Jumpstart your content writing by leveraging these free resources

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

On Tuesday, I highlighted three approaches I use when I’m feeling stuck and can’t seem to come up with content ideas for my own blog or the blawgs of my clients.

To get the ideas flowing once again, I discussed:

• Listing frequently asked questions
• Using keywords identified by Google Analytics
• Setting up Google Alerts

Here are three more free research and intelligence-gathering tools you can use to guide your legal blog content writing efforts and boost your traffic.

1.  Use Wordtracker to identify keyword questions

Wordtracker''s Keyword Questions is a nifty tool. Enter a single or short keyword phrase and you’ll receive a list of questions that people type into search engines. Use those questions to come up with blog topics. You’ll also want to use the question in your headlines.

For example, I typed in the search term “personal injury.” The questions Wordtracker identified included:

• Is a personal injury settlement community property?
• What is the average personal injury settlement?
• What to expect in personal injury mediation?
• What personal injury attorney handles dog bites in Tucson area?

2. Use Google Insights for Search to identify breakout searches.

Google Insights is a tool that allows you to look at search trends over time, then highlights predictions for the future. It allows you to track newspaper headlines and identifies not only the top search queries related to your keywords but also rising or breakout searches. It’s not unlike enjoying a great new restaurant before the rave reviews are printed: The breakout terms allow you to avoid the rush of the crowd and get the best seat in a soon-to-be-popular venue.

Once again, I typed in the search term “personal injury.” I limited the query to the state of Georgia. It identified seven breakout searches, including:

• Atlanta injury lawyer
• Personal injury cases
• Personal injury claims
• Personal injury settlements

3.  Use Google Sets to identify lists of words related to your practice area

Google Sets allows you to create a list of words related to your keywords. You can use the list generated as a word-association game to get the creative process going. Once again, you’ll have new words that you’ll want to incorporate into the post to make it more likely that prospective clients will find you.

I entered the following terms:  “personal,” “injury,” “lawyer,” and “attorney.”

The expanded list of Google Sets predictions included:

• Probate
• Legal services
• DUI
• Auto
• Car
• Truck
• Trial
• Insurance law
• Wrongful death

Of course, these tips are all helpful for Web content writing, too.

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At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

Feeling blocked? Follow these steps when content ideas are scarce.

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

In addition to writing for my own blog, I help law firms keep up with the demands of their own blogs. That might mean anything from planning a blogging calendar to create content that conforms to their legal PR aims to writing drafts of blog content.

But even as a professional legal content writer there are occasions when I find myself blocked as I’m trying to come up with content ideas.

Here are three approaches that help me get unstuck and back on the writing track.

1. List Frequently Asked Questions

When I speak to prospective clients about law firm website writing, blog writing or legal PR work, the questions I’m asked tend to be similar despite differences in practice areas and geographical locations.

When a lawyer meets with a client or conducts an initial telephone consultation, the concerns raised are rarely novel. Clients want to know about their legal rights and options, legal procedures, the scope of the representation and the law firm’s fee structures.

I find it helpful to make a list of questions frequently raised in the initial consultation and use them to plan upcoming blog posts. Try writing down the initial questions a client raises during the meeting.  If you use  your client's terminology to frame your questions, you may improve the chances that a search engine query will lead to your blog post.

2. Use Keywords Identified by Google Analytics

Everyone should have his or her law firm’s website or blog configured with a program that measures traffic. One of the most popular free programs is Google Analytics. (In “How to install Google Analytics to measure your marketing campaigns,” Enrique Serrano provides step-by-step instructions explaining the process. )

Review the keyword phrases that are bringing visitors to your website. You can sort the phrases in a number of ways — for instance, identifying the most frequently used phrases that bring people to your site and the phrases that have received the most page views on your website. Consider writing a blog post that capitalizes on those keyword phrases.

