YOUR OWN LAW FIRM INTERNET SITE, WHY & HOW

(NC Bar Law Practice Management Newsletter - 5-98)

By Dale Tincher 

As consultants, a question we often hear is "How active should we be in regard to the Internet?” We tactfully answer that, “If you do not become active, you will be left behind.”

Recent estimates of Web users worldwide put the number at 40 million and growing fast. The Internet is growing at more than 10 percent per month. It has been projected that by the turn of the century, there will be over half a billion users of the World Wide Web.   

Per the American College Survey Group, Forbes 500 CEO’s expect to generate almost 40 percent of their sales through the Internet within ten years.   A March 3, 1998 USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com) article reported that "company executives are going high tech, relying on the Internet as an integral part of their business day.”  

Another section of the article said that "a 1997 survey by the American Management Association found 53 percent of executives and managers spent up to four hours weekly on the Internet, with 25 percent expecting their use to jump to 10 hours or more per week within two years.” Among their uses was e-mail, checking out the competition, and keeping up with personal tasks. "They use e-mail to reach customers, clients and employees,” the article continued.

The NCBA’s Use Of The Internet

The North Carolina Bar Association (www.barlinc.org or  www.ncbar.org) is a model of how the Internet can be used. Schedules, committee information, executive and manager e-mail addresses, meetings, administrative law decisions, and other  resources are a click away. CLE classes are now listed on the Internet  and  can be searched by topic and location. Soon, members will be able to register for classes on line.

Julie Rabinowitz, The NCBA’s director of membership services and benefits, stated that, "Barlinc is important for both members and nonmembers in two important ways. For both groups, the home page showcases what the association is and all the activities, programs, and services it provides.”

“For members,” Rabinowitz continued, “its second benefit will be in the redesign this spring, in that it will provide a forum where members can meet and talk about practice concerns and legislation, or ask advice from other attorneys who share their interests." 

For nonmembers, whether they are from out of-state, law students or new lawyers, an additional benefit, Rabinowitz said, is that these individuals can get a sense of what is important to the practice of law in North Carolina. She noted that users can learn the “who's who,” the difference between judicial districts and local bars, and “all the other little things that are important about the practice of Law in North Carolina."  

"I have received calls from individuals from all over the country,” Rabinowitz noted, “and even the Mexican Embassy, about information presented on Barlinc. It is that accessibility of information that makes this such a valuable resource for attorneys in North Carolina."

Richard L. Gray, senior vice president and general counsel of United Guaranty and chair of NCBA’s Technology Advisory Committee, reported that "a searchable index of ethics opinions is now online. Searchable North Carolina General Statutes are also online."

Gray has arranged for opinions from Judge Ben F. Tennille's Special Superior Court for Complex Business Cases to be on line. Gray's "future dream" is to have a syllabus of Supreme Court decisions from Cornell Law School available on the day of their occurrence. He said that chat areas for sections and other groups are expected to be available in early April.

The Draw To The Internet
                               
The Internet is a great resource for finding people and information.  Think about how you find services, information, and resources.  You mentally recall prospective candidates or data locations.  You may call friends and associates.  You then check your files (computer and other), the Yellow Pages, or brochures and catalogs you have filed away.   

With regard to promotion, the key is having good exposure and being accessible.   The Internet is not a replacement for advertising and file management, but it is a well-priced supplement.  This is especially true for small firms wishing equal footing with large firms.  

Businesses, wanting to make themselves accessible, find that it is quicker and less expensive to place information on the Internet than it is to publish or purchase catalogs with current information. Many companies are posting documents and announcements on web pages rather than sending e-mail or other documents. 

Users are normally able to access and use the information regardless of their location,   equipment configuration, word processor, or printer.  The information is interactive and allows the user to branch to desired areas. Businesses also find that they can retrieve information from a desktop Internet computer more quickly than by searching publications (not to mention the storage space savings).

Administrative costs can be dramatically reduced with a web site. Clients may frequently call for a "write-up" or brochure on your firm. The brochures can be supplemented by referring them to your web site.  I recommend to clients that they have a page called brochure.htm that they can quickly print for mailings and handouts.    

Forms and documents such as job applications, firm job requirement criteria, newsletters, articles, maps, internal data, etc., can be placed on the site.   PowerPoint presentations can be easily published to the web.  Restricted areas can be protected through passwords. 

Businesses in America utilize the Internet for communications, research, product promotion and many other purposes.  Electronic mail (e-mail) has become an important extension of their communications.   Many business and firms start their day by checking their internal and external e-mail.  Throughout the day, their computer notifies them of e-mail from an important client or co-worker.

