A quick note to mention our client JD Supra was featured in the New York Times this past Sunday.

The article, titled Lawyers Open Their File Cabinets for a Web Resource, also included a number of individuals from site’s growing community including Mitchell Matorin, Marc Stern, and Elena Garella. Keeping contributors front-and-centre has been a big part of the JD Supra approach, and often reflected by posts in the JD Scoop blog. … I was really happy to see that tone get carried forward in the story.

On a related note, I posted some thoughts yesterday on the benefits of work product sharing for legal consumers. Specifically, I cited:

• The ability to read these documents & become better informed;
• Increased reliability of documents where Lawyers take public ownership of them;
• Researching legal issues within a collection of vetted documents;
• Ability to identify a lawyer with rare experience (& not worth the lawyer’s effort to market);
• Ability to identify expertise by geographic region or practice area;

For the consumer, exposure to work product is valuable because it helps in making better decisions. It also offers a more complete digital picture of the lawyer in question. But the interesting part, and this is consistent with most forms of web marketing, is that this influence & judgement process takes place in the absence of the lawyer, and prior to the initial contact.

Think about this. Unlike giving a presentation, or a word-of-mouth referral, a significant portion of the sales process is taking place before the potential client engages - or even contacts - the lawyer. This is one of the fundamental differences in the way the web works. Great personalities don’t count unless the prospect picks up the phone or writes an email. And even the best web metrics software cannot tell you exactly how much consideration your services received.

The job of the legal web marketer is to see the many facets of this digital picture. To select pieces of the puzzle, evaluate the fit for the lawyer or firm, and then to frame-up an incredibly positive pre-contact image. Our job is also to increase exposure, but without a good accurate picture - we’re done.

My take: Sharing work product can be a big part of describing the multi-dimensional nature of legal practice. With other web offerings doing nothing more than commoditizing legal services ($139 incorporations?), sites like JD Supra should be embraced. Without a wide selection of digital tools to demonstrate the value of legal work… it’s a slippery slope, and a long way down. But that’s just my take. :)

I exchanged emails with Jordan Furlong a couple weeks back on how we might improve the Scoop section of JD Supra. Nothing huge, just kicking around how we might help reporters decipher from source documents to the underlying story.

If you already read Jordan’s blog - law21.ca - you know he’s got lots of great ideas. So as Adrian just noted over on JD Scoop, we were very thankful when Jordan made an unexpected & very generous offer - to create this new guideline: JD Tips: Writing for The Scoop. To show people how to make those headlines & descriptions pop in front of a reporter’s eyes!

I highly recommend you link over and read the piece in its entirety. Here are section headings to get you started…

1. Think like a reporter.
2. Mainstream or legal media?
3. Identify your objective.
4. Get your client onboard.
5. Choose a great title.
6. Write a great lead.
7. Don’t write like a lawyer.
8. Include contact information.

Sounds a bit like writing a press release, right? It is. For me, Jordan’s article illustrates a fundamental point about marketing online content: the old adage of ‘If you build it, they will come‘ doesn’t work. Never has. Even the best content requires exposure, an intended audience, a grabbing headline, and a simplified description. And exactly like a press release: Always presume your offering will be scanned, and never read.

Many thanks to Jordan for this wonderful contribution!

Following up on yesterday’s JD Supra launch post, I’d like to illustrate how The Scoop portion of the site works. I don’t believe either of the following two stories have hit Google news yet, but both are supported by some of the latest legal filings under The Scoop:

• In re Dell, Inc. ERISA Litigation laintiff’s Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Motion to Dismiss - “The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York are investigating claims that Dell inflated financial results by engaging in improper revenue recognition and accounting practices. Dell began reducing sales and profit projections as the Company began missing its own revenue, earnings per share and unit sales growth targets, causing significant declines in its stock price.”
• Perfect 10 v Google (Amended) Opinion - “… While it leaves some questions open, the bottom line is that the Court upheld important policies of fair use and freedom online and resisted Perfect 10’s plea to put copyright owners completely in charge of how and when search engines and other online intermediaries can provide their users with links to images. EFF filed an amicus brief on behalf of Google to beat back Perfect 10’s overreaching copyright claims.”

