Virtual Law Practice

Tag: real lawyers have blogs

  • List of Sites Containing Tips to Market a Virtual Law Office

    In a recent blog post, I discussed how an attorney with a VLO can attract paying, online clients to a VLO.  As promised, below is a list of websites and blogs that provide useful marketing tips and resources for solo and small firm practitioners.  This list only includes sites that provide marketing resources and tips.  I could build a long list of other services and sites that an attorney could join in order to market his or her virtual law practice,  such as sites that help to raise the SEO of the VLO website or blog.  Hopefully, the sites listed below will point you towards many of these online tricks of the trade. 

    Most of the resources below are geared towards a traditional law practice and some of them are not even related to the legal profession specifically, but with a little creativity the tips found in them could easily be used to market a virtual law office.  If I had oodles of free time, I would love to explain in detail how each of these sites and resources can be useful to a virtual law practice.  Instead, I’m just putting it out there and inviting everyone to explore and use their imaginations.  Or better yet, if you become befuddled, contact the folks that run these blogs in person.  Some of them are really kind, helpful individuals who are attorneys themselves and contain a wealth of valuable information and experience to share.  As always, I welcome suggestions to add to this list.  

    [Tip: Since most of these sites are blogs, it might save time to check out their categories section or run a search on their site specifically for marketing tips.]

    Sites with Tips on Marketing a Virtual Law Office”
    1.  Lisa Solomon’s Legal Research and Writing Pro Website and Blog 

    **Lisa is hosting an upcoming teleseminar, PR 101 for Lawyers: How to Write Direct-to-Consumer Press Releases That the Media Will Also Love.  This will take place on November 18 and will be presented by Joan Stewart, a/k/a the Publicity Hound.  Details for this are on her website.

    2.  The Publicity Hound Blog & Tips of the Week Ezine

    3.  Susan Cartier Liebel’s Build a Solo Practice, LLC

    4.  Grant Griffith’s Home Office Warrior, Home Office Lawyer and Blog for Profit 

    5.  CopyBlogger

    6.  ProBlogger

    7.  Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World

    8.  Carolyn Elefant’s My Shingle

    9.  Ed Poll’s LawBiz Blog & Ezine

    10.  Stem Legal – “Building Web Profile for the Legal Industry”

    11.  The PR Lawyer

    12.  Law Marketing Blog 

    13.  Kevin O’Keefe’s Real Lawyers Have Blogs

    14.  Legal Marketing Blog

    15.  Brett Trout’s BlawgIt

    16.  Ben Glass’s Great Legal Marketing blog

    17.  Gary Vaynerchuk‘s blog

    Resource to Join

    Solo Practice University  (Opening soon, this web-based educational community will provide online courses related to marketing law practices.)

  • In a Slowing Economy – Benefits of A Virtual Law Practice

    Kevin O’Keefe over at Real Lawyers Have Blogs summarized Dennis Kennedy’s suggestions for how attorneys can cut costs in the slowing economy.

    At the top of the list was find technology that cuts costs for your law practice. Maybe it should also read: cut out the legal software that was supposed to save you time. Instead, find a more efficient way to accomplish the same law practice management and client development tasks by looking at technologies that other businesses besides attorneys are using to cut costs and raise client revenue.

  • Solo Advertising – Needs vs. Wants

    I recently commented on The Dreams of a Solo to a post here about how the needs versus wants when starting a solo practice are a fine balance that every solo needs to think about before getting in over their heads.

    I didn’t have too much difficulty in determining my technology needs from wants. With the web application, I could just use the computer equipment I already had, even though dual monitors would be swell as would a new Blackberry and a MacBook Air. [Note to self: I need to update my tech “wish list” again before birthday.]

    The most difficult part for me in determining the needs versus wants in opening my virtual solo was figuring out what advertising I really “needed.” Advertising expenses can quickly get away from you if you count the cost of new office announcements to other attorneys and membership in different organizations as a form of advertising. These don’t even reach the public, just build an attorney network that hopefully results in referrals.

    Online versus traditional advertising was my biggest challenge. I erroneously thought that I had to have a listing in the Yellow Pages. Big mistake. Kevin at Real Lawyers Have Blogs recently posted here about how ineffective this is for solos. He’s right. Google is the new phone book. Even if the YP ad came with the online listing that linked to my vlo, it still was not worth the $2,000 plus annual contract. I think I was under the impression from working at my previous firm that it was just what law offices did to have a “presence” locally. Well, if your office is virtual that doesn’t matter so much.

    Online directories, such as Lexis’ Lawyers.com also proved to not have a good ROI. Unless you can afford the extra cost to “bump” your listing up to the top (i.e., have a BigLaw advertising budget), I don’t think it was worth the expense. The service occasionally resulted in a prospective client but that wasn’t worth the monthly bill and tacky splash page to my website.

    I think it took me a good year of figuring out what I really “needed” for advertising to build a decent client base and then keep the business momentum going. I’m still working out the perfect balance. I suspect that, like everything in life, the need-want balance with my virtual practice will always change a little each year.

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