StudioPress is having a HUGE SALE – Get 25% off all WordPress themes and packages.  StudioPress SELDOM has a sale.  This is your chance to get going with StudioPress for less.

The StudioPress sale ends Monday, Nov. 28/11 at 7 p.m. Pacific time.

How do you get 25% off everything at StudioPress:

2 STEPS:

1. Use the StudioPress promo code THANKS at checkout; AND
2. Click here to visit StudioPress.

This is the week to buy all the StudioPress products you can.  Frankly, this is the week you should buy your StudioPress Pro Plus All-Theme package which gives you access to all their themes PLUS all themes released in the future.  1 payment gives you a lifetime membership (I’m a Pro Plus member).

Check out the following StudioPress discounts:

• Genesis Framework:  $45 (Reg. $59.95).
• Genesis Framework + 1 Child Theme: $60 (Reg. $79.95).
• Child Themes:  $20 including Marketplace themes (Reg. $24.95 – please note that some child themes such as AgentPress cost a few dollars more).
• Pro Plus ALL-THEME Package:  $225 (Reg. $299.95).  With the All-Theme package, you get 43 designs PLUS all StudioPress child theme designs released in the future.  It’s a LIFETIME membership – but you pay one time only.

StudioPress sale dates

• StudioPress sale STARTS Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
• StudioPress sale ENDS Monday, November 28, 2011 at 7 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

Visit StudioPress and use the promo discount code THANKS at checkout.

Learn more about StudioPress themes, the Genesis Framework, Marketplace, Pro Plus and more:

I’ve written extensively about StudioPress.  The following are some extensively detailed articles and reviews:

• Genesis Theme Review
• StudioPress Review
• StudioPress Pro Plus ALL-THEME Package FAQ
• StudioPress Marketplace FAQ
• StudioPress Discount Code (in effect Nov. 22 to Nov. 28/11).

Is StudioPress worth it?

I use StudioPress themes for many of my websites – my offline business websites and online business websites.  In fact, this website you’re reading uses the StudioPress Genesis Framework.

I’ve been a lifetime StudioPress member since 2009.  Their support is excellent.  Their themes are stylish.  They’re innovative.  They keep coming up with new designs, plugins (most of which are free), features, functionality … in a nutshell StudioPress is one of, if not the best WordPress theme developers and designers in the WORLD.

In my opinion, StudioPress is well worth their regular prices.  At 25% off, you simply can’t go wrong.

Please keep in mind that StudioPress seldom has a sale.  I know because I write about StudioPress all the time.  I pay attention with what’s going on there.  I’m a lifetime member and am in touch with the folks there regularly.  This is a rare event.  If you’re even thinking about getting a StudioPress theme or All-Theme package, this is the time to do it.

Enjoy the StudioPress sale today.  Click here and use the StudioPress promo code code THANKS at checkout for your 25% discount on EVERYTHING at StudioPress.

Related posts:

1. Corporate Theme by StudioPress: The Good and the Bad, a Review
2. Don’t Get the Wrong WordPress Theme for your Business Website
3. WordPress and Joomla make Great Lawyer Websites

Sure, when you publish articles on EZA, if you target relatively low competitive keywords you can rank your EZA article well in the search engines.  You’ll even likely get some traffic to your law firm website.  These are great benefits.

But, you can ramp up your article marketing by taking it one step further and that is syndication.

Syndication is when other websites (or print materials) take your articles from an article directory and publish it “as-is” on their website.

When you publish on EZA and other article directories you’re giving permission for your article to be syndicated.  This is a good thing and something to aim for.

“As-is” means the links to your law firm website you place in the article resource box at the bottom of your article will also be published on the websites that syndicate your articles.  Voila, you’ve built backlinks to your website with no additional effort.

What about duplicate content?

It’s a myth when concerning the same content on different websites.  Yes, it’s true … it is a myth.  Your originally published article whether on your firm website or elsewhere will not get punished in the search engines.  The entire duplicate content issue pertains to the same content on different URLs on your website.  Not the same content on different websites.

Think about it.  Syndication is something that’s been happening for years in the print world.  The major publications continue syndication online including Google with Google News.

Sure, a syndicated article may not rank as well as the originally published web page of the same content.  But it will likely get indexed (which means the backlinks count to your website) and you need not fear about your website being punished by the search engines.

It’s true that Google’s recent Panda algorithm update is ranking websites with only syndicated content lower, but it does not mean those sites are not indexed.  Moreover, syndication is still happening since Panda.  Since the Google announcement of Panda, my syndication numbers from EZA increased from 146 to 171 (see below).  This tells me websites are still syndicating content.

Capitalizing on Syndication

Once you notice that your articles are being syndicated, it’s time to ramp up your syndication efforts.

How can you tell if your articles are being syndicated?

Take a look at your EZA stats screen on your EZA home page.  It looks like the following (taken from my EZA account on March 20, 2011):

The syndication number is indicated by the “Ezine Publisher” figure which is 171 for me.

171 instances of syndication means I effortlessly built 342 backlinks to my websites.  It also means more readers and traffic to my websites.

Syndication = traffic & backlinks which are two cornerstone objectives in online marketing.

Likely more websites syndicated my articles without clicking the “Publish” button on the EZA page where my article is published and instead they simply copied and pasted the article.  But I can’t prove that with any certainty unless I do a search for each of my articles in Google (which I explain below).