3.  Set Up Google Alerts

If you scour the Internet in search of mainstream and legal media articles highlighting the latest news touching on your practice area, let Google Alerts do your Web surfing for you. You can enter your search parameters into Google Alerts, another free service, and receive a daily or weekly update highlighting the latest Google results on the basis of your topic or search terms.

The e-mail roundup is an efficient alert that pulls together late-breaking news and recent legal developments. Because you’re able to find out about it early, you can use the opportunity to weigh in or explain the debate on your legal blog.

These are just a few of my tried-and-true methods. Do you have any suggestions for overcoming legal content writing block? If so, I’d love to hear about them. Feel free to leave a comment to this blog post or email me at geri@legalmediamatters.com.

For our follow-up post on additional ways to generate story ideas, read "Blawg Topics: 3 More Brainstorming Tools."

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

A professional design and typo-free, frequently updated legal content top the list

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

What makes a law firm website a good one from the perspective of a potential client?

In 2002, the Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab released the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.  Based on three years of research involving more than 4,500 subjects, these guidelines are useful not only when it comes to planning a website but also in measuring the effectiveness of your firm’s current website.

Here are the guidelines, adapted for use by law firms.

1. Make it easy for people to gauge your website’s accuracy. Provide third-party links to support your information.
2. Demonstrate that there’s a real law firm behind your website. Include your phone number, a physical address and representative client lists or links to news articles about your firm.
3. Highlight your law firm’s services and the expertise of your attorneys. In addition to providing information on undergraduate and law degrees, include the honors and awards an attorney has received and the articles he or she has written.
4. Show that honest and trustworthy people are affiliated with the firm and its site. Use the attorney profile page not only to highlight a lawyer’s expertise but also to allow the potential client to connect with the lawyer as a person and a problem-solver.
5. Make it easy to contact your law firm. Is your contact page clearly visible? Do you provide multiple ways for clients to contact the firm?
6. Does your law firm’s website appear professional? Forty-seven percent of website visitors base their evaluation of a site’s credibility on its appearance. A poor visual design, bad layout, formatting errors, typographical errors and amateurish images can hurt a website’s credibility.
7. Provide a website that is both useful and easy to use. Are your pages informative? Will potential clients find them educational? Can potential clients find the information they’re seeking easily?
8. Frequently update your law firm website’s content. Offering outdated content is like showing up in court wearing a tomato-red polyester suit and your best pair of white dress shoes: Your law firm’s website will stand out, all right — but not in a good way.
9. Use restraint when offering promotional content. Prospective clients don’t expect to see third-party advertising on an attorney website.
10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how inconsequential they might seem to you. Does your website contain typographic errors, grammar errors or broken links?

At Legal Media Matters, we use our know-how to help your law firm’s website get positive notice. We create attorney bio pages; provide fresh, useful, easy-to-understand content that will attract the attention of potential clients and keep your website current; and offer copyediting services.

For more information, contact us by filling out our online contact form, e-mailing geri@legalmediamatters.com or calling 314-520-3897 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              314-520-3897      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

Photos, videos and screenshots can give your legal blog zip

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

I once participated in a focus group whose members were asked to share their opinions about a legal publication. We were to comment on the content as well as the overall look and feel of the paper.

I remember one lawyer in particular indicating that he preferred dense text, very little white space and a lot of legalese. In law school he had become comfortable with treatises and works that most find off-putting. He felt that photos, white space and the “plain English” approach to writing watered down the reading experience.

Having written for both mainstream and legal publications where the mandate was to make it as easy as possible for people in a hurry to absorb information quickly, I hadn’t considered the reader who actually enjoys settling in with a hornbook.

It was an “aha” moment for me.

Working with lawyers on website and blog content, I have noticed that some tend to prefer a screen filled with long paragraphs of dense text, devoid of images, white space or video because that is what they encounter day in and out, whether it is case law or statutes.

But prospective clients are often not so eager or patient when it comes to gathering information online. White space, images, headings and bold text make information more accessible.

A dense wall of words can be so intimidating that the would-be reader flees the page. (By checking your site statistics you can tell how long someone lingers on a page.)

