When television rose to prominence, experts predicted that radio would disappear. It never did. Why? Because it continues to attract large audiences and continues to sell products and services. That’s why radio can be one of the most cost-effective ways to build a business, and it works as well for lawyers as it does for everyone else.

Although TV advertising is likely to bring you a higher profile, its higher costs make it a far riskier “media buy” than radio, especially for attorneys just starting to advertise. Done well, radio advertising can cost-effectively bring you all the phone calls you can handle, many from people ready to become your clients.

Ethics

Of course, lawyers who advertise are bound by some ethical considerations that other radio advertisers need not follow. Both the FTC and your own state have published binding regulations concerning advertising for lawyers, and you are also bound by your state’s professional ethics rules. You can begin looking over these regulations here at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/guides.htm or you can contact your state bar association for details about ethical considerations.

Fortunately, most of the rules are simple and sensible, intended to protect the public from extravagant claims and outright lies. As long as you include only facts and statements you can support in your ads, it is unlikely that you will find yourself facing disciplinary actions. Just remember not to pay for referrals, not to criticize other lawyers, and not to claim you’re an expert — even within the vanity phone number you ask prospects to call. There are other restrictions, as well, so your homework before you allow any radio advertising to be broadcast.

Tips For Effective Radio Advertising

To make your radio campaign successful, make sure that you:

1) Treat it like a business expense. Don’t shoot from the hip, let your teenager produce the actual commercial, or run it on your favorite station. Instead, make an advertising plan that includes radio and possibly other media, establish an overall advertising budget, and get professional help where you need it. Instead of advertising on your favorite station, determine the demographics of various stations and select the station that best fits your budget and the station that is most likely to get your message in front of your target audience.

2) Think long term. Work your advertising plan for at least six months. Most advertising, and radio spots for lawyers are no exception, produce their best results when deployed over a long period of time. People must hear about you half a dozen or a dozen times before they will even begin to think about contacting you. If you can’t get into radio advertising for the long haul, consider another marketing option.

3) Don’t share. Many lawyers collaborate with others to pay for advertising and share the prospects that turn up. Considering the demographics, geography, and other factors that control the effectiveness of radio advertising, this is rarely smart. It’s far more cost-effective to saturate a smaller area and receive calls from all the prospects your advertising turns up.

4) Advertise a “vanity” telephone number. Studies show that people are a dozen times more likely to remember and call a number they can easily remember, such as 1-800-Lawyer, than a standard telephone number.

5) Include a web site in your advertising. Your 30-second or 60-second radio spots provide only enough time to make one or two persuasive points. To increase the number of people who eventually respond to your radio advertising by contacting you, include a web site URL. Then put up a “landing page” there that reinforces the message of your radio advertising, and augments it with additional reasons for a prospective client to call you instead of a competitor.

6) Get ready to answer the phone. Good radio advertising will generate a surprising number of telephone calls, depending on how many spots you air, how long you air them, how many people hear them, and the persuasiveness of your message. You will get some crank calls and hang-ups, as well as people with very small cases. Happily, you will also get your share of people calling with potentially large cases.

7) Consider your case-handling strategy. Many lawyers feel small-fee cases are not worth their time. But if you can handle small cases efficiently, they can fund your entire advertising budget.

Don’t ignore the hang-ups. Let caller ID capture the phone numbers of those who hang up, and have your most persuasive and understanding telephone operative call them back. A few of these hesitant callers will be people who eventually decide to have you represent them in worthwhile cases.

9) Rely on a good advertising agency. You can do some radio advertising on your own. But that takes time away from your primary responsibility: your law practice. A good advertising agency will save you money on media buying, will write and produce more effective spots, will measure the effectiveness of each spot on each station, and will leave you free to run your law practice. Agency commissions will be less than your savings in both cash and your time.

In March 2011, when Google announced changes to its search engine algorithm structures, many website owners panicked. These changes were intended to reduce the number of keyword-stuffed websites appearing on search result lists. Google’s goal was to make search engine optimization practices more…well, optimal. The panic these changes caused, it seems, was warranted: they affected as much as thirty-five percent of daily hits to some major sites.

Search engine optimization, commonly referred to as “SEO,” is the wording that directs users to a particular web page or site. The practice consists of intentionally including keywords or phrases on a website that a common Internet user would input into a search engine. When the user searches for a particular topic, the search engine algorithm picks up keywords and lists the page as a source. By using SEO, website owners increase the likelihood of a user visiting their site, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of the company selling their product or service.

