April has come and gone in the blink of an eye, and this month there’s no shortage of news to share. Here’s a peek at what our clients have been up to over the last few weeks:

• Okanagan law firm Pushor Mitchell LLP received the Change Starts Here Award, part of the United Way of Central & South Okanagan/Similkameen’s annual Spirit Awards, which recognize “volunteers and organizations in the community who have put forth an exceptional effort on behalf of United Way during the annual campaign”. Congratulations!
• Arizona DUI attorney Lawrence Koplow is involved in a case that made national headlines this month. The case questions the reliability of blood testing equipment at the Scottsdale Police crime lab, and the results could affect at least 11 DUI verdicts.
• BC legal support services provider Dye & Durham released its May litigation calendar, blogged a roundup of resources to help with BC’s transition back to PST, and shared a pair of recent speeches by BC judges – Chief Justice Bauman on the legal profession, and Justice McEwan in defense of the courts.
• The Canadian Corporate Counsel Association held a very successful Spring National Conference, revealed the winners of the 2013 CCCA Awards, and announced a new certification program for Canadian in-house lawyers, run jointly with the Rotman School of Management.
• Cloud-based practice management software Clio introduced yearly subscriptions, in which users save 10% over monthly plans. They also announced that Rhode Island has joined their Bar Affinity Program, and shared an interesting #GoneClio client profile of private investigator Chuck McLaughlin.
• In keeping with their April monthly theme of “Spring Cleaning“, Small Firm Innovation (the solo lawyer/small firm blog run by Clio) received a fresh new redesign. Be sure to also check out the recent 3-part series on Statistics and the Flat Fee (The Theory; The Numbers; The Control Chart).
• At his New Jersey DWI Lawyer Blog, criminal defense lawyer Jonathan Marshall blogged about how even multiple DWI convictions don’t enter felony territory, and discussed in depth how a driver who is not impaired can be legitimately arrested, charged and convicted for drug DUI.
• Janette Kovacs, a family lawyer at Fraser Valley firm Waterstone Law Group, blogged about the ins and outs of passports for children and how things get complicated when their parents are divorced or separated, and offered practical tips for smooth passport applications.
• Product liability firm Hissey Kientz has added a practice area for Byetta injections HK and information for those affected by the fertilizer plant explosion in West, TX; they’ve also updated their Mirena, BioMet, and Transvaginal Mesh microsites.
• Ontario family lawyer Russell Alexander blogged about the Ontario Government’s new website for divorcing couples, yourontariolaw.com, and interviewed fellow family lawyers Brian King and colleague Aleksandra Czyzowska for his ongoing “5 divorce questions” blog series. The firm’s lawyers attended a Collaborative Practice Toronto event, Settlement Tips from the Bench.
• Canadian tax law firm Thorsteinssons was named “Business Tax Law Firm of the Year in Canada” by Corporate Intl Magazine. The firm continued blogging thoughtfully at a remarkable pace, this month on retrospective and retroactive legislation, information leaks and off-shore tax havens, and of course, continued coverage of the 2013 federal budget.
• Rhode Island elder lawyer Mark Heffner gave a presentation through the Rhode Island Alzheimer’s Association on the Legal and Financial Considerations of Alzheimer’s Disease, as part of an education series for families and individuals facing Alzheimer’s. Mr. Heffner, who has a busy nursing home asset protection practice, will present the workshop again in May.
• Ontario condo and subdivision law firm Robson Carpenter lawyer Khiam Nong wrote a two-part series on how the bad behaviour of condo board members can result in personal liability. Part 1 explains two recent cases, and Part 2 discusses why it’s critical for condo board members to seek a professional opinion on proposed courses of action.

Don’t forget to check out the latest installment of our company news roundup, Stem Around the Web, over on our News page… we’ll be back in a few weeks with more client accolades and accomplishments.

Lawyers love the written word. When you talk to a lawyer about “content marketing,” he or she automatically shifts into thinking about articles, newsletters, blog posts, and other written forms of communication. But there’s much more to content marketing than writing — “publishing” can and does involve any number of media that require the active personal and verbal participation of the content provider.

One overlooked non-written form of lawyer content marketing is the presentation. Delivering information and insight orally, with the assistance of visual aids, can be a powerful way not just to display expertise, but also to show people what you’re like in person. Some lawyers — not many, but a few — are very good at designing and delivering presentations. Most lawyers are not.

Presentations shouldn’t be that hard to give, but they often are. Recent studies that I’ve just made up show that 80% of all presentations are terrible, with another 15% classified as cringeworthy and a further 4% leaving the audience clinically depressed. Lawyer presentations are, shall we say, much closer to the rule than the exception here. But exceptions there are — there’s that 1% of presentations that are simply fantastic, that leave the audience satsifed, informed, and glad for the experience. You can be part of this happy one percent.

