It’s been a fast month since our last client update! Stem clients have once again been very busy, and we want to show them our support with a monthly roundup:

• Widget’s the word over at JD Supra. Have you seen these nifty tools yet? You can customize a widget to display documents from several different practice areas, or by Hot Docs, or law practice articles. Bonus if you’re a contributor: you can even get a widget to syndicate your own contributed documents. Visit their RSS & widget page for instructions on how to get yours.
• And, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention two more fantastic JD Supra initiatives: 1) Adrian Lurssen’s latest additions to the legal twitter list; and 2) Aviva Cuyler’s *growing* aggregation of lawyer analysis regarding the Financial Bailout – both posted to the company’s blog JD Scoop (feed).
• Clio, the legal practice management software-as-a-service tool, had TechnoLawyer readers abuzz: the TechnoRelease announcing the Clio launch was the most popular TechnoRelease during the period of Sept 29 to Oct 12. Clio’s also running a three part report on data accessibility, security, and privacy. Parts 1 and 2 have been published, and we’re watching out for Part 3, set to be released on the Clio Blog (feed) shortly.
• Clark Wilson has had an extremely busy month, as they launched a whole set of new videos on the articling section of their site (we’ll have more on that soon!). They’ve also, as previously mentioned, unveiled Megawatt: The BC Renewable Energy Blog.
• Our Arizona client, Phoenix lawyer Lawrence Koplow has just started up the Arizona Criminal Lawyer Blog (feed), where he’s been writing a mix of informational and resource posts. Some recent topics include “I posted my bail. So why won’t they let me out of jail?” and “Why murder never goes unpunished”. Koplow and his law partner, Angelo Patane, already have successful blogs at Arizona DUI Defense Blog (feed) and Arizona Personal Injury and Insurance Bad Faith Blog (feed).
• Did you know that in Florida, heat of passion is recognized as a legitimate defense to the charge of murder? Ron Chapman, a West Palm Beach attorney, wrote about it recently on his West Palm Beach Criminal Lawyer Blog (feed). In addition to violent crimes, Chapman also specializes in Florida DUI and federal crimes.
• Hissey Kientz LLP, a product injury firm based out of Austin, TX, has been developing an excellent array of content portals to support its practice areas. Their release last month of Digitek Recall Help is just the latest example, with more planned for the future.
• COLI, BOLI, STOLI… what do they all mean? Mike Myers, a partner at Houston-based commercial litigation firm McClanahan Myers Espey, recently described STOLI (Stranger-Owned Life Insurance) at the firm’s Contingent Fee Business Litigation Blog (feed).  Myers is well-qualified to discuss this particular type of insurance: he testified before the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation on the topic this past summer. Oh, and in case you’re still wondering, COLI is Corporate Owned Life Insurance and BOLI is Bank Owned Life Insurance.
• And finally over on the Stem News blog, we’ve just welcomed our newest client Jonathan Marshall and his New Jersey Criminal lawyer practise.

And that’s it … for October.  We’ll be back next month with more client endeavours and achievements!

Matt Homann over at the [non] billable hour has a great new post up titled 10 New Rules for Legal Marketing.

As many of you may know, Matt is a long-term member of the legal blogging community, and prides himself on inspiring innovative thinking. His current push over at lexthink is to inject that method into his speaking, conferences and law firm retreats.  I genuinely hope he finds that success, mostly because I do find him inspiring.

While I encourage you to visit & read the post in its entirety, there were a couple items on this list that really stood out for me. And they were:

9.  Your future clients have been living their entire lives online and will expect the same from you.  If you’re invisible on the web, you won’t exist to them.

Such an essential point, and especially for younger Lawyers. If you’re in your 30s or 40s, you need to think long term. Marketing your practice the same way as a practitioner in their 60s makes little sense. Learn from an older peer’s success? Absolutely. But don’t mimic marketing tactics. The mix for a younger lawyer should be very different.

7.  Having the scales of justice on your business card says you’re a lawyer — an old, stodgy, unimaginative, do-what-everyone-else-has-done-for-fifty-years lawyer.  Same is true for your yellow pages ad.

