How lawyers can use the Internet, social media, online video, and technology to attract clients, be more effective, make more money, and have more fun.
I’ve recently been blogging (with some help) about the Gulf oil spill at BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig. When I started the blog, I was struck by the fact that there were no pay-per-click lawyer ads when I used Google News to search for articles. But that changed in a hurry. Within a couple of days the lawyer ads began emerging in an ever escalating war to sign up claimants. When mass tort ad campaigns such as this start, I’m usually either involved in it professionally or I follow the campaigns because I find them interesting and, sometimes, educational. As of the time that I’m writing this post, there are seven law firm ads displayed on Google News when you run a “BP oil spill” or “Gulf oil spill” search. Seven law firms and one almost unnoticeable ad by BP.
Perhaps it’s the technology geek in me, or my interest in Internt marketing, but I enjoyed comparing the ads. The lawyer ads all utilized the top line of the ad well, with large blue letters proclaiming something such as “Gulf Oil Spill Lawsuit” or “BP Oil Spill Lawsuit.” BP’s ad, by comparison, simply said “Spill” on the top line. It’s as if they are ashamed to be associated with it, and don’t want to admit which particular “spill” it is they are talking about. But if BP is too embarrassed to shout out its message in a way that competes with the lawyer ads, why even buy an ad on Google? And if BP, a company which had profits of $6.1 billion in the first quarter of 2010, wants to run an ad on Google, why doesn’t it bid high enough to rank higher than sixth out of eight ads?
We’ve got 3 new posts at BPOilNews.com about the use of social media and crowdsourcing to empower the public to help with the oil spill at BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf. The Louisiana Governor’s Homeland Security Department has an active Twitter account (@GOHSEP)that is well-used, and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade is using crowdsourcing to map locations where oil has been observed. At BPOilNews, we were surprised to find ourselves crowdsourcing possible solutions for stopping the oil flow or limiting the damage to shorelines. [click to continue…]
By now we’re all familiar with the latest national environmental crisis. An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, a BP offshore oil drilling rig, caused the deaths of 11 workers, injured 7 more, and left an oil spill the size of Rhode Island drifting inexorably toward the Gulf Coast. But this isn’t the first time that BP has been responsible for an environmental crisis, or the first time that they’ve attempted to change the narrative when accused of environmental malfeasance. [click to continue…]
As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I’m involved in an Internet campaign to spread information and make legal services available to people who have had the misfortune to find Chinese drywall installed in their homes or businesses. As we’ve done many times over the past decade, my partner and I have organized an alliance of law firms in multiple states, with lawyers licensed to practice law in most of states with significant numbers of cases, including Louisiana, Florida, Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama and many others. I’ll state at the outset that I believe that the only way a homeowner with a Chinese drywall problem is going to get the problem fixed is to file a lawsuit, either by joining in the MDL in New Orleans, or by filing an individual lawsuit against the builder and suppliers. I do not recommend that anyone wait around for the Consumer Product Safety Commission or some other governmental agency to fix their homes. And I believe that any delay by a homeowner before filing suit is simply time he or she loses in getting the money to replace the drywall.
When I began this project, I believed it would follow the same course as previous mass tort projects on which I have worked since 2000; cases such as those involving the deadly liver drug Rezulin, the cholestoral drug Baycol, artificial Sulzer Hip and Knee Joints, Diet Drug Litigation (diet drugs caused heart damage and primary pulmonary hypertension (a potentially life-threatening lung condition) among many people who had no history of heart problems), Yamaha Rhino rollovers (caused by design defects in the Rhinos), etc. I expected to create one or more websites that was full of information, optimize the website so it could be easily found by searchers who were looking for the information and services we offered, and make it as easy as possible for those people become informed and retain us if they wanted to do so.
This project has been somewhat different. Although we are getting substantial traffic to our website, and are talking to a number of people on the telephone and are reviewing a number of case review forms, I am getting the sense that, compared with our previous mass tort cases, a higher percentage of CDW victims don’t seem to know what to do.
I have my own hypothesis. I can’t remember being involved in a mass tort in which so many politicians and governement agencies are involved. Every politician seems to want to express his/her outrage, particularly if his/her constituents are affected by the problem. And the relevant governmental agencies feel obligated to release reports, even if the reports don’t really reach any conclusions. Then the politicians go back and complain about the slow manner in which the government is dealing with the problem, and several dozen news articles are written or put on television everytime one of these things happens. A Google News search today for “Chinese drywall” returns 922 articles. And none of them provide real, comprehensive advice about how the homeowner can get the problem resolved. If a person runs a Google search for the commonly-searched term “Chinese sheetrock,” a post I wrote on our Chinese Drywall Attorney Alliance site is the top-ranked lawyer-provided page. But it still doesn’t appear in the top ten results on Google.