I’ve given dozens of presentations to legal audiences of all kinds over the past several years, to lawyers, clients, judges, law students, and many others. As part of that process, I’ve picked up a few pointers about how to build and deliver a presentation that won’t leave your audience glaring at you as you step down from the podium. Here are nine, offered for your consideration.

1. Give your own presentation. Busy partners called upon to create a presentation often delegate the job to a junior, especially if they’re shy about using the technology. Trouble is, I’ve witnessed senior professionals deliver presentations that they obviously were seeing for the first time on stage, and their flat recitations and stumbles were painful to sit through. The person who gives the presentation must be the same one who drafts it.
2. Do not use PowerPoint. Microsoft Powerpoint is to presentations what Comic Sans is to typefaces: a mediocre format overused to the point of real aggravation. As a dedicated Macintosh user, I’ll sing the praises of Apple Keynote all day, a presentation format that actually cares about design and the user experience. There’s also Prezi, a swooping interactive format available on any platform — just be careful not to overswoop. Basically, think beyond the PowerPoint.
3. Narrow your subject focus. Very few presentations have ever left the audience thinking, “I sure wish I’d been given more information.” Presenters often feel they must tell you everything they know about the subject in the available time, so they stuff the presentation to the gills with facts, figures and observations. Like all publications, presentations benefit from a narrow, deep and sharp focus. Choose one thing you want to tell your audience about and explain it very well.
4. Get to the point. Your audience is there to hear you, primed and ready. Tell them as soon as you can, as simply and clearly as you can, why you’re there and what they can expect to hear. Give them a good reason, within the first 30 seconds, to sit up and pay attention. The longer you make them wait for knowledge, the more impatient they’ll become. The whys and wherefores, the history and the rationales, that underlie your central point can come later, once they know what you’ve got.
5. Frame expectations. A person reading a ten-page article knows exactly how much content is left until the end; a person sitting through a presentation rarely has that information and can get restless as a result. Lay out a “table of contents” at the start of your presentation, ideally with an expected time frame, and stick to it. Number your slides (“4 of 17,” “9 of 17,” and so forth) so that the audience always knows where things stand. And never say the words “Finally” or “In conclusion” unless you’re less than two minutes away from sitting down.
6. One idea per slide. Many presentations are handicapped by content-heavy slides, cramming multiple explanations and concepts into a space that was never designed to accommodate more than a few bullet points. Look at ways to move each idea onto a separate slide, or off the deck altogether. Every slide in a presentation should be a standalone concept or series of related concepts, expressed as precisely and concisely as possible. Think of each slide as a paragraph: it should not try to deal with more than one concept.
7. Less content, more time. You can always count on your actual presentation taking at least 10-15% longer than you anticipate. Otherwise fine presentations are frequently ruined by the dreaded, “We’re running short on time, so I’ll skip ahead past these next several slides” line. Look closely at your final-draft deck and ask yourself, “If the time I have allotted were suddenly reduced by one-third, what could I eliminate?” Once you’ve identified the slides you can live without, cut them.
8. Click, and shut up. This one and the next one are invaluable pieces of advice from my friend, master presentation coach John Plank of Commanding Presence and Edge International. When you first display a slide, your audience will stop paying any attention to you and will read what you’ve put up on the screen. Don’t talk while they’re reading; and when they’ve finished, don’t repeat word for word what they’ve just read. Let your audience absorb what’s on your slide, in silence. If your slide is too cluttered, or too confusing, to do this comfortably, rewrite it or break it into multiple slides.
9. Don’t read your slides! This, to my mind, is the single most annoying thing that happens in presentations, and it happens all the time. Except in rare circumstances, when you have an especially important point to make, reading out loud what’s on the slide is incredibly irritating. Your audience can read faster than you can talk, and they’ll have finished what you wrote well before you begin to say it. Click, and shut up. Wait ten seconds, and then begin speaking about what’s on the slide, not reading out the slide itself.

Every presentation begins with a fixed amount of audience goodwill toward you and your subject. Many presentations drain that tank of goodwill in the first five minutes. Sustain that goodwill, and feed it, with a presentation that focuses on the audience, not on you — on what they need to know, rather than on what you’ve got to say.

A big thank-you to everyone who attended my webinar today for the Lunch Hour Legal Marketing series.  Also, a special shout out to the three principals, Jared Correia, Catherine Sanders Reach and Erik Mazzone. I really appreciated the opportunity to come and speak.

