Category: Firm Technology

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Starting a Law Firm | Online fax resources for lawyers

While doing the due diligence and trying to set up faxing services for my law firm, I law firm fax number - Solo in Minneapolisdiscovered a nifty little comparison website for online faxing for lawyers.  Great!

I wanted to share my find with readers of this legal blog.

The fax comparison website is aptly titled www.faxcompare.com.  Cool!

The comparison site does a really nice job summarizing different pricing options for online or “e-fax” services.  I had heard of E-Fax and they do a really nice job advertising themselves.  The E-Fax service also looks great.  The problem?  It’s more expensive than its competitors.  It pays to do a little research.

I ended up choosing Extreme Fax – mainly because it appears to offer the most and it is cheap.  I don’t send a lot of faxes, but I have found that many attorneys either (a) do or (b) expect you to have a fax number.

I have also noticed that many online directories and websites that I have been signing up for have requested fax numbers for my new firm.  I was getting tired of saying “I don’t have one.”  It was kind of embarrassing.

Anyway, go check out the online fax comparison site.  I locked in a year’s worth of faxing for about $50.00.  If I use the service all the time there is likely going to be a cost; however, I don’t anticipate using it all that much.  Scanning and emailing is so much more efficient.  Yet, some curmudgeonly attorneys want to fax stuff to me.  Now they can.

Happy faxing!

 

 

-This post was written by Joseph M. Flanders, a Apple Valley MN lawyer who practices in the areas of family law and estate planning.

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Starting a Law Firm | Law Firm Blogging Platforms: Blogger or WordPress?

As many solo lawyers know:  starting a law firm in this day-in-age means blogging.  Solo attorneys are especially cognizant of the need to market themselves and garner search engine attention quickly and efficiently.  Doing so means blogging for business.

Law Firm Blogging Options

There isn’t a lot of information on the web comparing the main blogging options.  Those that I know of include:

There are other platforms, but I believe these 5 to be among the most used.  All of them would work as a blogging option for your law firm.  However, from what I have seen, Blogger.com and WordPress.com are the top blogging platform choices for solo attorneys.

Which Blogging Platform is the Best for Starting a Law Firm?

The answer to this question is open to some debate.  For the sake of brevity, I’m going to posit that WordPress and Blogger are the two most user-friendly platforms.  Both are free (if you want to stick with the basic blogging option) and both offer a great deal of user flexibility in the design and formatting options.

Blogger.com

Blogger is owned and maintained by Google.  Being Google, Blogger has excellent support and tutorials.  From my experience, it is easy to find answers to questions and concerns.

Google appears to be putting a lot of effort into making Blogger a good, user-friendly platform.  The controls and layout choices are clearly explained and logical.  When you initially log on the layout of Blogger is obvious and they point you where you need to go. If you have questions, Blogger makes you keenly aware of their ample help tutorials.

The design layout is also well-labeled and easy to understand.  Blogger also ties in seamlessly with popular Google tools such as Google Analytics, Webmaster, and Adwords.  This is where Blogger really has a leg-up on WordPress. I have found installing all of these desirable Google products difficult for my WordPress blogs.  It can be done, but it takes some learning and tinkering.  With Blogger, setting up these Google accounts is as easy as a simple click of a button.

Perhaps that is the key feature of Blogger:  the ease of use by simple button pushing.  You can create a decent-looking blog on Blogger within minutes by follow simple instructions and pushing a few well-placed buttons.  For a technophobe, Blogger may be the way to go.

Signing up for Blogger means you need a Google account and I believe there is some tie-in to get you a Gmail account. Once you get signed up, creating a Blogger blog is easy and quick.  However, for my money, this is where the superiority of Blogger ends.

The Blogger design layout is minimal.  There just aren’t a lot of options to choose from and the options Blogger has look much more like children’s books than professional websites.  There are some more professional looking options that are designed by outside vendors, but I haven’t found those options to be nearly as attractive and user-friendly as WordPress.

My end review of Blogger is that it is user-friendly and easy, but it looks unprofessional and lacks the content and layout options of WordPress.