I’ve found on my own site that the time spent on the page goes up and the bounce rate goes down when I incorporate images. Here are three ways in which you can liven up your legal blog, break up pages of dense text and increase the number of people who remain on your site for longer periods.

1. Incorporate video.

Short video clips interspersed with your text can be an effective tool with which to make your point. They’re also a good way to keep a reader on your blog — and remember it.

Here I’ll paraphrase Pee Wee Herman’s famous “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer!” Add video, and your visitor will linger longer.

2. Add photos and clip art that are free of royalty restrictions.

A number of free sites offer downloads of photos and clip art that aren’t bound by royalty restrictions.

One site that I often use is a free site from Microsoft’s Office.

3.  Add a screenshot of a Web page.

As anyone who regularly reads my posts knows, I love to incorporate screen shots of Web pages. It’s a convenient way to illustrate a point or walk a reader through a particular task.

For lawyers, the ability to take screenshots can be useful indeed. For example, divorce filings typically require the parties to fill out a variety of income and expense, property and child support calculation forms, and many states provide these forms online. A blog post explaining how to fill out the forms or addressing common questions about various aspects of the form could include screenshots of the relevant sections. Just below or above each screenshot, the attorney can provide a more detailed description or explanation of the information the form is trying to elicit.

I use a free web page capture plug-in called FireShot. It allows me to not only save screens with common photo extensions such as .png but also to edit what I save. Typically when I upload the screen shot to my blog I embed a link back to the original site.

Do you have a favorite tool for livening up your legal blog? If so, let me know.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

At Legal Media Matters, we provide legal public relations, law firm marketing and attorney website content writing services.

An in-house lawyer wants to reach executives and explain the services a general counsel offers

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I invited my Twitter followers to pose a question (in 140 characters or fewer, of course) that I would take up on this blog. One lawyer sent a direct message wanting to know the best keywords to attract chief executive officers and chief financial officers who want to learn more about what their in-house lawyers can do for them.

The question is much more complicated than it might seem at first blush.

Here’s a driving analogy. If someone asks how to start a car, the easiest answer is: “Just turn the key in the ignition.” But there’s a complicated assortment of processes going on behind the dashboard and beneath the hood that are responsible for starting the engine.  Even though the key signals to the engine that it is time to start, it is the first piece of a complicated process.

In other words, simply possessing a key will not make a car run — and the same key won’t start every car.

As with cars, there’s often a multilayered process that is engaged in before keywords will work. As with car keys, the keywords that will deliver the best performance are going to vary; one size does not fit all.

Legal Keywords and Problem-Solving

Keywords help people sort through the huge pool of information provided on the Internet and find what they’re looking for. But vague keywords, or inefficient keywords in areas where there is a lot of expert competition, are like replacement keys that are almost exact duplicates: They’re not going to work in the way you want them to.

To discover what types of keywords might attract them to your website or blog, you must first figure out what keeps executives up at night. Once you’ve done that, you can explain how an in-house lawyer is a problem-solver and ally when it comes to providing solutions to those specific problems.

Is an executive looking for loan workout help or bankruptcy reorganization advice? If the company is located in the U.S., does the executive have questions about the new healthcare legislation and how it applies to his or her company? What are the legal pitfalls a domestic company looking to expand abroad must avoid?

Once you’ve brainstormed ideas, it’s time to test them. There are several free tools — among them Google Insights, Wordtracker and Google AdWords — you can use to conduct research. (For more on the mechanical steps of finding keywords used in actual searches and then including them in your content, read “Law Firm Websites: Seven Tips for Legal Content Writing.”)

For a test run, I chose the simple phrase “in-house counsel” to see what would come up.

At Google Insights, a worldwide search of the phrase revealed that the top searches involved finding jobs and salary information.

I went to Wordtracker and plugged in “in-house counsel” to see what would come up. The most-searched phrase turned out to be the most specific grouping of keywords (a “long tail”): “in-house counsel obligation regarding spoliation.” Several job search-related queries also surfaced. There were two searches recorded for the keyword phrase “evolving role of in-house counsel.”