Anyone using a website for marketing purposes (which is pretty much everyone with a website) needs to understand SEO. This includes attorneys and law firms. The problem is that SEO practices can easily turn into keyword stuffing, or the overuse of keywords. This problem, unfortunately, is further exacerbated when the range of words to describe a field of practice – such as the law — is limited. There are, after all, only so many ways for an attorney to state that he focuses on family law cases without becoming repetitive. Because of this, attorneys must incorporate additional considerations into their SEO use.

Goodbye Keywords

First, forget keywords. While this may seem completely contradictory to traditional SEO practices, ignoring keywords practically eliminates the possibility of you stuffing your page with irrelevant words. When drafting a page, write without considering how many legal words or keywords you include. In doing so, you will produce clean copy which you can later edit to include the keywords or synonyms you want.

Cases, Not Clients

Secondly, focus on cases, not clients. Why? Potential clients have a legal problem they want help with. Focus your page and site on your cases, not on the people behind them. Not only does this open up the possibility for you to reach more people, but it also provides you with a wider range of topics – and words – to use.

This point contradicts the thought that focusing on clients makes you and your firm more personal. However, you can still make your site, practice and firm personal without discussing a specific person. For example:

“Dan Young was injured in a car accident; he came to us to help him acquire the money he needed to attend physical therapy.”

-vs.-

“Our personal injury cases have provided clients with the opportunity to attend physical therapy necessary for rehabilitation and to regain movement in their limbs after car accidents.”

See the difference? Diverting focus allows for better keyword use. If your keywords are personal injury, car accident and rehabilitation, the first sentence only allows you to use two of them, while the latter allows you to use five.

Your website should contain the best and longest-lasting information you can provide to increase SEO traffic and maintain that increased traffic in the long-term. Blogs and other social media sites are better places to focus on clients because they are easy to update and more casual in tone.

Hey, Break it up Now!

Third, become good friends with section breaks and titles. Most Internet readers skim pages to find information relevant to their field. Placing keywords in your section titles makes your page easily readable and means that you don’t need to worry about re-using keywords in your paragraphs, unless necessary.

The Whole Enchilada

Fourth, SEO is a comprehensive strategy, not just words. Consider how your entire website design, content and its links may appear to an algorithm. Don’t forget your social media links. In most cases, attorneys do not specialize in algorithms and need the help of an SEO professional with this step.

Goodbye To-Do List

Fifth, become uncomfortable with lists. Lists don’t allow you to discuss anything in-depth, thereby eliminating your opportunities to use related words. Sentences are always better because they permit better-hidden keyword and synonym use. Note that being uncomfortable with lists doesn’t mean avoiding them altogether. Think of lists as that friend you really like to spend time with, but only in small doses.

Everything Changes

Sixth, remember that nothing is permanent. It’s almost certain that search engines will change their algorithms again in the future. This means that you’ll most likely have to revise your site at some point. However, by creating quality content, you won’t need as heavy or as frequent revisions.

Keyword stuffing is not only unwarranted, but it makes readers distrustful of you and doesn’t allow you to showcase the aspects of your practice or firm that really shine. In SEO practices, quality is always better than quantity.

Success in the legal profession depends — as it does in many professions — on a “three-legged stool” of positive activities:

1) You must become the best lawyer you can be. Without competence, you will have a hard time finding success.

2) You must seek out and cultivate a wide range of relationships with people who are likely to need a lawyer. Successful people tend to need lawyers more often, and for higher-fee purposes, than others. But in our litigious society, practically everyone you meet will have some need for a lawyer.

3) You must “convert” as many of the people in these relationships as you can into clients.

Leaving Point 1 for you to handle on your own, at least for now, let’s examine some ways to make the most of Points 2 and 3.

Building Relationships

Today, relationship building is as complex and long-term an activity as it ever was. Personal “chemistry” remains extremely important, but our society has developed little or no understanding as to what creates the compatible chemistry that exists between some people and not between others. “Trust” and “sincerity” are also vital elements in building a relationship: relationships rarely flourish unless you are both reliable and honest, and you really like spending time with the other person.