WordPress

I use both Blogger and WordPress platforms, but my main focus has been on WordPress. I actually started with Blogger because it was easy and I found WordPress initial interface to be cumbersome.  To be sure, there is a learning curve with WordPress, but it is worth it.

For starters, WordPress’s layout and design options are much more professional looking than Blogger and WordPress.  The layout and design options are called “themes” and WordPress has many free themes to choose from.  If you don’t like the free themes, you can upgrade to a WordPress created “premium” theme for various costs from $35.00 to $165.00.  Or, you can choose from a myriad of professional theme designs.

As I discussed in my prior post on creating a law firm website, there are many law firm website and/or WordPress blog theme options to choose from.  Wordpress theme options that I have found and like include:

The cost for StudioPress themes is a one-time fee of $24.95 for one theme or $79.95 for a developers license.  The cost for the DIY Themes, Thesis theme is $87.00 for a single use or a one-time fee of $164.00 for a developers license.  Finally the cost for a Elegant Theme license is $39.00 a year.

Take my advice, you always want to go with the developers license.  If you like the theme you are going to want to use it again and you are going to want to have support for it.

Also, I am not making a plug, necessarily, for any of these themes, this is just what I have used.  I have also heard good things about the Thesis theme from DIY Themes from Lawyerist and other lawyer blogs.

Sadly, I have gone through several options and I am still constructing my own website: flanderslawfirm.com.  I am currently running a StudioPress theme on my website.  I still haven’t come up with my optimal website and I continue to tinker.  But, the point is that I can tinker because WordPress and the theme developers I have named allow me to do that.

Domain Names Choices

WordPress and Blogger both allow the user to create a blog domain name for free as long as the moniker “wordpress” or “blogspot” is utilized after the chosen domain name.

For example, I could choose “jlawyerblog” as my chosen domain name.  If I use the free WordPress option, my domain name would look like this:  “jlawyerblog.wordpress.com”.  If I use the free Blogger option, my domain name would look like this:  “jlawyerblog.blogspot.com”.

If you don’t like the added tag of “blogspot” or “wordpress” you can upgrade to your own domain name for both Blogger and WordPress as long as you pay for it.  Therefore, if I wanted to create my own custom domain name (assuming it was available) I would create the domain name “jlawyerblog.com.”  The cost for Blogger for a custom domain name is $10.00 a year.  The cost for WordPress is $12.00 a year.  Obviously, both are inexpensive.  The expense of blogging, which truly is minimal, is if you decide to upgrade to a professional theme design.

Conclusion

For all of the reasons discussed above, I have chosen WordPress as my main blogging option for starting a law firm.  The functionality and options are far superior to other Blogging platforms.  The WordPress themes are also far superior in layout and design to Blogger.  Wordpress and Blogger both have great support, but WordPress’s functionality, options, and professional-look make WordPress my choice for law firm blogging.

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Starting a Law Firm | The Virtual Law Office

In considering how to start a law firm, you need to consider where you are going to be actually sitting and thinking when you practice law. In other words, you need to consider what kind of office space and setup you are going to have when you start a law firm.

Sounds obvious, I know. This post relates to my previous post about law firm overhead.  A virtual law office arrangement equates to much lower overhead than paying for a lease or some other more traditional office arrangement.

Keeping costs to a nill is going to be key to ensuring that your practice is successful. Paying for a an expensive office lease is going to cost you money that you could be spending on other important things like a new printer/scanner/faxer. I’ve read on other blogs and in legal articles that paying for unnecessary overhead may be the biggest killer of a new law firm. I don’t know if this is true, but I do know that I don’t feel that I can afford the office rent at this point in my practice. Even if I could afford it, I don’t really want to pay for it when it isn’t necessary.

But, if you are going to start a law firm you need to have an office with office supplies in it. There is no doubt about this. For instance, I need a bunch of things surrounding me in order to be successful. I need a telephone, computer, a printer, a scanner, a copier, paper, writing utensils and various law books.  That is the minimum, and I want these items to be easily accessible. I am always concerned about my time and how much I am spending doing things that slow me down or are unnecessary. When you bill by the hour, you have to be efficient. I take a lot of pride in being efficient, and my office set up should (I hope) reflect this.

