Non-Subscriber Firm: If your firm is a non-subscriber of the MH directory (meaning your marketing budget grew significantly because you cancelled your listing), you do still have options for using MH’s rating logos.  There is, however,  a $159 fee to purchase the right to use the logo for online purposes.  Logos are revised annually to include the current year so, in order to show the respective years rating,  you need to purchase and replace the logo each year.  This logo file is purchased through American Registry.   Non-subscribing firms may still reference their rating status,  in online website content minus the graphic logo,  as long as the MH required disclosure language is included.

Current Subscriber Firm: If your firm is an MH subscriber (meaning you continue to pay for and update an annual MH listing)  there is no fee to use rating logos.   A downloadable logo file was included as part of the “tool kit” you  received when your firm purchased the full listing package.

As always, feel free to email me or contact www.martindale.com directly if you have any questions – hope this was helpful!

Can you imagine signing into Facebook or Twitter and being notified that you had been served with a lawsuit? That idea may not be too far out of the realm of possibility.

Courts in several countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have already allowed or, in some cases, even encouraged the use of social media sites, including Facebook, as a means of alternative service of notice.

In Washington, to serve someone with notice of a lawsuit, you follow the requirements of RCW 4.28.080 and Civil Rule 4, and serve the copy of the summons and complaint on the defendant personally. Alternatively, if, after reasonable diligence, the defendant cannot be served personally, you leave a copy of the summons and complaint at their residence, and also mail a copy by first-class mail to the residence or to their known place of employment. Washington does have a statute that provides for service by publication, but its applications are more limited.

CR 4(h) does provide the court additional flexibility. The rule states, “At any time in its discretion and upon such terms as it deems just, the court may allow any process or proof of service thereof to be amended, unless it clearly appears that material prejudice would result to the substantial rights of the party against whom the process issued.” Presumably, a court could allow service via social media if it decided that there would be no material prejudice to the party being served by amending the process.

Last year, a federal district court considered whether a party could use Facebook to serve a third party with a complaint. In Fortunato v. Chase Bank,1 Chase was unable to locate a person to add to the case. After an exhaustive search by a private investigator and many unsuccessful attempts to physically locate the party, Chase asked the court for permission to serve her with notice by sending a message to her Facebook account.

Chase argued that service through Facebook, as an alternative service, would meet the due process requirements just as well as publishing notifications in the local newspapers because the message was reasonably calculated to apprise her of the claims against her. The court was unconvinced and denied the motion.

The court pointed out that it was not convinced that Chase would be able to prove that the account was in fact a real account or if it had been opened by another person, using the same name or under a fake name. In short, authenticity of the social media account was a key factor in the court’s decision to reject Chase’s argument for its requested alternate method of service.

Fast forward less than a year and now a lawmaker in Texas has proposed a bill that would allow people to be served notice of a lawsuit via social media. Texas has a similar (although not identical) manner for service of process as Washington, including the use of publication for alternative service. The current rules in Texas also provide that a judge is allowed to authorize service “in any manner that the evidence … shows will be reasonably effective to give the defendant notice of the suit.” This is a more lenient standard than Washington’s rule, which requires a court to make sure that the party being served is not materially prejudiced by a court’s amendment to the process of service.

Eight key points to keep in mind when implementing your plan:

1. Always play to your strengths. You will be far more successful implementing activities and programs that you enjoy.  Identify things you enjoy doing and do well.

2. You are never too advanced in your practice to strengthen existing skills. Whether it’s enhancing presentation and communication skills or writing and research techniques, there’s always room for improvement regardless of your career level.  If there are activities you don’t do well, talents you want to develop, then determine ways to ensure you get the training needed to refine them.

3. Leverage your efforts. Try to gain the most mileage out of everything you do. If you get a byline article published then consider turning it into a blog posting, linking it to your bio and perhaps including it in a presentation.  Make sure your marketing time is managed in a way that is as efficient and effective as possible.

