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.

Nolo representatives Catherine Berryessa and Greg Roden headed from Berkeley to Orlando, Florida for the 2010 National Association of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA) annual meeting - "Planning for Change." There were more than two hundred member attorneys who focus on elder and special needs law attending general sessions, CLE's, networking mixers and more throughout the week. Nolo was very well received and we gave out more than 150 elder law related books to attorneys interested in becoming Nolo members.


Most of these attorneys were focused on estate planning, conservatorships, special needs trusts and general "end of life" planning. Many NAELA members we spoke with shared how the field is growing past just wills, trust and estate issues to encompass inter-disciplinary areas of law including family law, tax planning, social security, and medicare / medicaid issues.


Attorneys who know Nolo were pleasantly surprised to see us in attendance, and were very interested in learning more about how they can partner with us. We gave out a lot of books that were a hit with attorneys, including Long-Term Care, Special Needs Trust, and the 15th Edition Social Security, Medicare & Government Pensions.

We look forward to attending the fall NAELA conference in San Diego in November and thank all of the attorneys here in Florida for the warm welcome to our first-ever NAELA annual meeting!

This year proved to be the largest NACBA show ever with more than 3,000 bankruptcy attorneys in attendance for CLE's, seminars, networking and more in downtown San Francisco.

Many of our Lawyer Directory team came out to distribute Nolo's popular bankruptcy books to qualified attorneys across the country.

Only a couple of months old, our newest title, Bankruptcy for Small Business Owners, was a big hit. Co-author Steve Elias was on-hand Saturday and Sunday to answer questions and sign copies of his books.

We also debuted another  title - The Judge Who Hated Red Nail Polish - humorous stories from the courtroom and beyond which also went over well with the attorneys in attendance.

Tom Foley, Nolo's Lawyer Directory NACBA specialist says, "We always enjoy meeting NACBA members from all over the country.  It was great to have them visit us on our home turf."

As a thank you to our Lawyer Directory members, we treated a group of NACBA attendees to a sunset Bay cruise aboard the Adventure Cat II out of Fisherman's Wharf. Check out Tom Foley's pics here.

NACBA 2010 - San Francisco

This year's annual NACBA -- The National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys -- meeting will be held in San Francisco starting on April 28, 2010. Nolo will be out in force for the show and will also be taking a small group of Nolo-NACBA member attorneys out to sea on a sunset bay cruise aboard "Adventure Cat 2",  a luxurious 65-foot catamaran.
NACBA bankruptcy attorneys attending the San Francisco meeting are invited to join Nolo, Captain Hans and his crew aboard the beautiful Adventure Cat for this hour-and-a-half long sunset cruise.  Our cruise will take us around Alcatraz and under the Golden Gate bridge (check out this cool video)!

We will be departing from Fisherman's wharf at 6:30 p.m. sharp on Saturday, May 1, 2010.

There is no cost for qualified attorneys to participate, but space is limited so sign-up today by calling 1-877-NOLO-LAW or email Tom Foley directly at tfoley@nolo.com.

While we enjoyed speaking with all of the NACBA attorneys that stopped by Nolo's booth, here are just a few of the things that some of our member attorneys had to say.

"We don't track our advertising too closely but I'd say we've received at least 20-30 clients from Nolo over this past year. Our Nolo advertising paid for itself within the first few months" Holley & Peter Bricks, Atlanta - Georgia








"It was an honor to meet your colleagues. I did not expect to meet one of the author/editors of your Chapter 7 book, which I use on a regular basis.
 
I have a great deal of respect for Nolo, not just for the quality products, but for the ultimate goal that I have seen Nolo carry through the years of educating the public about the otherwise intimidating legal process. I try to serve this goal as well with my clients on an individual basis.  I consider it an honor to have my firm associated with Nolo." Kurt W. Wolfgang - La Plata, Maryland

"I've had so many phone calls and I haven't even completed my Nolo profile!" Selwyn Whitehead - Oakland, California

(Since then, Selwyn has completed a fantastic profile!)

Tom and I arrived in Tucson, AZ via Las Vegas to clear & sunny blue skies with a slight breeze out of the southwest and an outside air temperature a lovely 92º. After dropping the top down on the Sebring and rolling through a few off-the-beat-and-path construction zones on the southeast side we finally headed west and up into the rolling hills of the Tuscon desert and arrived at the JW Marriott Star Pass resort for the start of the 2009 National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) winter workshops.



More than 500 attorneys attended these Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminars and workshops on topics ranging from better practice management to the finer points of filing a Chapter 13. Approximately 150 attorneys, many of them Nolo members, stopped by our booth for their free books and to let us know how their directory profiles were helping their business. The response from our Nolo attorneys was overwhelmingly positive and over 90% of our attorneys said they were more than happy with Nolo partnerships!



After the conference ended, we headed for the hills, Mt. Lemon to be exact and drove up to 8,000'. If you've never been to this part of the country, this desert, these Saguaro cacti, it's a must see, in our humble opinions.