Author: Law Firm Newswire

New York, NY (Law Firm Newswire) October 14, 2015 - As part of their commitment to serving the local community, Littman Krooks LLP, Arc of Westchester, Huntington Learning Center, Miracle League of Westchester, New Frontiers in Learning and Pegasus Therapeutic Riding will host a workshop on special needs trusts.

Building financial security is an important consideration for the family members and friends of individuals with special needs. A special needs trust is an estate planning tool that protects funds intended to enrich the life of a loved one with special needs, while preserving eligibility for public benefits.

This workshop will be held on Wednesday, November 4, 2015 at the Auditorium, 800 Westchester Ave, Rye Brook NY 10543. There will be two sessions: 2:00PM – 4:00PM or 6:00PM – 8:00PM.

Littman Krooks attorneys Bernard A. Krooks, Amy C. O’Hara, Elizabeth Valentin, Marion M. Walsh, and Giulia Frasca will present current information about special needs planning. Topics will include the importance of a special needs trust and its role in an estate plan; coordination of government benefits; guardianships and advance directives; review of the ABLE Act; transition planning and the IEP.

All of these organizations will be in attendance at the workshop and will provide information about their services.

There is no charge to attend this workshop but registration is required. For more information and to register please visit http://www.littmankrooks.com/special-needs-planning/special-needs-trusts-workshop/ or call 914-220-9276.

About Littman Krooks

Littman Krooks LLP provides sophisticated legal advice and the high level of expertise ordinarily associated with large law firms along with the personal attention and responsiveness of smaller firms. These ingredients, which are the cornerstone of effective representation and are necessary to a successful lawyer/client relationship, have become the foundation of the firm’s success.

Littman Krooks LLP offers legal services in several areas of law, including elder law, estate planning, special needs planning, special education advocacy, and corporate and securities. Their offices are located at 655 Third Avenue, New York, New York; and 399 Knollwood Road, White Plains, New York. Visit the firm’s website at http://www.littmankrooks.com.

San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) October 9, 2015 -

The latest issue of Bigger Law Firm magazine tells attorneys how to develop an engaging and memorable web presence to connect with visitors.

In the feature article, “Mastering the Art of Storytelling and Storymaking,” Dipal Parmar explains how building a story for your firm's brand creates an emotional connection with potential clients and fosters growth.

Parmar examines four elements that contribute to a compelling brand story.

When a firm’s story reflects its true values, it evokes authenticity. Memorability can be achieved by emphasizing a firm’s motivations. Consistency means making a firm's story a part of its identity, present in all forms of online outreach. Tone, the final element, is how a story evokes a specific emotion from the audience. With attention to these four elements, Parmar says, any firm can create a story that resonates with potential clients.

The collaborative process of storymaking is also discussed in Parmar’s article. Based on the notion that user-generated content is more trusted by users than brand-generated content, storymaking engages the audience to share their own stories. Client success stories, for example, can help develop an emotional connection between site visitors and firms. And through social media, clients can help direct the conversation by bringing attention to the issues that matter to them.

Parmar wraps up by explaining how specific social media outlets and types of content can be used for a firm's storytelling and storymaking.

Each issue of Bigger Law Firm is packed with ways to effectively and efficiently utilize modern technology to grow a firm and serve clients.

To learn more about how to build a Bigger Law Firm, visit https://www.biggerlawfirm.com

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San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) September 30, 2015 - The Bigger Law Firm magazine discusses in its latest issue ways in which law firms can integrate interactive features to enhance their website and ultimately convert more clients.

A website’s interaction with site visitors is a key component to ensuring a higher conversion rate of visitor to client due to the interactive content’s ability to convey more information more effectively. Although many websites have interactive components integrated into their site, many law firms’ websites do not. A website may have a contact form or the ability to comment on a blog post, but while useful, these are basic features.

One can amp up law firm websites by using more advanced forms of interactivity, such as integrating features like quizzes that act as educational tools to teach users about the area of law in which they are interested. Another feature could be a form that allows potential clients to ask for a case assessment that lets them explain their case to an attorney and get an idea of what legal options they may have to pursue.