4. Stick with your ideas. Be patient. Change and results will not occur overnight. With commitment, persistence and patience, your efforts will pay off; some sooner than others.

5. Cut your losses. With that said, don’t wear our your welcome and if necessary, leave the party early.  If you are consistently trying to tackle a particular prospect, with no movement in sight after a reasonable period of time, then it’s time to let it go.  If there is no measurable benefit to your membership in a legal or industry organization, then you need to simply move on.

6. Be specific with your intentions and activities. Avoid general references, “I’ll take two clients to lunch every week.” You need to be specific in describing intended marketing plan actions, “I will take John Doe to lunch by March 15th and set a follow up meeting within three weeks of that lunch to discuss the expansion of his company.”

7. Be realistic. In order for your marketing plan to work, you need to be realistic about how much you can take on and feasibly accomplish within a particular time period.  Don’t try to be actively involved in three associations if the current state of your practice and your personal life makes that goal impossible or painful.

8. Hold yourself accountable. This is the trigger point. In order for any of the action items in your plan to work, you need to develop a system that works for you. Whatever that unique system is, it needs to work in a way that will help you hold yourself accountable for the goals, objectives, strategies and specific action items described in your marketing plan.

Do you ask your clients if they know what happens to their digital assets once they die? Do you know what happens to your own digital assets when you die?

Digital assets are those which exist in a solely electronic and non-tangible manner, such as email, digital photos, online banking accounts and records, media libraries (such as iTunes), and social media accounts such as Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, as well as the content posted on the accounts. In this age of social media, online banking and bill-paying services, it is critical that your clients think about what will happen to these digital assets and plan ahead for how to handle them after their passing.

Most states, including Washington, have not passed laws (yet) to address digital assets. The states that have passed such laws mostly address email, and even those laws vary from state to state. But digital assets include so much more than just email, and most clients would likely feel differently about how to handle different types of online accounts. Some accounts clients might want to have canceled immediately; others, such as digital photo albums, clients may want to survive and be transferred to a family member.

Your client’s estate planning should include planning for social media and other digital assets. If your client has an active online persona like many people these days, your client may want to consider naming a “digital executor” who may or may not be the same person whom she has named as the executor of the rest of her estate, depending on the technological savvy of the executor.

Unlike tangible assets, however, digital assets can be a lot harder to manage after the death of your client. Your client’s digital executor, or whomever your client has directed to handle her digital assets, should have been advised as to your client’s wishes for the fate of each account.

Once provided with these directions, the digital executor should be prepared to jump through some hoops to access the digital accounts. For example, when your client created a digital account, your client agreed to the terms and conditions for use of that account. These terms and conditions usually prohibit your client from permitting anyone to access her account except for the client herself.

Therefore, many digital-account providers refuse to allow access to a decedent’s digital executor or representative, or even a family member, who is attempting to access or close an account without being able to provide the specific user name and password associated with the account.

In the absence of uniform law on the fate of a decedent’s digital assets, digital providers look to the terms and conditions your client entered into when she created each particular digital account. Those terms will govern how the account will be handled.

Marketing has the single greatest impact on a law firm’s performance. This has been demonstrated in numerous studies in many different sectors. Marketing is both a culture and set of behaviors. This culture is essentially a business philosophy and business process that is about the firm wide collection of market intelligence relating to existing and prospective client needs, distribution of the intelligence across all areas of the firm, and firm wide implementation and responsiveness to it. It is further conveyed in various forms and specific tools including brochures, advertising, public relations, articles, seminars, websites, use of social media and other supporting tools that establish and build on the intelligence gathered, the firm’s culture, brand and market position.