Having said all that, however, one big thing has changed: We now enjoy advanced technology that can help us find, develop, and maintain worthwhile relationships. Using social media and mobile communications, it’s easier than ever to identify people who seem to be going somewhere, to zero in on those likely winners who possess compatible traits, and to make and maintain contact with individuals and groups over long periods of time. In addition to all you do in person, social networks create many opportunities to automate, to facilitate, and to multiply your communication efforts with the people you want to keep close.

Over time — and in most cases, converting friends or acquaintances to clients is something you cannot rush — people who know you, who trust you, and whom you have gently exposed to your expertise and competence will naturally tend to think of coming to you first, whenever they have need of a lawyer. If you do a good job for each one of them, you will be able to retain most of them as long-term clients, and probably get some referrals to additional clients, too.

Conversion

As you might suspect, there are a few techniques you can employ to encourage this natural conversion of friends to clients. To enjoy this conversion, you will need to:

1) Talk the talk. Take an interest in your friends’ and acquaintances’ business and personal activities. Get to know what they value most, and what they see as their biggest problems. From time to time, create and briefly share a “vision” of how their lives or their businesses could run smoother, better, or more satisfactorily, provided that they make a change you recommend — a change that requires your professional services. Don’t push. Don’t oversell. Simply share your vision and move on. If your friend or acquaintance doesn’t immediately “bite” on your vision, let it go and try again (with possible a different vision) at a later date. Even when you don’t immediately gain a new client, you’ve planted a seed that can grow into the idea of working with you on a professional basis.

2) Give yourself away. At the fist sign of interest, donate your time to your friend or acquaintance — but only briefly. Use this brief meeting not so much to solve their problem, but to help them recognize the scope of the work that must be done to solve their problem, and to clearly convey the rewards available to them when the work is complete.

3) Make a deposit. Create a deliverable you can deposit on the desk of your friend or acquaintance. It can be as little as a list of follow-on steps they will need to take, as helpful as a packet of references and readings to educate them about their issue, or as formal as a full-blown proposal covering what you can do and how much it will cost.

4) Always remember that crossing the line from friend or acquaintance to client will materially change the quality of the relationship. For many people, this is a big step they won’t take heedlessly. For some, there is a fear that “doing business together” will ruin the friendship, and that alone may be enough to prevent them from hiring you. This is why you must always move slowly, frequently acknowledging that the relationship is more important to you than the professional fees.

Oddly enough, the more reluctant you seem to accept them as clients, the more eager most friends and acquaintances become to pursue you as a professional attorney.

If your legal practice doesn’t already have a substantial LinkedIn presence, you may be making a big mistake.  LinkedIn, which is an online social network site geared towards professionals, has recently surpassed Myspace as the 2nd largest social networking site in the US, just behind Facebook.  What sets LinkedIn apart from other social networking sites is that all of the interactions on LinkedIn are oriented towards business.  LinkedIn thus provides a social networking site specifically created for business professionals and offers an excellent opportunity to expand your business contacts while expanding your business at the same time.

LinkedIn can be a very powerful marketing tool if used correctly.  It can provide excellent opportunities for your company to demonstrate its value and expertise, while also helping you to develop concrete and lucrative business contacts.  With over 100 million registered users in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is by far the largest professional networking database.

While LinkedIn is used by a myriad of different business professionals, it can be especially helpful to those in the legal profession.  LinkedIn can be an excellent tool to attract clients, hire new attorneys, and contact other business professionals to expand your professional network.  Having the right LinkedIn presence can help shape your professional image and show potential clients that your firm is a reputable and transparent company.  But how can your legal practice utilize LinkedIn to get the most out of this valuable and underrated social networking platform?

One of the best ways to use LinkedIn is to first set up your own company page.  Company pages are similar to individual profiles, but as a company you can post job openings, track analytics, and create discussion topics.  When creating your LinkedIn company page, remember to develop as complete a profile as you can so that you best represent the benefits and opportunities your firm is bringing to the table.

LinkedIn company pages also give viewers the option to “follow” your business, which allows users to subscribe to your company updates and information. You can use this feature to set up Twitter links, Facebook links and RSS feeds that will keep viewers up to date with current news and information about your firm.  By creating unique and informative content on your LinkedIn company page, as well as listing any possible job openings, you are giving people an opportunity to get to know your firm on a professional yet personal level.

Another great way to cement your firm’s LinkedIn presence is to get involved in as many groups and group discussions as you can.  LinkedIn has hundreds of different legal and law-affiliated groups, as well as hundreds of different sub-groups that may be specific to your own legal expertise.  These are great opportunities to post news and discussions, as well as comment on other posts.  Here you can post questions in areas specific to your expertise and rely on helpful tips from other leaders in the industry.  You can also be active in posting discussions and comments in other groups, becoming a leader in the LinkedIn community.