At Google AdWords, the “in-house counsel” query once again pulled up several job-related searches. However, it also indicated that the phrase “general counsel” is extremely popular and that “attorney client privilege in house counsel” is one substantive area that receives some inquiries.

There are, of course, additional strategies and techniques to sort and sift the information, but this brief exercise illustrates four points:

1. When it comes to keywords, there is no virtual master key.
2. Avoiding certain keyword phrases, such as the ones related to job searches, is just as important as finding the phrases you want to use.
3. The best-performing site will have one page dedicated to each distinct phrase — for example, a page addressing spoliation, another explaining attorney-client privilege and a third discussing the evolving role of in-house counsel. (For more information on how to use your keywords on a page, read “Three Keyword Rules for Law Firm Website.”)
4. You must measure the performance of your Web pages and keywords. Most sites require monitoring and adjustment. Because keyword selection isn’t as straightforward as one might hope, you may find one set of keywords performing extremely well and another set underperforming. (For more information on measurement, read “How to Install Google Analytics to Measure Your Marketing Campaign.”)

Integrate Your Legal Keyword Efforts with Media Outreach

At Legal Media Matters, we research keywords, develop strategies based on the basis of our clients' goals and then write content. We also emphasize the importance of integrating online and traditional public relations strategies.

In addition to your online outreach, don’t forget traditional print publications as a means of reaching out to executives. Some of the best places for this type of outreach are the so-called industry bibles and trusted trade publications that accept guest articles. Review the editorial calendar to find an opening. (For more on this process, see “Writer’s Guidelines and Guest Articles,” and “Editorial Calendars and Guest Articles.”)

Another way to educate your audience is to post comments to articles related to your topics. In both instances, comments and guest articles can serve as the initial means of engaging your target audience. A website address or link back to your blog, if an executive is reading the information online, will allow him or her to continue the conversation — and may also provide valuable inbound links to your site, boosting its performance and the reach of your keywords. (For more ideas on finding your audience, see “Law Firm Marketing: To Draw Clients In, Reach Out.”)

If you need help researching keywords, writing content or devising a print publication placement strategy, contact Legal Media Matters. We can help you with your legal content writing project and tailor a legal marketing and public relations plan tailored to your firm’s unique goals.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on this valuable information, subscribe to our regular e-mails or RSS feeds. You can also find Legal Media Matters on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

From story ideas to publishing hooks, editorial calendars are a great resource

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

Passion for an idea, an unwavering belief in an ideal or a strong feeling about an issue may motivate a lawyer to write a guest article, an opinion piece or even a letter to the editor.

That comes as no surprise. As advocates, lawyers are accustomed to airing their views in a logical and persuasive manner. But getting a piece published is not always as straightforward as filing a brief.

Sometimes an attorney wants to write a guest article and has several vague ideas but isn’t sure which route to take. (For more ways to come up with story ideas, read “Spotting Story Ideas.”)

Whether you’re trying to settle on a story idea or devising a publication strategy for your piece, editorial calendars can be an important resource.

Disproving the Infinite Monkey Theorem

What is an editorial calendar?

Most magazines, newspapers and other publications plan special editorial features for an entire year and put them on a calendar. In legal publishing, these features may touch on a variety of matters — for instance biggest law firms, technology, marketing your law practice, mediation.

Because some special editorial features are more closely aligned with a particular advertiser’s business than others, advertisers use a publication’s editorial calendar to help select publication dates.

Publicists also use the editorial calendar to help time pitches on behalf of clients. A forthcoming special issue on mediation might serve as a great opportunity to highlight the latest mediation manual published by a client.

Where can you find an editorial calendar?

The easiest way to find an editorial calendar is to simply type into a search engine the name of the publication you’re interested in reaching, along with the words editorial calendar.”

I typed the following search term into Google: Texas Lawyer editorial calendar.

