Category Archives: Marketing

 

May 26th, 2009

I Hate My Website

It isn’t the style or functionality of my website that I hate, it’s my writing. The site is my firm’s electronic brochure and it’s designed so that folks in need of a personal injury attorney can find it and consider retaining my firm. But creating such a website is a real problem because of three conflicting concepts:

  1. Biography: A need to show potential clients that you know what you are doing, which includes some past results;
  2. Search Engine Optimization: A way for those potential clients to actually find the site; and
  3. Fear of Juror Backlash: If jurors looks you up mid-trial, even though they shouldn’t, you have to make sure that they are not put-off by the content.

Biography is where we must start because the first thing any potential client will want to know is if the lawyer is the right one. The who, what, where and when of your professional life must be out there for the potential client to examine and, hopefully, be impressed.

And that’s the hard part, impressing the potential client. Because most of us were not brought up to brag. We’re taught as kids to be modest. Yet on the website we must do the opposite by showing past results and clucking about ourselves, and this does not come naturally. Except, perhaps, if you are Gloria Allred.

This wasn’t a problem in “the old days,” meaning before 1999 when I created my first site. I submitted verdicts and settlements to the New York Jury Verdict Reporter, which printed them up. Then I handed those printouts to clients so that they knew what kinds of cases I had successfully handled. In the digital age when information is demanded immediately, however, there is the need to put this stuff up on the web out of concern that the potential client will move on to another firm.

But even if lawyers know how to write their biographies well, and demonstrate that they know how to handle significant cases, and figure out how to do that with a fair degree of modesty, they will still run into the problem of …

Search Engine Optimization. What good is a website if no one finds it? Well, it’s only good if they already know your name. But if people are perusing a practice area without already having an attorney’s name, then you must do something to jump to the head of Google’s search results.

And part of optimizing the website for search engines is the requirement that certain keywords be repeated over and over until the copy makes you puke. This is, once again, unnatural. Seeing the same phrases gratuitously repeated destroys any decent writing that you may have done. This means that while you wrote the site for a client to find you, now that they have found you they will see that your writing leaves much to be desired.

But it gets worse. For not only must you brag about what you have done, and not only must you write poorly to get noticed by Google, but if you try cases for a living you also have to worry about…

Fear of Juror Backlash: Yes, we have to keep jurors in mind when creating a website because no matter how many times a judge tells jurors not to look you have to assume it will happen anyway. And here is the catch: What might look like a decent website in the eyes of the potential client (showing a track record of success) may look like obnoxious braggadocio to a juror.

Worse yet, it will look like poorly written obnoxious braggadocio due to the need for the search engine optimization. Thus, years of work getting to trial may now be impeded if a juror believes their verdict will be just some notch on a lawyer’s gun belt.

We live in an era where we occasionally see wretched lawyer ads — and now solicitation by website or blogs. While such lawyers are few and far between, their antics may get broadcast widely in the electronic age, and it sends a powerfully negative message to the public. Those horrid ads, as well as the occasional loopy lawsuit that finds its way to Overlawyered or the local papers where they are often justifiably skewered, helps to create and feed a deep cynicism when it comes to attorneys.

Of course, if a lawsuit makes the papers that means it was the exception and not the rule, since plain vanilla cases aren’t of interest to the media. But we must still deal with this anyway when picking jurors since those ads or crazy cases were the impression left on the jury pool. Only a fool would believe it doesn’t have an effect.

So the juxtaposition of these three elements — clients, search engine optimization and jurors — creates an unsolvable riddle for me. One possibility is to create a 2nd website, and have that swapped out with my real one when I am on trial so that jurors are not offended. But that doesn’t take care of the conflict between potential clients (where good writing is beneficial) and SEO (where poor writing is beneficial).

Nor is the problem solved by signing up with one of the many attorney search services that pollute the web so that they might feed you cases. For by outsourcing your marketing to these companies you may also be outsourcing your legal ethics. (See: New York’s Anti-Solicitation Rule Allows For Ethics Laundering and Must Be Modified and Is SueEasy the Worst Lawyer Idea Ever?)

