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

I write this on my flight back home to rainy Seattle after a week in tropical Florida. Man, was it hot . . . and muggy. Whenever, I pointed this out to a Floridian, he or she would say “This is nice – you should see summer.” I don’t think I should see summer. I’m not sure my Northwest cooling system is built for it. I left D.C. for a reason.

That being said, our week in Florida was immensely enjoyable. We had the pleasure of presenting in Miami, Palm Beach, Tampa and Orlando; and, as always, I was humbled by the turn-out combined with the intense interest in and/or appreciation for Avvo and social media in general.

I also learned a number of things on this tour. Here are 11 of them (“This one goes to 11 . . .”):

1. In Miami, restaurants do not stay open past 10:00 p.m. on Monday nights. Huh? Isn’t Miami supposed to be wild and crazy? This is a real problem if your flight arrives at midnight. We found ourselves standing at the window (no inside seating) of the local Checkers ordering enough calories to put down a horse.

2. It can REALLY rain in Florida. Even being from Seattle, we were impressed. Sadly, we were impressed while standing at the aforementioned Checkers window.

3. Mark Merenda of Smart Marketing is one funny guy. He had the crowd laughing multiple times in Miami, including offering the term “meat space” for the offline world (apparently cribbed from his 17-year-old son) and analogizing social media to atomic power (“it can be used to power cities; it can be used to blow up cities”). Thank you Mark for your entertaining and insightful thoughts.

4. Brian Tannebaum looks and is much younger than his social media pictures or his bulldog personality. While I won’t disclose his age, I will tell you that I am 42 and he is two years younger than me. I sincerely expected Brian to be in his late 40’s, early 50’s. Maybe it’s because he hangs around with Scott Greenfield so much. Here is Brian’s blog post on speaking at the Avvo seminar.

5. Rocket Matter is cool. In Miami and West Palm Beach, we had the luxury of watching Larry Port talk about Rocket Matter and how Rocket Matter is taking a lot of traditional software development best practices and applying them to law firm management. I hadn’t appreciated many of the parallels until seeing Larry’s speech. I am confident that Larry and Rocket Matter are going to go far – check them out at www.rocketmatter.com. Even if you don’t immediately buy his software, go see Larry the next time Rocket Matter comes to a speaking venue near you – Larry is a great public speaker. Here is Rocket Matter’s press release on the Avvo Tour.

6. Twitter is not hard. Some of the most-appreciated advice from the trip was Brian Tannebaum’s tutorial on using Twitter. I don’t even need to paraphrase – he said, “Get a twitter account and start using it, that’s all you need to know.” I loved this because more people need to be spreading the word that social media is not hard, scary or expensive. Lawyers simply need to be better at getting involved, and Brian hit this involvement point on the head.

7. Lawyers are not measuring ROI. One thing that we constantly preach is measuring ROI. Thanks in large part to the fat fees lawyers are used to shelling out for, say, the Yellow Pages, they will buy expensive marketing products without thinking through the ROI. Lawyers will spend thousands of dollars on a website, blog, PPC or other marketing tool without having any idea how much business it brings them. The sooner we can get lawyers making these calculations, the sooner the marketing cream will rise to the top. It is one of the reasons we are launching Avvo Pro, which the illustrious Bob Ambrogi so eloquently summed up in this blog post.

8. Central Florida is beautiful. We had to drive overland from West Palm Beach to Tampa. In between is some of the most beautiful farmland and ranchland I have set eyes on. It was a little bit Montana and a little bit Havana. Conrad and I agreed that it was a real treat getting to see a part of Florida that neither of us had ever seen before.

9. Dennis Chen doesn’t like to be called an “expert” in social media. Dennis Chen presented with us in Tampa and Orlando and, during the Tampa presentation, I referred to him as an expert more than once. Dennis is clearly a person of high integrity, and he said to me after the presentation that I probably shouldn’t refer to him as an expert regarding social media. Now, Dennis has four websites, participates on multiple social media sites, participates in listserves, runs his own PPC campaigns, answers questions in Avvo Answers and has a solid handle on SEO. He may not see himself as an expert; but he probably has more practical experience than many of the self-proclaimed social media “experts,” “mavens,” or (Conrad’s favorite) “ninjas” that are out there today.