Lunch Hour Legal Marketing is a joint effort from the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program, the North Carolina Bar Association’s Center for Practice Management, and the Chicago Bar Association’s Law Practice Management & Technology. Please check out their website for future programs. I thought the experience was great, and plan on attending more of these sessions in the future.

As promised during the session, I have posted my slide deck (embedded below) on Slideshare.

As noted at Stem News, Clio has just unveiled a redesign of their practice management blog, Small Firm Innovation. We were privileged to be part of this project and wanted to share some details on the new site, plus what’s happening under the hood.

Going into the redesign, Clio had two goals: make the monthly themes more prominent, and provide better exposure for the talented and ever-growing team of contributors at Small Firm Innovation.

To meet the first goal, the new design centers around the monthly theme, which makes it easy for the site’s visitors to quickly discern the theme and access the related posts. Pulling images from the corresponding blog posts into the homepage banner provides color and visual interest, and the Monthly Themes tab enables visitors to navigate the site’s 2+ year archives in a logical, useful way.

To focus on highlighting the written efforts of its solos and small firm lawyer contributors, Clio wanted to expand on each author’s profile, and allow authors to manage their own profile pages, too. To that end, blog post bylines are linked to author profiles, and short profiles appear at the bottom of each post, allowing readers to learn more about the author and quickly access to his or her other posts. Ultimately, the new design greatly improves visibility for Small Firm Innovation’s contributors both on-site and in the search engines.

Tweets from @sfinnovation and the site’s contributors are displayed in a sidebar — another way the site promotes its authors — along with the site’s most popular posts. Visitors can sign up for Clio’s newsletter from the sidebar as well.

It was a pleasure for us to work with Clio on Small Firm Innovation’s new design, and we’re looking forward to seeing what new features, themes, and of course, posts are in store for the coming months!

P.S. Small Firm Innovation is always looking for new contributors – if you’re a sole practitioner, work in a small firm, or have experiences to share with this audience, get in touch with Gwynne Monahan, Communications Manager at Clio. Or, join Small Firm Innovation on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter (@sfinnovation).

It’s been a couple months since we posted a selection of the latest blogs to be added to the Canadian Law Blogs List at lawblogs.ca. Without further ado…

• Injury Law Blog (Roger R. Foisy)
• OKT Aboriginal Rights Lawyers Blog (Olthuis, Kleer, Townshend LLP)
• The Trademark Shop Blog 
• Goldstein, Rosen & Rassos Blog 
• Treasurers Blog (Law Society of Upper Canada)
• Litigation Blog (Davis LLP)
• Les Actifs créatifs (Norton Rose Canada)
• The Conduct of an Appeal (Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP)
• Sufficient Description (Norman Siebrasse)
• Law Students for Technology and Innovation (LFTI) 

Know of a blog that’s missing from our directory? Please review our submission guidelines and let us know!

Ogden Nash wrote, “Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes. The wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year.” Looking at all our clients accomplished over the last few weeks, I think it’s safe to say that indeed, there wasn’t much relaxing in March! Read on for details of their latest projects and news.