Business Development is a much narrower concept than marketing. It is essentially the sales component which involves actions that help to increase business from existing clients and develop new client relationships. These actions are determined, and strategically defined, using the market intelligence gathered. Marketing creates the platform and it is then the interaction of the lawyers and clients that create the business development opportunities. Business development without a solid marketing foundation is extremely difficult and inefficient. A firm may get a lucky strike sometimes but the success rate increases exponentially with the support of a strategic marketing program. Business development serves a very important function but marketing ensures a process to enhance and deliver value which is ingrained throughout all aspects of a firm’s operations. Specific activities under the business development umbrella might include face-to-face meetings, client surveys/interviews, effective networking, client service and client appreciation programs, cultivating referral sources, responding to RFP’s, creating client-specific products and service strategy programs and organizing client teams.

As the use of social media by companies has become main stream, it is important to provide guidance to clients on the legal risks that accompany the use of social media to promote their businesses.  The legal risks can be broadly grouped into the following categories:

1. Employment: Employers need to be careful when investigating potential and existing employees through social media.  The potential to discover protected information about an employee is very high and should not be risked.  Additionally, the National Relations Board (NLRB) has recently released an advisory memo that states an employee’s posts on social media are protected if the posts discuss wages, hours, and working conditions with co-workers and others.  Employers need to be very careful to remain up to date on the current state of employment law as it relates to social media.

2. Contractual Issues: Using sites such as Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others all require a user to accept their terms and conditions to establish an account.  If your company is advertising on these sites, make sure the terms and conditions you agree to for advertising are in line with terms your company can live with; otherwise you may run afoul of the requirements of the social media site and end up with removal of your entire account.  In addition, if you have an employee running your social media campaign for you, make sure that employee is well versed in both the requirements of the FTC for your company and the terms and conditions of the social media site the employee is using.

3. Security: If your company is active on social media sites, the company is also at an increased risk for security breach which can translate into increased liability.  If your company does not have adequate social media-related security policies, procedures, and technical safeguards in place, it can be held liable for a breach from malware that may be downloaded onto your company’s computer by an unsuspecting employee.  Once the malware is downloaded onto a company computer and/or network, a spoofed site may be set up and your customers may be tricked into providing a hacker with private information.  Your company could be held liable for the data breach.

4. Intellectual Property: You need to make sure your employees know exactly what they can and cannot do online with both your company’s intellectual property and the intellectual property of others.  Copying and pasting reviews of your company that were posted on other sites may result in an infringement claim against your company.  Advise your employees to always ask for permission before cutting and pasting photos, articles, just about anything.  Employees should be very careful about potentially disclosing company trade secrets or confidential information on social media sites.

5. Defamation: A company should be very careful not only when making claims about its own products (to avoid false misleading advertising statements) but also when discussing a competitors products online.  Similar to standard print media, a company must take care in online social media to avoid false claims that may harm the reputation of a competitor or one of its employees without evidence to back it up.

6. Ownership of Social Media Accounts: If your company has an employee (or employees) managing its social media accounts on its behalf, you should take a long term view of the accounts and make sure they are owned and controlled by your company and not the employee using them.  This is still an open question in front of the courts: Can employers protect social media assets when an employee leaves the company?  For now, your company should clearly state in its employee handbook that the company owns all rights to the social media accounts and an employee transfers the rights to any accounts that an employee opens as part of their job duties to the company.\

7. Federal Trade Commission: As mentioned in relation to the contractual issues above, your company also needs to be well versed in its obligations under the FTC.  The FTC’s Act on unfair or deceptive acts or practices weaves in and out of many social media areas as it does with all advertising.   The FTC has also addressed blogging and has released guidelines applicable to social media advertisements.

The above areas are simply a broad look at just some of the legal risks that need to be managed when your company and its employees are active on social media sites.  While there are definitely risks to using social media, most companies seem to agree that the benefit of using this distinct communication vehicle is worth the time associated with carefully managing its use.

For more information on social media and blogging, contact Chris Pothering at cpothering@scblaw.com or Jennifer Iverson at jennifer@jmimarketing.com.

• 65% of corporate counsel have gone online to locate outside legal counsel;
• in-house counsel say they turn to websites twice as often as printed marketing materials;
• when selecting outside law firms, general counsel say that a poor website is a reason some firms are not considered at all.