10. There is a lot of artistic flair in the lawyers in Florida. One was a painter, another was working on a novel, etc. But the one who really surprised me was Terry Verduin from West Palm Beach. She has written two children’s books The Goopy Ghost of Halloween and The Amazing Flight of Little Ray, and she even brought them to the Avvo seminar. You can buy both of these books on Amazon – just follow the links above.

11. Many were watching us from afar. I received a number of DM’s from lawyers asking when we are coming to their area. Our mid-Atlantic tour kicks off the week of November 9th (one week from today) and we will be announcing new tours for 2010 before the end of the year. Also, we love to work into our tours speaking gigs for other organizations (like our ABA and NYCLA speeches next week). So, even if you are far away, if you would like us to come speak to your group, please let us know. We will always do our best to accommodate. You can also come see us at the sure-to-be-very-cool Avvocating conference, January 21st and 22nd in Seattle.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Avvo Tour. We had such a great time. We call the seminars our “depth charges” because they help people better understand who we are and what we are about, and consistently the attendees go back to their communities and spread the word. We also get to see first-hand the struggles that lawyers have in marketing under the demands of practicing law. This helps us build better products, Avvo Tours, webinars, etc. Finally, we find these tours to be so energizing because we are able to meet face to face those lawyers that rely on Avvo for client development. Every time a lawyer says to me, “I get a lot of business through you guys,” I want to weep. But as I said to the crowd in Orlando in response to one of these testimonials, that would be embarrassing for you and me.

Mark

We’re excited to tell you about our upcoming online marketing seminars for lawyers. At the end of  October we’ll be visiting four cities in Florida. Mid-November we’ll be making our way along the Mid-Atlantic Coast with stops in Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City.

Please join us for an afternoon to learn online marketing techniques from the experts–lawyers and marketing consultants that use the web everyday to generate new clients and maintain their existing ones.

Through a series of presentations, discussions and panels we’ll cover:

Core Web Presence: Learn how to develop a strategy around your online presence–and get the most out of Google, Twitter, Avvo, Facebook and more.

Google Analytics: Understand how to track online performance with Google Analytics–a free tool that shows you exactly how many people are coming to your site, what they are reading and where they are coming from.

Search Engine Optimization: Learn the basics of search engine optimization.

Ethics: Get up to speed on the Ethical Implications of Online Marketing.

Expert Panel: Explore the experiences of local attorneys who have fully engaged in a variety of online marketing initiatives. Learn what works, what doesn’t and what you can easily do for yourself.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Register for a Florida Seminar.
Register for a Mid-Atlantic Seminar.

At Avvo, we spend a lot of time on the Web, and more specifically in the blogosphere. We even offer our own blogging product designed to get more lawyers blogging. However, as more lawyers blog, some interesting personality types have evolved. I have tried to catch these blogging personalities below, at least the 10 most common; but feel free to suggest some of your own.

Keep in mind that some bloggers combine types – like the Bloprah and the Moser or the Bludgeon and the Puncher. And, for the record, I see myself as a combination between the Moser and the Bloater, while always pursuing the noble goal of being the Hitter. Whatever your type, you are already ahead of the game if you are blogging.

Top 10 Blogging Personalities

1. Bloprah – These are bloggers that want to be the Oprah of social media. They offer all sorts of thoughts on work/life balance, neat trends and their favorite products. Video montages of themselves are never hard to find. I had a prominent lawyer tell me once that, if a lawyer is looking for work/life balance, they probably shouldn’t be a lawyer. While correct, this lawyer would be shunned by Bloprahs world over.

2. Hitter – The hitter knocks the blogging ball out of the park. The hitter often offers new ideas and unique commentary. Sometimes the hitter will criticize things they see; but not without offering productive suggestions and sometimes even innovative solutions. The Hitter is the antithesis of the Bludgeon (see below).