• We welcomed our newest client, RI elder law firm Heffner & Associates. One of only 400 certified elder law attorneys in the US, Mark Heffner is among the most genuine, passionate lawyers we’ve worked with to date. Be sure to check out his Rhode Island Elder Care Lawyer Blog.
• March was federal budget month in Canada, and the tax lawyers of Thorsteinssons blogged about various aspects: see Mark Barbour on the budget’s impact on mining, Greg DelBigio on how it would close tax avoidance and evasion loopholes, and Thomas McDonnell, QC on the roots of budgets and secrecy. (Since the blog’s launch in May 2012, Thorsteinssons has taken to blogging like a duck to water, and we couldn’t be more pleased for them!)
• The Spring 2013 issue of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association‘s magazine has just been released. Articles include advice on how to transition from private practice to in-house counsel, a spotlight on the CCCA’s 25th anniversary, a look at the China-Canada investment treaty, workplace social media policies, and much more.
• Ontario divorce lawyer Russell Alexander was honoured by the Victoria Haliburton Law Association for 15 years of legal service to the City of Kawartha Lakes – congratulations, Russell! He also kicked off a great new feature on his FamilyLLB blog: “5 Divorce Questions”, an interview series with lawyers from across the country (check out answers from Marla Gilsig, Michele Allinotte, and Pei-Shing Wang). Lastly, 15-year employee Gabrielle Underwood received the firm’s Client Service Award. Kudos to you as well, Gabrielle!
• Another busy month for Hissey Kientz‘s hip replacement lawyers: they launched a new microsite for BioMet hip replacements, expanded their Stryker microsite, and added info on Wright hip replacements. The firm also added a new practice area for the Mirena IUD.
• New Jersey DWI attorney Jonathan Marshall blogged about the NJ Bar Association’s recommended change to the state’s breath test refusal statement, and also discussed the many types of evidence that lawyers may use in the prosecution of a drunk driving matter.
• At the BC Employment Lawyer Blog, Daniel Sorensen of Waterstone Law Group wrote about the ramifications of a recent human rights tribunal decision, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP v. BC — what the decision says about partnership agreements, whether partners are employees, and if they can be forced to leave.
• More congratulations are in order to legal practice management software Clio, which was named one of BC’s 25 fastest growing companies (and we got a peek at the Clio’s corporate culture from office admin Lauren Sanders). Clio also offered a free webinar on building your own virtual law firm.
• On Clio’s Small Firm Innovation blog, Heather Bussing wrote about the ins and outs of “big heart days”, Andrew Legrand discussed expectation management and its effect on customer service, and Adam Ziegler of Mootus was featured in a lawyer snapshot.
• In the latest issue of Legal Alert, Kamloops law firm Pushor Mitchell lawyers published articles on leasing considerations for commercial tenants, whether employee dishonesty is grounds for firing, and language discrimination in the workplace. Details of the upcoming Pushor Mitchell Okanagan Conference on Brain Injury were also released.
• At the Condo Development Blog, Khiam Nong, a condo lawyer with Ontario construction law firm Robson Carpenter, blogged about why builders should be aware of the HST New Housing Rebate. The rebate applies to new or substantially renovated housing.
• Raleigh law firm Wilson Law, PA announced it is now handling cases related to the Mirena intrauterine device (women have reported serious injuries and side effects related to the IUD).  Like Wilson Law clients who’ve experienced problems with transvaginal mesh devices, Mirena clients will receive sensitive, confidential service from a female attorney.
• BC legal support services provider Dye & Durham shared the new land title forms under the Family Law Act, and three new Supreme Court Practice Directions related to the new family law legislation. Dye & Durham’s BC Law Watch blog also celebrated a major milestone: 500 posts!

We’ll be back next month with more client news to share – in the meantime, we wish you all a very relaxing Easter weekend.

At the Massachusetts LOMAP Blog, law practice management advisor Heidi Alexander has just wrapped up a super series on website essentials, and we’d be remiss not to mention it here.

From registering a domain to boosting search engine rankings, Alexander speaks from personal experience, sharing practical tips on four main aspects of website development in plain language. What makes this series stand out is that it’s not just standard advice, it’s customized for the legal industry, and suggests considerations the readers may not have thought of.

Here are a few of the tidbits that stand out in Part 1: Website Building Blocks:

• What to do when someone else owns the domain name you had your heart set on
• Whether you should hide/privatize your information at your domain register
• The most important qualities to look of in a web hosting company
• The potential downsides of all-in-one website packages
• Why using your website domain as your email address extension is the way to go

Part 2: Design & Development gets into the nitty gritty of hiring a professional vs. doing it yourself. Here at Stem, we design all new client websites using WordPress, so I was glad to see that’s what being recommended here. Alexander offers another good point here – if you’re determined to do it yourself, there are tons of good, free resources online, and “most adult community education centers now offer courses in WordPress.” Many cities have WordPress meetups or groups, too.

In Part 3: Analytics, Alexander discusses how to measure the success of your website, and suggests that every law firm should be using Google Analytics if they aren’t already using another tool. She then identifies what metrics law firms should be concerned with, and what to do with that information.

Wrapping up the series is Part 4: Search Engine Optimization, where Alexander says that there are three key things you should do before you get started with SEO: 1) have a basic understanding of how search engines work, 2) understand that SEO is an evolving concept, and 3) recognize the difference between paid and organic search results. She then goes on to explain how content, platform and design, links and social shares affect rankings, and offers four main actions you can take to boost your rankings. No surprises here, just good, solid advice: write good content, regularly; share and engage via social media; hire a professional SEO; and submit your site to search engines.

All in all, this series is an excellent guide to the basics of law firm websites – a must-read for anyone thinking about starting a new site or wanting to improve or just make the most of their current site.

“I had NO idea that’s how Google works!”

If I had a dollar for every time someone has said this to me, after I explain to them how Stem helps clients improve their search engine rankings, I’d be rich. Or at least, have enough to take my colleagues out for a pint. For something that is so fully a part of our lives in the 21st century, it’s amazing how little people know about Google and how it, well, Googles.

Earlier this month, Google introduced a neat new interactive website called How Search Works. The site lets you “follow the entire life of a search query, from the web, to crawling and indexing, to algorithmic ranking and serving, to fighting webspam”.