E-mail is quick and efficient.  Instead of rushing documents to the Federal Express box or delivery person, documents can be attached to e-mail and sent across the country or the world in seconds - at no charge.  Very importantly, the recipient can retrieve the editable documents into their word processing program.  The edited documents can then be forwarded to individuals or groups throughout the world, a key advantage over delivery agents and voice mail.  Adding a password and encryption can make the documents secure.  Increasingly, clients are asking for their law firm’s e-mail address. E-mail alone can justify adding the Internet to an office.

Throughout the remainder of this article, I am going to refer to locations (URL’s) of meaningful sites.   If you have Internet access and wish to avoid manually retyping the following locations, please refer to my home page where I have this article hyperlinked and a section listing all of these locations.   Please choose the “Links” option. Also, I realize that I am using occasional computer terms that may not be familiar to you. Please visit my site for links to locations that provide term definition.  My site is located at http://www.consultwebs.com.

Finding people, business information, legal information, dictionaries, encyclopedias, medical resources and other data is a snap with the Internet.  An individual looking for medical information can search http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/ freemedl.html.  On June 26, 1997, the National Library of Medicine announced that its MEDLINE database of more than 8.8 million references to articles published in 3,800 biomedical journals may be accessed free of charge on the World Wide Web.

Two Web-based products, Internet Grateful Med and PubMed, provide this access. A brief description of each system is provided.

Looking for an individual or resource?  Whether you are searching for the phone number, address or e-mail address of an old classmate, witness, or resource, the Internet most likely houses your information.  Search services include http://www.infospace.com/, http://www.switchboard.com and http://www.whowhere.com.    North Carolina doctors and their data can be found at http://www.comp.state.nc.us/ncichome.htm.   Attorneys can be found at http://www.martindale-hubbell.com, http://lawinfo.com/ and on some of the book publishers’ pages.

How about information on corporations, including registered agents?  The secretary of state’s http://www.state.nc.us/business/ and http://www.state.nc.us/secstate/ provide a wealth of information.  The EDGAR database of corporate information can be found at http://www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm.  

Legal specific search engines include http://www.findlaw.com, and http://www.alllaw.com.  Associations, including the National Federation of Paralegal Association, National Association of Legal Assistants, State and National Bar and Trial Lawyers’ Associations (e.g., http://www.ncatl.org) and others can be found at these sites. 

The NCBA’s www.barlinc.org is an excellent resource for local and national links.  The North Carolina General Statutes are now available at http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/.   The North Carolina Courts Page (http://www.aoc.state.nc.us/) lists calendars, dockets, judge biographies, rules, forms and a wealth of other information.

Legal research over the Internet continues to improve, now including boolean logic and other search tools.  The above sites provide a host of federal, state and local research resources. 

Your Own Web Site                                

Do you want your own web site?  Do you want business?  These two questions will correlate in 1998 through the year 2000 and beyond.  More than 100 North Carolina firms have web pages (see http://www.lawyerprofiles.com).   Technology clients use the Internet now to find their servicing agencies.   Corporations find the Internet to be a great “electronic Yellow Pages”.  

You need to learn, understand, and tap into this medium. A web site will allow you to attract new clients locally, regionally and globally. You can communicate with information seekers. You can introduce your firm and its staff by displaying resumes and pictures. You can strengthen relationships and market additional services to existing clients. Your information is current and available twenty-four hours per day with minimum cost and resources. Recruiting is strengthened.

Consider your desired clients and image. Many firms want well-funded, progressive clients. These clients usually have web pages.  As mentioned above, technology businesses use the Internet now to find their servicing agencies. Consider your own impression of two comparable firms, one having a professional web site, and one not having a site.  Which firm do you view as more progressive?

Suffice it to say that you can and should develop a web site.  Where do you start?   You can save many hours of staff research and later page rewrites by obtaining a few hours of consulting assistance up front.  Visit http://www.lawyerprofiles.com to look at the pages of 100 North Carolina firms for ideas.  

If you want a site, but you do not want to worry about design and maintenance, the web contains many organizations, who like my company, will do the entire job for you, plus add content to keep the site interesting. You can perform a search for "web designers" on the Internet.  You can also look at the bottom section of law firm pages to see who developed the page or click on “View Source” to see the code and sometimes the designer’s name. 

You should invest $70 (www.internic.net) for a two-year purchase of your domain name, e.g., http://www.yourname.com.   I suggest renting web space from a provider such as BELLSOUTH.net, Adgrafix, AT&T, Interpath, AOL or one of many others.  Options, reliability rankings, and phone numbers are listed on http://www.consultwebs.com.