I’d like to end by saying that I’ve have solved this riddle. But I haven’t. Nor have I seen any other personal injury website solve it, even those written by “professionals.” Many of us do the same thing when it comes to our content, repeating the keywords for Google, listing past results and hoping that we can find a happy middle ground. Many of the sites appear to be oblivious to the potential for juror backlash.

If anyone does know the magic bullet — and it seems to me that this is a job for a copy editor not a marketer — I’d love to hear about it in the comments or on your own site. It must exist in some form.

I’d also add that this is not a request for marketer solicitations, but a public discussion on how the competing issues can be reconciled so that those attorneys whose sites appeal to consumers (personal injury, criminal defense, divorce, residential real estate, etc.) can be informative, dignified and easy to find amongst the clutter of the web.

Links to this post:

blawg review #214
had enough of the credit-crunch? this is an edition of blawg review for those who say… “when the credit-crunch gets tough… the credit-crunched get crunched with smokedo… and blog.” it is not x rated, it is office safe; the geeklawyer …

posted by charonqc @ May 31, 2009 2:03 PM

my website is worse than your website
eric turkewitz at new york personal injury law posts that he hates his website. turk is one of the guys who gets it. if you’re a pi lawyer, or frankly a civil litigator of any stripe, turk would be the guy you want to emulate, …

posted by SHG @ May 27, 2009 5:39 AM

attorney hates his web site
this post is really about another (”i hate my website,” written by new york personal injury attorney eric turkewitz). but, first . . . ______. it’s the better part of a year ago, and i’m in a courtroom. (not to worry; i’m sitting in the …
posted by Thorne @ May 27, 2009 12:15 PM

 

March 23rd, 2009

A Deadly Plane Crash Turns Into An Instant "Win an iPhone" Contest

It’s enough to make you vomit. The proliferation of marketers who will do anything in the spirit of Internet marketing.

So late last night a plane crashes in Montana killing 17 14 people. Horrible by any standard.

I Googled “Montana Plane Crash” as part of my continuing look at lawyers and marketing on the web and found a Google Adword link that looks like this (pdf version/MontanaPlaneCrashSearch.pdf):

Montana Plane Crash
Who’s fault is it? Give us your
opinion and get an iPhone
www.nkthen.biz/Survey/polls

There are 17 dead people and grieving families and someone is running a contest to win an iPhone? Please, say it ain’t so. I click and go to the website (/MontanaPlaneCrashiPhone.pdf):

MONTANA PLANE CRASH
Montana plane crash kills 17, including children

Montana Plane Crash – Who is at Fault?
Tell Us What You Think
and win an iPhone!

The Pilot and Crew! It is just an Accident!

So I went to the home page for the domain (http://www.nkthen.biz/), and found it to be pitching Internet marketing services like this (/JosephThenWebMarketing.pdf):

Discover How You Can Generate
An Avalanche of Traffic to Your Website in Just 3 Weeks!

Established Internet Marketer Spills Out Everything in Traffic Generation and How YOU can Get the Traffic you Want!

The author of the book and owner of the site is Joseph Then.

So thank you Joe, for your invaluable contributions to society. The bereaved will no doubt be grateful to you.

 

March 19th, 2009

Law Blogging as Indirect Marketing (Deliberations Blogger Gone Wild)

Two weeks ago I wrote about the folks at Drug and Device Law getting a lot of press as a result of Wyeth v. Levine., since they had written with authority on the issue of federal pre-emption in drug and devices cases for so long.

This week it is trial lawyer and jury consultant Anne Reed at Deliberations due to many recent stories on jurors using Twitter, iPhones for research, Facebook, etc. A sampling from Reed yesterday:

The New York Times has a front-page article today that has gotten a lot of attention, in part for the wise comments of Douglas Keene, president of the American Society of Trial Consultants. Meanwhile I’ve gotten to talk to reporters and columnists from the Associated Press, ABCNews.com, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel’s law blog Proof and Hearsay, BBC Radio’s The World Today and then their Newshour, and Southern California Public Radio’s Patt Morrison Show (Doug Keene was on that one too, with Greenberg Traurig’s Scott Bertzyk) — all in the last two days, with two more interviews coming up.

That link, by the way, has a huge round-up of posts on the subject that she has been writing about for some time now.