From Google’s announcement, the site includes:

• “An interactive, graphical explanation of Google Search
• A view into major search algorithms and features
• A 43-page document explaining how we evaluate our results
• A live slideshow of spam as we remove it
• Graphs illustrating the spam problem and how we fight it
• A list of policies that explain when we’ll remove content”

What I found especially interesting were the live spam screenshots, examples of spammy websites recently removed from Google’s index.

If you’re impatient like me, and dislike the vertical scrolling concept where screen items are only revealed as you reach them, just scroll to the bottom of the screen right away, then scroll back up, and all the items will load. Be sure to try hovering over the various icons and images, for extra tidbits of information to complement the overall ideas. (And bonus points for not missing the obligatory cat Easter egg!)

If you’ve ever wondered exactly how Google works its magic, I highly recommend checking out this simple-to-understand introduction to the topic.

In its January 19, 2013 edition, The Economist ran a short item about Dell Computers’ plans to buy back its publicly listed shares and take the company private again. The article itself was unremarkable; the headline was genius.

The title of the story was: “Ctrl-Shift-Dell.” To combine a computer company’s strategic decision to reinvent its corporate structure with a computer keyboard’s rebooting combination, and to mix in the name of the company itself, and to do it all in exactly 15 characters, was a work of art — even by The Economist‘s lofty standard for headlines and cutlines.

Take it from someone who spent a dozen years in legal journalism: writing good headlines is hard. You need to grab the reader’s attention and direct it towards your story without misleading the reader or making false promises about what the story will deliver. You need to do this in limited space, with limited time, against a backdrop of expectations about what headlines look and sound like. The form of the headline itself has become so ubiquitous that many of The Onion‘s best satirical items are nothing but standalone-joke headlines (“Battle of Wits With Unwieldy Burrito Nears Thrilling Endgame.“)

Measured against those standards, even news organizations can struggle to create good headlines. But after years of reading newsletter articles and blog posts by lawyers, I have to conclude that our profession falls far below even the league average for titles. At best, the headlines that accompany lawyer content are dull and pedestrian, factually describing the contents of the article but failing to inspire the reader to read a single word more.

And then there are titles so bad that they seem designed to actively discourage the reader from even making it to the end of the line. Check out these three headlines taken from large Canadian law firm newsletters in the past several weeks:

• Leave To Appeal To The Court Of Appeal re: Motion To Strike Pleadings Granted In Respect Of Claims To Unjust Enrichment, Denied In Respect Of Claims Under The Trade-Marks Act
• The Continuing Saga Of Permissible Deal Protections In Delaware: Standstill/Pill Combo Not Preclusive If The Mechanics Are Right
• The Superior Court Refused To Issue An Interim Injunction To Prevent The Operation Of A Restaurant, Which Would Violate The Non-Competition And The “Disidentification” Obligations Under A Franchise Agreement

If the headline writer’s objective was to create a one-sentence executive summary of the story, using as few definite or indefinite articles as possible, that would be understood by the person who wrote it and maybe three other people, then mission accomplished. But as a means of encouraging anyone to click through and read the full post, these headlines are failures. Titles like these are almost always written by lawyers, and they could not more effectively convey the lawyer’s lack of interest in whether anyone subsequently reads another word of the article he or she has written.

(Legal journalists, in fairness, sometimes fare no better: an Australian reporter recently achieved the rare feat of creating a quintuple negative to explain a court judgment: ”The grounds of appeal announced on Monday state Justice Sifris erred in not finding Mr Goldberg was wrong in failing to set aside the summonses.” A thousand points if you can figure out from that sentence what the court actually said.)

Here, then, are the ABCs (the ABCDEs, really) of what I think is necessary to ensure a headline is both effective and admirable:

• Accuracy: Be certain the headline correctly conveys the thrust of the article’s facts or expresses the opinions therein, and doesn’t overrepresent or over-promise on the contents. Countless mainstream media headlines fail at this first stage, in a sad effort to generate click-throughs.
• Brevity: Online publishing has overcome the traditional restrictions of the printed page, allowing longer headlines — but many writers abuse the privilege with titles that could be mistaken for short works of prose. Here’s a useful rule: if a headline requires a comma, it’s too long.
• Certainty: There are few headlines more annoying than those that ask a question: “Is The Supreme Court Preparing To Overturn A Basic Constitutional Right?” The answer in the ensuing article is always “No.” If it were yes, it wouldn’t be posed as a question. This is cheap baiting-and-switching.
• Distinctiveness: Headlines are everywhere, so you need to find ways to stand out, especially in form and construction. A catchy phrase, followed by a colon and a short description of the article (see the title of this post) have become cliches, but they still qualify as differentiators in lawyer content.
• Encouragement: The title should make you want to read the article. That’s its entire purpose. To achieve this goal, you need to know who will read the headline, what they care about, and what will catch their attention for being unusual or noteworthy. Know your (headline) reader.