Can all of these things be made available easily? Yes. Can you put them just about anywhere? Yes. Does it matter if they are in your basement or in a $1,000 a month, leased office space. No.

Now, I know that there are many advantages to having a professional office space. I hope to have one some day. I don’t want to practice out of my home or virtual office forever. But, this blog is about how to start a law firm and when starting a law firm you need to survive.  The virtual office can be a great way to survive.

Chuck Newton, over at a blog I really enjoy called Third Wave Lawyer, has some great posts about offices built out of odd-ball materials like old office containers.  This is not an example of a virtual office.  However, they are cool and I invite you to check them out.

An example of my attempt to check out a virtual law office arrangement in Minneapolis is that I have researched on the internet and found some companies that advertise for virtual office space.  The traditional arrangement goes something like this:  you pay somebody a lower rate (say $200 a month) to have access to a conference room are other office space when you need it.  Think:  meeting with clients.  The rest of the time, when you are not using the office, you are working from home.  This is a virtual office as I understand it.

Virtual law offices are a great way to still have an office presence while still keeping overhead low.  Starting a law firm is all about maximizing profit and making wise decisions.  For many people, the virtual office is can be a very wise decision.

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Starting a Law Firm | Website “Call to Action”

In trying to build and start a law firm in the best way possible, I have obviously been thinking a lot about law firm websites optimization and how to get client to my website.  A recent post on Lawyerist about designining a website “call to action” is very relevant to my law firm website goals.

As many of you many know, the Lawyerist is an excellent lawyer blog that has quite a few contributors.  It is a good site with good content.  I suggest you check it out.  Today, there was a post about having a “call to action” on your website.  The call to action, as I understand it, is getting the client to click on what you want them to click on – your name, number, and contact information.

I’ve thought of this before, but I’ve realized that I need to me more diligent about it.  My idea was to offer a free consultation and get phone calls that way.  People always call more if they think they aren’t going to have to pay for the lawyer phone call.   Thus, the free consultation button.  I don’t intend on working for free, but I have found that I can usually consult with someone for ten to fifteen minutes about their problem over the phone.  If it is a case I think I can handle, the client and I get along, and I think the client will pay their bill, that is usually when I try and make the sale.

But, is that enough?  I don’t really think so.  I have realized that I need to have more on my website to get people to actually pick up the phone or shoot me an email.  I’m going to work on it.  My law firm website currently has a logo section.  That logo is something I’m going to focus more on.  I also intend to include more information in the footer of the website for people to contact me when they are seeking legal services.

From a practical, marketing perspective, starting a law firm is all about getting the phone to ring and getting people in the door.  Being a good attorney and practicing in an ethical fashion are equally important.  I don’t intend to wait and I want to call all my potential clients out there to call and seek my legal advice and skill.

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Starting a Law Firm | Law Firm Website Update

As an update to my effort to start a law firm, I wanted to let everyone know that my law firm’s website is up and running.  It’s located at flanderslawfirm.com.

I am not completely satisfied with it and I plan to make some much needed changes.  But, it is up and it isn’t too bad.  The best part?  I did it mainly by myself.  If anybody actually reads this and goes to my website I would appreciate any comments.

I ultimately got my law firm website up and running through a lot of trial and error.  To me, starting a law firm is all about trial and error.  Why should it be any different with a website?

The first trial was hosting.  As I explained in my law firm website hosting post, there are a lot of choices but I chose Winhost.com.  To this point, I have been very happy with Winhost and I have no complaints.  However, it is early and we shall see how it goes.  Through many hours and a lot of head-banging, I was able to read the help forum and “knowledge base” articles on Winhost and figure out how to set my law firm website up using these main, FREE ingredients:

(1) Webmatrix

(2) FileZilla FTP

(3) Internet Information Services (IIS 7)

(4) WordPress.org

The Winhost forums have moderators who answer many questions from all kinds of people with similar difficulties.  There are posts about how to use your hosting service for all of these free tools.  Again, creating a law firm website isn’t easy, but if you have the time and the gumption you can do it.  Those are the free tools and they are great.

Now, the non-free tools I used were:

(1) Winhost website hosting (Cost: $114 for a year of hosting)

(2) NameCheap domain names ($10.00 for a typical domain name)

(3) Elegant Themes templates ($39.00 a year).