Using a blog for solicitation is a losing proposition, as the blog is merely an ad, and therefore utterly uninteresting. But if you write about something you enjoy and care about, and write it well, the media may one day come calling. Whether that results in business is impossible to say, but it if raises your profile in the legal community, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

 

February 13th, 2009

Buffalo Plane Crash WILL Test New York’s New Anti-Solicitation Rules (Updated x3)


When I wrote three weeks ago about the possibility of the Hudson River splash landing testing New York’s 30-day anti-solicitation rules for attorneys, I did it with a question mark and with one eye firmly on the fact that it ended very well for the people on board the plane. It even ended well for the bar, as I found only one firm that appeared to violate the ethics rule. It also led me to explore, while the Second Circuit considered the issues of New York’s new rules, the myriad ways that ethics laundering can take place with lawyers hiring attorney search services to solicit, or running “articles” on their web sites about the crash.

I didn’t expect to write again so soon on the subject, but today’s horror in Buffalo with Colgan Air / Continental Flight 3407 crashing and killing 50 people will bring the subject of attorney ethics and the 30-day anti-solicitation rule right back to the forefront. You can read much more about the rules at the prior links, but this is the starting point from New York’s Code of Professional Responsibility:

DR 7-111 (22 NYCRR 1200.41-a) Communication After Incidents Involving Personal Injury or Wrongful Death

(a) In the event of an incident involving potential claims for personal injury or wrongful death, no unsolicited communication shall be made to an individual injured in the incident or to a family member or legal representative of such an individual, by a lawyer or law firm, or by any associate, agent, employee or other representative of a lawyer or law firm, seeking to represent the injured individual or legal representative thereof in potential litigation or in a proceeding arising out of the incident before the 30th day after the date of the incident, unless a filing must be made within 30 days of the incident as a legal prerequisite to the particular claim, in which case no unsolicited communication shall be made before the 15th day after the date of the incident.

My analysis below — which will be updated in the future to provide for reactions from the bar to the crash — is limited to use of Google searches. First we’ll look at sponsored ads, and then natural search results.

Sponsored ads:

  • At 6:51 this morning I Googled “Buffalo Plane Crash” and came up with zero sponsored ads:/BuffaloPlaneCrash-2%[email protected]
  • At 6:55 I added “attorney” to the search phrase and came up with a few aviation firms that seem to have stock ads, but nothing obviously geared toward Buffalo:/BuffaloPlaneCrashAttorney-2%[email protected]
  • At 10:42, you now see some sponsored results for “Buffalo Plane Crash.” These don’t reference Buffalo in the ad, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a keyword that a marketer added to the search Google Adwords terms that would return this response. To me, a very subtle, but significant means of breaching the rules if that is how it was done. /BuffaloPlaneCrash-2%[email protected]

The chance of this changing as attorneys try to solicit via the web is high, but at least the starting point has been frozen in time.

Update #1 (2/13 @ 12:32) – The first ad directly soliciting victims has now appeared. It is by the same attorney that ran an ad after the Hudson River crash. Here is the pdf:/BuffaloPlaneCrash-11%3A13-12-32pm.pdf And here is the ad:

Continental Crash Victim?
Helping Victims of Flight 3407
Contact Our Aviation Attorneys
www.jcReiterLaw.com
New York


Update #2 (4:44): I received a call from Reiter, and the ad was taken down.

Update #3 (10:07 pm): Buffalo law blogger Roy Mura (Coverage Counsel) found another ad that directly solicits for this accident, from Philadelphia attorney Joseph Messa. (Welcome to New York, Joe. Now please leave.) You can find the link in the comments to this post.

At the same comment by Mura we learn that the Buffalo firm of O’Brien Boyd now surfaces with the search term “Buffalo plane crash.” At their web site, the text now reads:

We have already received several phone calls about what happens when someone dies in a plane crash. As a public service, we wanted to provide some information to the general public. In any negligence case, the legal system asks two basic questions: …

Also in the search findings for “Buffalo Plane Crash” are these firms, among others, whose names did not appear at 6:51 this morning when I used this search phrase, leading me to believe that the Google Adwords accounts were edited to add words specifically for this accident while not using the words in the ad itself. (Or this is a Google issue where sometimes stuff shows up and sometimes not.) Here is the pdf:/BuffaloPlaneCrash2%[email protected]

  • Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff. The firm appears under NY Plane Crash Lawyers (nycaccident.com) and claims to be the oldest PI firm in NYC;
  • Masry & Vititoe, a California firm made famous by Erin Brokovich; and
  • Injury Helpline Attorney, an attorney search service, which shows what happens to law firms when they outsource their marketing to others.

