We’re joining the “end of year” content game with our Best and Worst of 2008 Legal Marketing edition. Over the past 12 months, I’ve kept virtual and real folders of some great and horrendous examples. In no particular order, here are some of the highlights and lowlights:

Best Legal ’stache
Awesome mustache courtesy of Ben Levine at Leifer Levine and Associates. You just don’t see these every day.

Most Misleading Blog Headline
Brought to you by AmLaw Daily in the Talent section: If You Want More Women Partners . . .

Best URL
I’ll buy a microbrew for the prescient marketing intern who grabbed www.mofo.com for Morrison Foerster 16 years ago.

Most Gratuitous use of Pink
Paging Avril LaVigne: I count at least 8 shades of pink on the International Law Grrls site.

The Worst Advice on “The Best Elevator Pitch”
On his blog, legal marketing consultant Larry Bodine described what he considered the best lawyer elevator pitch:

When they ask me, ‘what do you do for a living?’ I answer I’m a Nazi medical researcher.”
The businessman will react with shock. “Then I say, ‘I was kidding. I just said that because I’m a lawyer.“

After widespread backlash, Bodine removed the post, as well as his initial response to those who complained:

“Thanks for all the comments on this post. No one could ever say that you’re acting as the Police of Political Correctness. Besides, you can’t have enough things that are PC anyway. Nobody would waste their time turning a quick joke into a highly-charged epithet. So keep those comments coming. Presumably you’ll manage to fit them in between protest marches against “The Producers” outside Mel Brook’s house and the orchestrated boycott of reruns of Hogan’s Heroes.” - Larry Bodine

Best Captivating Content
Go waste an hour browsing the photo gallery of cargo loss at international transportation lawyers, Countryman and McDaniel.

Best Legal Bulldog
I hate the gratuitous use of flash on a site, but Womble Carlyle’s Winston is very good.

Worst Legal Blog
Martindale made the odd decision to recreate blog technology on their own, struggled to find a blogging voice and required a MH log-in to post comments. They bravely acknowledge the shortcomings in a post “If at first you don’t succeed . . . , however, seem to have forgone the try try again part, mustering just 3 posts between Halloween and Christmas.

Best Legal Marketing Video
I love this video from Family/Divorce lawyer, Kelly Chang Rickert. Not only does she convey strength, aggressiveness and capability, but most importantly, she puts things in appropriate perspective. How many divorce attorneys have the guts to say: “Family is the most important thing in your life. If clients come to me and want a divorce but are unsure, I send them to counseling. If you can work it out you should.”

LinkedIn and Twitter Cheerleader Award
If you’d like to hear the “pro” side of the argument for Twitter or LinkedIn as legal marketing tools, just ask Kevin O’Keefe.

Worst Image on a Website
A dishonorable mention to every personal injury website with a picture of an ambulance. Click for list according to Google.

Worst Legal SEO Blunder
In an article titled Shame Shame Shame Findlaw, techie blogger Oilman blew the whistle on Findlaw’s Search Engine Marketing Product which violated Google’s webmaster guidelines against profiting from selling links to other websites.

Best name Truncation into a memorable URL
Lougovskaia Boop to www.lougoboop.com.

Laziest Headshot
Richard Grohman sports a smiley face created in what looks like Microsoft Paint.

I came across a great article called Good Law Firms Turning Virtual this morning by Stacy Clark that reviews the current state of legal marketing, given the Bates v. Arizona landmark case, 30 years ago. Very interesting read going in to 2009.

Earlier this year, Avvo successfully petitioned the New Jersey Supreme Court to release attorney licensing records - thus allowing Avvo to bring its service to the Garden State. Today, the NJ Supreme Court made another great decision, finding that the state’s prohibition on attorneys including comparative titles (e.g., “Super Lawyer”) in advertising is likely unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, the court didn’t tell the bar, in no uncertain terms, that restrictions on commerical speech must be narrowly-tailored and supported by specific findings of potential harm. Rather, it sent the decision back to the Bar’s advisory committees to craft new advertising rules that meet constitutional requirements. Expect to see more wackiness emerge from that process.