Such providers will rent 2 to 160+ megabytes of space for $20 to $99 dollars per month.   Some, such as Adgrafix, can save you substantial amounts of money by providing unlimited mailboxes with several of their options. 

I do not recommend that you have billable staff spend their time learning about esoteric areas such as jpeg graphics and java scripts.  However, your firm needs to be actively involved in supplying and maintaining content that people will want to read.    

Approach the page as your electronic brochure and as such, provide a professional and compelling  appearance.  Have a catchy lead-in.    Web pages will gravitate from flashy designs to a more conservative print-like appearance.  Have plenty of white space.  Small print and pages that fit on one screen have been proven to be less effective than larger print and scrollable pages. Users are accustomed to scrolling downward in their applications and don't mind as long as the pages are not too long.

More importantly, have meaningful content that makes it a site that people want to bookmark. Add value and service to your site. Give away a lot of information to show your expertise.  Keep your content fresh. No one wants to read yesterday's newspaper.

Consider the maintenance of the site.  You should not look at enhancing your site as a mysterious venture requiring programming skills.   A good eye for design and word processing skills are helpful, but minimal programming is required.  A simple page can be built in minutes.

During the Internet technology class that I teach at the N. C. Bar Center, we actually build three basic pages using three different methods.  These methods consist of a word processor, Microsoft FrontPage, and AT&T’s Quicklinks program.

If you wish to test my statement that a basic page is simple to build, I invite you to try this exercise.  Type a word processing page in WordPerfect or Word.  When you save the document, choose “Save As” and then choose “HTML.”   Put in your file name.   Now, load your Internet Explorer or NetScape browser.  Choose “File” “Open” and “Browse.”  Type the name of your document.  Choose “Open” and your document appears in your browser.  It is ready to be uploaded to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) for publication on the Web.  You can add color, backgrounds, etc., as desired.

Be conservative with graphics, since larger graphic files load slowly for modem users.   Provide only meaningful and navigation graphics.  To find graphics, choose a search engine such as Yahoo or HotBot and type “free graphics gif  jpeg.   You will receive a long list of graphics pages.

If you want pictures on your page, you have several options.  If you do not have a color scanner, a $249 Visioneer Paperport (http://www.visioneer.com) is an excellent acquisition for scanning your photos and drawings.  If photographs are a significant part of your graphics, choose a flatbed scanner, rather than a pull-through scanner.  Other methods of acquiring images include digital cameras, having your photo developer convert your film to digital format, or using a Camcorder.  

My favorite method of acquiring photos is using a Camcorder to capture numerous shots, then using a $99 “Snappy” (available at any computer store) to obtain my image.   As the VCR plays the tape, I “snap” my mouse button when I see the frame (on my computer screen) that I want. Snappy allows me to crop the photo as I wish. 

For further manipulation of images, an inexpensive download by the name of Lview is available at http://www.lview.com.  Microsoft FrontPage includes an excellent image editor called Image Composer [notice how slim I look in my web page picture ].  See our page at http://www.consultwebs.com if you would like to see Snappy generated pictures and Visioneer scanned photos.   Virtually all of the photos were captured by a Camcorder and Snappy.   Additional design recommendations are located on our page.

Many ISP’s provide “Quick Template” tools which allow you to fill in the blanks, choose some graphics, and quickly throw up a temporary site.  You may choose to supplement this offering by acquiring page development software such as Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe PageMill, both in the $100.00 range.

Professionalism is important; if you have reservations about your site, talk with a designer. Designers, often called webmasters, will develop your site, generally starting at zero to ten thousand dollars depending upon the depth and complexity.  Designers who have legal experience will save you time and will contribute significant marketing ideas.  Don’t forget, however; if you wish to start with a free, basic page, consult http://www.findlaw.com or http://www.lawyerprofiles.com.

Now that your site is built, you must market the page.  We advise clients to use a variety of marketing methods.  You can easily post your new site to search engines or, if you prefer, URL announcement services such as http://www.netcreations.com/postmaster/ will direct you through some questions, then send your site to the major search engines.   Such services provide more comprehensive listings for an additional charge.   You should also list your site at legal sites such as www.findlaw.com and www.alllaw.com.

Attach your address (URL) to all paper and electronic communications that go out of your office. These include business cards, fax, letters and e-mail signatures.  Do a mailing to clients and prospective clients.  Teach your staff to mention the web site when networking and visiting with clients.  Watch for beneficial reciprocal link opportunities with clients and noncompeting firms.