Legal Tech Needs Open Online Community With Company Leaders’ Participation

Motorcycle Accident Law – “Stacking” Insurance

I would like to update information on the law in Pennsylvania which requires insurance companies to offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage and, depending on the situation, to offer the ability to “stack” these coverages. PA Supreme Court Clears Way for Insurance Stacking A new PA Supreme Court case, Gallagher v GEICO, that was argued […]
Motorcycle Accident Law – “Stacking” Insurance posted first on https://fergusonlawatty.wordpress.com

7 Tips for Getting Your Motorcycle Ready for Spring

It’s been a long, cold winter here in Pennsylvania, but finally spring is in the air. And you know what that means for your friendly neighborhood Pennsylvania motorcycle accident lawyer. It’s time to get that bike out of winter storage, and hit the road. But any serious rider will tell you, you can’t just go […]
7 Tips for Getting Your Motorcycle Ready for Spring posted first on https://fergusonlawatty.wordpress.com

See You In Atlanta Next Week For the LMA Annual Conference

I am headed to the annual Legal Marketing Association Conference (“LMA”) in Atlanta next week. I’ll be joined Dan Mintz, who heads our sales and business development.

Dan’s a good person who comes with a lot of passion and care. Like me, he sees business development as all about relationships. People buy people, not products. So don’t be surprised if Dan reaches out to say hi or to meet with you – if he hasn’t already. 

With LexBlog’s evolution from solely a professional turnkey blog publishing platform to a legal news and commentary network with over 22,000 law blog contributors, the feel of LMA has changed for us.

As the publisher of legal news and commentary, we’re looking to help, at no cost, law firms and those agencies helping law firms.

• LexBlog is now publishing and syndicating law firm blogs, at no cost, whether the law firm is using LexBlog’s publishing platform or not. Each lawyer, blog and law firm receives a profile, automatically and at no cost. We’re looking to talk to those law firms whose blogs are not already on LexBlog. I saw a number of large law firms who we reached out to meet in Atlanta have already submitted their blogs.
• PR and marketing agencies have law firm customers looking for exposure. We want to talk with you about your syndicating your clients publishing to LexBlog – at no cost.
• Coverage about you from LMA. I have been contacted by a number of companies and PR professionals to report on product or service offerings. I am happy to do so, as relevant and newsworthy, via video or Twitter – you’d be surprised what you can report in 280 characters. LexBlog can then pick up my coverage.

Don’t get me wrong, we still have a business model founded on our managed WordPress platform for blogs, micro-sites and digital magazines.

Mintz has lined up meetings with a number of law firms and digital agencies. Agencies and PR professionals are looking to use LexBlog’s platform as a more powerful and less costly platform than something they development on their own. 

Socially, I am always happy to get together. Look me up or drop me an email if you’d like to get together. 

Last, but not least, LexBlog’s Beer for Bloggers comes to Atlanta – or at least a version of it – on Monday evening at 5 at Gibney’s Pub, 231 Peachtree St NE – a short walk from the conference hotel. 

Siteimprove and LexBlog sponsoring a joint happy hour for members of the Legal Marketing Association Marketing Technology, PR & Communications, and Social & Digital Media SIGs. All who attend will be eligible for our door prize – an Apple Watch courtesy of Infinite PR. 

See you in Atlanta.

See You In Atlanta Next Week For the LMA Annual Conference posted first on https://fergusonlawatty.wordpress.com

Lawyers and Twitter: Six Ways To Make People Like You

I use Twitter more to give shout outs to the good stuff being done by others than to broadcast about LexBlog and our doings.

I’ve always had a hard time believing I did something that qualified for bragging. Maybe that’s my Irish Catholic roots and my being an entrepreneur my whole life — nothing’s ever good enough and there’s no reason not to feel guilty.

Selfishly though, it just always felt good to make others feel good about what they’re doing. Lawyers, the organizations supporting access to legal services and the innovators bringing us the future of the law also need an attagirl or attaboy now and again. 

Turns out that sharing the good of others, rather than talking about my company and our products, is the most effective method of business development I have ever used.

Dale Carnegie, in one of the best-selling books of all time, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ laid out six business principles for making people like you – an essential he believe needed for business development.

Each of Carnegie’s points apply to how you as a lawyer can use Twitter to make people like you.