This should be of no surprise.  Look at your own usage.  How often do you turn to the web to research a product or service?  Don’t doubt that potential clients are visiting and reviewing your website in the same way:  What are they seeing?  Are you sending the right message?  Are you keeping pace with the competition?  Is your Internet position solid and up to date?  Is the content on your website relevant given the changes that continue to occur in the market, various industries and within practice areas?  In short, are you turning away business?

Analysts say that visitors instinctively judge your website and your firm based on these key benchmarks:

Design. According to a study by Stanford University, the look of your website is the number one criterion by which it will be immediately judged. Your home page is often the first contact that potential clients will have with your firm.  On average you have 10 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention.  It’s only good business sense to make the best first impression you possibly can.

So what is good design?  Essentially your site should be neat and clean; less is more.  Get rid of the clutter and create something that’s visually appealing, not too busy, easy to read and navigate.  Get rid of all those special animated Flash effects and anything that doesn’t load on an iPhone or other hand held device.  The look of your website and user friendly navigation should inspire confidence and convey a feeling of professionalism, industry and practice depth and savvy use of current technology.

Usability. A usable website makes it possible for visitors to quickly find the information and assistance they’re looking for and doesn’t force them to search for it.  You want to provide visitors with a continuous path experience.  Sounds easy, but how many times have you gone to a website in search of a simple bit of information, like a phone number, contact person’s name, or driving directions and not been able to locate it?  Highly frustrating when you’re in a hurry and need a quick answer. Beware of dense and difficult to read pages, long text and animated introductions.

Messaging. Upon arrival to your firm’s website visitors should instantly be able to understand three things about your firm:

1. What your firm does.  Don’t be afraid to state the obvious.

2. Who your firm serves.  Do you specialize in large or small, public or private companies?  Are there specific industries your firm has a unique expertise serving?  It is extremely important to tell visitors whether or not your firm handles clients that are similar to them.  If that potential client owns a construction firm, they want to know that you have expertise in their industry.  They want to feel confident that you can connect with them, understand their business and help solve their problem.

3. What makes you better than the competition?  This is one of the most important things to mention.  Surprisingly, it’s also the most neglected aspect of law firm messaging.  Does your firm have special expertise or corporate relationships?  Does it employ unique techniques or methods to achieve clients’ goals?  Whatever your competitive edge, state it clearly.  A buyer of legal services finds it extremely difficult to differentiate your firm from the next one.  Make it easy just tell them why they should choose your firm.

Content. A well-executed website is a combination of great content and unique design.  Spending too much time on design elements and not enough on developing meaningful content is a costly mistake.  Today’s buyers of legal services are savvier than ever.  They will quickly see through a law firm website that’s all spin and no authenticity.  If your firm isn’t present and engaged, in the places and at the times that your buyers are, then you’re losing out on potential business.  Review your website content, is it relevant, does it still make sense given the state of today’s marketplace and economic environment?  Are the attorney profiles current and do they include descriptive narratives? Are the listings of representative matters up to date and are past events (seminars) omitted and upcoming ones clearly posted?  One of the most overused statements in law firm marketing (print and online) is, “We provide high quality legal services at a cost-effective rate.”  That’s a statement of the obvious.  Any prospective buyer of your services would assume your approach to business includes this consideration; no need to offend them with this statement or any other meaningless language.

How do you know if your web site is turning away business?  Here are 6 quick questions to help make this determination:

1. How often is the site updated?

2. Does the site distinguish your firm from the masses of other firms that share a similar practice mix?

3. Is the overall design conveying an established yet dynamic, innovative and growing organization?

4. Have you applied the ten-second test? Visit your firm’s website and glance at the homepage for ten seconds.  Based on what you see how quickly can you determine:

• What your firm does?
• Who your firm serves?
• What makes you better or different?

5. Does your website specify the types of clients your firm serves?  It’s not enough to say “we’re a full-service law firm” visitors want more information to help them better understand if and how you can help them.

