Lawfirm.com.

Starting a Web site is easy, but marketing effectively on the Internet is another story altogether. There are literally millions of Web sites, and tens of thousands of lawyer Web sites. It's difficult to be found at all, let alone stand out amid the mind-numbing information glut.

That's the bad news. The good news is that well-planned sites do find their audiences and attract new clients. In fact, among law firms that give lawyers credit for new client development, one of the hottest topics is how to apportion new business developed through Web sites.

The first step to successful Internet marketing is deciding on a strategy. The two basic approaches are brochure sites and magnet sites. They embody radically different philosophies.

Brochure sites

These focus on providing information about a law firm: practice areas, lawyer biographies, maps to the office, and so on. While they can be expensive and elaborate, most are on the simpler side. Their theme is "Here we are and this is what we do."

Even simple brochure sites can provide some benefits. If nothing else, they make it easy for prospective clients to get basic information about your law firm. Further, a brochure site gives you a URL (uniform resource locator, or Internet address) that you can add to your firm's stationery or include in your conventional advertising so it looks like you are up to date. Nowadays, you're nobody unless you're a "dot com," right?

A major attraction of brochure sites is that there is no big investment of lawyer time. You can hire a good designer and then pretty much let him or her take it from there, much like you might if you were having a television ad produced. Many Web site designers offer fixed-price packages for simple sites at reasonable rates.

You can even get a decent brochure site at no cost. Law firms can establish respectable brochure sites easily at FindLaw (http://www.findlaw.com). Legal technology guru G. Burgess Allison explained exactly how in the ABA's Law Practice Management magazine, reprinted on the Web (http://www.abanet.org/lpm/magazine/ tu996.html). No technical skill is needed. Further, in this case, "free" means "free."

A free site at FindLaw may even be more effective than most paid sites, because FindLaw is a major legal "portal" for Web users interested in legal issues. Even lawyers who have more elaborate sites should consider establishing a free FindLaw site to serve as a "feeder" for their main site.

If a brochure site matches your budget and ambition level, there is no reason to be ashamed of opting for one. On the other hand, if you want a site that will attract significant new business, you will need to be more aggressive.

Magnet sites

Magnet sites seek to attract visitors (that is, potential clients) by various techniques. The most common is offering substantive information about one or more particular areas of law. While brochure sites are law-firm-centered, magnet sites are client-centered. They focus on what clients want to know.

"Category killer" sites are magnet sites on steroids. They aim to be comprehensive references for a particular area of law. An example is the immigration law site of Siskind, Susser, Haas and Devine (http:// www.visalaw.com).

If your firm's goal is a magnet site, by all means hire a contractor to handle technical design issues. Don't waste your lawyers' time by having them learn to write HTML --the coding language for the Web--or distinguish between GIFs and JPEGs--types of graphic files. However, lawyers must control the strategic planning and selection of substantive content for the site. Don't attempt a magnet site, much less a category killer, if you are not committed to investing the necessary hours in developing material and keeping the site up to date.

Magnet sites should always include brochure-type material, such as biographical information about your firm's lawyers, maps to your offices, and so forth. But keep this information in the background. If your goal is to attract new clients, keep substantive information that will interest them front and center.

One of the most promising magnet site strategies is what I call "narrowcasting." It focuses on a small sliver of the total audience. Narrowcasting is part of a natural evolution in mass communications. In the 1950s, and for decades after, TV watchers had limited choices. There were three major networks, and that was about it. Each show tried to appeal to the lowest common denominator, in search of mass audiences.

Today, things are different. Cable and satellites allow viewers to choose from scores of choices. There are channels devoted to animals, aviation, history, travel, and so on. In this environment, advertisers care less about the total audience than they do about the demographics of their particular audiences: Who is watching? For example, advertisements on the travel channel can be sold at a premium, because the audience is a self-selected group that has a high interest in traveling.

Audience fragmentation is high in today's television broadcasting environment, but the Internet takes it to a whole new level. Instead of scores of "channels," on the Internet there are literally millions of them. Each Web site is really a different "channel."