Now I’m not a journalist, but can certainly imagine how the first document could turn into a story like “SEC Investigates Dell Accounting Practices“; or how a journalist could have fun with the second document, and publish “EFF Defends Google Too“, reflecting that Google isn’t always the bad guy when it comes to EFF support.

For lawyers & law firms, The Scoop is a real opportunity to work with the media. To get your court filings & decisions working on your behalf. And for investigative journalists looking for unique stories, it’s a great tool to monitor possible leads that are backed up with substance.

Sounds like a winning proposition for everyone. Right?

Stem Legal is proud to congratulate client JD Supra on today’s launch of their new website & accompanying blog - JD Scoop! JD Supra is a new website dedicated helping lawyers & law firms share legal documents, forms, pleadings, judgements, research, and other professional support materials.

As I wrote a few months back, I think JD Supra is going to stand out because of the site’s approach - there’s a definite collection mandate for the content & a targeted community of contributors. As a foundation for any website, that’s a huge starting point.

I also love this site’s ability to link a lawyer’s marketing presence back to substantive work product. It just makes sense. Not only does it create an incentive for sharing work product and a useful tool to help others, but it represents a qualification tool to measure professional experience. Whether you’re looking to hire a lawyer, or a member of the media needing a quote in a niche subject area, finding a lawyer who can backup their claim of expertise is important. Don’t just tell me you’ve got 20 years experience, show me your track record!

JD Supra enables that. And that’s unique.

The other aspect I’m really proud of is how the community is rounding out. The fact that both big firms and solos are seeing the value to participating. On one side we have larger firms like Morrison Foerster, Mintz Levin, Lane Powell and my former Canadian law firm Clark Wilson. And on the other side, great contributions from solos like Lisa Solomon, Doug Cornelius, Amy Becerra, Mitchell Matorin and Stem client Florida criminal lawyer Ron Chapman. Add in academics like John Hagan, interest groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Cato Institute, and you can just imagine the content mix we’re heading for.

So I offer my congratulations to the entire JD Supra team… Adrian Lurssen, Eliot Gersten, Larry Bodine, Brittanie Williams, the group at POP Interactive, and especially JD Supra’s founder Aviva Cuyler. I know everyone will continue to work hard on improving this website, especially in the coming days, but launch day is always a milestone. A time to celebrate… This site has a huge future ahead!

The February edition of my Web Law Connected column is now posted over on Slaw. In this month’s article, Closed Networks & The Problem with Facebook, I address some of my biggest concerns with social networks (or any web product for that matter) that attempt to exist in a vacuum.

This is a bit of a turn-around for me. I’ve always liked the potential of Facebook, and what it could potentially deliver for professional networking. And for the most part, I still see that potential. But, as it exists, with a distinct lack of content ownership for authors, and its data stores shut down to the rest of the Internet (including Google indexing), my opinion is definitely headed south.

Now, I’m not advocating that lawyers go and shut down their accounts. At least not yet. :) But I do think it’s time for everyone to ask the question: Is this the best use of my marketing time & effort?

Writing this article also pushed me to reconsider how I approach Facebook. I want to be investing my marketing time into public-facing web technologies, like blogging or micro-blogging, and specifically in tools where I maintain control over the original content. I will continue to import my content into the Facebook sytem - eg. automating the imports of blog posts or twitter exchanges. And I still see value in having a Facebook profile. The small amount of time it takes to manage FB relationships frankly isn’t prohibitive. But when it comes to drafting original commentary, or documenting anything important via their in-system messages, I’m afraid I’m out. That type of content must always be free for me to use, and at my whim.

I’m going to break a personal rule today. I don’t normally reproduce entire blog posts, but this is a situation where I was the original source of the content, and I really like what the exchange says. So I’ll make an exception. :)

Quoted below is a Q&A session published this past Friday by Lexblog’s Rob La Gatta. It’s fairly concise, but I think it reveals a lot about my personal approach to law firm SEO — what it is; qualifying an SEO to help sell professional services; why good SEO is often misunderstood; and why blog commentary can be an important piece to the puzzle.

