by Brian Focht | Oct 27, 2016
I’ve been lucky, and I have no problem admitting that. To date, I haven’t had a client who, either during or after completion of my representation, decided to burn me by posting a scathing negative review online. While I may have had a few clients that might have been inclined, I’ve done everything I could to manage the situation before it came to hostile words being shared to the world online. Like I said, that doesn’t necessarily make me good, it makes me lucky. Many other lawyers, unfortunately, haven’t been so lucky. I’m not talking about those lawyers who treated their clients casually, failed to return phone calls, or truly caused their clients harm through negative actions or omissions. They deserve all the ink they get. I’m talking about lawyers who, despite their best efforts, just couldn’t deliver what the client wanted or expected. Whether you deserve the online tongue-lashing you ended up getting or not, once it’s posted, you need to do something about it. And when I say “something,” I most certainly mean something OTHER than what these lawyers are accused of doing… You Should Already Know that Committing Fraud is Wrong, But Just So We’re Clear… If you haven’t heard the story, two lawyers have been engaging in “online reputation management” through some allegedly sketchy, unethical, and illegal means. According to a lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawyers would attempt to have negative reviews that had been posted on various sites online taken down. When a site refused, the lawyers would file a defamation lawsuit – either on... read more
by Brian Focht | Jul 25, 2016
You make sure nobody knows how to contact you! Last week, I had a little bit of free time at the office and decided to update my contacts (yes, I actually do this). Several contacts, as happens, were missing phone numbers, email addresses, and other information. Some were literally nothing more than a name that I’d saved to remind myself to follow up about something – the fact that they’re blank indicating that the reminder to follow up didn’t work. So as I looked around online for updated information on a bunch of attorneys I know, I ran into a problem I’d experienced in the past, and found remarkably frustrating – the information I was looking for was NOWHERE TO BE FOUND on the law firm website. “Ah, now I remember,” I thought to myself, “why so many of my contacts don’t have full information.” I also remembered exactly how frustrating it was when what seemed like such basic information was unavailable. Imagine how your prospective clients feel. Basic Contact Information is Nowhere to be Found on your Law Firm Website I mean NOWHERE. Sure, several of the bigger firms had downloadable vCards (extremely helpful, thank you), and some had the slightly less helpful listing of phone numbers and email addresses on attorney bio pages. However, the MAJORITY of law firm websites I visited did not list the email addresses for individual attorneys. Many also did not list direct phone numbers. A disturbingly large number of them also didn’t provide a phone number, and only provided a contact form on one page of their site. Once someone is on... read more
by Brian Focht | Feb 16, 2016
Creating a new website for your law firm, whether you’re opening up a new practice or updating a dated law firm, can be an immense task. I’d love to say that following this guide will allow you to put together a successful and profitable website in your spare time. It won’t. However, in this series, I will walk you through the critical steps of putting together an effective website. Some of those steps inform you to go get help from someone else. Unless you’re a veteran computer programmer, a marketing expert, and a practicing, there’s a lot that’ll probably be over your head. Don’t worry about it. In this four-part series, you’ll learn the basics of setting up a website that, as part of your overall marketing plan, will help convert visitors into clients, and give you a competitive advantage in your market. Part I: Getting Started Part II: Your Domain Name You have your domain name, now it’s time to get technical – first up on that list is finding the right web hosting service for your new website: Most people think of a website based on what they see. Well, this is the part that nobody sees. Just like a play, the most important elements to making sure what happens on stage is working right is performed out of sight. For your website, that’s what your web hosting and your platform are all about. We begin with web hosting. Understanding Your Web Hosting Needs: 5 Questions Before you begin searching for a web hosting provider, there are a couple of questions that you should ask yourself. Trust me, once you start... read more
by Brian Focht | Feb 9, 2016
