consider and may have considerable value for networking and referrals. To help you understand the possibilities and investigate the issue on your own, here are some of the more popular social networking sites for attorneys.

If you launch into the social networking arena, remember the golden rule: keep work social networking focused on work and stay away from the personal stuff. Also, it's a good idea to check out some of the pages already posted on these sites by other law firms before setting up your own.

http://www.facebook.com/ is widely used by everyone who isn't a lawyer and some lawyers too. The formal is personal but can easily be turned into a professional page and has with it lots of options for privacy.

http://www.lawlink.com/ is common for information sharing and networking among attorneys. You can apply or be invited to join so there is some "vetting" of the authenticity of the participants. You can find legal news, some groups, ads, and forums. Document sharing is big here.

http://www.legalonramp.com/ touts itself as focused on collaboration, but then that's what underlies all social networking sites anyway. The difference here, though, is that LegalOnRamp requires it. For instance, just to get in the door you have to specifiy what knowledge you would like to share with others in the LegalOnRamp community. Some news and blog posts are visible to nonmembers so you do have the chance to build your reputation, but that is more of a side benefit to this site because its real focus is on developing relationships between attorneys.

http://www.linkedin.com/ is the most common social network site for legal professionals. Huge amounts of lawyers on members. It's easy to create a profile and to connect with others. Odds are that at least half of the lawyers in every big city are members here and you probably will recognize names right away. If you join anything, at least join this one.

www.Martindale.com/join.aspx is the "Martindale-Hubbell Connected" networking site and its purpose is obviously both for networking with other atttorneys and creating visibility for potential clients. The company has been around for what seems like forever, so their credability is well established. They offer an easy format with lots of optional additional "add-on's" like blogs, forums, groups, directories, Q&A, and more.

http://www.twitter.com/ does have lots of business and law firm members but their mainstream is the lay public. Still there are law firms, law libraries, government officials, and lots of business leaders on the service. It requires more of a committment to "tweet" your short messages on various topics and using it for promotional purposes of specific legal services, one at a time perhaps, may be its best use for the legal profession.

More and more attorneys are using social networking as a tool for marketing themselves and their practice so maybe it's time for you to get started or to expand too. Before starting, think about what you want to do carefully. Create a cohesive networking presence that you "tweak" to fit each networking site's best capabilities and its target audience. And check your law firm's Social Networking Policy as well as your state's ethics rules for guidance.

Ron Burdge
Helping attorneys help their clients, since 1978.
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Wednesday

Social Media Policies Made Easy


If your firm has a policies and procedures manual, good. That puts you ahead of a lot of other law firms. But, does it also cover employee use of internet social media?

Less than a third of US employers have one, so odds are your firm is overlooking it too. But your firm needs it to protect itself and to protect your people. Mashable has a good explanation of why you may need a law firm social media policy, click here.

With all the social network sites out there, it's almost impossible to prevent an employee's workplace from being linked up with the employee's identity, even if the employee tries hard to never let it happen. There are steps the firm can take to minimize the problem.

There's a free resource you can tap to quickly and easily create a social media policy for your firm, one that fits exactly what you want. It's quick. It's easy. And best of all, right now it's free.

Do you want your employees to refer back to the firm when they are tweeting, etc? Well, they might be and you might never know it. And do you want to require them to keep it social and not discuss work activities or personnel? There's a policy for that.

Business lawyer David Canton and his friends at rTraction have created an internet web site where you can answer a few quick questions and, presto, you've got a Social Media Policy for your firm. You can even email it to yourself for quick and easy firm distribution or to cut and paste it into your manual at work.

PolicyTool.net generates custom corporate social media policies based on your answers to questions online. In just a few minutes, you're done. We strongly recommend you give it a try.

Helping attorneys practice law profitably, since 1978.
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Monday

"Terms of Use" Page Can Protect Your Web Site Content

We continue to be surprised by the number of lawyers who don't take the simplest of steps to protect the content of their web sites from being plagiarized and outright stolen. And it is so easy to protect yourself.


If you spend dozens (or hundreds) of hours and thousands of dollars creating content for your web site, why not take a few minutes and protect it? Gordon & Doner learned the value of a little self-protection when they found an impersonator had copies their entire website and claimed it as their own, which can lead to your clients going elsewhere for legal help without them or you even knowing it.

Just adding a small "copyright by [insert your name here]" won't do you much good. You need a "Terms of Use" page on your website, with clear links to it from every page on your site.

Consider this page a sort of contract between you and your website visitor which states what the visitor can and can not do if they are going to use your website. While some writers fill them up with legalese, others take the plain and straight forward approach. Do what works for you, but do it.

The terms restrict how the website visitor can use your website in every sense, but perhaps its greatest value is now rooted in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal law that lets you use your terms of use to act offensively by either prosecuting individuals for wrongdoing that comes from a violation of the terms or to seek civil penalties or remedies for legal injuries from what actually amounts to a breach of contract.