1. Rob La Gatta: In layman’s terms, what is the purpose of search engine optimization?

Steve Matthews: Keeping this as jargon free as possible, I would say ‘SEO’ or search engine optimization is about using search engines like Google to expose ’something’ to the right audience. When it comes to marketing professional services, that ’something’ can refer to the firm brand, a service line, a lawyer’s individual profile, articles & content, or some combination thereof.

Firms that employ an SEO strategy build a portfolio of search terms targeted around their subject or service expertise. Those firms know exactly which phrases are being searched for because they utilize keyword research tools. Pages are selected as ‘landing pages’ for particular keyword combinations, and then optimized to rank well. And to rank well, pages must be properly coded to reflect the subject of choice, and more importantly, be cited - via links - from other web pages on that same topic.

2. Rob La Gatta: As the Internet expands and the value of high search rankings becomes more apparent, it seems like there are a lot of so-called “SEO specialists” coming out of the woodwork. How can someone tell whether an SEO consultant is legitimate?

Steve Matthews: I would start with a cursory review of their work. Ask to see a comparable client in a different market, and see how their site ranks. While requests for client confidentiality do occur, most professionals should be able to give samples of their work.

I would also listen to their proposed strategies, and specifically how they intend to acquire links to your website. Remember, your site will be evaluated by the company you keep. I would also make sure they understand marketing professional services, and have experience beyond product-based search marketing.

The difficult part of the evaluation will be telling if the practitioner has the skill to rank for highly competitive search phrases. I would ask to see some of their top results for two word search phrases. Rankings gets increasingly difficult as the number of words in the search decreases. If he or she can hit a top-10 rankings for two word searches (and preferably two words that combine for a recognizable phrase), that would be a good sign they are capable to building your firm a ‘portfolio’ of three word searches.

One last hint: if you’re not sure which searches are competitive, have a look at the number of accompanying advertisements or ’sponsored links’ on the right hand side of the page. Paid results almost always correspond with desirable, and usually competitive, search terms.

3. Rob La Gatta: What would you say is the biggest misconception people have about SEO and its purpose?

Steve Matthews: One of the biggest misconceptions I come across is the belief that SEO is somehow based upon programming tricks. I routinely run into people who believe that SEO is no more than stuffing keywords into the meta tags or title tags, or that if you *gasp* stuff keywords into your marketing copy you’ll get to the top of search results.

My take is that a successful search strategy can be broken down into: 30% on-page factors, and 70% off-page factors. It’s much more important to have a quality network of links coming into your website than to let someone alter your message. And when you do hit those top rankings, it’s the pages with quality copy that will convert to leads.

Here are the facts: Marketing copy should be drafted for its intended audience, and always be natural. A good SEO should be able to work with clean copy and make it rank. That doesn’t mean that on-page factors aren’t important - as an example, well designed title tags are very important - but a good rule of thumb in my books is that SEO should never trump exposing your firm brand or alter your marketing copy.

4. Rob La Gatta: I’ve read that blogs naturally perform better in search engines than static websites. Do you believe this is true? If so, why?

Steve Matthews: Not to be picky, but we must compare apples to apples here.

Blog software is classed as a Content Management System, or “CMS”, and most modern CMS products already have the on-page SEO factors baked into their product. If we’re talking about hand-coding static web pages, then yes, a developer could overlook some of the basics - which would make it seem like blogging software has an advantage. But otherwise, most web designers will employ a CMS, and these products can compete with blog software.

The practice of blogging, however, does bring a number of attributes to the table that are unique.

First of all, blogs are content based marketing, and the breadth of content that a blog can deliver is very powerful. What many people are calling the long tail, blogs allow an author to cast a very wide net around their subject of expertise. And it’s this ever-growing body of work that gets indexed within the search engines.

Situated properly, a professional blog can build individual lawyer’s profile, and work as a more casual lead-in tool for the firm’s website, which is geared more toward services, expertise and experience. In other words, get to know the lawyer in question, and then decide if that person is qualified. Even with SEO, you must consider the entire online decision making process.