For example, on Nov. 23, 2009, the lawyers for the Consumer Product Safety Commission wrote a letter to Senators Bill Newlson and Mark Warner, and representatives Jim Webb and Glenn Nye. A great deal of waffling is found in the letter, which concedes that investigators eyes were irritated when they inspected homes with Chinese drywall (CDW), but the letter didn’t make a single recommendation telling people what they should do.
I admit I have bemoaned the ugly Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) sometimes created by Google when someone searches for a mass-tort related term. Somehow, it appears slightly hucksterish to see all those page titles saying “[name your tort or defective product] Lawsuit, lawyer, attorney, law firm….” But if you run a Google search for “Chinese drywall” the top ten results are news results (as of Thanksgiving day 2009). None of the news articles offers help getting the money to remove and replace your drywall. I’m as big a news junkie as anyone (hey, Google News is my homepage), but the integration of News results into Google web search seems to be going a bit too far. I still believe many people search Google News for news articles, but search Google web for more in-depth information and the type information they need to solve problems.
Am I forgetting the ability of lawyers to appear at the time of Google by purchasing pay-per-click ads? No, but the most recent data I saw on the issue still indicates that people are about twice as likely to click on an organic (natural) listing rather than a pay-per-click listing. Even though I sometimes use pay-per-click ads, I still believe at least a few good legal marketers should be able to find their way to put genuinely helpful information onto the first page of Google’s results with the necessity of resorting to pay-per-click advertising.
There may be other instances in which the heavy integration of traditional news into the top of Google’s web search results are beneficial, but I don’t think it’s helping CDW victims who are trying to decide what they need to do to solve their CDW problem. Call me a skeptic, but I don’t believe anyone is going to get his or her Chinese drywall problem solved by a person who walks up with a CPSC card and says “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.” I think the challenge for those of us with information and services that can actually help Chinese drywall victims is to break through the noise that has been created by politicians, political agencies, and the news media, and continue putting out a message of clarity that is easily found by those who are searching for help with their Chinese drywall problems.
I expect to lauch ConsumerNews.com within weeks (after having fired and replaced a developer). Pro-consumer lawyers and others who want to communicate directly to consumers will have an avenue via that site, especially if they are communicating on a topic that is news-driven, such as Chinese drywall. If you or your organization is interested in being a sponsor or advertiser on ConsumerNews.com, which will cover stories of interest to consumers from a distinctively pro-consumer point-of-view, please contact me.
The FTC finally got around to issuing guidelines for bloggers and “guerrilla marketers” who hype products in exchange for products or money. If you have the time and interest, or if you need something to read before going to sleep, check out the 81-page- long Text of the Federal Register Notice.
Adweek notes: “The FTC chose not to make a distinction between professional bloggers and amateurs. It also does not differentiate between paying cash and providing product samples. Violators face fines of up to $11,000 per infraction.”
Today I attended the first day of WordCamp Birmingham, a gathering of WordPress bloggers and developers. There were some very informative sessions. The highllight of the event was a “WordPress Town Hall Meeting” presided over by Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress. Matt, who has a great sense of humor and is very entertaining, spent over an hour answering questions and giving tiny hints about things that might be in the works for the next version of WordPress.
I came away from the session more convinced than ever that lawyers who blog can’t go wrong choosing WordPress as their blogging platform. It’s very easy-to-use, and although I’ve not tried to promote this particular blog, I’ve used it on some other sites and found it to be very SEO-friendly.
In June of 2008 I attended AlwaysOn’s OnHollywood conference, primarily for the part of the program dealing with online journalism. In one panel discussion, the moderator asked several CEOs of online news services whether “new media”, including bloggers and the 24-hour news cycle, had caused a deterioration in journalistic ethics. The moderator hypothesized that, in the old days, the big, respected newspaper in each city was expected to communicate the objective truth in its news pages, even if it might offend large advertisers or large numbers of subscribers. One panelist called BS on that premise, saying there has never been such a thing as objective journalism. Even if reporters didn’t allow financial considerations to impact their reporting, said the panelist, the stories that were assigned to the journalists and the news agenda of the paper was impacted by financial considerations. [click to continue…]
The Official Google blog today reports two new services you may want to try. One is the “Similar Images” search which allows you to find images that are, well, similar to another image. Another toy that may prove more useful to some of us is the “Google News Timeline.” According to Google’s blog, “Google News Timeline organizes information chronologically by presenting results from Google News and other data sources on a zoomable, graphical timeline. You can navigate through time by dragging the timeline, setting the time scale to days, weeks, months, years, or decades, or just including a time period in your query (i.e., “1977″). To see this in action, check out the results viewed by month in the summer of 2006.”