Polls and surveys are also valuable tools to gauge how effective a law firms’ website may be, as it provides the chance for a reader to answer questions relating to usability and clarity of information quickly and anonymously. The results often help an attorney fine tune his or her site and begin to offer more information in areas that are trending. The beauty of polls and surveys is they provide instant feedback.

Transforming text into visual interactive content is another way to engage website visitors. For example, a legal concept can be illustrated into a series of slides. Roughly 65 percent of people are visual learners, and thus law firms need to cater to those who learn by seeing, not just reading, although the visual aid may include voice and text as well. If the visual aid is simple but powerful and creatively presented, most people are more likely to understand the material and not only share it, but convert.

What once took hours, highly skilled computer programmers and a large budget has become easier to access thanks to the advent of user-friendly and easily accessible content creation tools. Before signing up for any form of interactive content tools, one should know precisely what is needed for each website under consideration for an upgrade. One should start small and test to see what works on each website and be ready to expand law firm website interactivity to keep ahead of the curve.

To learn more about how to build a Bigger Law Firm, visit https://www.biggerlawfirm.com

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San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) September 28, 2015 - An article in the new issue of The Bigger Law Firm magazine says that shorter content on law firm websites may actually rank higher than longer content in search engine results pages.

In his “SEO Obiter Dicta” column, legal marketing expert Jason Bland questions the conventional wisdom that lengthy content is looked upon more favorably by search engines. Bland indicates that since Google's Panda update, which devalued webpages that provided no real user value, many in the search engine optimization (SEO) field have assumed that short content is less valuable. That is not always the case, Bland writes.

Search engines seek to deliver the most useful content to users, and Google has identified content that it is actively seeking to weed out. This includes content that is automatically generated by a computer program rather than written by humans, content that is copied directly from another source and “doorway pages” that exist solely to target search terms but do not provide additional content beyond what is already present on the website.

Bland points out that “short content” is not on this list of low-value content. In fact, if a search engine user is asking a relatively straightforward question, a law firm's concise answer can easily become the top search result, ahead of longer articles on more authoritative websites.

The fact that law firm websites can use concise content to dominate the results pages for certain search terms is just one of the SEO secrets revealed in this issue of The Bigger Law Firm magazine. Bland also points out that duplicate content can be a significant problem for law firm websites, as copying the text of statutes, though helpful to users, can actually be a red flag for Google. However, Bland provides an easy fix that law firms can use to correct the problem — without removing the content. To learn more, read the latest issue.

To learn more about how to build a Bigger Law Firm, visit https://www.biggerlawfirm.com

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San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) September 24, 2015 - The most recent issue of The Bigger Law Firm magazine (BLF) concentrates on how to master the art of storytelling and storymaking in order to establish connections with one’s future clients. Dipal Parmar describes the value of relating a narrative that is authentic, consistent and memorable, and that will help create a brand for one’s firm.

In addition, she discusses the importance of setting the correct tone in one’s story to elicit a certain response from the readers of one’s blog posts, photos and videos on social media that a law firm may use as part of its marketing strategy. Parmar also directs attention to the process of storymaking, which involves using information collected from the audience, including testimonials, reviews and Tweets, and then redistributing the content.

BLF founder Jason Bland explains that, in contrast to what one might expect, brief content could have a higher rank on Google than a longer article of the same topic because the shorter content may offer more value. He also provides examples of “thin content,” or various kinds of content that offer little value to users.

Ryan Conley highlights the advantages of including interactive features on one’s website so as to learn more about one’s readers and to inform them of latest developments via the use of quizzes, polls, surveys and blogs that permit them to post comments.

Brendan Conley shares the significance of performing a search engine optimization (SEO) audit of one’s website in order to determine whether any changes need to be implemented that will improve one’s rankings in search engines.

Alisha Corbitt illustrates the efficiency of EagleEye Agreement Checker to assist attorneys in drafting contracts that are far more accurate than traditional methods of writing contracts.
Justin Torres offers insight into the use of vector graphics in web design as a way of strengthening a website’s performance, including load time.

Kerrie Spencer describes a product called Litéra Smartsend, which helps preserve the security and confidentiality of lawyers’ emails.

Ryan Conley discusses the various social networking websites and the ways in which one can use them to build and maintain professional relationships.