LinkedIn also gives you the opportunity to create polls, which can be a great way to get a sample of views on a specific issue or news event.  Polls are simple to create, and can offer surprising statistical insights to your company.  LinkedIn also offers a large variety of apps that can do a lot to enhance your company profile, such as a Slideshare app to upload presentations, and a TypePad Blog app to integrate your blog posts with your LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn offers you countless ways to promote yourself, as well as your legal practice. It also gives other professionals in your industry a real opportunity to network and communicate with you in real time.  If used correctly, LinkedIn will not only greatly enhance your contacts and network, but will enhance your bottom line and bring you new opportunities and new clients.

What is Pre-Settlement Funding?

Pre-Settlement funding or pre-Settlement financing is a method of providing non-recourse cash advances for injured parties to a lawsuit. In return for the money, the parties sign an agreement obligating them to repay the cash advance, but only under certain favorable conditions. The fact that repayment only takes place under some conditions makes the arrangement advantageous for the injured party or parties.

The most prominent condition of the repayment agreement is that there is no obligation to repay the advance until and unless they receive a sufficiently large sum from either a lawsuit settlement or a court award. If the injuried party loses the case, or receives insufficient funds to repay the full advance, any excess amount from the advance is immediately forgiven, and need never be repaid.

Because any funder of such non-recourse cash advances necessarily assumes a considerable amount of risk, they are likely to require significantly large fees when events do trigger a repayment.

Given the intricacies of such pre-settlement funding arrangements, injured parties who are thinking about applying for these funds should carefully consider all the legal, ethical, and practical issues involved. They should also give thought to the relatively high cost of repayment, in the event of victory or a beneficial settlement.

When Does Pre-Settlement Funding Make Sense?

In today’s over-crowded courtrooms, even a relatively simple case can require months or even years before a final judgment or a settlement is reached. During this time, of course, the injured party must still pay his or her expenses, which are often increased dramatically by newly incurred medical bills. At the same time, income is often substantially reduced or even eliminated by employability limitations resulting directly or indirectly from the injury or surrounding complications.

In such cases, it is helpful to be working with an attorney who is willing to defer his or her fees with a contingency fee agreement. But all this only reduces the injured party’s roster of expenses. It offers no help for covering food, clothing, utilities, insurance, rent or mortgage, and all the rest of the bills that we all incur simply as a matter of living.

Because accepting pre-settlement financial help can result in the winner of a case paying large fees to the funder, it is wise to delay making this kind of arrangement until more traditional sources of money for living expenses — savings, asset sales, family, and friends — have been explored. In fact, many advisors strongly suggest that people arrange for pre-settlement funding only when all other sources are neither acceptable nor available. However, in cases where these other sources of funds are not an option, legal funding can help provide needed money.

If the decision is made to accept pre-settlement funding, the best advice is to shop around carefully among various sources of these funds before signing an agreement with any of them, and to negotiate hard for the lowest possible fees.

Although these fees are set at levels intended to compensate the pre-settlement financier for the risk of offering non-recourse funding, the plain fact is that these funders are unlikely to offer cash advances under any conceivable fee arrangements unless they judge the risk in your case to be acceptable.

How Pre-Settlement Funding Works

Many parties to a lawsuit who seek out pre-settlement funding do so at their attorney’s suggestion. Under his or her guidance, they will normally contact a number of funding sources and shop for the best available deal. Each of these potential funders will ask for documentation regarding the case, up to and including some confidential details. Skilled underwriters will examine and analyze the evidence and arguments on both sides of the case, compare the situation to previous, similar cases with known outcomes, and determine not just the potential of each side prevailing, but the likely size of any award (or settlement) that might be made.

Based on those estimates, the funder may then offer a cash advance to the injured person, specifying the fees and other charges to be collected if and when the money to repay becomes available through a court verdict or out-of-court settlement.  In some cases, the funder will suggest a flat fee. In other cases, the contract may call for a monthly fee, sometimes very high, that continues to accrue for as long as the case remains pending.