You’ve finally decided to get into the game and develop a serious, well-designed website for your law firm. It’s got everything your prospective clients need. But they need to find it first. Sure, many visitors will be looking for you specifically, but you also want to rank well on more general searches. For that, you need to optimize your website – a process commonly known as Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”). You know that SEO is really important to do well, because it determines how your website ranks in various search engines, so you studied up. You fixed what you could, but you also got help from professional marketers. After spending considerable time – and money – you believe that you finally have a solid SEO strategy. The thing is, it’s all about to fundamentally change. How SEO Works: When someone performs a Google search, they enter words or phrases about what they want to find. Google, with a mission to provide the best possible results (and thereby keep people using their search), uses their vaunted algorithm to find the best websites. Relying on a complex list of criteria, Google provides the best possible websites based on two primary criteria: relevance and authority. For more information on how SEO plays into that assessment, check out this post. For 15 years, Google has constantly tweaked its algorithm to provide the best search results, and punishing sites that have used shortcuts to improve ranking. Google remains the most used search engine in the world, so your website – and your related digital marketing – is designed to bring people to your website... read more
by Brian Focht | Dec 16, 2015
Special Guest: Jason Marsh Download this Episode: Download Audio For most law firms, all business is local. Given the nature of our profession – we’re licensed by the state and expected to completely understand the psyche of judges and jurors where we practice – it’s really no wonder. People want a lawyer that understands their situation, their city, and has had drinks with the judge. So it’s really not a surprise that, like politics, a law practice really is “local.” So when your prospective clients are looking for an attorney, they’re likely going to be looking for someone in their area. So what’s the best way to make sure that when someone is looking for an attorney online, your name appears? By maximizing your Local SEO. How is Local SEO different from regular SEO? As I discussed with our podcast guest, Jason Marsh, Local SEO isn’t really a wholly separate, distinct element of SEO. However, it’s also not entirely confined within basic SEO. The most accurate way to describe it would be to consider it a bit of a tangential offshoot of SEO, with its own unique attributes. Regular Search Engine Optimization is “the process of affecting the visibility of a website… in a search engine’s unpaid [or “organic”] results. General SEO strategies combine a knowledge of how search engines work – such as an understanding of the Google Algorithm and what it likes – with what people search for (a.k.a. keywords, key phrases, etc.). Your general SEO strategy involves making sure your website has the proper code, is easily crawled and indexed by search engines, uses the best keywords for your... read more
by Brian Focht | Nov 12, 2015
Special Guest: Dan Weeks Download this Episode: Download Audio Name one thing that all lawyers hate. And you can’t even say “BlueBook” anymore, because it’s kind of become a little bit of a joke. Advertising. All lawyers hate advertising. Ok, so it’s probably not totally true. I’m sure there are a few who like it. But I’d be willing to bet that any survey of lawyers in this country would bear me out on that. I’d imagine the percentage of lawyers answering “hate with the hellfire of Satan himself” would go even higher if we asked specifically about online marketing. View image | gettyimages.com Why do lawyers hate online marketing? Setting aside the (somewhat) accurate line about lawyers hating business, there has to be a more specific reason why lawyers hate dealing with advertising. It could be that, as a profession, we’re embarrassingly bad at it. I mean, like HUGE embarrassingly bad. Why do lawyers suck at online marketing? But I actually thing it’s something a little more cerebral: we don’t understand it. We don’t know what works, what doesn’t, or why. How can we do something better if we don’t know what works? Sadly, most of us pick one of two options: we ignore it or we accept the advice of third-party vendors blindly. The results suck, and it’s long past friggin’ time to STOP that crap! I doubt that I have the actual mental endurance to truly protest, but we need to start an uprising here! As a profession, let’s all agree to generate ads that don’t suck, and to take an active role in promoting our law... read more
by Brian Focht | Aug 3, 2015
Creating a new website for your law firm, whether you’re opening up a new practice or updating a dated law firm, can be an immense task. I’d love to say that following this guide will allow you to put together a successful and profitable website in your spare time. It won’t. However, in this series, I will walk you through the critical steps of putting together an effective website. Some of those steps inform you to go get help from someone else. Unless you’re a veteran computer programmer, a marketing expert, and a practicing, there’s a lot that’ll probably be over your head. Don’t worry about it. In this four-part series, you’ll learn the basics of setting up a website that, as part of your overall marketing plan, will help convert visitors into clients, and give you a competitive advantage in your market. Check out Part I: Getting Started Once you’ve figured out how your website can best serve your prospective clients, you need to secure a domain name: Secure A Quality Domain Name My God, we’ve finally reached something techy-sounding. This is what you came for! Now it feels like you’re actually building a website. So we start with a pretty important part, your website’s name. There are two components to your website’s domain name: the Top-Level Domain (“TLD”) and the appropriately named Second-Level Domain (“SLD”). These two components are probably the reverse of what you expect. Choosing a Top-Level Domain Name The most popular TLD, as you probably know, is .com. However, there are a number of potential TLDs that you probably use fairly regularly: .net .org .edu .gov .biz... read more