The second SEO factor I’ll note is the number of trusted citations that blogs produce. Lawyers need to understand that links are the currency of the web, and that blogs are not just a publication opportunity. If they were, why wouldn’t you just convert all your newsletters into blog software? It doesn’t work. It’s only when blog authors engage the social side of blogging, and begin to link out to other bloggers (who eventually reciprocate) that blogs begin to have a dominant effect on the search results.

A big thank-you to both Rob La Gatta and Kevin O’Keefe at Lexblog for this opportunity! The Lexblog Q&A series is very distinguished company, and I feel very lucky to have been included.

You may have noticed all the new websites recently - LegalPubs.ca, Lawblogs.ca, the Clawbies. While mostly associated with the Canadian legal market, there’s also larger long-term goal in play here: to develop quality legal web content. This network will not remain entirely Canadian, and the number of websites will not stop at five. My goal for Stem is to expand this group of sites to 12 by the end of the first year of operations, in August/08.

So to that end, I offer a new page that defines Stem’s legal web publishing network.

It’s no secret that I have an open view to web publishing and advertising. I don’t care much for conceptual barriers when it comes to developing content online. Whether a concept evolves from me directly, working with a client, partnering, advertising, or integrated with SEO, the end purpose is the same. You must do something of substance to get noticed online (ie. the attention economy), and how that occurs really doesn’t matter.

These additions reflect my wider vision for Stem, and also how I believe web marketing will be done in the future. Word of mouth advertising can have a huge impact; and while I am contractually protected from having to endorse clients and their projects, it’s often very easy for me to do. Mostly because I am advising or developing with the client, rather than being an outside third party. When you’ve been working for months on a site, or developing a strategy for someone, supporting the end product with an endorsement isn’t unreasonable. It’s very natural.

I would also direct your attention to the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog which is now sporting Stem’s first featured client, BC Legislation service Quickscribe.

Is this advertising? Well, yes and no. While I am promoting Quickscribe’s services, my endorsement is based on months of talking strategy with Mike Pasta, Quickscribe’s President. And back in October when I blogged about Mike’s Legislative RSS product, I did so because I believe it’s world class!

Advertising? Endorsements? Marketing with quality content? Yes friends, the lines are blurring. It needs to be done with the audience’s interests in mind. But then again, good quality advertising is always in that realm, without offending anyone.

And again, it must always be backed with substance.

One of the biggest areas of unexplored territory in legal web marketing these days is the power of RSS, or real simple syndication.

I’ve written in the past on the use of RSS in law firms (see here and here), and how those in the legal industry can be better consumers of information using this technology. However, for those of us on the marketing side of things, the best opportunities for RSS right now are in publishing, not consuming.

A great example, Infolaw’s Nick Holmes over in the UK has mixed together the content of 13 different family law blogs into a single feed using Yahoo Pipes. Now, Nick has followed up in a comment saying this was ‘no big deal’, but I’ll tell you what is a big deal: the opportunity this type of feed mixing offers to law firms and their web presence.

Many law firms are slowly adopting and getting onto the RSS bandwagon. And that’s great! For firms that don’t currently offer it, I hope there’s a plan in place to syndicate soon. I guarantee you’ll be hearing a lot more about RSS in 2008.

Now that said, once you do have your content RSS enabled, the next obvious question is — what are you going to do with it?

Your firm website will offer those feeds, probably running through a tracking service like Feedburner to get a subscriber count. But then what?

This is where the mixing that Nick has done comes in. For another example, check out Stem’s feed mix of Canadian legal publications; it was created using Yahoo pipes too. The power comes from taking these feeds and combining (or mixing) them. Content can take a completely different flavour, and be directed at a completely different audience when using this technique.

And most important, be automated to extend the firm’s content reach with no further effort by lawyers or staff!

Law firms frequently put together cross-disciplinary service groups, either for a target industry, or a specific client. Imagine being able to take the various online commentary from your contributing internal groups, and combine it to create a new dedicated product. Or, imagine being able to filter everything the firm publishes for the keyword “environment” and publish it to a new online location, and then directing those clients interested in environmental issues.