As someone who has created a number of websites dealing with recalled products, I’ve found that most clients appreciated a timeline explaining the history of the product, from the time it was introduced until the time it was recalled. To the extent that Google News Timeline can help with that, it could be very useful to people building sites devoted to particular defective products. I tested it with a search for “Yamaha Rhino.” I currently represent clients injured on Rhinos, and operate a Yamaha Rhino recall site and an ATV and Yamaha Rhino lawsuit site.) Unfortunately, Google News Timeline was not as helpful as I hoped. It failed to turn up several relevant news articles. For example, it failed to list a single article from January 1, 2009 through March 31, 2009, although there were very relevant news articles about Yamaha Rhinos, including the establishment of an MDL and consolidation of all federal lawsuits involving Yamaha Rhinos.
I’m going to put Google News Timeline down as an item to check back on in a month or two. It’s too early to tell how helpful it may be.
One of the projects in which I am involved is the ATV Attorney Alliance, a national network of law firms we organized to pursue ATV accidents–primarily the Yamaha Rhino, an incredibly unstable vehicle which can roll over at low speeds on flat ground. To make matters worse for Rhino owners, many of the Rhinos were sold without adequate protection to keep riders’ arms and legs in the vehicles. We have used an online marketing campaign for about a year in an effort to: (1) educate consumers to the dangers of the Rhino, (2) put pressure on Yamaha to recall the Rhino, and (3) obtain clients who have been injured or lost family members due to Rhino rollover accidents.
We started calling for a Yamaha Rhino recall in blog posts almost a year before the recall came.
4) On November 27, 2008 after the death of 2 Mississippi girls, we took our Rhino recall campaign in a different direction, this time producing a video for YouTube explaining how dangerous Rhinos are and why they roll over so easily. 5) And finally, due to the lack of response by Yamaha to the requests for a Rhino recall, on March 13, 2009, we launched an Internet campaign which included producing and distributing the video satire that appears in my March 26, 2009, blog post below on this site. That video was designed to dramatize Yamaha’s callous failure to issue a Rhino recall.
On March 31, 2009, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (“CPSC”) and Yamaha announced that all Yamaha Rhino models are being recalled. Owners were told to immediately stop using the Rhinos. All Rhinos are to be returned to Yamaha dealers to have repairs that are intended to solve the Rhinos’ problems, and no new Rhinos will be sold until the repairs have been made on them. (Forgive me, but I believe I’ll take a wait-and-see attitude before deciding whether the newly repaired Rhinos are safe for their intended use.) I have to admit, after trying to get Rhinos recalled for almost a year, it was gratifying to see these dangerous vehicles recalled. I hope the repairs are adeqate to render the vehicles safe for future riders.
Unfortunately for the hundreds of people who have been permanently injured or killed in Yamaha Rhino rollovers, the Yamaha Rhino recall came too late.
For more information about the recall, check out Yamaha Rhino recall blog I started over the weekend.
TV can be a great marketing tool for lawyers, but it has limitations: (a) a 30 to 60 second message; (b) the need to gain your viewer’s confidence in 30 or 60 seconds; and (c) the need for the potential client to remember how to contact your firm. I believe you can use online video to do some things that you just can’t do on TV. We tried this in a video that we recently used in a Yamaha Rhino campaign. The Rhino is a side-by-side off road vehicle that rolls over very easily. It’s caused hundreds of deaths, amputations, and crushed bones. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating the Rhino, buy Yamaha acts as if there’s no problem. I thought Yamaha deserved a satirical look at their inaction. Here’s the video:
A blog for lawyers about technology, legal marketing, mass torts, consumer advocacy, and protecting the rights of individuals.
What can we do together? Since 1999 I've been using the Internet, websites, blogs, online video, Twitter and other social media to help thousands of injured people find great lawyers. We've organized national networks of lawyers in over forty states to take on Pfizer, Bayer, Yamaha and other multinational corporations. We've put consumers on a level playing field, and had fun doing it. If you're a great lawyer looking for more clients, contact me and let's see what we can do together.
Use the Contact Form or connect with me onLinkedIn, follow me on Twitter @evansmichaelj, or connect on Facebook.
What can we do together? Since 1999 I've been using the Internet, websites, blogs, online video, Twitter and other social media to help thousands of injured people find great lawyers. We've organized national networks of lawyers in over forty states to take on Pfizer, Bayer, Yamaha and other multinational corporations. We've put consumers on a level playing field, and had fun doing it. If you're a great lawyer looking for more clients, contact me and let's see what we can do together.
Use the Contact Form or connect with me on