The results sent me to the main advertising Web page for Texas Lawyer. On that page I found a link to the writer’s submission guidelines — the topic I covered on Monday — as well as a link to the 2010 editorial calendar.

Here’s a screenshot of the features planned for July, August and part of September.

How can you use an editorial calendar?

If you have a few vague ideas for guest articles and aren’t sure which one to pick or how to proceed, the editorial calendar may be of help. If an idea is related to an upcoming special feature, you might want to go with that idea first.

Let’s use the Texas Lawyer editorial calendar as a reference. Perhaps you’ve wanted to write about the discovery process but aren’t sure how to focus the piece. In July, the publication plans to include an e-Discovery roundtable. You might want to focus on technology and e-Discovery.

Or perhaps you already have an article written about the banking crisis and consumer regulations in Texas. If you submit it to Texas Lawyer, you may want to mention that you noticed on the editorial calendar an Aug. 2 special report on the topic of banking and finance.

Certainly a publication may choose to run a guest article that is not tied to a special section, but following the calendar increases the odds that an editor will choose to run your well-written piece that follows the submission guidelines.

Does your firm use an editorial calendar as a planning tool for guest article placement or story pitches? If so, let me know whether you think it has been effective. And for more on creating an editorial calendar for your blog, read our previous article on the topic.

A special thanks to Debbie Ohi (a.k.a. Inkygirl) for giving me permission to include her cartoon in this article. Ohi is a multitalented Toronto-based cartoonist, illustrator, freelance writer, photographer and musician. To see more of her work, visit Inkygirl.com or DebbieOhi.com.

If you're looking for more law firm marketing, legal public relations or content writing tips, subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail

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By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

A Peanuts cartoon begins with Snoopy walking to his doghouse, a letter in his paws. It reads:

Dear contributor,

Thank you for submitting your story to our magazine. To save time we are enclosing two rejections slips … one for this story and one for the next story you send us.

The final panel consists of a dejected Snoopy lying atop his doghouse.

Rejection is never easy. Receiving a rejection letter after you’ve poured countless hours of research and writing into an article is even harder.

There are three steps lawyers who want to write — and publish — guest articles can take to increase the chances that their work will be published:

• Review the writing guidelines.
• Contact the editor with your story idea.
• Follow the writing guidelines when you begin writing.

In this blog post I’ll walk you through the steps of how to find writing guidelines, highlight some of the important information contained in the guidelines and tell you what to do you if you can’t find an online guide.

Tracking down the writing guidelines

Many law-related publications set forth their writing guidelines online. Before pitching an idea to the editor, you should read them. You don’t want to suggest a 5,000-word law-review-style article when what the editor wants is a guest article of no more than 1,000 words with citations incorporated into the text.

Here are some writing guideline samples from various legal publications. Often the quickest way to come up with the page is to perform a targeted search.

For my first search I plugged in the following phrase into Google: “National Law Journal writer’s guidelines.”

This general page allows me to drill down even further to the type of piece I wish to submit. It might be a guest article for a special section, or it could be an opinion piece. The guidelines for each are different.

The author of a guest article for a special section is asked to hew to the following detailed guidelines:

• Biographical sketch of no more than 30 words
• 1,200 to 1,400 words
• Deadline five weeks before the cover date
• Written in the third person
• Some news value
• Central point made in the opening paragraph
• Paragraphs of just two or three sentences

Compare the National Law Journal’s requirements with those of the Association for Corporate Counsel. My search engine query “Association for Corporate Counsel writer’s guidelines” led to that publication’s authoring guidelines, which explain how to submit a proposal, provide a contact name and e-mail address, include frequently asked questions and set forth the following requirements:

• 3,000 to 4,000 words, including sidebars
• Two or three sidebars of 250 to 300 words each
• Sophisticated “how-to” articles
• Use of the second person
• No excessive footnoting (i.e., more than 10 footnotes) and no lengthy law-review-style explanations of case holdings in footnotes

What if you can’t find the writer’s guidelines?