Some marketers consider audience fragmentation an insurmountable challenge. For those who understand the Internet, it is an opportunity. If you want to be heard by the audience you seek, then think of your Web site as one or more specialty "channels."

The Michigan firm of Hilborn & Hilborn is a good example, devoting one section of its site to products liability law and another to an even narrower topic: the legal ramifications of a particular automobile plant explosion. Its URL is http://www.hilbornlaw.com.

Innovative content

Law-review-type articles are far from being the only content that can enhance your reputation and attract visitors to your Web site. Here are some techniques to make your site come alive:

* Use quizzes to engage visitor attention. See http://www.venable.com/lawquiz/ lawquiz.pl. Nonprogrammers can easily format professional-looking online quizzes using the free Cool Tool feature at http:// www.builder.com/Programming/Scripter.

* Let visitors subscribe to an e-mail newsletter. These have some advantages over the paper newsletters that many law firms use.

* Provide a service. The Tax Prophet site (http://www.taxprophet.com) offers an interactive program on determining employee versus independent contractor status. Some sites offer downloadable versions of government forms that might otherwise be difficult to obtain, like the immigration forms at http://www.shusterman.com. Most of these features cost the sponsoring firm little or nothing, but they are traffic builders that bolster the sponsoring firm's image.

* Add an online bookstore. The best method is probably participating in an affiliate program with a major online bookseller like Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com or Barnes & Noble at http://www.bn.com. Affiliate programs pay a commission on each book sold as the result of a referral from the law firm's Web site.

Don't expect to make much money unless you have an extremely popular site. The main benefit is not income from book sales. The real objectives are reinforcing the impression that your firm has expertise in a particular area and providing a service to visitors to your site. If the books complement a theme of your site and you add value through thoughtful reviews, the bookstore becomes "content" that can make your site more attractive and help generate repeat visitors. The bookstore at Wolfe & Richards, a law firm concentrating in mortgage banking, illustrates these benefits (http://www.wolffirm.com/ bookstore).

* Host a discussion group. This can be Web-based or by e-mail. Hilborn & Hilborn (http://www.hilbornlaw.com) hosts a mailing list for discussion of issues surrounding the explosion and ongoing investigation mentioned above. Places like eGroups at http://www.egroups.com and Topica at http://www.topica.com host easy-to-administer mailing lists at little or no cost.

* Promote special Internet events related to your area of practice, such as live interviews with your lawyers or discussions featuring them using "chat" software (numerous free versions are available) or a real-time lecture using streaming audio or even video (http://www.real.com).

Publicizing your site

This may be the most-often-neglected aspect of establishing a Web site. As Burgess Allison explained, "No one will find your site if you keep it a secret. And in this Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse of an Internet, if you don't publicize your site, it's the same thing as making it a secret."

Do not let promotion be an afterthought. Plan for it from the very beginning of the design process.

The first step in promotion is building the Web site so that it is easy to promote. There are two parts to this: Include one or more marketable themes and relevant substantive content (in other words, have a magnet site), and then structure the site so that search engines will rank it highly.

Substantive content. Having substantive content that will interest potential clients helps you in two ways:

* Search engines catalog the words used at your site and use them to rank the results returned in response to a research request.

* Other Web sites will be more likely to build links to your site if it has good content.

Dallas lawyer Steven Johnson's Web site at http://www.fedlawyer.com illustrates how this works. Johnson provides a large amount of information and links on the subject of "EIFS/Synthetic Stucco," a specialized area that has been the subject of significant litigation. All other factors being equal, when someone looking for a lawyer searches for these terms, Johnson's site is more likely to appear in the top few results. Consumer-oriented Web sites will find a link to Johnson's site attractive. When reporters want to write stories on this topic, they are more likely to find him, interview him, and include the URL to his site in their story.

You could use this technique to attract new clients in cases about small aircraft design defects, franchise disputes, white collar crime, or just about any issue that you handle competently.

Structure. There are ways to structure your site to make it rank more highly in search engines:

* Include significant key words in the title of your site (the part that appears at the top of the screen in your Web browser) and in large headings throughout the site.