Fundamentally, though, a title can only do so much. If an article cannot be headlined without either boring or misleading the reader, then the fault usually can be found within the article itself.

Accordingly, it falls to the author to make it a habit, when he or she has finished the first draft, to imagine the best headline to accompany the article — and then ask themselves (or, preferably, a potential reader): Who would want to read an article with a title like that? The more often you road-test your headlines before publication, the better you’ll get at crafting titles that will make readers continue to read — and make them glad, at the end, that they did.

Forgive us for being a day late with our month-end client news roundup; the end of February really snuck up! As we remark every year, our clients managed to accomplish quite a bit in this short month. Here’s a look at what they’ve been busy with:

• BC legal support services provider Dye & Durham launched a new BC corporate supplies website, with expanded product lines, easier navigation, and multiple ordering methods.
• Oshawa divorce lawyer Russell Alexander was honoured to be interviewed by Justice Harvey Brownstone for his show, Family Matters TV. Justice Brownstone and Mr. Alexander discussed alternatives to family court litigation, such as Collaborative Practice and mediation.
• Okanagan law firm Pushor Mitchell raised over $5000 for the Heart and Stroke Foundation through some fun Valentine’s Day events: a heart-healthy BBQ lunch, a silent re-gifting auction, a casual attire day, and 50/50 ticket sales. And speaking of charity, wills and estates lawyer Vanessa DeDominicis wrote about the many reasons people are motivated to include charitable giving in their estate plans.
• Product injury firm Hissey Kientz had a busy month with their hip replacement injury practice: they unveiled a microsite devoted to the Stryker hip replacement recall, at www.strykerhiprecallhelp.com; have been publishing ongoing coverage of the DePuy hip replacement trial currently underway in the United States; and added information on BioMet hip replacements, which have not yet been recalled but have been the subject of lawsuits from patients who’ve experienced metallosis, hip pain, fretting and corrosion.
• The Canadian Corporate Counsel Association (CCCA), along with the CBA’s SOGIC, CLGA and Pride at Work Canada, co-hosted Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace, a breakfast event and live webcast on February 25. The program highlighted trailblazers in the area of LGBTQ inclusion within the workforce and promote the sharing of strategies and best practices to advance workplace diversity.
• Cloud-based law practice management software Clio‘s CEO and Founder, Jack Newton, co-authored the Microsoft Business Hub ebook, Cloud Computing for Legal. Clio was also honoured to be highly recommended in the ABA’s 2013 Solo and SMall Firm Legal Techonology Guide, and welcomed the Louisiana State Bar into their Affinity Program, which offers discounts to more than 25 bar associations.
• At Small Firm Innovation, which was created and is maintained by Clio, February’s theme was customer service. Some of our favorite posts discussed consistency in customer service; the power of a smile and a handshake; and when saying “no” is the best customer service.
• At his Arizona Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog, Lawrence Koplow wrote about Arizona State Hospital v. Klein, the first Arizona decision to cite the federal Daubert standard, which safeguards against junk science in the courtroom (read more about Daubert here).
• Lawyers at Canadian tax law firm Thorsteinssons were busy speakers: Terry Barnett presented to the Mortgage Brokers Association of BC in Vancouver, Victoria, Kelowna, and David Baxter presented on estate plans, trust structures and tax planning at a Pacific Business and Law Institute Conference in Vancouver.
• Family lawyer Janette Kovacs of the Fraser Valley law firm Waterstone Law Group blogged about how BC’s new Family Law Act treats email and social media in the context of family violence.
• Raleigh law firm Wilson Law, PA tracked the progress of a bill to lift North Carolina’s fracking moratorium through the state legislature. The legislation would be favorable to the oil and gas industry, and attorney Kim Wilson urges anyone approached to lease their mineral rights to consult a lawyer before signing anything.

We’ll be back next month with more notable client news.

Recently, my husband went on a quest to find a lawyer to advise him on his real estate investment ventures. We have a lawyer we like and trust for our basic legal needs (wills, residential real estate, etc.) but the time had come to find a lawyer with more expertise in the particular intersection of tax, business, and real estate.

We couldn’t think of anyone we knew who might be able make a personal recommendation. So, ever the researcher, my husband spent several hours online, checking out lawyer bios at various local law firms. He narrowed his pool down to two or three lawyers and did some more research. Ultimately, he called one lawyer, and after a phone call, felt confident in retaining him.

Is this the typical way that consumers seek out a new lawyer? Based on Mike Blumenthal’s research for Moses & Rooth Attorneys at Law, yes, it is!

