Online Marketing
Last week I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for an article that was published today regarding companies that deliver basic legal services online and how this impacts both the public and legal professionals.
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Slides: Final Social Media in Law Practice for Digital Lawyering Program
This is the slide deck from our final online session from the Univ. of Dayton School of Law Digital Lawyering Program. It covers time management, the future of social media, its application to the legal profession, and our deliverable for the session. The students were asked to create a social media policy for a law practice to prove competency in the subject matter. In the course, we covered Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, and Twitter as the core platforms, reviewed management and analytic tools, privacy and security settings, ethics rules and opinions, and more.
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WSJ Covers Virtual Lawyers
The Wall Street Journal has finally covered virtual law practice in a brief article in the Smart Money section last night. The article focuses on online legal guidance that is limited to unbundled legal advice for fixed fees and delivered through a technology platform owned by a third-party company marketing directly to the consumer. These services are provided by a lawyer who is part of the company’s network. The article does not cover other forms of online legal assistance, such as those provided by a virtual law firm owned and operated by a licensed lawyer.
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Consumer Law Revolution
I will be speaking on a panel at the College of Law Practice Management (COLPM) Futures Conference this Friday at Georgetown Law Center in D.C. Our panel will be discussing the following topics:
•How is technology changing delivery of legal services to consumer?
•How is tech changing how lawyers who serve consumers practice?
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Progress on New Book – Online Marketing Tools
I wanted to provide a quick update of what I’ve been working on and what I will hopefully be sharing more of on this blog in the near future. I have been finishing up a new book on the topic of online marketing tools for lawyers. In the course of researching for this project, I’ve studied and registered for accounts with companies that provide online legal services to the public and seek to collaborate with lawyers. This process has only increased my excitement and optimism about the future of online delivery of services.
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Virginia Disciplinary Case on Misleading Lawyer Advertising
A recent disciplinary case out of Virginia addresses the issue of a lawyer’s use of misleading online advertising and references “virtual” law offices. In fact, the objectionable actions taken by the lawyer are those that could apply to any lawyer or law firm that has a website or any online presence. It is not in fact related to the online delivery of legal services, but to lawyer advertising in general.
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NC Proposed Ethics Opinion – Use of Leased Time-Shared Office Address
There is a proposed North Carolina ethics opinion that may affect virtual practitioners who use leased time-shared offices or PO Boxes as addresses because they work from home or only need to meet with clients infrequently.
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Update on the Ethics of Performance-Based Marketing
Most lawyers who have researched ethics opinions related to online advertising are familiar with the Total Attorneys ethics matter, which began in April, 2009 when a single Connecticut lawyer filed an ethics complaint with the state bar disciplinary counsel in 47 states. The complaints targeted not just the company, but also more than 500 of its bankruptcy law firm customers. Here’s the final update on how this played out along with my thoughts on the significance of this process.
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Standing Committee Recommends Deletion of Problematic Advertising Rule
The ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services has written a letter to the Commission on Ethics 20/20 providing its recommendations regarding lawyer advertising rules. In an interesting move, the Committee has recommended the deletion of Model Rule 7.2(b). For those of us in virtual practices who depend on online advertising methods perhaps moreso than traditional law firms, this would be a potentially revolutionary change to the rules.
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Updating the Marketing Strategy for a Virtual Law Practice
This Saturday I’m giving a live lecture focused on virtual law practice marketing strategy for my students in Concord Law School’s Small Business LLM program. I’m having the students slowly add in components of a business plan with each assignment so that by the end of the semester they have a complete and ready-to-implement business plan for […]
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