Month: April 2015

Chicago, IL (Law Firm Newswire) April 22, 2015 - The Association of Legal Administrators (ALA) has opened enrollment for two new eLearning courses focusing on the Financial Management and Legal Industry Business Management. The newly developed curricula offer fresh ideas and solutions for legal management professionals to gain expertise in law firm financial and legal industry trends. Those working toward the Certified Legal Manager (CLM) designation may earn educational credits through these innovative online sessions.

The business of law is changing every day, and ALA’s eLearning system is designed to meet the needs of industry leaders in a flexible format to fit busy schedules. Online courses can be completed either live – with peer collaboration and networking opportunities – or on-demand, at the learner’s convenience.

Course descriptions are as follows:

FM1: Law Firm Accounting (July 6 – August 16)

Expand your knowledge of federal payroll and employee benefit procedures, tax and reporting requirements, and general accounting procedures, laws and regulations. Instructor Lisa Waligorski, CLM and Firm Administrator at Carmody MacDonald P.C. in St. Louis, MO, will cover the following:

• General accounting
• Banking and investment
• Trust accounting
• Payroll, taxes and reporting
• Legal organization structures
• Special accounting issues

*Note: This course may be purchased as part of an FM package at a discounted rate. FM2: Financial Information & Analysis, also included in the package, takes place September 7 through October 18.

LI: Business Trends for the Legal Industry (July 6 – August 16)

Get up to speed on professional liability issues, disaster planning, and changes in confidentiality, along with other hot topics. Instructor Tracey Gallegos, CLM and Legal Department Operations Manager for Argonne National Laboratory, will cover the following:

• Business development and client service strategies
• Planning techniques
• Procurement and outsourcing
• Law firm ethics and legal trends
• Records management
• Mergers, acquisitions, and dissolution

For more information and to register, visit http://www.alanet.org/eLearning.

About the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA)
ALA is focused on the delivery of cutting-edge management and leadership products and services to the global legal community. It identifies and provides solutions to the most critical strategic and operational challenges its members and customers face today, and prepares them for the opportunities and challenges of tomorrow. For more information on ALA, visit http://www.alanet.org.

Tampa, FL (Law Firm Newswire) April 21, 2015 - Custom Legal Marketing is launching a new nationwide series called CLM Conversations. The event promises to be everything attorneys can't get from a crowded convention, offering attorneys a chance to have a real conversation about their online marketing with a CLM expert, entirely free and without the pressure to sign a contract on the spot.

To start the nationwide tour, Custom Legal Marketing is heading back to its hometown: Tampa, Florida. The first of 10 Conversations scheduled for 2015 will be held at the Tampa Club on May 13.

Skip the Sales Pitch
Every day, lawyers contact Custom Legal Marketing, expressing frustration with their websites, their marketing personnel, and the high-pressure sales reps who field their calls at marketing companies. Custom Legal Marketing's lead Legal Marketing Enthusiast, Jason Bland, decided that lawyers deserve a more customized path to information.

“We wanted to bring lawyers together in a small platform to hear their challenges and help them discover real solutions, without pressure or crowds. Lawyers need the opportunity to have a conversation that fits into their busy schedules,” said Bland.

The CLM Conversation platform is unlike any other opportunity currently available to law firms. It combines expert advice with the opportunity to bring specific, real questions to the table. Lawyers should know what to expect before signing up for the free event:

• All Conversations are held in large conference rooms at society clubs and Class A business centers, so that attendees can enjoy a comfortable setting.
• First, the CLM Enthusiast will share an actionable marketing tip, called a Conversation Starter. This is usually a 20-minute presentation, accompanied by literature the attendees can take with them to help them employ the strategy at their own firms. A 10-minute discussion to clarify any questions about the presentation follows.
• Then, the conversation starts. Attendees have an opportunity to ask about any marketing challenge their firm is facing, including search engine rankings, local marketing, social marketing, website-related questions, link building and other online marketing topics.

Once as many questions as possible have been answered, attendees will part ways. CLM does have availabilities for some practice areas in some U.S. cities (the company only works with one firm in a given practice area in a given metro area), and those who have taken part in the conversation will receive contact information for their Legal Marketing Enthusiast, should they wish to follow up with more questions and/or launch a larger relationship with CLM.

Space for Tampa's CLM Conversation is very limited, so click here to reserve your seat.

CLM Conversation – Tampa, FL
Conversation Starter: Getting High-Value Visitors with Low-Cost Clicks

Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Time: 10:00AM to 11:30AM
Location: The Tampa Club
101 East Kennedy Blvd Suite 4200
Tampa, FL 33602

See other CLM Conversations at http://www.customlegalmarketing.com/seminars/.

Custom Legal Marketing
An Adviatech company
Toll Free: 1.800.789.6451

Custom Legal Marketing Wins at the 13th Annual Horizon Interactive Awards Competition for New Jersey personal injury law firm's website, Petrillo & Goldberg Law.

San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) April 1, 2015 - The Horizon Interactive Awards, a leading international interactive media awards competition, has announced the 2014 award winners to highlight this year’s “best of the best” in interactive media production.

Custom Legal Marketing, an Adviatech company was recognized for their excellence with a Silver award for the Legal Website's category.