Missouri Lawyers Weekly, where I served previously as legal editor, is one of my favorite publications. It contains valuable information Missouri practitioners need to stay current.

However, my search query, “Missouri Lawyers Weekly writer’s guidelines,” only yielded the guidelines lawyers should follow when submitting verdict and settlement reports.

Visiting the main website, www.molawyersmedia.com, and the “About Us” and “Contact Us” sections yielded no writer’s guidelines. However, I did find contact information for the editor and managing editor. The easiest way to proceed in such a case is to contact one of the editors, indicate your interest in submitting a guest article and find out whether the publication has any writer’s guidelines you can review.

The writing guidelines are more than just the roadmap you should follow when writing your article. They also serve as a tip sheet to help you formulate a successful pitch.

Check back in on Wednesday, when I’ll discuss how to use an editorial calendar to generate guest article ideas.

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Check your content to make sure it’s meeting these aims

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

In its May issue, the ABA Journal tackles the topic of bad blogs. In particular it notes that Findlaw’s 15 hyperlocal news-based blogs have been dubbed “spam blogs” by the legal blogosphere.

Writer Rachel M. Zahorsky explains the controversy over the blogs, which some have criticized as little more than regurgitations of local accident reports designed to dump search engine-friendly copy onto the Internet without adding to the legal discourse.

The blogs have also been criticized because nonlawyers have been hired as blog writers, resulting in mix-ups of criminal and civil terms and other snafus.

In a May 13 TechNewsWorld article, “Making a Place for Yourself in the Blogosphere, Part II,” writer Brian R. Hook interviewed several successful bloggers. This point cannot be emphasized enough:

“Content is king, but quality is queen.”

To ensure that you are publishing quality content, evaluate it, using these four criteria.

1. Is the law characterized correctly?

This may seem like an elementary point, but you need to have enough legal knowledge to write a blog post. If your law firm has hired a professional writer, does he or she understand the basic differences in the types of law and burdens of proof and how the justice system works?

This also applies to lawyers. As a lawyer, I follow the law closely for new developments and I know the lawyers to whom I can turn to make sure I got it right. If you’re writing a blog post that touches on a topic outside your regular practice area, don’t be afraid to run it by a colleague for feedback.

2. Can a lay audience understand the post?

Most first-year law students are told on arriving at school that learning the law is like learning a foreign language. Anyone who clutched a legal dictionary, as I did, for the first semester and constantly thumbed through it to find the meaning of various arcane terms understands what that entails.

The problem with learning the law as a language is that it can be difficult to drop the legalese once you’ve learned it. Terms such as “tort,” “estoppel,” and “res ipsa loquitur” may be bandied about by lawyers, but for those standing on the sidelines they’re nothing more than jargon.

But nonlawyers are genuinely interested in the law and new developments.  They're also potential clients. Have you written your post in a way that is accessible to a variety of audiences?

3. Is your post keyword optimized for search engines?

No matter how great it is, content must be found before it can be of use. That means using keywords — but not all keywords are equal. If your website is still new and small, achieving a good ranking through the use of the most popular keywords may not be the best strategy. Sometimes, at the outset, opportunities for good rankings can be found in less popular combinations. Then the strategy entails building up to the most crowded keyword combinations over time.

Keyword placement in the copy is important. The same goes for heading choices and the use of bold typeface and bullet points.

4. How does your blog entry fit into your law firm’s marketing and public relations goals?

How do you see your law firm’s website or blog fitting into your firm’s marketing and PR plan? Do you have concrete and specific goals for these tools? Are you measuring the performance through programs such as Analytics?

Reviewing your goals and comparing the information with your data can provide insight on how to make adjustments to the text or create new entries in the future.

Do you have any additional tips you'd like to share?

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A roundup of compelling and informative articles

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

Well-written, insightful and timely information is available on the Internet. The challenge is sifting through virtual mounds of material to find it.