For me, that’s why law firms should take notice. RSS is easy, it’s cheap, and is probably the most flexible new technology the web currently has to offer.

Taking a break from web strategy content here, I’d like to highlight a couple of new Stem Legal websites:

• First up and just launched yesterday, my Canadian Law Blogs List which started life in September 2005 as a VLLB blog post has now been moved to its own website at LawBlogs.ca. The list will remain open (& free) to any Canadian blogging lawyer, law librarian, legal marketer, legal tech specialist, or paralegal.
• The second site, launched on November 1st, is LegalPubs.ca. The purpose of LegalPubs (as you might guess from the name) is to produce a one-stop-shop for newly released Canadian legal publications. The site uses RSS technology to automatically aggregate new book titles from Canada Law Book, Thomson-Carswell, Irwin Law, CCH Canadian, and LexisNexis Canada. Canada is one of the first countries in the world to have our major legal publishers on-side with RSS technology, and this site really showcases how RSS can extend the reach of existing web content.

For me, these websites reflect my larger vision for Stem, and that the concept of ‘profile building’ is more than just being a consultant or an industry-based SEO service. I want Stem to evolve into a service that helps with the big picture, making sure all the factors are working together - audience profiling, web advertising, SEO, web publishing, cohesive branding, etc. … And the way you do that, from my perspective, is to get involved in what you’re preaching. How can you possibly advise on website marketing if you haven’t executed yourself? How can you advise on law blogging if you aren’t a blogger yourself? Experience is critical, and while I think I could rely on personal history, executing in the present (and the future) is just as important.

I hope to continue the Stem network expansion in 2008! And maybe in late 2007… :-)

One of the new features on Slaw (the Canadian co-op blog on law, technology and research) is a revolving set of weekly articles. The idea is to engage some of the regulars (and some new blood) to go beyond our usual blogging exchanges and craft something a bit more substantial.

This week it’s my turn… I’m kicking off a series titled Web Law Connected, with the first article addressing Thought Leadership and the building of online expertise within the legal profession.

Future articles in this series will tackle the subjects of legal web brands, finding the business development spin to new web technologies, and connecting online exposure to lead creation & sales. Basically more of the stuff I’m working on here at Stem. :-)

Expect some catch-up blogging this week on my part. Now that the PLTC conference and a couple of projects are winding down, I’m due.

Search Engines are still a big part of the digital lifestyle. With all the talk of blogs, wikis and social networks these days, it’s easy to lose sight that very few web applications have the ongoing impact of online searching. And in living that digital lifestyle, I feel pretty confident to say that most everyone who reads this post will have been exposed to their handy work - that of Search Marketers.

Search marketing goes by two primary names (and acronyms): search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). Name wise, I’m not that particular which people use. Personally, I tend to stick with the original ‘SEO’ term. Mostly because that’s the term I learned first, and because the industry has never fully removed the term from its vocabulary.

The Question of Credibility

While every industry has image problems, if you do any investigation at all you will find SEO has more than most. Often accused of gaming the search results, or facing ethical questions regarding their strategies & techniques (See: white hat vs black hat), it’s very easy to overlook the core purpose to their business - to help match content to its appropriate audience. And for a law firm’s online presence, I consider this to be fundamental.

If you want to expose your firm’s content, it is not enough to simply build webpages and hope for the best. You must employ a strategy to get your chosen content in front of its target audience. In-house newsletters, email marketing, content syndication, etc. are all wonderful pieces to your marketing puzzle, but are more effective at marketing to existing clients.

Extending Legal Brands via SEO

If firms wish to stretch out their online branding efforts - for whatever reasoning they choose - they must expose their content to new audiences. And to that end, the search engines continue to be a the number one tool available to drive new readership.