3. Bludgeon – Bludgeons are blogging curmudgeons. They see blogging as their personal and never-ending critical peanut gallery. Seldom do Bludgeons create. Seldom do Bludgeons offer solutions. Bludgeons simply complain. Don’t be a Bludgeon.

4. Puncher – Punchers are some of the best bloggers. They write punchy, concise posts (which doesn’t always mean short) that boil big issues down to their simplest form. Punchers also typically hammer out blog posts in a matter of minutes. They grasp issues so quickly and precisely that they don’t get hung up when writing. They have already done the pre-production in their heads.

5. Hogger – This blogger has to speak on every issue. No issue is relevant if they have not blessed it with their prose. If someone challenges the Hogger, the challenger is met with a reply that is never less than 400 words.

6. DiDer – These bloggers find the devil in details – in fact they live for the details. DiDers tend to be the intellectual upper crust of the legal profession with a genuine love for legal theory. Law professors and highly specialized attorneys are most often DiDers. They are simply posting throwaway footnotes from their latest Law Review article.

7. Cloaker – Cloakers claim to be objective voices and often see themselves as a digital-age reporter. The problem with Cloakers is that they have a reporter’s objectivity until their real job is threatened – then the cloaked smear campaign begins. Over time Cloakers will be rooted out of the blogosphere but they are some of the more dangerous commentators on the web. If you see a Cloaker, please call them on it.

8. Bloater – Bloaters are bloggers who are shameless self-promoters. Admittedly, the Avvo Blog too often falls into this camp. But we’re pretty transparent about it, as we never want to be the Cloaker. I actually find self-promotion to be necessary in getting any business off the ground. If you don’t find yourself great, who else will?

9. Moser – Like Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, Mosers blog to help other lawyers find a better place. They share some of the Bloprah characteristics, but they are much more focused on practical issues and execution. They might blog on how to become a solo or how to better market one online. It is all very instructional, but seldom professorial. The devil is in the practical execution rather than the academic details.

10. Punter – The Punter never takes a stand. They love to observe but hate to opine, which may be the worst of all blogging form. Blogging (and most other social media) is about sharing your opinions – being an influencer. If you don’t take a stand in your blogging, you are littering not blogging.

Did we miss any? Also, if you are interested in blogging but aren’t currently doing it because of time, expense and/or irrational fear, please give us a call. Here is all of the info regarding Avvo Blogs.

Mark

At the end of last week, Martindale announced that they had revamped their age-old “AV®” rating system . According to Martindale’s Ralph Calistri, “The needs of people, both lawyers and consumers, who evaluate legal services, have evolved, and the demand for more comprehensive and detailed lawyer ratings has emerged.”

What Ralph didn’t mention is that Martindale’s new ratings look just like Avvo’s. Well, not exactly, which I will discuss in a moment; but Martindale has decided that it is a good time to offer these very Avvo-like elements to its ratings:

• Ratings based on a 40-point scale, from 1.0 to 5.0. Avvo rates on a 90 point scale from 1.0 to 10.0.

• Subratings based on “Legal Knowledge,” “Analytical Capabilities,” etc. Avvo does the same, citing a lawyer’s experience, industry recognition and professional conduct.

• Discloses whether lawyer “Meets Very High Criteria of General Ethical Standards.” Avvo discloses all disciplinary history (and sometimes gets sued because of it).

I think this is a very big and welcome step forward for Martindale. They have had a closed, “old-boys” rating system for so long that more transparency is always better. And, the fact that they are trying to follow Avvo so closely is admirable; however, is it too much for me to ask for a bit more?

My biggest criticism of the new Martindale rating system is that it is still not transparent enough. First, while they say they will rate lawyers as low as 1.0, they also say that lawyers who are currently in their lowest category (“C/V”) will start at a 2.9 rating. Huh? So, in reality, the new Martindale rating system only goes from 2.9 to 5.0. Better than their former three-point scale, but not by much.