* Make sure the first visible text on your site makes sense--for example, don't make it a navigation bar--because some search engines include that text in the list of sites returned in response to a query.

* Consider establishing multiple feeder pages that are optimized to take advantage of the idiosyncracies of particular search engines.

* Use meta tags. These contain data that are not visible to visitors but are used by computers for various purposes, including helping automated search engines index Web sites.

The two meta tags used for Web site indexing are the "keywords" tag and the "description" tag. You can see them by clicking on "view" in your Web browser's task bar, and then selecting "page source." They go in the "header" section of a page and look something like this:

<META NAME="keywords" content="lawyer,
attorney, personal injury, tort, accident,
Minneapolis, Minnesota">

<META NAME="description" content=
"Jones and Jones is a two-attorney law
firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with
extensive experience in handling personal
injury cases.">

The content part of the keywords tag should be under 1,000 characters. Most search engines won't display more than 150 characters of the description content. Meta tags are important, but they are not magical. Due to abuses (like including sex-related words), many search engines don't use them.

Make navigation easy

Confusing navigation is a common complaint from Web site visitors. They don't like "getting lost" at sites. Make sure every page has a link back to your home page, a menu of links to other key pages at your site, and your basic contact information. Include a hypertext link to send you e-mail, and list the URL of your site at the bottom of every page (in case visitors print out pages to share with friends). If you use "image maps," be sure to include a text alternative. Make sure your navigation system does not rely solely on sophisticated programming techniques like Java or Javascript. Many users may have older browser software that does not support them, and even those with newer software often turn these features off for security reasons.

Navigation bars on the left side of a page have become something of a standard, but don't let that stop you from trying something else if you have a good reason. Whatever you do, be consistent within your site. A well-thought-out navigation structure can add graphic interest to your pages.

Site-specific search engines are valuable if you have a large site. They consistently rate highly in visitor surveys. Some Web hosts provide search engine scripts. Microsoft FrontPage makes it very easy to install a search engine if used with a Web host that provides add-on software called the FrontPage extensions.

Ethical considerations

At their best, law firm Web sites can arguably be considered a form of public service, not advertising. However, in Zauderer v. Office of Diciplinary Counsel, even though a lawyer was distributing only accurate factual information about intrauterine devices and related litigation, the communication was commercial speech subject to regulation by the bar.(1)

Therefore, for purposes of ethical compliance, consider your site a form of commercial speech. Review your state's rules on advertising before you start a Web site.

The ethical rules regulating lawyer marketing are complex and frequently nonintuitive. A respected ethics authority with extensive Web experience once told me that he had never seen a law firm site that did not violate one or more ethical rules.

If something violates ethics rules in the brick-and-mortar world, it will be a violation on the Internet. The Internet is not an ethical free-fire zone where the rules don't apply. For example, if the rules won't allow you to imply you are a specialist, quote client endorsements, or list your track record of cases won in print or broadcast ads, don't do these things on your Web site.

Avoid the temptation to use marketing terms like "top-notch," "expert," or "leading," as these subjective assessments are frequently considered ethical violations. Even calling yourself a "full-service law firm" can be considered misleading in some states if you don't handle everything from traffic tickets to multibillion-dollar antitrust cases.

Make sure you have suitable disclaimers at your Web site. Study what other lawyers in your state are doing and compare that with your state's advertising rules before coming up with your own.

Integrate your Internet communications into your regular conflict-checking mechanism. You may be able to reduce the possibility of conflicts of interest by designing your disclaimer so that people are forced to read it and acknowledge having read it before coming to an e-mail link back to you or a form for sending you information. See the Northern Virginia Law Page at http://www.farr-law.com for a good implementation of this precaution. The purpose is to avoid a position where you can be accused of having encouraged someone to send you information about their legal problems, only to have it create a nasty conflict of interest.