That’s it.  Easy right?  I also think those prices are pretty darn reasonable and I did pay a web designer anything.

Once I figured out how to use  these tools, I was able to customize my law firm website. It takes some knowledge of html  coding and cascading style sheet (CSS) language, but I picked it all up on the fly.

If anybody needs any help out there on how to start a law firm website, post a comment.

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Starting a Law Firm | Creating a Law Firm Website

I wanted to share with everybody what I have learned about building a website for starting my own law firm.

As I posted previously, I have been doing a lot of searching and reading about law firm website hosting.  There are way too many web hosting options to list here.  Suffice it to say that I can’t recommend one or another.  Everybody wants to host your lawyer website.

So, where to begin?  Do a google search and you will find many choices.   I chose winhost.com.  I’m not making a plug, I am just letting your now what I chose.  I could have made a mistake, who knows.

I chose Winhost for two reasons:  (1) the price and (2) the functionality.  The price I chose was a monthly “Max” plan at $10.00 a month.  They have a cheaper plan, but I wanted a plan with enough functionality for me to expand and add things like more website content and email users.  The functionality compares with, if not better than, many website hosts out there.  The “Max” plan has quite a bit of hosting space and other options that I frankly don’t know how to use.  I will say this, I did quite a bit of research and I didn’t see this much functionality at places like Godaddy.com.  The price is the same, but I don’t think you get as much.  (Caveat, I’m a lawyer, not a web designer, and I really don’t know what I am doing.)

So, onto the lawyer stuff.  I have decided to develop a law firm website right now.  That way, I can build up links and get some traffic to the website before I officially open up my law firm doors in Minneapolis.  Also, since I have more free time on my hands than I am used to, I figure this is the best time to learn this stuff.

Now that I have chosen a host, I have to figure out how to get a website up.  This is where the real fun begins.  I have no website building experience and I just learned how to set up a blog.  I’ve put a lot of time into it, but there is a lot more to learn.  As I am on a budget when starting my law firm, I don’t want to pay for a web designer.  I’m trying to do it on my own.

Here are the tools I have used so far:

(1) Winhost.com (the website hosting service)

(2) Microsoft WebMatrix (a web development tool)

(3) WordPress.org (free blog and CMS website hosting)

(4) Various business and/or law firm templates.

Those are my current tools in more or less the order that I am using them.  Again, not a plug for any of them, but that it what I have found so far.

On Winhost, there is a control panel which allows you to set up a database and it also contains domain information like your server address, url address, etc.  This is all voodoo to me, but it is necessary to connect with the next step, WebMatrix.

Download WebMatrix and then learn to use it.  Did I mention that it is free?   There are plenty of tutorials on the Microsoft site.  It isn’t the most user friendly software, but, then again, it isn’t that difficult.  In WebMatrix you can choose a number of different website building options.  There are templates pre-installed, but I recommend either buying a template or finding a free law firm template and loading it into WebMatrix.  If you choose a pre-built template, you can load it into WebMatrix and then connect WebMatrix to your server (e.g.: WinHost).  This is where the voodoo comes in.  I struggled for hours to get WebMatrix to properly connect to and recognize WinHost.  But, in the end, I got it to work.  Again, instructions are all available via online tutorials and help forums.   Also, you can load WordPress.org through WebMatrix if you want to use a WordPress design for your law firm website.

If you do use WordPress, there are many different free templates that you can use for your law firm website, or you can pay for and install a law firm theme for WordPress.  I haven’t done this yet, but I am planning to go this route.  Wordpress’ functionality and SEO optimization tools are easy, free, and, best of all, they look good.

So, that is my hackneyed explanation on what I am doing to create a law firm website.  I’ll unveil the site on Solo in Minneapolis when it is ready.  Let me know if any of you have questions on this process.  I’d be happy to share what I have learned anybody wanting to build a website when the are starting a law firm.

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Starting a Law Firm | Website Hosting

The issue of establishing a web presence when starting a law firm has been disussed ad naseum and I may not add much here.  This post is more of a question to solos out there who are reading this blog.  Who do you use as a website and/or blog host and why?