I spend a lot of time – probably too much – online, reading the latest news articles, blog posts and magazine stories that touch on the law, writing, technology and business management. I often tweet links to my Twitter followers. (Visit @legalmediamtrs and check out our custom-designed Twitter background!) I also e-mail helpful or interesting nuggets to clients and friends.

I’ve decided to take that practice a step further and offer a link-roundup segment. Every Friday, I’ll highlight interesting and helpful items I’ve come across during the week.

The mix of links is eclectic.

Professionals of all types are increasingly being called upon to master, or at least appreciate, the art of communication. It is no longer enough for lawyers, mediators, accountants and doctors in private practice to simply be experts within their disciplines. Websites, public relations outreach and social media are all components of the modern communication toolbox. Using them effectively is an important part of building a practice.

Some of the items on the list will focus on writing. I’ll also highlight social media, PR, practice management and new legal decisions or trends. My client base includes firms in both the United States and abroad, so we’re interested in information from across the globe.

With that windy intro aside, here’s my recommended reading list for May 7:

A Career in Law: Defining Success on Your Own Terms

On Slaw, an award-winning Canadian blawg, Nicole Garton-Jones lists the reasons that she became a lawyer and recounts how she found herself practicing at a firm that was a mismatch. She offers five tips for creating a personally rewarding career path.

Best Practice: News Rooms on Websites — Generating Media Attention and Interviews

Law office management guru John W. Olmstead notes that many a law firm website falls short because it doesn’t offer a newsroom. At the Illinois State Bar Association’s Illinois L@wyer, Olmstead reminds attorneys that the website audience not only includes fellow lawyers and prospective clients but also members of the media.

Social Media Release Must Evolve to Replace Press Release

If your firm’s website already has a newsroom and the firm is familiar with press releases, this post at Mediashift by Ian Capstick will take you to the next level. Social media releases, which are really single pages of Web content, not only contain some of the traditional press release components but also often include embedded links to YouTube videos and SlideShare presentations.

Making a Place for Yourself in the Blogosphere

Writing for TechNewsWorld, Brian R. Hook interviews experts who offer advice on how to get started, how to develop a blogging strategy and the importance of identifying your target audience.

Learning About Everything Under the ‘Cloud’

Wall Street Journal columnist Walter S. Mossberg offers a clear, concise explanation of cloud computing and holds the jargon.

5 Simple Tools for a Paperless Office

An online contract-signing service, fax-to-e-mail services and online backup and recordkeeping are just a few of the tools highlighted in this article from Mashable and American Express OPEN Forum, written by Matt Silverman.

Why My Human Document Reviewer Is Better Than Your Algorithm

Looking for ways to control ballooning eDiscovery costs? In this Association for Corporate Counsel article, Richard Russeth and Susan Burns discuss how overreliance on document search technology may lead to higher costs and lower quality.

Apple and Adobe Infographics

Speculation continues to swirl that that the standoff between Adobe and Apple over Flash will result in litigation. Enrique Serrano, LMM’s designer and programmer, has put together an infographic for Treble Click that contains detailed information about the companies and the technical details of the conflict.

Job of the Week

Director of legal services, Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law

AP Stylebook Ask the Editor Question of the Week

When I’m not consulting LMM copy editor Kerry Bailey for answers to my AP style questions, I read the AP Stylebook’s Ask the Editor questions online.

This week the editor notes that the words “metropolitan” and “metro” should be lowercased when it’s used to describe a geographic region— for example, the St. Louis metro area. When either term is part of a proper name, as in the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District, capitalize it.

A Service of Note

When I prepare verdict and settlement reports for my law firm clients, I submit the write-ups to a number of publications, including The Civil Litigator. An online database serving the legal community in the Midwest, The Civil Litigator provides coverage of civil cases throughout Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. For more information about subscribing, email Editor@Civil-Litigator.com.

Beth Lewandowski, The Civil Litigator’s editor, is also a St. Louis family law attorney. Her firm, Law Office of Marta J. Papa, is a Legal Media Matters client.