The same holds true for law firm websites. Stock images = stock lawyer. Invest in a good photographer and a graphic designer. Find imagery that works for your practice, and stand behind it for a few years.

2.  Google tells me there are 337,000 “Full Service Law Firms” out there.  Which one was yours again?

This is one of the ‘big ones’ in my world.  Neither corporate or commodity legal consumers use generic terms when searching. Couple that fact with a lawyer that’s unwilling to ‘hang their hat’ on an area of practise, or narrow their target geographic region of service…  and the whole sales proposition becomes infinitely more difficult.  Similar to off-line brand tactics, its much easier to explain & share a simplified concept – a lawyer who knows exactly what they do, and who they do it for.

I hope you’ll go read Matt’s post … and kickstart your Monday morning. :)

Alyn-Weiss & Associates have just released a new survey that shows “the number of local and regional corporate, transactional and defense law firms using search engine optimization (SEO), and getting cases and referrals as a result, has tripled in the past 24 months”.

Also from the press release:

• “59 percent of firms used SEO over the past 24 months. That compares to 20 percent in the two years prior to then. In 2007-2008, 20 percent of firms said they got cases from SEO, compared to 8 percent in 2005-2006.”

While that’s great news for those of us with SEO services as part of our legal marketing repertoire, it does make for a tougher playing field overall.  Five years ago, on-page optimization factors were enough in many legal markets to create a competitive search presence. Now of course, this is simply par for the course.

Where there used to be two or three pages of optimized results for a competitive search phrase, in many markets that number can now span eight to ten pages. Which supports a point I’ve been making for a while now – good search positioning is at least 70% about a website’s incoming link network (and likely more).

Most firms should be asking:

• Do we know what websites are linking to us?
• Do we have a strategy to improve the quality (& to a lesser degree, quantity) of those links?
• How closely aligned, subject-wise, are those links with website content?

As more firms get onboard with SEO, competition is clearly going to be on the rise. Unless Google suddenly decides to change their default result to 20 or 100 listings on the first page. Which seems unlikely to happen any time soon.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with competition. As reputations build and performances are graded, there should be some culling within the industry. Which is good. But unfortunately, I suspect more competition also means more shady tactics from some providers in the short term. And even more unfortunate, SEO services aren’t going to get any easier to evaluate for law firm marketers or practitioners.

Not saying that as a scare tactic. Just a troubling fact. And from my own perspective, I can see how the next couple years are going to be a challenge to differentiate Stem as an ethical SEO option; and related, whether to train out those standards, recruit for them, or both.

Interesting times ahead.

Key to any type of marketing is knowing your clients (and potential clients). Knowing their needs, how they want to be served, and what the deliverables are. This is true at a micro day-to-day client service level, and also on a larger industry-wide basis.

So when the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) stands up issues a challenge to the value equation and seeks to the re-engange the parties (CC, firms, academia, consultants, media…) within the conversation, will those counterparts, and especially law firms, take a seat at the table?  Oh boy, let’s hope so!

Both the details of the initiative and the language are very interesting. See the ACC’s definition of “the problem“:

ACC believes that many traditional law firm business models and many of the approaches to lawyer training and cost management are not aligned with what corporate clients want and need: value-driven, high-quality legal services that deliver solutions for a reasonable cost and develop lawyers as counselors (not just content-providers), advocates (not just process-doers) and professional partners.

And the mission goals:

• dialogue “driving an alignment and focus on value”;
• Develop methodologies and metrics “to assess the strengths and weaknesses of law firm vendors” (SM: standardized metrics anyone?);
• create tools “that in-house counsel and firms can share to drive change in the performance of value-based legal services” (SM: time to question hourly billing?);
• Enhance awareness and communicate success stories in achieving value and alignment.

Some firms who have their act together will see this as an opportunity, and should be making contact asap, I think. Others are going to see this as a threat to revenues.  I get that.  However, the time to get involved and see the light on your client’s needs, it would seem, is right now.

Even at a stakeholder scale of discussions, a voice at the table for this conversation should prove enlightening. If your firm serves (or wants to serve) large corporate clients, why wouldn’t you get involved?

Many thanks to my twitter friend Jonathan Kash (@time2simplify) for the relay! Great stuff.