Check your state's rules on referral services before participating in an online lawyer directory. Some are considered to be an unethical form of fee splitting.(2)

Many lawyers are concerned about confidentiality issues when using the Internet. ABA Formal Opinion 99-413 takes the position that using e-mail does not constitute a waiver of the attorney-client privilege but recommends that lawyers should not use unencrypted e-mail for highly sensitive communications. Lawyers who have well-heeled clients who are targets for economically motivated surveillance efforts should be aware that it is easier and cheaper for snoops to intercept e-mail than to tap voice phones. Contrary to popular myth, modern encryption programs like the newer versions of PGP are not hard to use. Don't let the ABA position lull you into unwise practices that could result in harm to your client--or yourself.

Avoid promoting your practice by sending unsolicited e-mail to prospective clients. A pattern of similar behavior was one factor that led to the discipline of a Tennessee lawyer (http://www.legalethics. com/states/disbar.htm).

Peter Krakaur's WebEthics site at http://www. legalethics.com has a wealth of information on the ethics of promoting a legal practice on the Internet.

Choosing a Web site designer

The Internet Lawyer magazine Web site hosts a list of designers with law firm Web site experience (http://www.internetlawyer. com/developers). This is a good resource, but remember that the qualifications to be listed are minimal (two completed law firm sites, without any screening for quality). A more general list of designers is at http:// webdesignlist.internetlist.com. Ask candidate contractors to show you examples of sites designed, preferably sites for law firms.

While doing the initial design work on a high-quality site requires a significant level of skill, doing routine maintenance and updates is much easier, especially if you use sophisticated software like Microsoft FrontPage, Symantec Visual Page, or Claris HomePage. Look for a contractor that will help you take over the upkeep of your site after it is up and running.

There is a downloadable Web site design contract checklist at http://www. lawyernetbook.com.

Internet marketing requires a radically different approach from conventional advertising. With television or print media ads, you can usually just hire a contractor to take care of planning and implementation. In those media, the style is usually more important than the substance.

Web sites for law firms require a different approach. The biggest expense for a good site, especially a magnet site, will not be the money paid to a design firm, but the time invested by your lawyers creating "content" and keeping it current

How much should it cost?

How much money should a law firm expect to invest in an ambitious Web site? The best answer to that question is one that you hear in any high-end stereo equipment store: "How much do you want to pay?"

You can buy stereo gear at any price from $100 for a cheap boom box to tens of thousands of dollars for a luxury stereo system. Web sites are no different. Many vendors sell packages costing a few hundred dollars, but an elaborate site could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Two respected designers, Sandy Ramlet and Nancy Roberts Lindner, suggest $5,000 as a reasonable price for a good basic site.

Sometimes there seems to be an inverse relationship between price and quality. Some of the most expensive sites are among the worst, while some of the least expensive (in out-of-pocket cost) are among the most effective. This price-performance gap exists partly because this is a relatively new and unsettled market, with many highly motivated buyers who don't necessarily know that much about what they are buying.

There is an even more important cause for the price-performance gap, one that we can understand by returning to our stereo analogy. Which would you rather listen to?

* An $800 stereo playing your choice of Shania Twain, Bruce Springsteen, or the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or

* A $100,000 hi-fi system playing the likes of Slim Whitman, the Bay City Rollers, and a mediocre junior high school marching band?

Confronted with this choice, most people will choose the stereo, in an instant. The content matters most.

It's the same with Web sites. So long as a site meets a certain minimal level of quality, spending more money on glitz is seldom the best way to make it more effective.

Finally, don't make the mistake of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a brochure site and then complaining that it doesn't bring in many new clients. That's like buying a Ferrari and then complaining that it isn't very good for hauling furniture. While brochure sites have their benefits, it's unreasonable to expect too much from them. If attracting new clients is your top priority, a magnet site is the way to go.

Finding a host

After your site has been designed, you will need to make it available to the world. Some designers offer hosting services as part of a package, but this may not be your best option.

Hosting a Web site in-house is not cost effective for most law firms. Nearly all firms will be better off hiring a contractor to host their site. Economies of scale enable contractors to provide a high quality of service at reasonable prices. These contractors are sometimes called "Web presence providers," but I prefer the simpler name "Web hosts."

Most decent Web hosts offer a basic package of services in the $20- to $30-a-month range. Expect to pay more for options like more than one domain name, interactive database support, or a Real Audio server, which allows you to "stream" sound signals from your site, like a speech one of your lawyers might have given to a consumer group or industry association.

