It’s time for our 4th annual Best Law Firm Websites. (Here are the results from 2010, 2011, and 2012.) Nominate your picks for best website right here, in the comments. All we need is a link to the website, although you’re welcome to add a note explaining why you think your law firm website nomination is the best (or explain why other nominations are the worst).
We will close nominations (and the comments) on June 15th. Our panel of experts will comb through the nominations to pick the 10 best, post them, and then you get to vote on the winner.
UPDATE: No nominating your own website, or websites you’ve designed. The goal is to find the best law firm websites, not to find the biggest self-promoter. If nobody is willing to nominate your website, we’re not going to consider it, either.
(image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jodimullen/7182159418/)
Yesterday, I sat in on the ABA Young Lawyers Division council meeting in Minneapolis. The council was considering a resolution to recommend to the ABA House of Delegates that would require law schools to teach business skills to law students.
Better-equipping law students to practice law ought to be the job of law schools, after all. But, I can’t help thinking, what makes anyone think law schools would be any good at teaching business skills?
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A: A central point of contention between people who think online marketing (read: social media) is worthwhile for lawyers who want to get clients and those who think it is a waste of time is this question: Is there a critical mass of good-quality clients online, and are they ready and willing to hire you if you market yourself online?
In other words, if you go all-in with online marketing, could you get the kind of business you hope for in your wildest dreams?
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For students who are generally successful in their academic endeavors (read: law students), a B may be acceptable, but a C might as well be an F. It doesn’t matter that there are two more letters to go; C means you’ve slipped to average, and average is not what future CEOs, politicians, doctors, and lawyers want to be.
That’s why Professor Joshua Silverstein, of the William H. Bowen School of Law, wants to go ahead and make C the new F by revising grading curves upward to a B-. He gives two reasons.
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Total Attorneys launched its practice management software with a $1/month price tag. The obvious reason why was TA’s add-ons, which was how Total Attorneys planned to make its money.
The problem, from my perspective anyway, was that this turned the practice management software into a sales funnel. I didn’t see how Total Attorneys would be motivated to go up against software with a more “serious” price tag, like Clio, MyCase, and Rocket Matter.
Maybe I was right.
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US News may be the big deal in law school rankings, but there are competing rankings from Above the Law, Cooley. ATL’s rankings may not be likely to overtake US News, but the outcome-based approach is more useful. Still, ATL is pretty focused on BigLaw [see the “prestige” BS Elie talked about the other day).
If you just want to know which law school will do the best job preparing you to go solo or work at a small or medium-sized firm, try the new rankings tool from the Institute for the Advancement of the Legal System.
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At PandoDaily, B.J. Mendelson (author of Social Media is Bullshit, natch) pokes holes in the myth of social media ROI (that’s “return on investment” if you don’t speak marketing-ese). It’s not that social media ROI doesn’t exist; it’s just not what you think. When social media does pay off, it’s usually not the result of hitting the organic social media viral jackpot. It’s usually the result of hard work and lots of money, just like regular marketing.
But what about those famous social media success stories — the from-out-of-nowhere viral blockbusters? Mendelson breaks a couple down. Let’s take PSY.
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At the end of this Bloomberg Law video, Above the Law’s Elie Mystal predicts law schools will split into two tiers, one for law students who are aiming to become white-shoe law firm partners and Supreme Court justices, and another for law students aiming for a middle-class existence in smaller markets.
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On the one hand, it’s nice that PDF documents are basically just electronic versions of paper documents. It makes it easier for non-techie people to wrap their heads around paperless documents. On the other hand, if you cannot get past that simple analogy, you aren’t taking advantage of the medium.
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Come join us for a free-form chat on Google+ at 2pm today. Here’s the link to RSVP. (I think you have to join the SoloSmallTech community on G+ to see the invitation, but I’m not sure.
To keep us talking, here’s a list of topics. Please add anything you’d like to talk about, serious or not.
If you’re not into the whole face-to-face, audio-visual thing, I’ve started an IRC channel at #lawyerist on irc.synirc.net as an experiment. Join using your IRC client of choice, or use the synIRC webchat client. (Don’t know what IRC is? Come to the Hangout and ask!)
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