Tyler Rhodes clarifies the meaning of backlinks, and stresses the value of quality over quantity in building links on attorney websites.

To learn more about how to build a Bigger Law Firm, visit https://www.biggerlawfirm.com

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San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) September 21, 2015 - The findings of a new Custom Legal Marketing Lab report challenge the widespread view that law firm websites with large backlink portfolios tend to outperform ones with smaller portfolios.

Titled “Does the Top Ranking Website Have More Links?,” the study analyzed the backlinks of law firm websites that naturally ranked first and second in Google search results for each of the major metropolitan regions of the United States. Law firms practicing in areas such as personal injury, bankruptcy and estate planning were examined.

The Legal Marketing Lab research team found that around 54 percent of the websites that ranked second in search results had more backlinks than their first-place competitors. The reverse was true for over 45 percent of the searches. The slim margin between the data indicates that a high volume of backlinks does not negatively impact a website’s placement among search results in a significant way.

Backlinks play a key role in extending the reach of a website and providing new sources of traffic. A link portfolio refers to a summary of all the backlinks that lead to a site’s webpages from various locations across the internet, including blogs, websites, legal networks and directories.

Quality is as important as quantity when it comes to the link portfolio of a law firm’s website. The websites ranked highest among the search results had diverse link profiles that pointed to more government, regional and education-oriented websites rather than free web directories in comparison to their competitors. The results imply that link-building is no longer just about the high volumes of traffic that a backlink brings to a website. Without quality content that has real value for its audience, bulk links generated through duplicate directory listings and other similar practices fail to achieve the desired search results.

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 View the full report at http://www.customlegalmarketing.com/lab/does-the-top-ranking-website-have-more-links/.

Custom Legal Marketing
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San Francisco, CA 94133
Toll Free: 1.800.789.6451

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San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) August 20, 2015 - Get a glimpse of the future of search engine optimization services by looking at the concept of WaaS — website as a service.

The tech industry is always evolving, and it comes as no surprise that the latest spin on the concept of SaaS (software as a service) is likely to apply the success of that model to web design. Savvy law firms will want to get out ahead of this new development.

Until recently, the software used to run computers was generally a one-time purchase per version, with a new edition of the product coming out every two or three years. However, because technology changes and those changes spread so rapidly in the age of the internet, in order for software to function optimally, it became necessary to update it much more frequently. That prompted the software developers to create the SaaS model, in which customers subscribe to software rather than buying it outright, as a way to best keep their clients’ computers current and meet their changing needs.

As Cloud computing progressed, the next evolution in SaaS was a variety of Cloud-based applications and more monthly fees associated with those services. Modern software users now routinely pay a fee every month for access to all of their — regularly updated — software. SaaS may not be ideal for everyone, but is a good solution for many businesses.

And now another implementation of this model is slowly coming into its own: website as a service (WaaS). Lawyers need to know about WaaS because it is part of a dynamic marketing process that is relevant to clients and potential clients. Law firm websites must be continuously monitored, updated on the fly and must reflect changes in the market, legislative reforms, demographics and competition. The typical cycle of redesigning websites every so often is time consuming and costly. WaaS may be the cutting edge solution for keeping content, design and back-end framework up to date. It also provides the flexibility to sync with new devices.

WaaS is not here yet, but it may be available in five to six years. In the meantime, law firms can budget for monthly website updates and be ready for WaaS when it arrives. Updating every month keeps an attorney’s site fresh and current. Static web design can’t keep up with the pace of cyberspace. Websites need to evolve to market demands.

To learn more about how to build a Bigger Law Firm, visit https://www.biggerlawfirm.com

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San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) August 11, 2015 - The most recent issue of The Bigger Law Firm magazine (BLF) discusses the importance of information governance as a way for law firms to effectively and efficiently manage their large amounts of data. In this issue, James Ambroff-Tahan explores the ways in which information governance can help law firms gain control over their data and thereby operate with more efficiency and reduced costs.

Law firms have traditionally been part of a very paper-intensive industry that one might expect to embrace the digital world. Ambroff-Tahan writes that as challenging as it might be to manage information in tangible form, intangible data also needs to be correctly managed. Information governance is a way of managing, using, and processing information in order to increase its advantages for a business while complying with legal, security and other regulations.