But don't use just any old boilerplate language. You can find lots of examples online (Google lists 192 million returns for "terms of use sample"), but then write your own terms of use contract to fit your particular site and the risks or uses that are relevant to it.

To be enforceable, the terms of use must be easily seen and understood. That means conspicuous and clearly written to state conduct that is and is not authorized. While you may not legally be required to put a link on all your website pages, at least one court has said that the terms of use are adequately communicated to your website visitor if the terms can be accessed from all the pages. Not sure? Then put a link everywhere.

Oh, and if you suspect someone has copied your content or used your site data or content in violation of your terms of use contract, then act on it. Like any other contract, if you are lazy about enforcement in the face of a knowing violation, it can amount to a waiver.

The Terms of Use page on your web site can protect your site content from being stolen. But it's up to you to make sure of it everyday. How? You can, of course, always run a search using a few specific phrases that come from your site content and then carefully look at the pages that show up.

If you've never done it, you'll very likely be surprised at how much of your content has already been "adapted" to someone else's web site use. If you can prove it's your's then ask them to take down the plagiarized content. If they dispute that they got it from you, your techie can probably do some forensic work on the web site host computer and tell you if they visited your site. It could well be worth it.

Ron Burdge
Helping lawyers improve their business since 1978.
To read the Burdge Law Office sites' Terms of Use page, click here.
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Sunday

7 Tips to solidify your law firm finances

We're continuing our series on how to improve your business. Today we'll talk about 7 things you should do to solidify your financial status. The good news is that if you made it through 2009 then the odds are your business will survive. Now that the recession is starting to ease up, the objective should be to make sure your business gets as healthy as possible, as fast as possible. Here's some tips.

1. Cut costs and add to efficiency. Yes, I know you did that. Now keep doing it.Look at your current suppliers and see if you are getting the best deals possible in the marketplace. Examine your routine practices again and see if the are adding to your profitability or are they just one more step someone has to accomplish without really adding a profit to your bottom line. And take another look (maybe for the first time?) at off shore opportunities for specific and routine task accomplishments that can be done cheaper and maybe more efficiently.

2. Take advantage of ready cash chances. If you have an intake staff that screens your cases or does other preliminary "prep" work on a file, consider incentivizing the workload so your people get the new cases in faster and more efficiently. Look at where your most profitable work is and market that area of your practice more aggressively. For paying cases, don't just charge interest for late payment but offer a reduction for early payment of legal services. And use slow time as an opportunity to provide current clients with more timely updates on the status of their files.

3. Reframe your budget. You do have one, right? Well go over it again to refine your cash flow and bills-to-pay projections. You've got a bad year's worth of numbers now so you should have a better idea of what to expect for both income and expenses as the marketplace picks up. And if you are looking at your numbers monthly, then start looking biweekly. Use slow times as a chance to better understand and know your numbers for rebounding and continuing profitability.

4. Watch client credit. If you don't get paid in advance, then you are advancing credit to your clients in the form of your time expended. So, watch your credit closely. give your best service to those clients who pay the bill promptly and without dispute. They matter to your next paycheck more than any others do. And be careful what new clients you take on. Just as last year was no time to take on a heavy load of long-term contingency cases, this year is not yet the time to stop worrying about paying clients either.

5. Rethink your practice areas and fee structures. If you took on a new practice area last year to help your cash flow, now is the time to look at the numbers that resulted and decide if it worked or if you need to do something else. And look at your hourly rates in your different areas of practice. One of the best ways to increase your income is to simply make a slight increase in your hourly rates. Another way is to shift some of your conventionally overhead costs into client paying costs. Rethink what you can do to advance menu selling in your practice too.

6. Keep managing your money tightly. Now that your general account is a little healthier, don't splurge. This is not the time to loosen your grip. Use "just in time" buying practices for your supplies and external services from third parties. And don't let client bills get behind. Times are still tight for everybody so some clients will still prolong payment of their legal bills. When it happens to you, stop working. Don't throw good billable time after an uncollectable client.

7. Get rid of unprofitable assets, including people if necessary. Chances are you already have looked at this aspect during the last year. Well, keep looking. If your law practice is to survive and prosper, you have to make sure your people remain productive and work cost-effectively. The economy isn't great yet and it may be months (some say years) before it gets there again. This continues to be the time to let go of unproductive or unprofitable or inefficient hard and soft assets. If an area of law isn't in your "core" practice, then consider dumping it.

Things are a little better than they were 6 months ago and, for some, maybe even a year ago. But this is no time to forget the hard lessons learned in the last year. Now is the time to begin to profit from them.

Ron Burdge
Helping lawyers understand the business of law, since 1978.
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Thursday

Have You Googled Yourself Lately?

