2009 March

How Blogging Helps Solos Beat the Big Firms (and How Firms Make it So Easy)

March 30, 2009 By Grant Griffiths

Black Thursday – if you’re an attorney, you would have to be living under a rock if you hadn’t heard of Black Thursday, when many of the U.S.A.’s largest and most prestigious law firms went on a pink slip rampage. Nobody knows for sure how many bodies were thrown overboard, but estimates are anywhere from 800 to over 1,000 attorneys lost their positions.

What’s even more unsettling are the whispered rumors that this is just the beginning.

It’s not hyperbole to say we are living in extraordinary times.

I’m not saying any of this to scare you. Note the positive headline for this blog post. We feel that now is the time for unprecedented opportunity–for those brave enough to reach out and take it.

You know there are plenty of “solos” out there. Single attorney law practices have existed forever, but they were never able to really compete with the big firms.

Until now, that is.

To read more on how blogging helps solos beat the big firms, visit the Blawging Lawyers blog at How Blogging Helps Solos Beat the Big Firms (and How Firms Make it So Easy)

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers

Should You Use Blogger, WordPress.com, Or Host On Your Own?

March 24, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

A cautionary tale . . .

[flv:http://www.legalpracticepro.com/files/bkpp090324.flv 448 336]

Filed Under: Legal Marketing

Why Should Your Legal Blog Accept Comments?

March 24, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

Lawyers are always concerned about liability – and bankruptcy lawyers in particular, given the fact that we’re required (in most places) to provide a slew of disclosures to someone pretty much the second we even think about opening our mouths.

So the knee-jerk reaction we all have is to turn off comments on our blogs. Because we don’t want to run afoul of the authorities. Because we don’t want to get roped into giving out advice.

I did this for a long time on this blog, but for different reasons. Then I got yelled at by Amy Derby. I hate getting yelled at, so I turned on the comments.

OK, Amy didn’t really yell at me – she just set me straight. And she was right.

My friend Liz Strauss asked today about The Value of A Comment. And I’ve been thinking about it in the context of our own little world, the microcosm of bankruptcy lawyers.

The point of a blog is to involve readers, to bring them into your circle of influence and engage them. Get them talking, hear what’s on their minds, and delve ever-deeper into the issues concerning them. By doing so, you create a vibrant community of people who come back again and again.

For bankruptcy lawyers, this is pretty important whether we like to acknowledge it or not. With the proliferation of bankruptcy lawyers coming online now and in the future, you’re going to get lost in the shuffle unless you engage your readers.

And it doesn’t matter how good your content is, how much of it there is, or how smart you are – if you don’t make a connection, you won’t make an impact on your readers. And you’ll lose the client to the lawyer who’s online and doing it right.

Now you’re going to fall back on the argument that accpeting comments opens you up to liability. Not necessarily. If someone posts a comment about his or her personal situation, put up a response telling them to call you in the office to talk about it. Let them know you can’t talk about individual situations online, but that you invite them to continue chatting in generalities. Use it as a platform to let people see you’re a real person, caring and involved.

By the way – the picture is of Dan Press, me (in the middle with the scrawny legs) and Brett Weiss. We are in Savannah, GA during our October 2008 Hilton Head meeting for the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys. As you can see, both Dan and Brett are very serious, upstanding bankruptcy lawyers with no sense of humor whatsoever. Immediately after taking this picture, we resumed a heated discussion on the avoidance powers of a Chapter 7 trustee. Brett departed our meeting with a completed appellate brief and Dan had dictated his oral argument into a digital recorder.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: blawg

Still Think Facebook Is A Waste Of (Professional) Time?

March 19, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

Facebook is a giant time suck, according to my wife. I agree that you can get into Facebook and not look up from the monitor for hours, but the fact is that Facebook is not for kids. In fact, your prospects are getting onto Facebook at record numbers.