6. Finally, take a look at your competitors’ websites.  How does your firm compare?  What adjustments do you need to make to keep pace with the competition and then, what can you do to look better?

Today’s successful law firm invests a combined balance of attention to their “live” markets, as well as, to their virtual ones.  As many firms have learned, and continue to experience, losing site of the importance of this stability could be a costly mistake.

This list may initially include law school classmates – who will eventually become referral sources, perhaps judges and possibly in-house counsel – and will continue to expand with clients, co-counsel, accountants, real estate agents, bankers, neighbors, fellow association members and, in some situations, opposing counsel.

What to do with these lists: Start by identifying a handful of local contacts on your list and set up coffee or lunch meetings. Be a great friend and business acquaintance to these folks and through the years it will pay off. Depending on whom the contact is, and your relationship with them, this might mean asking them to describe their perfect client or a case they would like? Then keep your eyes and ears open to refer a client or matter their way. You might ask them what challenges and opportunities they see ahead. Really listen, then follow up and try to help them get new business or overcome some hurdle they face by introducing them to someone you know, helping them line up a new secretary, paralegal or other outside resource.

A valuable lesson: People may forget what you have to say and what you do, but they will never forget how you make them feel. So be thinking of ways to make your contacts feel like you genuinely care and that you are a valued friend and resource. Be there for people who matter to you. This will take that awkward salesperson feeling away and replace it with the good feeling that you’re doing someone a favor and truly helping them out. In time, it will come back around.

Scour newspapers and industry periodicals: Look for helpful news items you can send to your contacts. You need to have your name in front of someone at least 7 times a year for them to remember you. Stay on their radar – don’t be obnoxious about it just be respectfully consistent so that you’re not forgotten.

Author your own newsworthy material: Identify opportunities to publish a byline article for a local or national legal, business or industry publication or website. You can then request permission from the publications to reprint your article so you can disseminate it to your list of contacts and post it on your website or link it to your bio. Consider developing a specialty practice or industry blog or submitting regular posts to an existing firm blog. Perhaps you could create and disseminate an HTML e-communication mailing (like the one you’re reading right now). They are very cost-effective, extremely simple to create and provide many tracking reports about the list of recipients.

No excuses: Your firm likely has a client contact database system in place for which you can regularly feed information about new contacts, prospects and referral sources. If you’re not sure about how your firm maintains this data, contact your IT Director and have a conversation with that person about the process that’s in place for collecting, managing and sorting this valuable information. Then, begin building your list, using your list and enjoying the fruit your efforts will eventually bear.

As law firms wake up and recognize the potential of social media networking, law firm leaders will begin to pay closer attention to this rapidly growing online resource.  Being well informed of social networking mediums is simply a smart strategic marketing move by law firms.

Online networking will never replace face-to-face business development but it is changing the face of the way many conduct business and this includes the legal industry.  Many lawyers and law firms argue that social media/networking is of questionable value and further say they do not believe their clients and in-house counsel contacts are using these tools. Surveys indicate differently; they are being used by clients, in-house counsel, referral sources and competitors. The world of Facebook, Twitter and Linked In may become irrelevant someday – predicting advances and the direction of technology and the Internet is close to impossible – but for now, they are relevant and we should all be paying close attention to what’s relevant in today’s market.

With this evolutionary networking medium comes many opportunities as well as many challenges.  It’s important that law firms be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities as well as be fully prepared to face the challenges.

If your firm does not already have an internal Social Media Policy then it is definitely time to establish, and further ensure that every firm employee agrees to it with their signature.  This policy should become a part of every law firm’s new employee packet and stack of documents to be signed during the initial orientation process.

Online networking sites, web sites and online discussion forums generally consist of commentary on a defined subject and frequently include links to other sites pertaining to the same subject.  While online networking sites can serve a useful function, if improperly used, they can result in unintended attorney/client relationships being established, sensitive information being disclosed and defamation and copyright issues being created.