A number of sites rate Web hosts. One of my favorites is CNET's, at http://webhost list.internetlist.com.PC Magazine recently reviewed hosts at http://www.zdnetcom/ pcmag/stories/reviews/0,6755,2385322,00. html (the favorite: Interland.com). Or go to http://www.pcmag.com and search for Web site host review."

Some lawyers may be tempted to post simple law firm sites at "free" Web hosts like Geocities or Tripod or on America Online (AOL), because it is included in their regular monthly fee. Because much better service through real Web site hosts costs so little, they are the better choice for nearly all law firms. If you are desperate to pinch pennies, try the free sites available through FindLaw.

Getting your own `dot com' address

Nearly all law firms will benefit by owning a domain name, or "dot com" electronic address. Without a domain name, if your Web host is named Webcom, your Internet address will probably look something like this: http://www.webcom.com/ smithjones.

With this type of URL, people are contacting you in "care of" your Web site host, Webcom. This is analogous to saying you get your paper mail in "care of" your landlord. With a custom domain name, your address will relate directly to your law firm: http://www.smithjones.com.

The latter format is easier for potential clients to remember and type, contributes to "branding" your law firm, and looks immeasurably more professional. It can also help you avoid headaches. If your Web host's service deteriorates, you can move to someone better with minimal disruption if you have a customized domain name. Perhaps most important, without your own domain name, you look amateurish, and many potential clients, particularly businesses, will simply not take you seriously.

There are many benefits to having a custom domain name, and the price is right. As of this writing, they cost only $70 for the first two years and $35 for each subsequent year. These prices may drop even lower as Network Solutions, Inc., loses its domain registry monopoly in 2000. Nearly all Web hosts will register a domain name for you, frequently at no additional charge.

Many firms choose to register domain names that suggest their practice area, like http://consumerlawpage.com. While many of the most obvious custom domain names have already been taken, there are still plenty of reasonable names left for those with some creativity.

Most Web site hosting companies contain special search engines that let you tell whether a particular domain name is available. One example is Interland (http://interland.net/order/lookup.asp).

Test, test, and test some more

Whether you are designing a site yourself or reviewing a site designed for you, avoid the trap of assuming that all users will have a system like yours. People visiting your site may be using equipment and software very different from yours. A site can look OK on the designer's monitor but look terrible to many other users.

For example, colors display differently on different types of systems and different monitors. Screen resolution is another major pitfall. Pages designed at 640 x 480 pixel resolution (the usual default on 14-inch monitors) may look garbled at the higher resolutions commonly used on 17-,19-, and 21-inch monitors, all of which are becoming more common. Similarly, pages designed on large monitors (commonly used by professional designers) may look bad on small monitors.

Good technical knowledge can help a designer avoid some of the more obvious traps,(3) but there is no substitute for testing. Before you go "live," test your draft site on the widest possible variety of computers, using the widest possible variety of software. Don't forget older computers, and don't forget Macintosh computers. Definitely test your pages with the AOL browser, because it frequently mangles pages that look fine with mainstream browsers. If you market not just to businesses but to ordinary consumers, consider testing with the WebTV browser.

Keep the graphics slim and fast

Bloated, slow-downloading graphics are consistently the worst design problem on law firm sites. When judging these sites for the "Best of the Web" competition,(4) I repeatedly had to plow through sites that took ridiculously long to download. In my frustration, I found myself muttering in disbelief about the designers: "They still don't get it, they still don't get it."

Here are the best explanations I can come up with for the plague of pathetically slow law firm Web sites:

* Law firms assume that elaborate-looking graphics must be higher quality and therefore must be worth higher fees. Most Web site design firms are not anxious to disabuse them of these notions.

* Most draft Web sites are demonstrated from a local hard drive or over ultra-high-speed Internet connections, Either way, even a bloated site will appear to download with reasonable speed. This conceals the poor quality of the design from the purchasing law firm until it is too late.

* Many graphic designers grew up working in print media, where the concept of "download speed" means nothing. They are lost when asked to design for the Net.

