Last time, in part four of our Local Marketing series, Mike Ramsey outlined the components you need to design the best law firm website. Obviously, the goal is to attract potential clients to your site. And that begs the question, "How do you know it's working?" In today's part five, Mike points out which stats to mind, along with a Google Analytics primer.

Twitter lists are an easy way to group what flows through Twitter so that you can better organize the flood of information. I've found that Twitter lists are useful for all kinds of things — whether they're private so that you can keep tabs on a hobby or very public so that you can leverage them for networking and business development. I use lists to: 1. Follow conferences and events, such as the #ABATechShow and LTNY. 2. Keep up with groups and associations (COLPM and ILTA). 3. Monitor just the tweets of a core group of people of the likes of @taxgirl and @chrisbrogan. 4. Stay abreast of the happenings regarding a certain keyword such as #legalIT and the popular #legalchat (which are Fridays at 11 a.m. ET). 5. View the tweets of certain users, without technically actually following them. You can add users to lists without following them from your account. There are certain people I refuse to follow, but in some instances I will see their tweets — generally when an event comes around and they start their spam-markety crap (which is why I don’t actually follow them in the first place). Still, this can be a very useful way to see what someone is tweeting that is less noticed than an actual follow. Setting up Twitter lists is easy — the directions are right here. However, there are a few things you will need to decide when creating your lists ... READ MORE

Forever, it seems, the “paperless law office” has been the Holy Grail for technology-focused law firms. They understand that storing paper onsite is expensive — after all, the firm pays as much per square foot to store paper as it does to house a partner — and paper remains at risk to flood, fire or similar disasters. Paper stored offsite is also expensive to store and retrieve. Added to that, there can be significant penalties for removing and destroying old files. Either way, information contained on paper is harder to organize, search for and search through. ... READ MORE

After a certain amount of time on the front lines answering intake phone calls, you and your staff can become jaded and insensitive to callers looking for a lawyer. This is common and natural. It can also cost you tens of thousands of dollars in unrealized revenue if an inability to consistently qualify callers means you are losing new clients you almost had. When taking call after call discussing plight, strife and suffering, a form of “vicarious traumatization” (VT) can occur. ... READ MORE

Each spring when I plant my garden, I have great expectations for all the vegetables I’ll be harvesting. By June, the new plants start to look a little like the pictures in the catalog, but here and there I encounter a few "volunteers" from last year’s crop. Typically, it's a tomato or squash plant embedded among the cucumbers and beets.

The degree to which individual lawyers fail to find professional life personally fulfilling can be a clear indicator of their level of risk of a malpractice claim or disciplinary complaint. So let’s go with that. Ask yourself these quick questions — and while you do, think about the people you work with and how they might […]

I appreciate a nice, tidy “to-do” list — and how moving through the list can offer clarity of purpose, digestible milestones and a sense of accomplishment. But when it comes to mapping out their career paths, lawyers can find a to-do list is tough to create. There are, though, a few core components that are must-haves on the professional investment front. While these five are hardly novel in and of themselves, too often lawyers neglect them. ... READ MORE

Question: There has been so much talk about the Affordable Care Act. We realize there may be a few things we’ve missed regarding coverage of our staff. Help! Jude A. Dainton: Individual open enrollment for the insurance exchanges begins on October 1, 2013. With less than a month to go, insurance companies, government officials and regulators of all […]

News Flash: No one is looking at your law firm website.It’s true. Many lawyers don’t realize this. They equate “having” a website with people “visiting” their website. Ask if people are visiting the site and they say, “Of course.” Ask about web analytics traffic data and you get the puzzled puppy look. How do they know people are visiting their website? “I just know.”

In my early years, when I first started working as a law firm marketing director, I was preaching the benefits of obtaining client feedback but running into major resistance from management. About two years later, however, one of the senior partners came to a meeting extolling the customer survey process that one of his clients had implemented. Lo and behold, we launched a client interview process; the partner was a hero and I was thrilled. I have worked in law firm marketing my entire professional career so, when presenting a novel idea, I am never surprised when lawyers say, “But law firms are different.” ... READ MORE