When the case concludes, the injured party will pay to the funder their share of the recovery, usually directly from the attorney’s settlement account. Under the terms of these contracts, a loss in court usually obviates the need to repay any of the advance. A settlement is likely to trigger a requirement to repay, but — depending on the amount — perhaps not the whole amount. If the injured party wins the case, he or she may still not owe the maximum repayment amount, because the amount due depends primarily on the size of the judgment and any penalties, and sometimes also on the length of time between the date of the cash advance and the date the case concludes. In most cases, the funder’s return is limited by the actual amount recovered by the injured party, which can be less than the funder originally invested.

No matter how the court case turns out, however, everyone who receives money under the terms of a pre-settlement funding agreement gets to keep the entire advance.

Amounts of Pre-Settlement Funding

The amounts a funder will make available to a plaintiff varies a great deal. Naturally, the greater the weight of evidence on the side of the injured party, the more likely a victory in court, the more generous the investment. The nature of the case is an important factor in the calculations.

Regardless of these details, different funders tend to invest different amounts. For example, similarly situated funding companies may view a claim with good prospects differently. Some companies may offer amounts between $2,500 and $10,000, while larger (or more expensive)  companies may be willing risk as much as $100,000. The expected return and service fees will also vary from one funding company to another.

Legal & Ethical Issues

When determining whether a form of financing is a loan or not, one key determinant is whether the amount must be paid back under all circumstances, or whether repayment is forfeited by the funder under certain difficult-to-predict conditions (such as losing a court case). In legal funding, repayment can be forgiven and the amount must be paid back under only some circumstances. Therefore, this form of funding is not considered to be a loan and is not subject to the same laws as a loan, allowing companies to charge higher fees than lenders.

With legal funding, there is never any open-ended obligation to repay the original amount disbursed. Instead, the person who needs the money is asked to promise to pay the funder according to a specific schedule of amounts due, which depend on the amount of any verdict or settlement.

In general, state bar associations believe that lawyers must not lend money to their own clients, fearful that the lawyer may then be motivated to disregard the client’s best interests. However, in most states, they may recommend pre-settlement firms to their clients.

The cost of pursuing a legal claim varies widely between law systems, and depends on a number of factors.  Different countries and jurisdictions have evolved distinctive practices managing how these costs are determined.  Each system is reflective of the region’s cultural and legal history, as well as contemporary prevailing attitudes.

United States

The cost of hiring an attorney is the chief expense in pursuing civil litigation in the United States, and often in defending criminal cases.  American attorneys commonly bill by the hour, with the rate depending on the attorney’s experience, specialty and the complexity of the case.  The Laffey Matrix shows the average hourly rate of an American attorney ranges from $300 to $700.  However, a study by the consulting firm Hildebrandt Baker Robbins recently found that senior partners in highly regarded firms with particular specialties demand up to $1,500 an hour, and $700 an hour for their associates.

In addition to attorney’s fees, parties pursuing litigation are also responsible for administrative costs and any associated court fees, which can quickly reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the intricacies and duration of the case at issue.  Initial filing fees for a civil complaint are usually around $400, with subsequent motions requiring additional payment.

In some states, statutes require the losing party to pay the court costs of the opposing party  Alaska, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, New York, California and Illinois have this type of loser-pays system in at least some types of cases. In states where the legislature has not specifically addressed the issue, judges have the discretion as to whether to award court costs and in what amount.

In most cases, however, attorney’s fees remain the responsibility of each party regardless of the outcome of the case. This is because most states in the US follow what is known as the American Rule, where each party in a case is responsible for its own attorney fees, regardless of the outcome. The American Rule is not a blanket rule, however, and other state and federal rules can cause the losing party to be forced to pay attorney’s fees to the winning party.

Some states also have exceptions to the American rule, allowing winners to claim attorney’s fees as a part of damages in some personal injury cases. For example, California’s Consumers Legal Remedies Act allows plaintiffs in product liability and other personal injury cases to recover attorney’s fees.

Europe

Attorney’s fees and the laws restraining them differ throughout Europe. For example, French lawyers typically charge an hourly rate in the range of $250-$500 USD, or a pre-negotiated flat fee.  As in the United States, the rate correlates to their experience and specialization, and takes into consideration the merits of the case and the amount at issue.  German fees, in contrast, are set by a standardized statutory fee schedule based on the value in controversy and the nature of the case (e.g. civil, family, labor, criminal and social).

