Well, another great Avvo Tour. This time we had the pleasure of giving five speeches in four days in the mighty cities of DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. Once again, we learned all sorts of things on this trip. Let me offer a few:

1. We bring the rain wherever we go. Florida had the downpour. The Northeast just had Seattle-like cloudy skies and drizzle the whole time. While this made us feel at home, no Seattleite really wants to feel at home when they are on the road – just as no Siberian wants to feel at home on the road. We need sun man!

2. Carolyn Elefant draws a crowd. Carolyn spoke with us in DC and Baltimore, and she is a true thought leader with her MyShingle blog and fantastic book, Solo by Choice . In DC, Carolyn spoke off the top of her head for 30 minutes regarding marketing, networking and practicing law. After her presentation (and a long break), I had to shoo away the crowd around her so that we could start the next segment. If Carolyn is speaking near you, go see her. She knows of that which she speaks.

3. Jon Frieden got into social media because of dead cats. Honest. He tells a great story about how he defended a Virginia woman over her 500 cats, some dead and in the freezer. The story got so much press that his Internet persona became the “Dead Cat Lawyer.” To combat this, he started blogging and working social media to reflect his broader skill set (he represents people with dogs too). OK, the dog parts a joke – Jon is an accomplished litigator in Fairfax Virginia. Thank you Jon for your great presentations.

Carolyn, Mark and Jon. Photo Courtesy of Legal BizNow

4. Baltimore and Philly brought out Jon Katz and Kelly Erb (aka “Tax Girl”). Sadly, I missed Tax Girl’s talk due to my ABA speech. However, Conrad said she was fantastic – talking about being an early DIYer and building a solid core web presence. Jon Katz talked at length regarding how working on 1st Amendment lobbying issues pulled him into the blogosphere and social media in general. Thank you Jon and Kelly for your valuable thoughts – you both generated some great conversations among the crowd.

5. Philly has some great food. Conrad (who is originally from Jersey but spent a number of years in Philly) took us to Pat’s in South Philly for a traditional cheese steak. While I loved the food, I was amazed at the price: $51 for three cheese steaks, fries and soda. Watch for Avvo’s House of Cheese Steak coming soon.

6. The ABA can draw a crowd. I spoke at the ABA Law Practice Management Conference. What fun. I had the chance to meet the head of Martindale’s ratings strategy (step 1: Copy Avvo’s ratings) as well as people from Superlawyers, Best Lawyers and Law Dragon. It’s always interesting to spend time with one’s competitors. I couldn’t help but show this slide during our speech showing Avvo poised to be – if not already – the most trafficked legal directory on the Web (Avvo is in blue).

7. NYCLA rules. NYCLA has one of the grandest meeting halls in the bar world and they filled it wall-to-wall with lawyers. The facilities were great and the crowd was better. Thank you NYCLA for such a great event.

8. Our New York panel was off the charts. We had Tony Colleluori, Jeena Belil and Ari Kaplan. Each one of these people can TALK. I had to do little moderating. They were so full of good ideas, and spurred so many great questions from the crowd that I just had to let these guys talk. Tony spoke to leveraging the Web for an already successful law practice. Even in a room full of New Yorkers, he dropped a lot of jaws with his straight talk on law firm marketing. Jeena spoke to building a new practice with online tools and marketing. Jeena was a long time in house lawyer who hung her own shingle, and look at her now! I regularly use Jeena as an example of effective DIY website. Finally, Ari Kaplan looked at things from a consultant’s perspective. He works with so many different firms on what works and doesn’t work on in the marketing and networking worlds that he was the perfect overlay for the our two practitioners. We even had someone in the crowd who had attended one of Ari’s webinars the day before and she said, “Are you really that Ari?” Ari is also a loyal graduate of George Washington University Law School, so you know he is sharp. :-)

Tony, Jeena, Ari and Mark at NYCLA. Photo by Andrea Cannavina

While on the subject of the NYCLA event, Andrea Cannavina tweeted from the event so you can get a feel for our great panel here. Also at the ABA event TheLaw.TV interviewed me after my presentation (they were covering the event for the ABA) and you can see the interview here.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the tour. Our next big event is the Avvocating Conference, January 21st and 22nd here in Sunny Seattle. We are having some of the biggest Web giants come speak to lawyers on Web strategies. We would love to see all of you here.

Mark

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 2:27 pm by Mark Britton, CEO and is filed under Avvo News, Mark Britton Posts, Marketing for Lawyers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.