I discussed this technique of using certain keywords in the Google Adwords system to make the ad pop up, while hiding the actual words from public view, in this post: New York’s Anti-Solicitation Rule Allows For Ethics Laundering and Must Be Modified. To actually prove ethics violations here would probably require subpoenas of Google’s records for the accounts due to variations on how Google puts up its sponsored results.

Natural Results:
Law firms might come up in the natural results if they wrote about the crash on their web site. Some have a “blog,” and I use that term loosely in this context, that does nothing more than run stories on local accidents. I discussed in December 2007 how such a blog can be used for attorney solicitation. As you will see this presents First Amendment issues. Writing about an event is one thing, but what happens when you tie it in with a solicitation? A story is run followed by “If you or a loved one has been killed or injured…” There are a million shades of gray as to how that is done.

Update #1 – And the first website I have found that hits page one of the natural results (search term: Buffalo Plane crash attorney) is Parker Waichman. Here is the pdf of the search: /BuffaloPlaneCrashAttorney2%[email protected]

When you follow the link you find a story of the accident right next to a “Free Case Review” for airline accidents. Note that “Buffalo Plane Crash Continental Flight 3407” is in the title bar for optimum search engine results. And that is a great example of how the First Amendment and New York’s anti-solicitation rules clash.

It’s important to note, by the way, that these rules apply to out-of-state attorneys who may try to solicit in New York (only to refer, the case, no doubt, to local counsel). That rule specifically states:

Extra-Territorial Application of Solicitation Rules

EC 2-21 All of the special solicitation rules, including the special 30 day (or 15 day) rule, apply to solicitations directed to recipients in New York, whether made by a lawyer admitted in New York or a lawyer admitted in any another jurisdiction.

The rule also applies to “agents” of the firms, which to me means any of of the dozens of attorney search services that exist and who might break the rules while doing their marketing. The attorney who hired the firm would not doubt be “shocked” to find such conduct taking place.

I hate writing about this stuff in the midst of such a tragedy. But the brutal reality is that, after the Staten Island Ferry crashed in 2003 killing 11 people, the local paper was flooded with ads coming in that afternoon for the next day’s paper. With the new rules in place, it seems important to take a snapshot of the situation before any ads are run, to see how it contrasts with what will likely happen.

=====================
2/16/09 Update: Flight 3407 (Buffalo Crash) Web Site Established By Law Firm (Contravening Ethics Rules?)

2/17/09 Update: DC Firm Jumps Into Cyber-Solicitation Fray, Chasing Buffalo Air Crash Clients

Links to this post:

blawg review #200
could this be the end of the line? when we started blawg review with the question, “do you blawg?” in 2005, who would have thought this traveling carnival of law blogs would still be alive 200 weeks later? …

posted by Editor @ February 23, 2009 12:00 AM

buffalo plane crash
the client-chasing has begun on continental flight 3407, ably chronicled by eric turkewitz. tags: airlines, chasing clients. related posts. minutes after the flight 1549 crash…. (6); january 13 roundup (6); youtube lawyer ads (3 …
posted by Walter Olson @ February 13, 2009 2:10 PM

 

January 15th, 2009

Hudson River Plane Crash To Test New York’s New Attorney Ethics Rules? (Updated x2)

The plane crash in the Hudson River today may test New York’s new attorney ethics rules with respect to solicitation.

New rules were put into effect in the wake of the 2003 Staten Island Ferry disaster that killed 11 and injured 71. The Appellate Divisions were appalled that so many personal injury lawyers ran to place ads in the Staten Island Advance before a 3 pm deadline on the day of the accident; ads that were placed while rescue efforts were still underway.