The reasons why a law firm would employ an SEO strategy are numerous. Off the top of my head, I can think of a number of possible scenarios:

1. The firm is looking to increase exposure for a new office in a regional market;
2. Lawyer profile pages aren’t ranking for their areas of practice expertise;
3. The firm is a market leader and sees a top search ranking as a ‘must have’;
4. The firm wishes to increase market share for lucrative or high-margin area of practice;
5. A competitive regional practice, where service pages are buried beyond the second page of search results;
6. The firm has a new or innovative service offering, and seeks the first strike advantage;
7. The firm is a boutique practice without geographic boundaries, and simply needs a top-10 listing to turn volume;

We could probably push this list a lot further, but no need. The reasoning behind ‘why do firms do SEO’ isn’t nearly as commanding as the equation of supply & demand. The difficult truth is that there are only so many ranked positions available: 10, in fact. Maybe 20.

There’s also the fact of diminished returns within those results. The top position for some search phrases can be the equivalent of having the only full-page advertisement in the yellow pages . Reports have shown the top search position to receive as many as 42% of the available clicks. On the bottom side of that comparison, rankings between position #11 and #100 will share as few as 11% of the clicks available. Suffice to say, ranking on that first page is more than a desirable. If firms wish to use Search as a marketing tool, chances are those first page results are going to be a must have.

SEO is a topic that I will be posting more on in the future. It’s a topic that, especially within the legal realm, deserves to be known for more than hucksters and gaming of the search engines. For the past 10+ years I’ve worked on various strategies to get content & brands in front of web audiences. It’s important in any type of marketing to engage new target audiences, and especially over the web, SEO is a great method to do just that.

One of the intended effects of starting this business was to force me to focus. You see, I’ve always been this multi-discipline kind of guy — web marketer, KM practitioner, coder developer, law librarian, etc. (you can check the About page, or my profile, if you don’t know me) — lots of interests and lots of hats, but always with a web-information delivery bent, and always within the legal market.

I’ve also tried to recognize that it was those varying interests that tied me together; gave me my perspective. And while I’m appreciative of my time working in law firms, it was the opportunity to roll those skills into a single focus that drove me to the Stem concept.

Beyond worrying about the company’s financial viability [Note to concerned friends: it’s going better than expected! stop worrying…], my biggest concern coming out the gate has been the possibility of losing my connection to the things that interest me, like Knowledge Management. And so, even in the earliest stages of my business plan, I made myself this promise: Along the way, I reserve the right to work on projects that I believe in.

That doesn’t mean I want to be a KM consultant. Trust me, there’s only one Ron Friedmann. [that’s a plug btw, in case you missed it. ;-) ]

It just so happens that I love the KM literature — the puzzle of how to codify knowledge & expertise, and what that information tells us. I also believe there’s a strong link from internal KM collections to the development of online marketing product. But that’s another post…

So, Day 1 of operation, I come down to my new office. Out of the HSBC building in downtown Vancouver, and into my newly retooled office, a.k.a. my basement. :-) My voice mail is flashing, and the person on the other end is Aviva Cuyler, a lawyer in the San Francisco bay area. Cool, a great way to start!

Well, she wasn’t inquiring for her firm, but I found the call no less interesting. We talked for a good hour. About her new website - JD Supra. About lawyer work product, and what it can tell about an individual’s expertise - especially within niche areas of the law. How research and filings and court successes can qualify a lawyer’s knowledge & experience. And how in a world where everyone ’says’ they’re an expert, this new website has the chance to ‘prove’, or at least validate, that a lawyer can execute what they’ve said they can.

Now she’s got my KM interest - a qualification tool that would tie work product to professional profile. A tool that would give credit to the lawyers and firms that contribute, including logos and links back to their firm website. Perhaps a future that includes some Community 2.0 tools? collaboration? networking opportunities? My mind is now working overtime.

So there it is. I’m sold. If there’s a better fit for all those varying interests of mine, I’m not sure what it would be. Aviva Cuyler’s vision is unique, and yet well aligned to the type of product I would conceive of myself. I think JD Supra is set to become an important web 2.o offering for the legal industry. And that’s why I’m signing on.

I’ll say more soon, and sorry about the month-early tease (launch is slated for late September 2007). If you’re a legal researcher, writer, or gatekeeper for in-house precedents, there is an early bird opportunity for those willing to contribute. You can sign up on the JD Supra homepage or email Aviva directly to get involved.