In the UK, there are two tiers of lawyers (solicitors and barristers) who are certified to perform different legal duties, but in practice often compete with one another for clients, or must be hired concurrently to handle separate aspects of a single case.  Both typically bill by the hour, and UK divorce attorneys can charge £200 to £500 per hour, or about $311 to $779 USD per hour and up.  In commercial disputes, a city law firm can charge £700 an hour and up, or about $1091 USD hourly or more.  It is not unusual for top tier attorneys in the UK to charge £1,500-3,000 pounds hourly.  Some UK attorneys do offer conditional fee arrangements, similar to contingency fee agreements in the US.

Although judicial policies vary from country to country, most European countries ascribe to the “loser-pays” principle or the English Rule, in which the losing party is responsible for all the court fees, attorney’s fees and costs associated with the prevailing party’s legal expenses.

Asia

Because the volume and sophistication of legal work is rapidly developing in many Asian countries, there is often extreme variation in the price of hiring an attorney.  Many international firms have set up shop in major Asian cities and cater to both foreign and domestic clients.  Such firms typically set their fees slightly lower than US rates in an attempt to compete in the burgeoning market, and one can expect to be billed between $200 and $600 USD per hour for basic civil litigation matters.  Large domestic firms charge similar fees.

For example, the average cost of a divorce in Shenzhen, China, is around $2,000, with a large standard deviation depending on the exigent factors involved in the case. Local counsel operating on a smaller basis offer services at a much lower rate, usually between $60 and $100 USD per hour or less for issues not requiring complex litigation.

Asian firms also use similar fee arrangements to those in the United States, including hourly, contingency, flat and percentage fees, depending on the nature of the case and the client’s situation.

Unlike the United States, the court costs of filing a civil suit are calculated as a percentage of the amount the claimant is seeking to recover.  Chinese courts, for example, have much stricter evidentiary requirements that must be met before a case can be brought to trial.  The costs associated with meeting this burden of evidence can be substantial, and as a result most civil litigants settle their disputes outside the court, whether via informal negotiations or through arbitration.  While arbitration fees are typically higher than court fees, when taking into consideration the ancillary costs and logistics of bringing a case before a judge, they are often more economical.

Conclusions

The costs of pursuing justice vary around the world, although the costs of attorney fees remain constant as one of the contributing factors to plaintiff costs. Different countries have developed their own systems for managing these costs, from contingency fees to loser pays rules, in order to allow plaintiffs to bring forward legitimate claims.

Attorneys are generally excellent writers to begin with. The briefs, arguments and all of the other writing that is involved in the legal profession usually hone writing skills.  Writing a book can be a natural extension of this type of legal writing, and can provide an excellent platform for success for you and your law firm.

Authoring a book will bring you and your firm closer to achieving recognition and authority – more than you can accomplish through most other marketing strategies.  Books open doors to media and other marketing avenues as well. For example, Oprah Winfrey’s show had a confirmed forty million viewers…and statistics show that at least 10% of those viewers bought books she endorsed. Having a book allows you access to media exposure, and that media exposure can help you promote your law firm.

Book authors can get radio and television interviews, speaking engagements, book reviews, newspaper/magazine mentions and book signings. When you author a book as a legal expert, these are all paths to recognition of your book, and your law firm.

A published book and the designation of “author” also help to establish you as an expert in your field.  Publishing a book can in fact bring you to the forefront of a specific field and can allow you to become sought after for advice and consultation. Displaying your book in your law firm can help establish you as an authority in your field. A successful book can also provide another income stream.

Of course, all these advantages do not come without work. Writing a book is a long and sometimes tiresome job. Even if you know your legal field well, you will need to conduct research, organize your ideas, write the book, edit it, and search for a publisher. All of this takes up an immense amount of time and energy.  Trust me, I’ve written two – and although they were written from a place of passion, there were times the groundwork became just simply overwhelming.

You’re probably thinking…. I bill 50 to 60 hours per week, how would I ever find the time to write a book and still have a life?  It’s easier than you think. You can whittle away at an outline and expand on an idea over time – little pieces here and there. You’d be surprised how quickly the chapters come together.

There are lots of professional ghostwriters who can take your ideas and turn them into reality.  Many professionals enlist the help of these types of writers.  Ghostwriters are usually authors themselves, experienced in the written word, and can usually dedicate hours to your book. Your paralegal or a legal intern can also be hired to help with research, organization, or editing.

