The Legal Web
Are you feeling ignorant about the internet. Worried about wikis? Baffled by blogs? Or intimidated by twitter? You need a bit of professional training and guidance.
Allow me to introduce the answer. This is the new ebook and CPD course from Nick and Delia on Modern Practice Topics for Solicitors.
Nick and Delia have been involved in and writing about the legal internet for years. Must be at least ten, probably more. Both have informative web-sites, Delia runs the best set of legal links on the internet, as does Nick, as Infolaw. Together they produce the fabulous and award winning Internet Newsletter. Every now and again they produce an ebook / CPD product and this is the most recent offering. It is very good.
The ebook is in five parts.
1. New ways to organise firms. This is largely about virtual firms and to me was the perhaps most interesting part of the series. The first article is an introductory one by Delia, followed by studies of three different ‘virtual’ firms.
I have to say that I was HUGELY impressed with the article on Blacklaws Davis, a mostly legal aid firm based in South London and the internet. Of all the articles in the book, this is the one which stayed with me the most and made me happy to look at the ebook again for this review. What a fantastic system them have! If I were a legal aid solicitor I would be beating a path to their door. I also enjoyed the article by sole practitioner Dick Jennings, and quite agree that SPs can be far more innovative than the (often patronising) larger firms.
2. Social Media for law firms. This is an intelligent look at the usual suspects, blogging, twitter, wikis, facebook and LinkedIn. Well worth reading if you are thinking of using these platforms but don’t know much about them.
3. Referral and Marketing companies. This section did not hold many surprises for me as, actually, I wrote much of it! My articles are on Quality Solicitors (which you can read on this blog >> here), Contact Law (which you can read on this blog >> here) and LawNet (which you can read >>here). Delia did an article on TakeLegalAdvice and Justin Patten did one on legallybetter.com.
4. Your website – accessible, interesting and productive. All law firms with a web-site (and that should mean all law firms) would do well to read this section. The first part looks at making websites accessible for disabled people. The second is about ‘converting browsers to business’ and looks at the AIDA principles of marketing. The third looks at online legal drafting software company DirectLaw, creators of that ‘destructive technology’ Rapidocs. Finally there is an article on client satisfaction surveys.
5. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Another very helpful and interesting look at an important subject which can be a bit (whisper it) boring … It features articles by Nick Holmes, David Gilroy and Susan Hallam. (Although I just use Scribe now.)
So there you are. If you fancy finding out more about all these topics AND getting five hours CPD, you want to hop on over to Nick’s site >> here where you can read more and buy it online.
Have you bought this or any other of Nick and Delia’s ebooks? How did you find them?