I’ll add that I am in the market for a good host for my yet-to-exist firm website.   I am having some difficulty deciding a number of things, including:

(1) the design of the website,

(2) whether it should incorporate a blog in the actual site or just a reference to an external blog in the firm website itself,

(3) how many websites do I need,

(4) when am I going to start the website, and

(5) how much is this going to cost?

Those are the general catch-all questions going around inside my head.  I have some time to do this, but I want to get on the ball.  My firm will be established in Minneapolis, MN when I pass the Minnesota bar exam.  However, I’m already licensed in Indiana and I have clients.  So, I could feasibly have a website presence now.

And yet, I don’t know when to start.  The debate is whether to start designing a website now or wait until I’m licensed in Minnesota.  If I start now, I can simply incorporate my office address and telephone numbers to be Minnesota-centric when I am licensed there. Also, if I start the website now, I have some time to think about it and start building links to it.   I can also try and optimize it slowly by starting now.

However, back to the question, I need to decide on a web-hosting service with all the functionality I want first.  I need to think more about when is the best time to launch the site and why I am doing it.  I will be blogging on my chosen niche areas, but should that be incorporated into my website or not?  Any help out there for a fledgling solo about to using technology to start and build a a law firm would be most appreciated.

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Starting a Law Firm | Computers, Software, Etc.

In an effort to get my computer systems ready for starting an Minneapolis, MN law firm, I just spend the entire day (and I am not kidding) trying to create a network between my old desktop computer and my new laptop computer.  It didn’t work.

I get so frustrated by Microsoft.  They are great at a great many things, but they keep rolling out product that is incompatible with their old products.  Why?  My theory is that they are too busy paying their R&D and software development people to create new products and new maintenance for that product, that they forget to support their old systems.

I run Windows XP Professional on my old Dell desktop.  It’s basically a dinosaur, but it works.  The new laptop came with the Windows 7 operating system.  I have to tell you, I really like Windows 7.  It is so much smoother and user friendly.  However, it doesn’t like to connect with Windows XP via a network connection.  This really shouldn’t be so hard.  Especially, when I have other things to concentrate on when starting my new firm.

If I am going to run a law practice, I am going to need a network so that I can share different computers on the same business network.  I am going to use multiple computers and I hope to have staff one day who can be on the network.  Is that to much to ask?  It shouldn’t be, but Windows 7 isn’t really compatible with other operating systems.  I did manage to create a remote desktop connection, but I don’t like it as much.  It is too clunky.

The remote desktop is great (but not as great as a network connection) because it enables me to share all of my office information with another computer.  I also have printer, fax, and scanner access through the remote desktop.  I am also protected by a user name and password, so I don’t need to worry about law firm client files being hacked into.  Finally, with a network or a remote desktop, I can work from anywhere I want and bill my firm’s clients.  Great!

The point of this post is that there is so much more to running a law practice than practicing law.  It is tough to realize how many little things I will have to do, and how much will go wrong.  But, all that being said, I am still very excited about starting my own Minneapolis, MN family law firm.

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Starting a Law Firm | Firm Technology

When thinking about how to use technology to help me start a law firm, I have come across some really cool, free, ideas.

I know I discussed MindMeister already in a previous post, but while using the brainstorming tool on MindMeister I was referenced to Yahoo Widgets.  I’ll admit that I am not one for gadgets, but I really liked this one.

I have trouble keeping my thoughts organized and I am always coming up with what I think are great ideas.  Sometimes I actually write them down.  Sometimes I put them in an email and email it to myself.  All of this is very disorganized and often doesn’t lead to much.

But, the MindMeister brainstorming chart I am using is linked to a Yahoo Widget called Geistes Blitz.  Being a German student in high school, I knew “geistes” meant mind.  So, the widget is a mind blitz or, put another way, an idea capturing tool that sends all my starting an Minneapolis family law firm ideas to my MindMeister chart.

Pretty cool huh?

This way, if I’m working at my computer or surfing the web for helpful information on starting a family law firm, I can pull up the Geistes Blitz, type in an idea and/or link and it automatically goes to the marketing section of my chart.

This may be kind of lame, but I find this kind of very helpful for idea organization when starting a law firm.