Nolo's Lawyer Blog

West Coast Tech Talk from Legal Tech in Los Angeles, June 23 & 24, 2010


Beyond the NBA championship team, Los Angeles played host to this year's west coast Legal Tech trade show, held at the downtown convention center. Nolo was in attendance, checking out the various solution providers and their latest products and services for law firms. From document management to turn-key client billing and account management solutions, hundreds of attorneys and tech support staff were on-hand.

The LACBA (Los Angeles County Bar Association) made quite a presence on their home turf, representing their more than 20,000 member attorneys. ALM itself had a major impact with their host of media publications and products, including Law.com,

The American Lawyer, and The National Law Review, as well as state specific publications like Texas Lawyer and California's Recorder.

One of ALM's most interesting products was their Virtual Legal Tech show, lead by ALM point-person Scott Pierce. Avatars roamed the virtual exhibit halls while presenters dished out the CLE seminars via webcams and streaming video. Is this virtual environment going to replace face-to-face contact amongst clients and vendors? No, but as the bandwidth pipeline continues to expand, expect to see many of these visions of the future become a reality sooner than you might expect.

Know Your Visitors & Where They Are Coming From

You've got your website up, maybe even a blog. You've committed part of your overall marketing budget towards online marketing and you're using several social media tools like Linked In, Twitter and Facebook to get noticed in the increasingly vast sea of online attorneys. Perhaps you've even enlisted the help of an attorney directory, maybe even an SEO consultant.

For lawyers doing any online marketing, advertising or Search Engine Optimization, knowing who is visiting your website and where those visitors are coming from are two of the most critical components in measuring the ROI for your online marketing.  There are several tools to help analyze your online traffic including demographics and category or topic specific interests.

Here at Nolo, we use WebTrends, a paid service that combines analytics tools with professional services. There's also Mint, which helps web owners better understand their traffic trends at $30 per site. Yahoo also has a free analytics tool but the best bang for your buck is Google's FREE tool - Google Analytics. Google's free traffic measuring tool helps attorneys track their website traffic: where their visitors are coming from, what pages are being visited, how long they stay on a particular page and the bounce rate - how many visitors simply click their back button and leave the site altogether.

Here's a simple breakdown of how to get started with Google Analytics:

• First, sign up for a free Google Account.
  
• Then, use your Google Account information to sign up for Google Analytics.
• Register your site(s) with Google Analytics.
• Cut and Paste the generated code onto your website - NOTE: If you are NOT the person administering your website, you'll need the help of your webmaster or the company that built your website for you. You may even want to check with them before you star.
• Set up reports for your site within Analytics to help better understand your traffic patterns.
  

Take the Google Analytics tour for a brief video overview of their tool.

"By making this powerful service free, we aim to give all websites - large and small - the tools they need to better serve their customers, make more money, and improve the web experience for everyone," says Paul Muret, Google engineering director.  Google Analytics also ties nicely into other products in the Google ecosystem--including AdWords, AdSense, Website Optimizer, Webmaster Tools and more, giving attorneys powerful resources to aid in making valuable decisions regarding their online marketing.

Finally, Google Analytics can be very confusing or even daunting at first, especially for less-than-savvy web users. Don't let this dissuade you from jumping in feet first.

Where do I go to start blogging?

Let's say you've got your website up and running with all of your practice categories listed. You've also got your bio with a good profile photo and background pages along with your contact information on the About Us page too. Maybe you've even got some good articles or content for visitors when they come to your website to help them decide if your services are the right solution for them.  The next step is to keep that content frequently updated, a very important aspect to keeping your site current and relevant with the major search engines.

One great way to keep your firm's online profile up to date is a blog, also known in the legal blogosphere as blawgs. Before we go into blogs though, you might want to do some research about the best platform for hosting and posting your legal blog. Whether you're going to write a humorous blog like The Anonymous Lawyer or a helpful and informative blog for Solo Practitioners like Carolyn Elefant's My Shingle, the choice is yours. Here's a good article you can download that gives a great break down of various competing legal blog options, from basic and free to deluxe and expensive, conducted by Steve Matthews & his Law Firm Strategy Blog for the Legal Industry. We will continue to post more helpful 'How To's' and Tips for legal bloggers soon, so stay tuned!

Now there's an app for that too

Show your friends & co-workers how you manage to stay at the forefront of the legal technology curve and download the latest legal iPhone app from Nolo. iPhone owners can now download the new Plain-English Law Dictionary, available FOR FREE at the iTunes App store. This free application provides iPhone users with anywhere, anytime access to nearly 4,000 legal terms and definitions. "Quick, easy-to-use access to the latest legal terms and definitions just got a whole lot easier for students, business owners, media, paralegals and others", says Nolo Founder & CEO Ralph 'Jake' Warner.

Here's what one of our customers had to say:

"I'm a 30+ year attorney and needed a quick and easy law dictionary app. Here it is. You can't beat Nolo for their helpful legal info aimed at consumers and this helpful app is a great example. I use Black's Law Dictionary in my office and have been wanting a law dictionary for my iPhone since I bought my first iPhone. Now with the 3G's model, Nolo timed it perfectly. Just about every legal phrase you commonly need is defined here. And if you get tired of the Law & Order opening notes, you can shut them off and get straight to work. A great app, highly useful, especially for attorneys, and you just can't beat the (free) cost. Nolo scores again." Ron Burdge