As Content Pilot and Right Hat gear up to conduct the AmLaw 100 Websites: Ten Foundational Best Practices research for 2012-2013, the two companies have combined forces and released the latest list of “must-have” attributes for your law firm website. This has been substantially overhauled from the 2010 list. “Mobility” is […]
Back in America
I’ve just returned from two weeks touring and cruising Italy, plus other countries that are on the coastlines of the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas. It was a great immersion in ancient cultures and centuries-old cathedrals and basilicas, combined with the joy of spontaneous, contemporary exploration and choice-making. But this post isn’t about […]
The Twitter logo: 2 years old and over-the-hill
Twitter leaders decided that the old bird was over-the-hill. And too fat. No more tubby, toddler-appropriate tiny “Ts,” either. Logo refreshes aren’t unusual, but they typically happen over decades, not months. For example, take the evolution of the NBC logo (all the NBC logos below are the property of NBC): Lightening […]
The yin of the web designer and the yang of the client – whose ego wins?
For nearly 30 years, I have bought and sold design services, and since 1996, I have worked with website designers. Wait, I shouldn’t count those first years of web design, because they were horrifying experiments in this crazy new medium, but I can legitimately herald 2000 as the year that […]
Lawyers (and everyone else), ask yourself: Am I my resume?
With yet another high profile resume-fake (Scott Thompson, who was ousted as Yahoo! CEO after four months among accusations that he lied on his resume about having a computer science degree) I am compelled to write this blog post about telling the truth on your website and other biographies. Whether […]
What law firms can learn from Dyson’s (think vacuum cleaners) anti-branding slur.
British industrial designer, Sir James Dyson, is best known for his iconic bagless vacuum cleaner that he peddles on television. And among frequent travelers who wash their hands in airport restrooms, for the Dyson Airblade, which dries your hands as would the edge of a tornado. But after a recent […]
Do the leaders of your law firm use social media? Employees trust leaders who do.
By now, most law firms have inked social media policies, yet leaders’ fears are still cresting at the thought of firm employees’ fingers running amok and damaging the firms’ reputations in some way. It seems this trepidation is a one-way street, however, as BRANDfog’s 2012 Social Media and Leadership Survey […]
Your vote and opinion really matter to me! Deadline to vote: Friday, March 30
I am proud to announce that my company, Content Pilot, has been included in the first-ever National Law Journal list of legal vendors for 2012. We have worked hard to be a part of this important national list – and we’ll work even harder to stay on it. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NLJBest2012 If […]
Content Pilot’s “Velocity” wins IAC Awards – Best Legal Mobile Application
NEWS RELEASE – March 26, 2012 THE 2012 INTERNET ADVERTISING COMPETITION AWARDS (iAC) HONORS CONTENT PILOT’S “VELOCITY” The first mobile app to drive sales in the legal industry wins “Best Legal Mobile Application” Dallas, Texas — Content Pilot LLC announced today that Velocity™, the first mobile application that drives sales […]
The Elephant in the Room: Marketing Technology Trends you can’t Afford to Ignore
That's the title of our ILTA/LMA panel at the Legal Marketing Association's pre-conference CMO session tomorrow. (This is the first formal joint venture between LMA and ILTA – the first of many, I hope.) Starting at 11 CT, Kate Cain, the new Director of Market Intelligence at Sidley, will kick […]
SMU Law School Law Practice Management Class 2012 – What’s on their minds?
Last week I taught Southern Methodist University’s Law Practice Management class – for the third year in a row. In 2011, the students were mostly 2Ls, but this year, there was an equal mix of 4Es (evening students who have fulltime jobs during the day), second and third years. They […]
Mobile apps or mobile websites: What’s a law firm to do??
When my company, Content Pilot, last conducted the AmLaw 100 Websites: Ten Foundational Best Practices research in Q2-3 2010, there were only four of the country’s largest law firms that had mobile apps. A few more had mobile websites, which were typically poorly designed, bare-bones renditions of their big site. […]
3 Geeks review our cross-selling mobile app, Velocity
In an ILTA hosted webinar yesterday about experience databases, Kathrine Cain (Winston & Strawn), Lisa Simon (Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck) and I spoke about our own experiences implementing experience databases. As I mentioned in my introduction and observations, this is one of the hottest topics proliferating law firms today – […]
Attorney at Work’s “Lawyer Marketing Collection 2011”
If you haven’t subscribed to Attorney at Work yet, take 5 minutes during this post-Christmas-gift-exchanging-sale-exploiting week and do it. To get a taste for the benefit you’ll receive, download this free “Lawyer Marketing Collection 2011” — the most popular/best read Attorney at Work posts during the last year. I am happy to […]
3 No cost ways to drive traffic to your website
It’s almost New Year’s Eve. I am a believer in making New Year’s resolutions – I make them every year. When Merrilyn Astin Tarlton and Joan Feldman asked me to write a year-end blog post for their popular blog Attorney at Work, I sought to write one that would inspire readers […]
Have you heard about “Twitterology?” It’s the latest hot new science.
Ben Zimmer is a self-described all-around word nut. He is the former On Language columnist for The New York Times Magazine, the executive producer of VisualThesaurus.com (an entirely useful tool when you're looking to add color to your prose) and vocabulary.com. In a recent New York Times Sunday Review column […]
How does the “last mile” relate to lawyers’ website biographies?
The “last mile” is a supply chain management term (and a single released by hard rock/glam band, Cinderella, in 1989, and also a play and movie from the 1930s) that refers to a product’s last mile before it gets to market and on store shelves. Apparently, it’s the hardest and most […]
The Social Media conversation we should be having – Part 1.
There is still a lot of hand-wringing about social media by law firm partners. A surprising number of firms still don’t have approved policies – they are in permanent “draft” mode, perhaps because they don’t really want to commit to anything they don’t fully understand. I have given several presentations […]
Considering a website redesign? Make sure it’s better than it was before.
Three major companies have recently redesigned their websites – American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Amazon. I frequently use all three, so I was intimately familiar with the previous sites' user interfaces and overall usability. The Amazon experience isn't functionally much different than it was before. But the design style is updated, it uses softer […]
Martindale’s Counsel to Counsel Forum – Managing Investigations, Compliance and Audits in Today’s Tough Markets
I have facilitated Martindale Counsel to Counsel forums all over the world since 2000. These discussions are “best practice” exchanges by corporate counsel and law firm lawyers about a particular topic. Consistently, they are the best received CLE programs by buyers of legal services and senior law firm partners of […]