If you want to write a book, you may also want to try starting a blog.  This can help you build a platform and consider some of the cases and ideas that pop up in your practice.  Many good books have been initiated from a blog collection.  And, if you are making notes, by all means get them down in some form. Whether you choose to write a book yourself or hire a professional writer to help you, it can be a rewarding venture that helps you attract more clients to your law firm.

The arrival of social networking media ushered in a new era of marketing for companies wanting to reach a broader audience. Yet, despite the wide popularity of social media, article writing remains one of the more effective marketing methods. There are ways to use article writing and social media together for marketing purposes. For instance, you can promote your articles on social media and link back to the site on which you posted your article. You may not see instant results for your legal funding company as soon as you submit your first article. But, the more articles you write, the more exposure you generate for your company.

Getting Started

Begin your writing with the intent to give readers helpful information about your legal funding company. With that in mind, the first question to ask yourself is, “What do I want readers to know about my company?” Whatever you want readers to know, make sure it’s relevant to them. For instance, does your company give top-notch customer service? If so, then promote that quality in an article and include brief examples. You can also ask yourself, “What would readers want to know about my company?” Many people have not heard about legal funding or if they heard about it, they may not know how it works.  Focus an article around the specific ways your company works with plaintiffs, attorneys, and financing lawsuits. Ideas for future articles will come as you continue brainstorming.

While considering your topics, think about titles for your articles. Research shows that readers scan titles and will read an article if that title is catchy and grabs their attention. A study by the Poynter Institute on how readers scan a web page showed that people are “first scanners” and will read something only if it catches their eye. In some ways, titles are just as important as the article.

For articles intended for the Internet, remember to “optimize” your articles with specific keyword phrases, which are words that readers would type into a web search engine when looking for information. Use keyword phrases such as “legal finance,” “legal funding,” “legal financing industry.” Include your legal funding company’s name in your articles so that when readers type in one of these keyword phrases, your company’s name will appear in the overall search results.

Know Your Audience

Keep your audience in mind as you write. For instance, if you are writing for a print publication or web site read mostly by attorneys, then take a legal angle and focus your article on what your legal funding company can do for lawyers. Since attorneys recommend legal funding to their clients, write a persuasive article on why they should consider referring their clients to your company. Consider creating an article with statistics and facts about the industry and what your company is doing to further the industry’s efforts. You may also want attorneys to know what types of commercial litigation cases your company funds and how the funding helps attorneys and plaintiffs involved in the case.

When your article is targeted to plaintiffs and the general public, consider an article about how the legal finance industry works. Let readers know who is eligible to receive financing, conditions under which financing has to be repaid, and more specifically, how your company helps plaintiffs mired in long, drawn-out legal battles that have eaten up their living expenses.  If possible, interview two or three plaintiffs that your company has helped or ask them for written “testimonials” for your article. Also, if your company has an attorney referral service, let readers know about it.

End your articles with a separate paragraph about your company and how people can get in touch with your company. The paragraph should be no more than three or four sentences and should include your address, telephone number, web site address and e-mail address.

Be sure to proofread your article for grammatical and factual errors before submitting it for publication. Mark Twain wrote in his memoir, Life on the Mississippi, “We write frankly and fearlessly but then we ‘modify’ before we print.”

Publishing Your Article

You can place some of your articles on your legal funding company’s website and blog. You can also publish articles in print and online legal and business journals and law firm web sites. Publishing in print and in respected publications gives your company more cachet, but you will need to meet editorial standards of each publication you approach, and the process of writing and editing for print can be more time-consuming. Depending on your company’s budget, you may also wish to consider hiring article marketers. These are companies that distribute your articles to designated audiences with the goal of “driving more traffic” back to your legal funding company’s web site.

Writing and publishing articles is just one of several ways to promote your legal funding company. The more responses you receive from your articles, the more new business opportunities you could enjoy. That could result in positioning your company as a leader in the legal funding industry.

Bar codes on steroids are what they’ve been called. The alien-like pattern is popping up everywhere and on everything. They’re almost as mysterious as crop circles, and they contain hidden messages, too. What are they? They’re Quick Response codes, or QR codes, and they’ve taken off as a new tool for advertising. If your law firm is not using them yet, you could be missing out on an important marketing and information-sharing tool.

Born in Japan, QR codes were originally created in 1994 by Denso Wave, a subsidiary of Toyota, to track auto parts. They have become wildly popular in Japan and throughout Europe for commercial purposes, and have recently gone mainstream in the U.S.