Co-founder and former CEO of Judy’s Book and well-known local angel investor Andy Sack blogged today about a $35 legal bill he received today.  He was billed for .10 of an hour at $350 per hour, equaling $35.  Ask yourself - would you send a bill like this?  Would you note the time but write it off and say Happy Holidays instead?

The Rod Blagojevich scandal dominates this week’s Lawyers in the News.  Rod, himself, is an attorney - a graduate of the Pepperdine University School of Law and a former Cook County Prosecutor.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was named one of People Magazine’s Sexies Men Alive in 2005.  His fame is now perhaps greater as the prosecutor who filed an indictment last week against Blagojevich for his attempts to sell the Illinois Senate seat vacated by President-Elect Obama.

Ed Ganson, a lawyer best known for helping to secure an acquittal for R. Kelly in his child pornography trial, has been retaine dby Blagojevich to defend him both in the federal prosecuting and in his impeachment trial.

image courtesy of grittycitygirl via Flickr Creative Commons License

MarketWatch Radio, a financial-news leader with a nation-wide listenership of almost 20 million, turned to Avvo to develop a story on how the financial crisis is impacting divorce rates.  Avvo surveyed top-rated divorce lawyers to determine what impact the economic meltdown has had on divorce rates, causes of divorce, and the growth in popularity of post-nuptial agreements.  The Avvo survey contains some suprising results - namely that divorce rates are going down and that interest in post-nuptial agreements is spiking up.

Here are two CNN Money segments (taped back to back) where I am talking about some of the legal pitfalls around starting a business and protecting intellectual property.

Segment #1: “Skip the legal fees”

Segment #2: “Protecting your ideas”

Thanks for the great interview(s) Poppy! Oh, and if anyone would like more free legal advice regarding the start-up world, they should c’mon over to Avvo Answers. We have a treasure trove of small business questions and answers.

Mark

p.s. I had problems opening these videos in Mozilla. If you have similar problems, you may want to try IE.

Last Friday, we had a white elephant exchange party here at the office.  Here are some of the choice items (thanks Jeannie for taking the photos):

two-year old gingerbread

mousetrap complete with cheese

stuffed stewie

For more White Elephant Exchange photos, become a member of Avvo Lawyers on Facebook.

I’ve posted before about the Louisiana attorney advertising rules and Public Citizen’s lawsuit to stop those rules from being implemented. The last few weeks have seen an additional lawsuit being filed, by the Wolfe law firm, whose specific concern is the extent to which the new rules would proscribe all manner of attorney electronic communication, from blogs to Twitter. We’ve also seen some questions from commentators about whether these concerns are overblown.

They aren’t. State bar advertising rules are among some of the worst form of regulation. Start with restrictive, often vague and/or bizarre rules around attorney communications. Have them administered by a committee comprised on non-lawyers and lawyer-competitors to those advertising. Put the stakes on defying the rules the potential loss of one’s livelihood.

The worst part is the brazenness of the enterprise. Bars are run by lawyers, who should be aware that attorney advertising, like all commercial speech, is afforded first amendment protection so long as it is not false, deceptive or misleading. They also know that any proposed restrictions on advertising must be, under the Supreme Court’s Central Hudson decision, narrowly-drawn restrictions that directly advance a substantial state interest.

Did Louisiana do any such analysis of their ad rules? Did they take any findings, do any studies showing, perhaps, that testimonials or references to a lawyer’s track record are inherently misleading or problematic for consumers? Did they learn from their opportunity to see how similar rules fared when challenged in New York? Did they pay heed to counsel offered by the FTC, which weighed in on the inadvisability – from the consumer protection perspective – of moving forward with such rules? Nope, on all counts. Stunningly, the state didn’t even offer a fig leaf to the Central Hudson standard. Instead, Louisiana has simply decided that its rules are necessary to protect the “dignity of the profession,” and First Amendment considerations can be hanged.

Fortunately, an increasing number of challenges are being filed to these overreaching rules, in Louisiana and elsewhere. At the end of the day, all but certain restrictions on egregious in-person solicitation are going to be knocked down for being patently unconstitutional. And that’s a good thing - those who regulate attorneys should have to occupy the same legal universe as the rest of us.

Seattle 2.0 ranks local startups based on publicly available user data. Look out Redfin, Urban Spoon and Jobster.