1. Become genuinely interested in other people. “You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them, than in two years by making them interested in you.” The only way to make quality, lasting friendships is to learn to be genuinely interested in them and their interests.
2. Smile. Happiness does not depend on outside circumstances, but rather on inward attitudes. Smiles are free to give and have an amazing ability to make others feel wonderful. Smile in everything that you do.
3. Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. “The average person is more interested in their own name than in all the other names in the world put together.” People love their names so much that they will often donate large amounts of money just to have a building named after themselves. We can make people feel extremely valued and important by remembering their name.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. The easiest way to become a good conversationalist is to become a good listener. To be a good listener, we must actually care about what people have to say. Many times people don’t want an entertaining conversation partner; they just want someone who will listen to them.
5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interest. The royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most. If we talk to people about what they are interested in, they will feel valued and value us in return.
6. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely. The golden rule is to treat other people how we would like to be treated. We love to feel important and so does everyone else. People will talk to us for hours if we allow them to talk about themselves. If we can make people feel important in a sincere and appreciative way, then we will win all the friends we could ever dream of.

I use Feedly, a news aggregator, and Twitter lists in most of my use of Twitter. 

Feedly gives me news stories on subjects and from certain sources. Sharing the story, with an excerpt or quote from it, and also mentioning the person’s name (Twitter handle) by attributing the story/quote to them seems to work well. 

Twitter lists enable me to see what the people and organizations I’d like to know are sharing. By retweeting, with an excerpt from the underlying story shared or a kudos to the person or organization in the story – or to the party tweeting – seems to enable me to make friends.

With a decade or two under my belt, I’ve found generating business to be about friendships and people liking each other.

Unlike the “Oracle of Omaha” Warren Buffett, though, I never realized Dale Carnegie’s course could be the most valuable degree I could get. I’m learning.

Lawyers and Twitter: Six Ways To Make People Like You posted first on https://fergusonlawatty.wordpress.com

Syndication of Legal News

What if there was legal news service, ala UPI, that syndicated legal news, information and commentary so that such news and commentary could be published by third-parties?

UPI (United Press International), founded in 1907, at its peak had more than 2,000 full-time employees, 200 news bureaus in 92 countries and more than 6,000 media subscribers, including newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations. 

As a kid I thought it incredibly neat that our local daily small town newspaper could pull and publish UPI stories and photos from around the world, in what looked like instantaneous fashion. 

Most of us who are old enough think Walter Cronkite broke the news of President Kennedy’s assassination. Not so, Cronkite got the news from UPI.

The essence of UPI, as well as AP and Reuters is syndication. Collect the news in various formats (text, audio and video) and syndicate it to those in the news business. 

With the decline in the traditional news business, these news services are no longer what that they used to be.

The legal news and journalism business is also on the decline.

• With declining ad and subscription revenues, it is near impossible for traditional legal publishers to retain top reporters and editors.
• Open publishing is starting to impact the publishers of treatises, reviews and journals who have traditionally received articles and editorial work for free and sold subscriptions, including to those who wrote and edited the content. 
• Law firms are paying third parties to distribute the content published by their lawyers, with the third party often taking the Google search and social networking influence of the content. 
• Third party publishers are asking legal professionals to write for them – for free – and for the third party publisher to retain ownership of the content and its original domain on the net.

What’s killing traditional legal journalism even more is the importance of the individual citizen journalist and what that citizen journalist should own and control in today’s Internet world.

Legal journalism has been democratized. 

• Legal professionals have a printing press in their hands via a WordPress platform on a desktop or mobile device.
• Legal professionals are reporting on law blogs – thousands of blogs with tens of thousand of bloggers, over 22,000 bloggers on LexBlog alone.
• Legal journalism is now created by those in the know – practicing lawyers, law professors, law students and other legal industry professionals, all of whom have first hand knowledge and experience in niche areas.
• Legal professionals can own and control their journalism (content and domain) without handing it to third parties for publishing or distribution, resulting in loss of influence caused by not having their domain be viewed as the primary domain.

With all of these law blogs, why not have a “UPI” syndicating this legal news and commentary?

The content could be syndicated to subscribers licensing a “syndication portal” displaying the stories the subscriber saw as relevant. 

Subscribers could include associations, law firms and other organization who had a ready reason to license a “syndication portal,” whether it be for member relationships, brand building or otherwise. 

Content could also be syndicated in niche focused “magazines” comprised primarily of syndicated legal news and commentary.

Most important in such legal syndication is it being all about the individual law blogger, not the third party publisher as in days past. Blogger retains ownership and control, with the primary domain for growing and retaining search and social influence being the bloggers.

A hub for legal blogs with the accompanying technology for “syndication portals” could make legal news syndication a reality. 

Syndication of Legal News posted first on https://fergusonlawatty.wordpress.com

Legal Journalism Takes All Forms