Want some proof beyond me yammering in your ear? A report just published by Nielsen (Global Faces and Networked Places). shows that Facebook’s greatest growth in global audience numbers come from people aged 35-49.

In fact, more than 24.1 million of the 35-49 crowd is on Facebook. And look at the growth in the 50-64 year old category – up 13.6 million! The under 18 year old visitor segment, by comparison, added a “mere” 7.3 million.

In Nielsen’s own words: “Consequently, people under 18 years old are making up less of the social network and blogging audience, whereas the 50+ age group are accounting for more of the audience.”

I got this nifty info from FutureLab.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing

How Do You Deal With The Late Night Freak Out Session?

March 17, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with your heart racing . . . knowing that there was SOMETHING you needed to do and had forgotten about?

Roll out of bed, trudge downstairs, flip on the computer and log onto the office machine? Or even worse, throw on a pair of shoes and race over to the office?

Maybe it’s a blown deadline, or a document you really need to file before the courts open in the morning. Maybe it’s nothing at all – something you did but had forgotten about.

I’ll admit that I’ve seen the digital 4:11am on more than one Sunday night (well, technically Monday morning).

How Do You Deal With The Late Night Freak Out Session?

Do you go in the next morning and fire someone who messed up?

Do you roll up your sleeves and do it yourself?

Do you think about hiring an office manager?

Do you figure out what went wrong and develop a plan to make sure it never happens again?

We’ve all been there before – some of us more than others. How do you handle it?

Photo courtesy of _marmota.

Filed Under: Law Office Management

Blogging works for solos — it is attracting clients and getting them noticed

March 17, 2009 By Grant Griffiths

Two post you should check out over at Blawging Lawyers:

After you have read them, if you have any questions about blogging or Blawging Lawyers, please drop me an email at grant@g2webmedia.com and I would be happy to discuss further.

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers

Why A Bankruptcy Lawyer Can Use A Good Copywriter

March 16, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

When looking at web sites put up by bankruptcy lawyers I am often struck at how uniform they all seem. Not that this is a surprise, but it’s just sad.

Every one of them says the same thing – some even using the same exact words.

And the lawyers behind the computers wonder why their websites don’t do what they are created to do – sell.

Years ago, as I began my transition from “hamster on a wheel” bankruptcy lawyer to something a little bit . . . stronger than that, I immersed myself in the art of copywriting. Not because I wanted to market, but because I was a Fiction minor in college and still harbored dreams of being a bestselling author one day.

During my first class at Gotham Writing Workshop I listened as everyone announced themselves. We each read a short piece we’d done in advance of the class by way of introduction; as I read mine I thought, “Jeez, this is the most compelling stuff I’ve written since college.”

And what I’d written wasn’t even very good.

But it hit me – the reason why my direct mail didn’t pull, why my letters went unanswered, why my website grew moss, was because I didn’t know the first thing about creating compelling content. Law school had atrophied the muscle that moved people to do things that I wanted them to do.

So what did I do?

First, I bought a whole bunch of books and courses about copywriting. Hundreds upon hundreds of dollars flew out of my pocket at lightning speed, headed to the pockets of those who knew this skill.

Still, my letters were useless.

So . . . I went back to the drawing board. I studied psychology, sociology, demographics, psychographics . . . and a bunch of “new age” stuff that made me feel like a 60′s throwback.

Then I wrote. And wrote. And wrote some more.

For awhile, it sucked. My words failed to move, there was no greased chute from the headline to the final PS. Heck, I couldn’t get over the use of a headline in the first place.

Gradually, I got better. Then I got a lot better. Really, really good.

Once I was good, I hired a copywriter.

Wait, you say. You spent all that time and money to get to be a good writer, and then you hired one? Are you nuts?

Not at all. I hired a professional to take my final drafts and turn them into pure gold. And to this day, I keep my copywriter closer to me than any other professional. Every single letter and web page (except for my blogs) goes under his nose before it hits the streets.

Why? Because if you want the job done right, you hire a professional.