Have any links to suggest? Feel free to give them a mention in our comments section. And if you have any recommendations for next week, feel free to e-mail them to me. geri@legalmediamatters.com

Have a great weekend!

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Even

By Geri L. Dreiling, Esq.

I wish that the first draft of everything I wrote were perfect. As someone who is paid to write, it would certainly make my job faster and easier — but, alas, after having written for a number of magazines and newspapers, as well as legal PR clients, I know that when I write that first draft it’s only the beginning.

For professional writers, this observation by Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw during a meeting with her editors certainly resonates:  “There it was, the article I put my heart and soul into — and it was bleeding.”

For this week’s post I’ve decided to share seven tips to help you improve your law firm’s website copy and ensure that you put your best virtual foot forward when prospective clients visit your website.

1. Carefully review long compound sentences.

Anyone who has read statutes knows that they often contain long sentences peppered with “and” and “or”. Many lawyers use diagramming to figure out the full meaning of sentences in statutes!

Take a careful look at your law firm’s website content. Do you find yourself itching to start diagramming sentences? If so, break things up! It’s a good idea to try communicating one idea per sentence.

2. Use a topic or “summing-up” sentence at the beginning of a paragraph.

A topic sentence is a great tool that helps both the writer and reader organize information. For example, if you want to describe a personal injury settlement that involves an injury caused by a company employee, communicate that the worker was new to the job and describe the training the worker received just before the accident, you might begin the paragraph in this manner:  “John Doe’s training had been minimal.”

3. Watch your transitions between paragraphs.

Once you’re done writing, go back and read the last sentence of a paragraph and the first sentence of the next. Is the transition seamless? If not, you may want to add a transition sentence.

4. Pick a style guide and stick to it.

Will you put periods between the letters in “LLC” or leave them out? Should you write “Corp.” or “Corporation”? Will you lowercase or capitalize nouns that are not proper names (e.g., “plaintiff” vs. “Plaintiff”)?

Although The Bluebook is the uniform system for citation in the legal profession, when it comes to content writing for law firm websites I prefer The Associated Press Stylebook. The AP’s style guide tends to favor lowercase letters over caps, making AP-formatted text easier to read quickly.

Whatever your choice, try to stick to it. There will be times when you prefer to contradict your chosen style guide, but these should be the exception, not the rule.

5. Verify that proper nouns, locations, names and addresses are correct.

Is it Apple Inc. or Apple Corp?  Make sure you have the right designation. Is it Market Avenue, Market Street or Market Boulevard?

Other common problems include inversion of numbers in telephone numbers and introduction of errors by the autocorrect function of your word-processing program. (As I was typing the last name of an individual recently, Outlook asked me whether I wanted to change it to “gorilla”!) Spelling- and grammar-check programs, though useful, are no substitute for close reading of your copy.

6. Don’t underestimate the importance of one or even two sets of fresh eyes for review.

When I’m reviewing my work, my brain tends to read what I meant rather than what I actually typed. And because I’m a fast typist, sometimes my laptop just can’t keep up and words are omitted.

These are just two of the many reasons that I have our copy editor edit my blog posts. Once I’ve made those changes and incorporated some of my own, our web programmer typically gives the post a quick once-over.

7.  Review the text again once it’s been posted.

Errors can creep in when the content is uploaded to the website. Recently a legal content writing client discovered that location modifiers had been added to an attorney’s law school listing by the company that handles the client’s website. Unfortunately, the person who made the addition placed the school in the wrong city and state and didn’t confirm the change with the client.

Mistakes are inevitable. It is important to proofread your content after the website goes live.

For more on editing, reread the classic Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.

If you have any editing tips you’d like to share, let us know. And if you want to outsource the editing of your law firm’s website content to Legal Media Matters, contact us by filling out our online contact form or e-mailing geri@legalmediamatters.com.

If you're looking for more law firm marketing, legal public relations or content writing tips, subscribe to the Legal Media Matters email alerts: Get articles via e-mail