Well, you should. And you should do it regularly. Not only do you want to know what is being said out there on the internet about you, but you want to make sure there are no "fake" web sites set up to steal your info and your clients.

That's what one law firm discovered recently.

Gordon & Doner, a Palm Beach Gardens personal injury law firm, discovered that virtually their entire web site at www.fortheinjured.com had been copied and reposted on GoDaddy.com by an unknown person, choicefully changing certain key contact data but not hardly anything else. If you didn't know better, you'd think it was them.

And that was the problem. If you were an injured client in search of the law firm, which one would you trust to be the right one? Likely, you'd give up and go somewhere else.

The fake site supposedly was for maslinassociates.com, a purported law firm in Manchester, England, and was copied wholesale right down to minor phrasing. But names were changed and dollar signs were changed to pounds and the law firm's home city was changed.

The site was up about a month before GoDaddy removed it after the Gordon law firm sued them and "John Doe", the unknown web site copycat culprit, for copyright infringement and everything else a good lawyer can think of, and for good reason. GoDaddy isn't talking. And who knows who John Doe really was. And who knows how much damage was done before it was discovered.

Don't let this happen to you. So how do you protect yourself?

First, search your name and web site phrases periodically to see if your content or your entire site is being used without permission. It also keeps you aware of what others are saying about you. Actually, you can set up a Google Alert that will email you whenever your requested search terms are used and that makes it even easier. How to use Google Alert is explained here: http://www.google.com/alerts

Next. post a copyright notice on every page of your web site. Let there be no misunderstanding about the matter.

Finally, you should also post a "Terms of Use" page that is linked to every page on your website, like this one here: http://www.ohiolemonlaw.com/terms_of_use.html. This is just one example but there are plenty of samples to work with on the internet.

The point is that you want to say you own the site content and you don't allow anyone else to use it without permission and that using your site is an agreement that the site visitor won't do that. Of course, being lawyers, we'll dress up the language into lots more, but that's the basics.
And while you are at it, why not post a disclaimer too. One that says there is no attorney-client relationship except on the stated terms that you will agree to, such as a retainer, etc. It's just good common sense.

Oh, and those Florida lawyers at Gordon & Doner, can you guess how they found out about the fake website that had copied their own site? One of the partners googled his name.

Protect yourself and your property. It's something we lawyers often tell our clients. Don't forget to say it to yourself once in awhile too.

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Sunday

Success from Failure

We're continuing our series on improving law office profitability. Today we're looking at the psychology of failure and its relationship to success. Heady sounding stuff, I know, but worthwhile thinking about.

First, a definition or two.

Failure isn't always failure. Sometimes it's just not having as much success as one thought would occur. In marketing your law practice, it's often hard to tell what approach is going to work best. And when it doesn't bear fruit quickly (after all, humans are getting to be a very iimpatient specie), we tend to view the effort as a failure and move on to the next marketing idea. Maybe that's a mistake.

It could be that the "fruit" of that marketing effort just takes more time than we'd like and what we are really looking for is a quicker result. It could also be that it wasn't a failure at all, we just didn't see the success we expected.

There's a great article on this idea of making success out of screw-ups and it just came out. It's in the January 2010 online issue of Wired magazine and, although it's pretty long and filled with lots of neuroscientific stuff. Still, it's worth the time to read all the way to the end. It's here at this link and it's called "Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up."

It examines how scientists conduct experiments and come up with what at first glance seems to be a failure, a strange result, one that doesn't make any sense at all in view of what they thought would be the result.

That sometimes happens to lawyers too. And not just in their marketing efforts. The point is, however, that the unexpected result may not be a screw up at all. Sometimes there is much more to it than that. And sometimes you have to think outside of the box to see what the result really is.

And that can mean that maybe you should have been thinking outside of the box in the first place, in order to get the result you were after. So, when your next advertising idea comes up, your next marketing thought, take it outside of the box first, before you implement it, and see what it looks like in a different light.

Wierd advertising can work. Unusual marketing ideas can sometimes bear that "fruit" faster and better than the conventional approach to just running more ads on television or radio or in the paper.

As an example of using non-traditional approaches to marketing, there's a personal injury law firm in Ohio that sponsors a county fair (I don't even know how you get to do that), whose lawyers put in time at the local food bank, and whose partners cook at the annual Thanksgiving Day dinner put on by a long-standing charity. The have their usual "lawyer ads" too, but those extra efforts put the firm's name and its lawyers' faces out there in the public constantly too. That's smart marketing.

So the next time you question whether or not the result of your marketing was what you planned for or expected, try to ignore the reactionary thought and question the result more thoughtfully, Maybe the result was not a failure at all. Maybe it was just a different kind of success.

So, maybe you should accept defeat and look at the neuroscience of screwing up as an opportunity to find the success that exists in the screw up. It's probably there someplace.

Ron Burdge
Helping lawyers find success since 1978.
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