A QR code is a 2 dimensional barcode that can be decoded by your smartphone. It can include text, links or other information that can be read by smartphones. Scanning a QR code is simple, but users first need to download a QR code scanner, like QR Reader for iPhone or Barcode Scanner for Android. Once this type of scanner is installed, the customer can then simply point their smartphone camera at a QR code, and the code scanner will scan and read then code, pulling up URL’s, text, video, and photos.

QR codes can be found on the pages of magazines, on movie posters, in advertisements and even on TV and Web sites. QR codes are useful for their ability to contain large amounts of information in a tiny package. For businesses, they are extremely beneficial as an advertising tool to gain attention or a competitive edge and allow businesses to leave their mark on anything. QR codes have been seen on t-shirts, hats, pins, bumper stickers, and business cards.

How do you Generate a Code?

It’s simple. Users can generate a free QR code using a site like Kaywa.com or QRStuff.com. Creating one only takes a few minutes. But the benefits to your business will be far reaching and long lasting.

If your law firm or legal finance company is not using QR codes yet, you could be missing out on an important marketing tool. Adding QR codes to brochures, your website, or even on your business card can help you compress a great deal of information in a small space. For example, if you want potential clients to be able to access detailed information about your law firm from your business card, you do not need to cram in all your practice areas or recent case victories on a tiny piece of paper. Many attorneys have successfully been using QR codes on their business cards. Potential clients can scan the cards and get instant access to law firm videos, contact information, and detailed information about practice areas and law firm strengths.

If your law firm is hoping to strengthen social media, you can also Likify to add QR codes to marketing materials, and then link those QR codes to a Facebook “like” button. Then, if a client scans your QR code, it triggers a thumbs up “like” on Facebook.

As the overall condition of the economy continues to show little improvement, governments around the world are seeking ways to cut costs. In the UK, legislation has been introduced to cut legal aid funding in certain areas. Specifically, legal aid payments for criminal and civil cases could be reduced by 10% in October, 2011 with the same budget cut proposal being implemented for family cases in February, 2012.

The latest proposed legal aid cut of 10% falls on top of the 12.5% from the final days of the last Labour party government. This cut could precede a further proposal in place to almost completely cut all legal aid by October of 2012.

The current proposed cost reforms from government bodies in the UK do not only include this drop in legal aid funding. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill suggests cutting legal aid to some extent from a broad spectrum of cases, including medical negligence, welfare, housing and family issues. This proposed budget cut comes with an announcement that cutting legal aid from these areas could result in saving the UK government some £350m.

Obviously, such extreme cost reforms that affect the legal services of the public have not been met with uniform approval from all government representatives or the general public. The proposed reforms are expected to be met with strong opposition in the Lords this autumn.

Additionally, reductions in funding could lead to the closure of necessary legal aid centers as their lawyers are already working for a mere pittance compared to their legal peers. Several legal aid centers including Law for All, the Immigration Advisory Service, and Refugee Migrant Justice have either already closed or have announced plans to close due to such budget cuts in the legal aid system.

In a statement released to The Guardian in 2011, human rights advocates such as the director of the UK branch of Amnesty International, the executive director of Friends of the Earth, and the executive director of War on Want detailed their concerns over how the newly proposed budget cuts would affect the justice system for victims of abuse cases. Their letter mostly applied to concerns regarding how the budget cuts would hamper legal aid access to victims of overseas human rights abuses, stating that the new changes would result in, “severely reducing the ability of law firms to take on such cases.” By citing to cases that were formerly brought to the attention of the UK legal system as successful representatives of how justice was rightly served under the old budget system, the letter argues that the proposed changes could greatly hinder the access of victims in similar future cases to the UK courts.

Other groups, such as those with disabilities, have voiced their opposition to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill as well. The proposed legal aid cuts will affect the already-lacking access to legal aid for the hearing-impaired. The few hearing-impaired interpreters working at law firms across the UK are often funded by the portion of the legal aid budget that would be cut by the Legal Aid Bill. Without this necessary funding, these interpreters would no longer have jobs at their agencies and hearing-impaired citizens of the UK may struggle to obtain necessary legal representation.

Still others opposed to the proposed bill fear that any legal aid budget cuts made today could have an extremely negative impact on future generations. The chief executive of the Law Society Des Hudson argues that cutting funding for legal aid to young people in need of welfare and employment advice would not actually solve the problems faced by this current generation.