Skilled designers, on the other hand, know how to make graphics that look good but download quickly. Graphics can also be "optimized" to make them download faster. Some graphics software can do this, like the newest version of the popular Paint Shop Pro. The GIF Bot and GIF Lube features at the Netmechanic and Web Site Garage sites are good alternatives for those who don't own such software (http:// www.netmechanic.com and http://website garage.netscape.com).

Some novices get the idea that graphics in JPEG format are always smaller than those in GIF format. This is a myth. JPEG format is usually faster for photos and other complex images, but GIF format is much faster for images with areas of solid color, like cartoons and other line art.

Include "ALT" text for all graphics at your site, as visually impaired people sometimes use readers that can translate text but not graphics.

Problem areas to avoid

Any or all of the following features may occasionally be found on a good Web site, but more often they tend to be found on the worst sites:

"Under construction" signs. Every good Web site is always under construction. Don't ask visitors to grade you on a curve because you haven't gotten yours right yet. The right way to do it is to list planned "coming attractions" and give visitors a way to be notified when these are added.

Visible hit counters. These purport to show how many visitors a site has received. They slow the rate of page downloading, are inaccurate, and are generally considered a sign of an amateur site. Even worse, they don't provide enough detailed information to be useful.

A decent Web host will provide detailed, accurate statistics that will five you a much better understanding of who is visiting your site and what they do when they visit. The WebTrends reporting software is deservedly popular. If you feel you must brag about the high number of visitors your site receives, do it with a link to the statistics, as does http://www.visalaw.com.

Animations. Exercise great caution with animations. They tend to annoy visitors because they make it hard to concentrate on the text of a page, and most of them contribute to a general air of tackiness.

Illegible designs. The worst offenders are patterned backgrounds or odd color schemes. Almost all patterned or "textured" backgrounds make text harder to read. Light-colored text on a dark background is a way to try to look cool. It almost never works on a law firm site. Dark-colored text on a light background is easiest to read on a computer monitor, just as it is on the printed page.

Splash screens. Larger law firms seem to be the worst offenders here. A splash screen is a graphic that appears initially when you try to visit a Web site. Some of them are even animated. I don't say that splash screens can never be effective, but I've never seen one on a law firm site that was an asset.

If you are toying with the idea of a splash screen, ask yourself this question first: Would it be appropriate to have the splash screen as a link from your main page, perhaps labeled something like "A graphic presentation intended to produce a more favorable emotional impression of our law firm"? If it would not be appropriate to make viewing it an option, why would you make it mandatory?

If splash screens are so bad, why do so many large law firm sites seem to have them? The best answer I have figured out it that design firms push them to help justify higher fees. The animated variety may meet a receptive audience with some older lawyers who control budgets and who, in their naivete, expect the Intemet to act like television.

Frames. Frames are a way of dividing a Web page into sections, some of which can remain fixed while information in other frames changes. Frames were the rage a few years ago, but there seems to be a consensus among today's best designers that their drawbacks outweigh advantages.

Among other problems, frames make it more difficult for others to give "pinpoint citations" to sections of your Web site, thus making your site less attractive to others who might want to build links to you. Further, frames are more difficult for search engines to process, so frames-based sites tend to show up lower than they would if their content were in a more search-engine-friendly format. Few, if any, of the alleged advantages of frames cannot be easily duplicated by a skilled designer using tables and "server side includes" (both of which are easy if using modern design software like Microsoft FrontPage).

Clip art. Standard clip art is seldom appropriate for a site right out of the box. Unless selected and placed by a master designer, it tends to look cheap. You can get a classier-looking result by turning the name of your firm into a graphic and using tables with colors inside. The top graphic at http://www.alexanderlaw.com illustrates these techniques.

Navigation buttons can also be used to add color. The main logo at the site of Kaufman & Canoles demonstrates this technique (http://www.kaufmanandcanoles.com). This type of logo is fairly easy to design with a program like Paint Shop Pro (http://www.jasc.com).