Jason Bland of Custom Legal Marketing said, “We are honored to receive this award. Our team worked very hard on the Petrillo & Goldberg website. It was truly a fantastic experience with this firm and they were very supportive throughout the development process.”

The 13th annual, international competition saw over 1200 entries from 27 countries around world including: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and nearly all 50 of the United States of America.

An international panel of judges, consisting of industry professionals with diverse backgrounds, as well as an end user panel evaluated categories ranging from online advertising to mobile applications. The 2014 winning entries showcase the industry’s best interactive media solutions including web sites, mobile applications, print media, interactive displays, public exhibits, online advertising, video, email and more.

“The 2014 competition represents an amazing display of digital artistry, innovation and craftsmanship,” said, Mike Sauce- Founder of the Horizon Interactive Awards. “We have continued to see a trend where an emphasis is placed on consistency of the digital experience across all touch-points of user interaction from desktop to tablet to mobile phone. In this year’s competition, we were astounded by not only the responsive, full screen and immersive desktop experiences but the optimization of screen real estate and attention to purpose for tablets and other mobile devices. All this while providing engaging and rich multi-media solutions to users. The bottom line, our 2014 winners truly do exhibit a mastery of the optimal blend between aesthetics, outstanding content, innovation, usability and performance.”

The Horizon Interactive Awards holds the competition each year with the winners being announced the following April.

To see the award winning website, visit http://www.petrilloandgoldberg.com/.

About Custom Legal Marketing
Custom Legal Marketing, an Adviatech company is based in San Francisco, California. They provide legal marketing services to mid-sized law firms. Learn more at www.customlegalmarketing.com/.

About the Horizon Interactive Awards
In its 13th year, the Horizon Interactive Awards was created to recognize excellence in interactive media production worldwide. Since 2001, the competition has received tens of thousands of entries from many countries around the world and nearly all 50 US States. Each year, those entries are narrowed down to the “best of the best” to be recognized and promoted on and international stage for their excellence. The judging process involves a Horizon Interactive Awards advisory panel, end user panel and a worldwide panel of judges consisting of industry professionals. Winning entries are dubbed the “best of the best” in the interactive media industry. For more information, visit www.horizoninteractiveawards.com.

Learn more at http://www.customlegalmarketing.com/.

Custom Legal Marketing
An Adviatech company
1111 Kearny St.
San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: 1.415.449.1985
Toll Free: 1.800.789.6451

Custom Legal Marketing's Blog

• No Comment: Why Law Firms Should Disable Commenting
• How to Catch Typos on Your Law Firm’s Website
• Get the Most Out of Your Law Firm’s Videos
• How to repurpose webinars for maximum marketing impact
• Google Chrome’s AdBlocker and Your Law Firm’s Marketing Efforts
• How Law Firms Should Adapt to Mobile-First Indexing
• The 2018 Content Marketing Plan for Law Firms

San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) April 14, 2015 - While it may not be breaking news that WordPress is popular, a new Custom Legal Marketing Lab report shows how popular the content management system is on sites that reach the top of search results.

Custom Legal Marketing recently published a report outlining the “Characteristics of the Top Two Ranking Personal Injury Websites in U.S. Cities.” For each of America's largest metro areas, the research team in the Legal Marketing Lab specifically reviewed the personal injury law firm websites that naturally ranked in the top two positions in Google search results.

The team considered commonalities – including responsive layouts, custom designs and content management systems – in their examination. The report was based on the auto accident subset of personal injury keyphrases, which the study called “America’s most competitive legal keywords.” In many of the reviewed cities, the pay-per-click value of these keywords exceeded $100 per click.

Content management returned the biggest surprise in their results. Even given prior awareness of its popularity, WordPress dominated the elite group of high-ranking websites beyond expectations. Half of the top-two-ranking personal injury websites in the country are using WordPress as their content management system. This, in turn, reveals a critical peace of data for law firms: not only are American lawyers adopting the popular content management system frequently, they are achieving high rankings with it.

The study did not reveal a clear second place winner for content management systems. The other half of reviewed websites currently use a variety of content management systems using HTML files without a backend system.

The open-source WordPress was not the only version of the popular platform that appeared in the report, either. The paid, hosted version of WordPress was the most popular do-it-yourself site builder appearing in the top results for the reviewed competitive terms. While only five percent of reviewed websites are presently using a do-it-yourself solution, the group is dominated by the hosted WordPress service.

The study is available on the Custom Legal Marketing website and the Custom Legal Marketing to Go App available on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

Get the full report at http://www.customlegalmarketing.com/lab/.

Custom Legal Marketing
An Adviatech company
1111 Kearny St.
San Francisco, CA 94133
Toll Free: 1.800.789.6451

CLM BLog

• How Local Events and Sponsorships Can Power Link Building
• How Law Firms Can Identify Their Local Competitors
• Google My Business Adds a New Feature for Posting Positive Reviews on your Law Firm’s Listing
• A Guide on How Law Firms Can Safely Redirect Their Web Pages
• Picking Memorable Photos for Law Firm Content
• A Google Error is Deindexing Pages: Should your law firm be worried?
• How to Optimize Your Law Firm’s Mobile Website for Voice Search