Specifically, there is a prohibition on solicitation within 30 days of such a mass disaster. (While some of the new rules were found unconstitutional, this one was not.) The new rules read:

DR 7-111 (22 NYCRR 1200.41-a) Communication After Incidents Involving Personal Injury or Wrongful Death

(a) In the event of an incident involving potential claims for personal injury or wrongful death, no unsolicited communication shall be made to an individual injured in the incident or to a family member or legal representative of such an individual, by a lawyer or law firm, or by any associate, agent, employee or other representative of a lawyer or law firm, seeking to represent the injured individual or legal representative thereof in potential litigation or in a proceeding arising out of the incident before the 30th day after the date of the incident, unless a filing must be made within 30 days of the incident as a legal prerequisite to the particular claim, in which case no unsolicited communication shall be made before the 15th day after the date of the incident.

Lawyers who place the ads claim that they do so so that people will be able to quickly learn their rights before an insurance company stuffs a release under their noses while they are still in shock from the incident, and gives them 10 cents on the dollar. The new rules, it should be noted, prohibit the insurance companies from doing so. The following paragraph reads:

(b) This provision limiting contact with an injured individual or the legal representative theoreof applies as well to lawyers or law firms or any associate, agent, employee or other representative of a lawyer or law firm who represent actual or potential defendants or entities that may defend and/or indemnify said defendants.

Of course, the authority of the court to regulate the insurance companies in such a manner has never been tested. (See: Did New York Courts Exceed their Authority With New Advertising Rules?)

Some may believe that, thanks to the fast and heroic action of local ferry operators that saved so many people, and the lack of serious injuries at this point (as per news reports), it would indicate that few personal injury lawsuits would even occur. But even if the physical injuries are minor, there will no doubt be substantial psychological damage to many who thought they would not live to see another day, and may suffer post-traumatic stress disorder in the months and years to come.

With all this in mind, I Googled “Hudson River Plane Crash” to see who started to run ads. Thankfully, the answer is zero. None. Nada. Zip. I don’t know if this is the result of the new ethics rules, or due to the lack of death or serious physical injuries, but it is certainly surprising. A pleasant surprise I might add.

So far, so good. Let’s hope I don’t have to do an addendum.

[1st Addendum: OK, I now have to do an addition. Yeah, you knew there would be one, right? An attorney search service is might, in fact, trolling for victims (via Overlawyered and Popehat). This is would be a clear violation of New York’s attorney ethics rules, but of course, the site claims not to be a law firm (and this might be for a different crash). I had warned in November 2007 of exactly this type of problem, with lawyers using agents to advertise while turning a blind eye to the ethics of the services. See: The Ethics of Attorney Search Services. I wrote at that time:

The implications of attorneys outsourcing advertising to a third party that may be acting unethically represents an area of law that is unexplored by many ethics committees. The company itself is most likely not in your state and not subject to attorney disciplinary rules. So what forces the advertising company that the lawyer is using to act in accordance with local ethics codes?

The very act of engaging such an advertising service should subject the law firm to disciplinary action for any ethical violations committed by the non-attorney advertising company. With this threat hanging over the head of an attorney, it is unlikely they would take such risks with their licenses. It thus makes it impossible to turn a blind eye to any ethical breaches by any service that is used as a front for the law firms.

There is little doubt that if and when attorneys are called on the carpet for problems, they will simply play dumb and say they didn’t know. But that should not be an acceptable excuse. And this is a problem that should be nipped in the bud quickly.] End 1st Addendum

[2nd Addendum: OK, it seems that we have a clear winner on the issue of this crash and the new ethics rules, with one New York firm clearly and unequivocally using “Flight 1549” and “US Airways” in their Google ad]

And one big, gigantic tip of the hat to the pilots and crew and all involved in the rescue. I would call the result a miracle, but if I did so it would diminish the skills and courage of those involved.
————————————————————————-
Photo Credit: Fanny Brown Rice
————————————————————————-
More on the crash:

…it’ll take more than a miracle to keep the lawsuits from flying. As far as we know, no suits have yet been filed. But we were curious about what such a claim — negligent infliction of emotional distress, anyone? — may look like, and whether it could succeed.

Please don’t rush to New York and file a lawsuit over yesterday’s crash.

Links to this post:

mortimer, morden, and miracles
a few “quickies” that took too long to write this saturday morning afternoon: thank you, john mortimer, for creating rumpole: as today’s new york times reports, “john mortimer, barrister and writer who created rumpole, dies at 85” (jan. …
posted by David Giacalone @ January 17, 2009 1:25 PM