Secret to success

After getting mediocre results from a few years of print advertising, a Maryland lawyer I know decided to put up a Web site. He included a lot of information about specific legal issues. Within a short time, he had 11 new clients, some of them with high-quality cases. Some of these new clients told him that they had visited many other Web sites before deciding to hire him instead. One of the new clients explained why she had selected him: "You were the only one out there who seemed to know anything about my type of problem."

This is why you need "content" at your Web site. While brochure sites have their place, only magnet sites have much potential to bring in new clients in significant numbers.

The most promising route to Internet marketing success is to identify specific types of problems that potential clients have. Instead of using your Web site to say that you understand those problems, use your Web site to prove that you understand them--and how to solve them.

Decide what type of client you are trying to attract. If you then "stock the pond" with material about the legal issues that interest those potential clients and make your Web site easy for potential clients to find, you will more frequently hear the magic words, "You were the only one who seemed to know anything about my problem."

Notes

(1.) 471 U.S. 626 (1985).

(2.) See ARIZ. ETHICS OP. 99-06 (June 1999).

(3.) One common error is creating a background stripe using a background graphic that is only 640 or 800 pixels wide. This will look fine on the designer's monitor, but it will "wrap" when viewed at higher resolutions, frequently making part of the text illegible to readers.

(4.) Now incorporated into The Internet Newsletter. You can still see the old "Best of the Web" results at http://www.legalonline.com.

RELATED ARTICLE: Resources for marketing on the Web

Books

Gregory H. Siskind and Timothy J. Moses, The Lawyers Guide to Marketing on the Internet (ABA 1996). This book is a classic reference. An updated version is scheduled, but if you are even thinking about starting a Web site or want to learn how to make your existing site more effective, get this book now, and then also get the second edition when it is published. It will be the best investment you can make.

Jerry Lawson, The Complete Intemet Handbook for Lawyers (ABA 1999). This book has an extensive section on marketing. There is an accompanying Web site at http://www.lawyernetbook. com, only part of which is restricted to owners of the book.

On the Web

Lawyermarketing.com (http://www. marketing.findlaw.com). Mike Goldblatt's Web site is a "category killer" among Web sites on the subject of marketing law firms. Comprehensive and excellent. Now operated by FindLaw.

WWWScribe (http://www.wwwscribe.com) is the personal site of author Ken Johnson. Highly recommended. Ken's clear explanations of technical topics are always a pleasure to read, and the site contains several of Ken's articles on Web site marketing for law firms.

Netmechanic and Web Site Garage both offer a variety of free tools for diagnosing and solving Web site problems (http://www.netmechanic.com and http://Websitegarage.netscape.com).

The Internet Panel. Go to http:// llrx.com, where The Internet Panel features leading experts on Internet marketing for lawyers in a regular round-table discussion of what works and what doesn't.

Search Engine Watch (http://www. searchenginewatch.com) is a great place to learn about making your site more attractive to search engines.

Learn by example

People learn best not from studying theory and abstraction, but from looking at examples. The following sites explain what is good and bad about specific law firm Web sites.

Red Street Consulting (http://www. redstreet.com). This site by Rick Klau and Internet pioneer Erik Heels systematically reviews and rates hundreds of large and small law firm Web sites. There are few better ways to learn what makes a Web site good or bad than to study the reviews at this elegant site.

Mark Pruner's Internet Lawyer column (http://www.internetlawyer.com/ firms.htm). One of the most consistently innovative designers around, Pruner annotates selected law firm Web sites in this monthly column, archived at The Intemet Lawyer Web site.

Greg Siskind's Top 20 Law Firm Sites (http://www.lawmarketing.com/cgi-bin/ law/display.pl/appendB).

Virtual communities

LawMarketing Discussion List. Sponsored by the Law Firm Marketing Association, this is one of the busiest e-mail mailing lists for the legal community. The subjects include Web sites and every other imaginable issue that is related to the marketing of legal services. Fair warning: This list is so popular that subscribers could easily get 30 or more messages a day. You should learn to use your e-mail software's filtering features, if you haven't already. You can subscribe at http://www.lfmi.com.