Second, while Martindale has started talking about “ethical standards,” they are not disclosing the elements of any lawyer discipline; and misconduct does not appear to affect the Martindale rating. For their rating to be truly legitimate, Martindale needs to detail discipline and have it affect the rating.

Third, it appears that Martindale is still only rating those lawyers that pay them money. Can Martindale really offer legitimate ratings if they are only displaying paying lawyers? No wonder the scale starts at 2.9. Who is going to pay to be a 1.0? This is consistent with Martindale’s Avvo-like move of last year where they started displaying client reviews in their directory. The rub was that they let the lawyer *hand-pick* whether reviews were displayed, thus gutting the objective value of their client reviews.

Finally, Martindale announced that they will roll-out their new rating system over the next 10 years. That seems like *ahem* a long time. Ten years ago, Google was an edgy alternative to Alta Vista, “The West Wing” debuted on television and Boris Yeltsin was still the President of Russia. Ten Years? Really?

Dear Martindale, as a 17-year lawyer, I respect so much of what you do. We even include the Martindale ratings as a factor in the Avvo Rating. But the transparency of Web 2.0 is here and wading in up to your ankles over a ten year period is not going to get you far. Now is the time to get into the deep-end – won’t you join us?

Mark

I have written a decent amount about Avvo’s tour of the West Coast last month, but one lawyer from the tour has been clinking around in my head (sadly, there is a lot of room for stuff to clink around in there), and I decided to write about it.

During our seminar in Los Angeles, a lawyer commented from the crowd that he was getting too many leads from Avvo that were smaller cases than he prefers. He said he was getting something like 15 leads per week. He was mildly (maybe completely) annoyed by this and wanted to know how we could help him screen out the smaller cases.

I had to do very little talking in response to this because one of our panelists J. Craig Williams quickly pointed out that the lawyer could be referring these “smaller” cases to hungrier lawyers for a meaningful fee. Kelly Chang Rickert then pointed out that all of this activity through the lawyer’s Avvo Profile was free marketing that would help him land the big case from time to time. I also mentioned the six-figure case that Anthony Colleluori reeled in through Avvo.

Ultimately, our commenting lawyer agreed that these were all great ideas and seemed to be happier that Avvo was sending so many potential clients his way. But it once again got me thinking about how hardwired we are as lawyers to spot the issues of every situation rather than the opportunities. I have written about this before, so I will not go on and on. But let me repeat this piece of advice: It is critical that lawyers, in evaluating their different marketing channels, take the time to think through the different potential opportunities of each channel before listing even one potential issue. Take the time to go hog wild and think through all the different ways you could leverage that channel – whether free or paid. After partaking in such positive thinking, only then identify the potential issues. That will in turn allow you to at least consider the ROI of every opportunity, before scrapping it from the outset due to fear.

I assure every lawyer out there that this simple shift in critical thinking will lead to less hand-wringing and more business. A place that J. Craig Williams and Kelly Chang Rickert already are and every lawyer should be.

Be opportunistic!

Mark

I often speak to attorneys about their Core Web Presence and how a website, blog or even an Avvo Profile can serve as an excellent core. Oddly when it comes to blogging, attorneys consistently have two knee-jerk excuses:

1. I’m too busy to even figure out where to start; and
2. I can’t spend thousands of dollars a year on something that I may not use.

I usually put the first excuse to bed by referencing blogs like Leanna Hamill’s Massachusetts Estate Planning and Elder Law blog or Craig Williams’ May It Please the Court blog. Leanna and Craig have successful legal practices, and yet they find time to blog numerous times per week. And for every Hamill and Williams, there is an Ambrogi , Elefant or Greenfield. They all support the notion that there are thousands of busy lawyers blogging effectively, and the excuse-laden lawyer should be too. The marketing benefits far outweigh any effort.

But combating the second excuse is always harder. That’s because, when it comes to blogging platforms and tools for lawyers, there are few reasonable alternatives. Lawyers can either (1) use a very basic WordPress or Blogger template that may not have the professional look and feel that lawyers need, or (2) have a custom blog built for them that is expensive to both build and maintain.