by Brian Focht | Jul 27, 2015
Creating a new website for your law firm, whether you’re opening up a new practice or updating a dated law firm, can be an immense task. I’d love to say that following this guide will allow you to put together a successful and profitable website in your spare time. It won’t. However, in this series, I will walk you through the critical steps of putting together an effective website. Some of those steps inform you to go get help from someone else. Unless you’re a veteran computer programmer, a marketing expert, and a practicing, there’s a lot that’ll probably be over your head. Don’t worry about it. In this four-part series, you’ll learn the basics of setting up a website that, as part of your overall marketing plan, will help convert visitors into clients, and give you a competitive advantage in your market. In my experience, there are four types of law firm websites: Call to Action-centric This website has one goal, to get you to perform one specific action. It could be clicking on a link, it could be dialing a phone number, it could be participating in a contest. Regardless, you know exactly what that one thing is, no matter where you are on the site. Information/Expertise-Sharing This website is less direct than the Call to Action-centric site. The company operating this website knows that its prospective clients aren’t going to make up their mind in 8 seconds. It might take days, weeks, months or even years. The goal is to make sure that, through providing information and demonstrating expertise, when the time comes, the website visitor thinks... read more
by Brian Focht | Jun 29, 2015
Your website is how you’re found, it’s as simple as that. There are no attorneys anymore who are both looking to bring in new clients and in a position that they don’t need an effective website. Even if recommended by a close friend, family member or business associate, you’d be foolish to assume that anyone who walks into your office didn’t look you up first. They did. So what did they find? I’ve discussed a number of different content-based issues on this blog, but today I want to address something a little bit different. The reason for that is quite simple – no matter how beautiful or expensive your website is, it’s worthless if it doesn’t convert visitors into clients. There are a lot of variables, for sure. However, without certain elements, you’re wasting important opportunities to grow your client base. Here are the 8 critical components of your law firm website: 1) Client-focused… everything I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Your website isn’t about YOU! It’s about how you will SOLVE your potential clients’ problems. Guess what, nothing that you did on the moot court board in law school is going to do a damn thing about your prospective clients’ problems. Period. Everything from your home page, to your practice areas, to your attorney bio pages, to your contact form, should be about how your law firm can solve your visitors’ problems. Believe me, very few people visit a law firm website for the hell of it. They’re on your site because they need, or will soon need, a lawyer. Make sure your content always lets them know... read more
by Brian Focht | Jun 12, 2015
This is a guest post by Stephan Roussan, the founder of ICVM Group. “I don’t need to update my website, because all of my business comes from referrals.” This is one of the most common excuses for having an outdated or neglected website – or for lacking one altogether. But in today’s online world, it’s a risky stance that will cost you future business. Personal referrals and word-of-mouth may have been enough to sustain a law practice in the past, but that is quickly changing. With little exception, the first thing potential clients do is visit your website to learn more about you – even if they first heard about you from a friend. The Modern Referral Chain Requires An Online Presence With legal fees today, fewer are the clients who will simply take someone else’s word for it and hire you without further due diligence. Given the financial investment required, and what may be at stake in the outcome of the matter, online research has moved front and center in the evaluation process. If the general population today isn’t willing to buy a toaster without reading a host of online reviews, they will certainly not be hiring lawyers without similar scrutiny. If you’re still not convinced, don’t forget that there are also other audiences who may be frequenting your website. Opposing counsel, bar association peers, potential recruits, firm alumni and members of the media are all routine visitors of law firm websites. It’s in your best interest to have it reflect the level of your expertise. Word-Of-Mouth Is Necessary, but Not Sufficient, for an Effective Referral Network The... read more