Net-lawyers discussion group. With 1,800 subscribers, this e-mail discussion group is probably the largest for lawyers. The group is moderated by Washington, D.C., lawyer Lewis Rose. All aspects of using the Internet, including marketing, are fair game for participants. Subscribe at http://www.net-lawyers.org.

--Jerry Lawson

RELATED ARTICLE: Publicity tips for your Web site

It is extremely beneficial to have owners of other sites that prospective clients might visit build links to your site. Each link is an implied endorsement of you and your law firm. Links from trade associations or consumer groups are particularly valuable, but each link, however humble the source, helps you, as many search engines give higher rankings to popular sites--those with many links to them.

Good links

How can you find sites that are good candidates to include links to you? Use directories and search engines to find sites that might appeal to your target market. Contact them by e-mail and politely request a link. Be sure to explain in your request message why your site will benefit their visitors and offer to provide a reciprocal link back to them if desired.

One of the best ways to find good link candidates is to find established law firm sites of your competitors and then find out who is linking to them. If someone is linking to a firm like yours, they may also be interested in linking to you. Here's how to use some of the more popular search engines to find out who is linking to a particular site:

* AltaVista--Enter the search request "link:[URL]", where [URL] is the address of the site you are checking out.

* Excite--Just enter the URL in the search box. Try it both with and without the "www" part.

* HotBot--Enter the URL in the search box and select "links to this URL" in the "Look for" box.

Internet directions

Should you pay to be listed in Internet lawyer directories? I wouldn't say you should never pay, but after years of Internet experience, I don't remember seeing a single paid directory that I thought was worth the price. Work aggressively to get your firm listed in as many free directories as you can, especially the most important ones like Yahoo!, but don't feel like you need to be listed in paid directories.

A great way to attract potential clients to your firm is to put some of your best content on popular sites that the type of clients you seek are likely to visit, along with a hypertext link back to your own site. This works well with links from consumer groups or trade associations, for example. One of the best sites for this approach is Prairielaw. com at http://www.prairietaw.com, an innovative site that caters to consumers of legal services and encourages lawyers to post articles there.

Print media

Don't overlook print media as a way to promote your Web site. Try to include features in your site that will make it attractive to editors of magazines and newspapers that are likely to be read by your target market. Follow up with press releases and less formal contacts with the editors.

Many Web site designers offer to submit announcements of your new site to hundreds of Internet search engines. These services are usually of marginal benefit and may even hurt you more than they help.

They make your firm a target for "spam," or unsolicited commercial e-mail. Rather than try to get into every obscure search engine in the world, you should concentrate on maximizing your position on the top 20 or so Internet search sites.

A handful of sites get the vast majority of traffic. Visit them manually and use their submission procedures to your site's advantage. You can save some time by using the hypertext list of key search engines and directories for law firms at http://www.lawyernetbook.com.

Include your Web site's URL (uniform resource locator, or Internet address) on your business cards and stationery. But this is only the beginning of integrating your site with other marketing efforts.

You can and should use your Web site to support just about anything else you do to market your firm. Further, you can and should use most of your other marketing activities to boost your Web site.

An example

Here's just one example to show how this works. Let's assume that, like many firms, you host educational seminars for potential clients. You should:

* Use your Web site to publicize the seminars.

* Include the site's URL on all handouts distributed at the seminars.

* If the site contains information that will be of interest to the audience (as it should), demonstrate it during the seminars and/or distribute paper copies of key pages.

* After a seminar is over, use the Web site to distribute follow-up information. For example, if you collected written questions from attendees but didn't have enough time to answer them all, reply privately to the questioner (if known) and post the questions and answers.

* Expand the audience for material developed for the seminar by posting it at the Web site. Programs like Corel Presentations, Lotus Freelance Graphics, and Microsoft PowerPoint make it easy to change slide shows into Webpublishable format.

Do you use print or television ads? Including your URL is a simple way of strengthening these ads by making it easy for viewers to find detailed follow-up information about you and your practice.

-- Jerry Lawson

Jerry Lawson is a practicing lawyer and author of The Complete Internet Handbook for Lawyers (ABA 1999). Information about the products mentioned in this article is provided by the author and does not reflect an endorsement of any product by TRIAL or ATLA.