The commissioned research surveyed 1500 US consumers. According to Blumenthal,

“Here are some top level take aways:

• Word of mouth from clients is critically important
• Search engines are the most likely source for new clients
• Facebook offers little value in finding new clients
• The print Yellow Pages, while not as likely to be used as the search engines, still have some life in the legal industry. This is particularly true in the MidWest and amongst older clients
• Google reviews are 3x more likely to influence a decision than Yelp
• A website and online reviews play a critical role once the consumer makes it to Google

For more on this research, see also Where do clients find a specialty lawyer?, from AttorneySync’s James Bellefeuille.

For us at Stem, these findings reinforce what we always tell our clients: any particular services, strengths, or specialties you want to be found for in the search engines MUST be included in the written copy of your practice pages and lawyer biographies. These two areas of a firm’s website are critical first points of contact for internet searchers but are rarely written with this in mind.

Also of interest was the question “If you Search for a specialty lawyer on the internet what is most important to you?“. The #1 response was “Information elsewhere about them on the internet”. A well-written bio is the first step in making sure a potential client can find you, but this particular finding highlights just how important it is to optimize your social media profiles and publish broadly across many channels, too.

Let’s go back to the example of my husband’s search for a specialty lawyer. Once he found a lawyer bio that he thought sounded good, what sealed the deal for him was finding online materials, like blog posts and conference papers, this lawyer had written that demonstrated the expertise and experience in the areas of law my husband needed advice on. If the cake is the lawyer bio, then this complementary information is the icing on it.

Of course, this is just one account of one person’s own search behavior. But it is satisfying how closely it matches the results of Blumenthal’s research, and confirms some of the key messages we try to send clients about building reputation online: write your bio for your clients’ eyes, and publish widely on the topics you want to be known for.

Lee Rosen recently coined a new term: Marketing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. He writes there’s a surefire way to make sure any marketing effort will fail:

“It’s called Marketing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (“MADHD”). It’s marked by starting a marketing project, doing some work on it, and then moving on to another marketing project. The project is left in an unfinished state.

Interestingly, attorneys suffering from MADHD repeat the cycle over and over. They fail to finish the website development. They move on to e-mail marketing and, before they finish that project, they move on to the next. Nothing ever works, and they can’t figure out why.

These MADHD sufferers assume that the marketing tactic they’ve been using is flawed. That’s how they rationalize moving on to the next tactic. They see minimal results from project one and feel compelled to start project two.

Of course, it makes sense that project one isn’t working yet. It isn’t finished, and even if it is finished, it hasn’t been given a chance to work.”

(emphasis mine)

Over the years, we’ve worked with a couple clients who suffered from extreme impatience when it comes to SEO, and MADHD is the great way to describe the affliction. We’ll get their website’s on-page factors nicely optimized, run a comprehensive linking campaign, develop a good content strategy, and then sit back for a bit, prepared to see their rankings improve. Given time, they almost certainly will. But some folks want overnight results. By the time we’re a couple weeks in, they’ve become antsy. They expected they’d be #1 in the search results by now, and are ready to start over with different tactics.

Most times we’re able to calm those anxieties, and get firms to hold tight, but there’s also been a time or two when clients have moved on because of it.  Developing a strong search presence, at least when it comes to “organic search” takes time, and – here’s the catch – continued effort.

The key with this continued effort is not to succumb to MADHD and start tweaking title tags, URLs, and link architecture before Google has even had a chance to register the original work. This is not only short-sighted, but in our experience, Google doesn’t treat websites favorably who are constantly switching up these basic descriptive elements — this kind of constant tinkering looks (and probably is) manipulative.

No, you need to take actions to complement your initial SEO improvements. Firms are far better off creating a steady stream of relevant content, and publishing through their news, blogs and social media channels. Those types of actions are what actually empower SEO. On-page changes are only your starting point — ‘best practices’, and not much more. Your website won’t compete without them, and proper consideration is indeed critical, but those changes alone aren’t responsible for making your website “number one”.

SEO may inform the search engines of the terms and phrases you want to rank for. But Google isn’t going to trust your site to rank for anything, until you can demonstrate traction. Engagement isn’t just a coined marketing phrase, it’s where the rubber meets the road: measurable proof to the search engines that your website should be trusted (and rank well).

So, to reiterate: when it comes to SEO, patience is critical. As Lee Rosen suggests, finish what you start. But then give your efforts some time to mature. Especially when it comes to installing new on-page optimization elements. Leave them be for at least a couple of months, and see what happens.

I’ve had the opportunity recently to review several marketing campaigns undertaken by a range of midsize to large law firms. These campaigns ran the gamut from mass-market advertising to multimedia publications to targeted client awareness efforts to law student recruitment blitzes, and they all appear effective to a greater or lesser extent.