There is a growing necessity for a method of organizing enormous quantities of data. The production of data is doubling every two years, and it has been predicted that the amount of data in the digital world will increase 10 times from 2013 to 2020. Litigation and its attendant process of discovery are primary reasons for law firms to use information governance to manage their voluminous data.

Specifically, one statistic illustrates why it is imperative that law firms adopt information governance. Just one page of evidence is produced for every 1,000 pages that undergo processing via e-discovery. Thus, Ambroff-Tahan states, the ability to return solely relevant information via e-discovery would cause one to realize significant savings of up to a 1,000 percent decrease in costs.

In 2014, a survey was conducted concerning different kinds of businesses. The survey showed that half of all businesses were compelled to reproduce information because they were unable to find the original. Ambroff-Tahan also notes that 90 percent of the businesses lacked any knowledge of what their data contained.

Ambroff-Tahan’s article in the latest issue of BLF can guide attorneys with effective strategies for managing their data and facilitating the recovery of information.

To learn more about how to build a Bigger Law Firm, visit https://www.biggerlawfirm.com

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San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) August 7, 2015 - The latest issue of The Bigger Law Firm magazine (BLF) explores several tools law firms can use to improve their online outreach to clients. In the issue, Brendan Conley reviews Paper.li, a news aggregation site that can help law firms, as well as other businesses, find and share the right content.

Conley outlines some of the biggest content marketing needs of law firms: Content must be topical and in plentiful supply, while also of high quality and of interest to readers. All content creation and social media use must be done with an eye to search engine optimization.

Robo-journalism, or automated tools for content marketing, can be a valuable tool for many law firms, writes Conley, and Paper.li is one such program.

Paper.li allows users to create a customized online newspaper based on news feeds and Twitter accounts that the user follows. The result is a readable online newspaper that updates regularly. Each article includes a photo and brief excerpt, as well as hotlinks to the source site. Users can customize their page as desired with the program's drag-and-drop interface. This can keep law firms up to date on the latest, most shareable news.

Conley discusses the potential applications of Paper.li for law firms. A firm may use the program to create its own online newspaper, which could help the firm become a trusted news source and position itself as an expert in the field. However, Conley notes that law firms need to continually maintain their page, reviewing pieces before publication to ensure that the site is up to par. Law firms who do not choose to run a site through Paper.li can still benefit by becoming contributors, which can result in a wider readership.

The most recent issue of BLF includes several other pieces about how law firms can improve their online marketing efforts.

To learn more about how to build a Bigger Law Firm, visit https://www.biggerlawfirm.com

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San Francisco, CA (Law Firm Newswire) August 4, 2015 - Finding an attorney online with the assistance of a legal app is not new. However, new additions to the market are increasing competition, particularly in the mobile app niche.

Information technology is not a term solely related to software engineers, app developers or search engine optimization. These days, mobile technology has become a companion to, and in some cases almost replaced, the conventional tower for online searches. EmPower is one such application that may appeal to online users wanting to find an attorney quickly.

Online searching for everything from best tire prices to criminal attorneys is increasingly being done with smartphones or other mobile technology. This is important news because Google is now showing apps in mobile search results, and Google App Indexing provides a new vista for marketing law firms. The Index already contains 30 billion links, and when accessed by someone looking for legal information, the searcher receives related apps in the results.

Since install buttons appear beside the apps in the search results, with one click searchers will be sent to the Google Play store where they can download the app to their smartphone or other mobile device. This allows for immediate access to information, which can be especially helpful when a legal issue arises and someone needs an attorney right away.

EmPower, a new player in the app market from U.S.-based Encore Digital Media, LLC., includes an attorney search platform based on name, location and practice areas, and offers a full digital directory with lawyers’ website, office, biography and name. Directions to the attorney’s office are provided with an interactive mapping feature. All attorney biographies are available, and the app offers the option to call or directly email attorneys.

Are attorney locator apps worthwhile? Google is continuing to adjust search results to fit user needs, and law firms should be actively seeking ways to proactively stay in front of the most online viewers possible.

To learn more about how to build a Bigger Law Firm, visit https://www.biggerlawfirm.com

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