To fill this gap, today we are introducing Avvo Blogs, a simple, effective and affordable blogging solution for lawyers around the world.

Simple

The key for lawyers in blogging is to start blogging, and Avvo Blogs make that very simple.

Avvo offers 10 simple templates to start that run on WordPress technology – the blogging platform for millions of blogs, including the NFL, Time Magazine, Ford, CNN, The New York Times and Techcrunch.

Avvo pre-populates a customizable blog roll, and also allows additional customization of highlighted pages, categories, etc.

Avvo Blogs also are supported by Avvo’s great customer service team. For two years, we have been helping thousands of lawyers get more business and Avvo Blogs are no different.

Simply visit the Avvo Blog page, follow the instructions and, voila, you will be blogging in no time.

Effective

To be effective, lawyers’ blogs must be professional looking and tailored to the lawyer’s web strategy. Each of the Avvo Blog templates is very professional in its look and feel. Additionally, we have kept each template clean and simple so that your ideas, rather than the blog design, do the talking – much like the Avvo website. :-)

Another important feature is that Avvo Blogs can go on the lawyer’s own domain, which allows you to pick a catchy domain url (e.g., bestPIblog.com) or to integrate the blog into an existing website or other web property (e.g., blog.wilsonjones.com).

Affordable

With Avvo Blogs, you can blog for less than $1 per day. You shouldn’t have to spend a truckload to showcase your expertise in a professional manner.

Many companies will try to sell you “more-effective” blogging technology for thousands of dollars per year, but few bloggers will need such a fancy blog. Think of blogging like buying a suit. You can spend thousands of dollars on a custom-made suit, or you can buy one off the rack at Macy’s that your client’s will love just as much. Clients will focus on the brains in the suit, not whether you have hand-stitching on your lapel.

As with all things Avvo, we would love to get your feedback. We have intentionally kept our Avvo Blogs simple, so they don’t have every bell and whistle. But they don’t have the multi-thousand dollar price tag either. With your feedback we look forward to adding just the right amount of bells or whistles that lawyers want and deserve at a reasonable price.

Let the blogging begin!

Mark

Another update on the June 9th Legal Marketing Seminar in Portland and the June 11th Legal Marketing Seminar in Seattle: This free seminar has now been approved for one-hour of Ethics CLE credit in Oregon!

A quick update on the June 9 Legal Marketing Seminar in Portland and the June 11 Legal Marketing Seminar in Seattle: this free seminar has now been approved for one-hour of Ethics CLE credit in  Washington (Oregon CLE pending).  We are expecting a great turnout (over 124 of you have registered to date) – but there is still room for more.

Note the change in the Seattle venue from Avvo’s offices to a Perkins Coie Conference Room to accommodate the demand and the slight change in time frame (from 2 to 4:30 to 2:30 to 5).

"Rollerderby Wave" courtesy of San Diego Shooter via Flickr CCL

Featuring: Michael A. Conger, Gordon Levinson, Mark Britton, Stephen Fairley & Conrad Saam

Co-sponsored by the Law Practice Management and Marketing Section of the SDCBA and AVVO, Inc.

This CLE is worth 1.0 LE & 1.5 GEN

Local Lawyers and online marketing experts will share tips on how to use the internet to your advantage, including advertising, thought leadership and social media marketing. Learn what works, what doesn’t and explore cost-effective secrets to doing it yourself.

Agenda Items: 

• Discuss best practices for retaining existing clients through the power of the web;
• Proactively manage your online reputation;
• Building relationships with other attorneys online;
• Tactics and tools to get started easily; and
• Explore legal/ethical concerns about participating online.

Registrations are due by noon on June 12, 2009:

 https://www.sdcba.org/index.cfm?pg=events&evAction=showDetail&eid=1557  

Late registrants and walk-ins will incur a $5.00 late registration fee.  Walk-ins will be accomodated as space allows.  Registrations will be held until 25 minutes after the published seminar start time. The SDCBA certifies that this activity has been approved for MCLE by the State Bar of California.