What struck me, however, was that many of the campaigns were based on the premise that the firm needed to differentiate itself from the competition. This is absolutely true, and it’s what many industry advisors have been saying for years. But firms still make a common and serious mistake: they tend to differentiate themselves on grounds that aren’t relevant to clients.

Most firms know their competitors well enough to perceive distinct differences in how their own firm thinks, behaves and operates from other firms. These differences are most often described with the word “culture.” Now, this is a term that, as I’ve written elsewhere, lawyers tend to use incorrectly. But I will certainly grant that no two law firms share exactly the same culture, just as no two people share exactly the same fingerprint. The problem is that, unless you’re a trained forensic expert looking through a microscope, fingerprints do in fact all look the same. And unless you’re immersed in the culture of a law firm, which clients assuredly are not, law firm cultures all look the same too.

But there’s a larger problem here: clients don’t buy culture. Or at least, they buy only the observable impact of culture, insofar as it affects the firm’s output, pricing and customer service. Your firm might well be a more humane, more collaborative and more innovative enterprise than its primary rivals; conversely, you might be more driven, more relentless, and more ruthless. But unless you can demonstrate how these differences translate into measurable market advantages from the client’s perspective, it just comes across as more talk. Worse, in fact, because it comes across as more self-absorbed, self-obsessed talk.

Marketing is not about the seller; it’s about the market. It’s right there in the word. If you want to market your firm by highlighting how you are differentiated from your competitors — and you should —  then you need to focus on differences that matter to the people who buy your services, not to the people who sell them.

On Slaw.ca last week, Allison Shields talked about some of the reasons lawyers might want to use infographics as part of their marketing strategies this year. Alison makes some good points about why infographics have been such a welcome addition to the marketing landscape over the last few years, and why they’re well suited to lawyers’ marketing activities:

“Lawyers are generally a text-heavy bunch. …  Infographics can help clients understand complicated legal concepts without confronting long blocks of text. By presenting material in infographic form, lawyers can help make legal concepts less intimidating for both existing clients and prospective clients. Infographics may also help keep prospects’ and clients’ attention longer and help them retain the information longer than information presented purely in text format.”

And for added mileage:

“Infographics are also great marketing tools because they are so easy to share. Visuals are always popular on social media, and good infographics can go viral quickly.”

Allison also links to a Pinterest board prepped by Gyi Tsakalakis, which includes several dozen legal infographics. Maybe predictably, a lot of them are from personal injury firms. But there were some nicely designed, creative images that caught my eye, like one from a bankruptcy law firm that outlines the debt that can follow holiday shopping, and this one, which outlines, in remarkably few words, how US laws are made (click the image to see the original, large version):

Source: http://static.vizworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/howlawsmadeWIRTH2.jpg

I completely agree with Allison that infographics can work for any practice area (and I’d add, any company – check out the graphic that our designer Laurel created for Stem’s 5-year anniversary). Serious or playful, infographics have the potential to enliven almost any data. Allison suggests they can be used to “help train employees, to enhance firm newsletters, as a recruitment tool, or as an alternate or additional lawyer biography. Lawyers may want to provide statistical firm information on the law firm website in infographic form, or create an infographic that showcases the results the firm has attained for clients.”

Have you seen any good legal infographics lately? Please share them in the comments!

Ever wondered where Google gets the business location information for its maps? If the details about your law firm are accurate, you might not have occasion to find out. But if an office move is in the works, you’ll need to be prepared for some hard work to make sure your firm shows up in the right location in online maps.

That’s why we appreciated David Mihm‘s recent post on SEOmoz, “Moving to a New Location? Don’t Forget About Local Search“. In it, David shares a case study based on the help he gave to a local non-profit organization whose local search listings were outdated after they moved to a new location.

Correcting your location goes way beyond just updating your address in Google+ Local/Google Places. It’s actually a bit nightmarish, but it has to be done, and fortunately for us, David gives thorough, step-by-step instructions on how to solve this problem. Some key tips:

• Use GetListed’s Local Business Data Accuracy Report to get a complete picture of what you’re dealing with.
• Stay organized: methodically track problematic sources in a spreadsheet, along with login credentials for any directories in which you have control over your listings.
• When you do track down outdated listings, “It’s important to UPDATE old, out-of-date listings rather than create new ones.”
• Be patient. It can take 2-3 months for changes to trickle out through the web.

David also offers an extensive list of other blog posts that cover this topic. If a move is in the cards for you, we highly recommend becoming familiar with this process well beforehand, so you can get your location updated across the web as quickly and efficiently as possible.