A note about my other stats.  The 8.6% click rate is the rate of readers who clicked to my websites.  8.6% is NOT good, in fact it borders on terrible.

The reason I have a low click rate is my first 80 or so articles do not have very good resource boxes (I should go back and edit them but I haven’t had the opportunity).  When I started with article marketing, I made some mistakes.  My click rate has more than doubled with my latest 80 or 90 articles once I learned how to improve click rate in EZA (see my 1 simple tip to improve article click rate section below).

Next, find out who is syndicating your articles

In the Google search field, type the title of your published EZA article surrounded by “”.  If your article is syndicated and it’s indexed you’ll get a list of web pages where your article is published.

Go to each website and if you can contact the webmaster, do so offering that you’re willing to offer them your articles before you publish them on EZA (and elsewhere).

Not every webmaster will take you up on it, but some will and that’s an easy way to ensure you build more backlinks to your website.  Continue delivering quality content and you’ll have another easy source of completely white hat backlinks.

1 simple tip to improve your article click rate

I started getting much better click rates when I integrated the resource box as part of my article.

A very simple way to do this is by starting your resource box with the word “Next”.

For example, if you wrote an article about breathalysers (as a DUI attorney), you could write the following resource box.

Next, discover 5 types of breathalysers used by the police.  Not all breathalysers are the same and not all breathalysers require the same type of maintenance by law enforcement.  Learn about the different breathalysers used by the police so you know something about the breathalyser you blew into when charged with a DUI.

I don’t know if there’s 5 types of breathalysers.  I’m not a DUI lawyer.  I use it as an example.

The bolded portions are th links to your law firm website – be sure to link to the relevant articles.

I’ve stopped the “Atticus is a DUI lawyer practicing law in Fargo North Dakota with the law firm of Atticus & Co. since 1990″ type of resource box.  That’s what your EZA profile is for.

The “bio” style resource boxes receive lower click rates almost every time.  Instead, integrate your resource box into your article and then write a great profile bio in the event readers want to learn more about you.

Related posts:

1. Become a Big Time Article Publisher on the Internet With this Article Writing Tool
2. Magic Article Rewriter Review – SEO Rewrite Software – Publish Unique Content Fast
3. Boost Site Traffic With Ezine Articles Submission and Publishing Campaign

1. The shotgun approach
2. The sniper approach

The Shotgun Approach to SEO

The shotgun approach is doing everything and the kitchen sink hoping you rank well for intended keywords. You don’t aim; instead you fire hoping to hit your mark. You write content, optimize your web page for the keyword, and then randomly build backlinks hoping beyond hope you end up on page 1.

There are two problems with the shotgun SEO approach:

• You miss your target altogether by aimlessly going for keywords that unless you spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of time you will not end up on page 1. In other words, you’re wasting your time.
• You overkill your target. You invest time and resources into ranking a keyword beyond that which is necessary and therefore miss other opportunities.

The Sniper Approach to SEO

The sniper approach involves planning, taking careful aim, and hitting your mark deliberately. The sniper approach involves upfront planning, but once you know what must be done, you deliberately plan and execute a precision-based SEO campaign to rank for select keywords. Once you achieve the ranking desired, you slow or stop that campaign and go after other keyword opportunities.

The benefits of sniper SEO are:

• You seek to rank for keywords you have a chance to rank for rather than guessing and hoping.
• You do just enough smart SEO to rank and then stop. You don’t waste resources.

Because sniper SEO is deliberate, it’s smart SEO in that you can plan your campaign and achieve results with minimum investment and resources. Obviously I’m of the view sniper SEO is the better approach. I’m not saying shotgun SEO doesn’t work, it’s just not as efficient and in some cases not as effective.

How do you do Sniper SEO?

You must select your keywords and decide how high you wish to rank for those keywords. For the remainder of this article, I’ll assume you wish to rank somewhere on page 1 of Google. Selecting keywords is a balancing act. You want to rank high for the most searched-for keywords your prospective clients use. Yet, you don’t want to waste time and money on keywords for which you will not achieve a page 1 ranking. How do you research keywords? I use software that produces the following chart for the keyword “Denver Personal Injury Lawyer”

(click to enlarge)

The main two numbers are:

• Number of monthly searches (for an exact search) which is 590.
• Number of web pages that contain the phrase “Denver personal injury lawyer” which is 672,000

“Denver personal injury lawyer” is a fairly competitive keyword given 672,000 web pages contain the phrase. However, it also receives a decent number of searches and the lawyers who rank on page 1 will gain a decent amount of monthly website traffic for just this keyword. But number of searches and competing web pages is just the start.

Next, you must determine how hard it will be to bump an existing site off of page 1. You see, there could be millions of web pages competing for a keyword, yet the top 10 sites on page 1 of Google aren’t that well SEO’d.

Likewise, there could be a keyword with only 10,000 competing web pages, but the top 10 sites on page 1 are very well SEO’d and therefore strongly entrenched.

Analyzing the SEO Strength of the Top 10 Websites for “Denver Personal Injury Lawyer”

I’ll use my software again for a competitive analysis, which produces the following:

(click to Enlarge)

It turns out ranking on page 1 is moderately difficult. It’s not impossible, but does require effort.

What do the colors mean?

The more green means less competitive and pink means more competitive. The brown is moderately competitive. The most competitive factors for ranking in the top 10 is backlinks. The websites listed have many backlinks. Arguably, backlinks (quality and quantity) are a very strong factor to ranking well.

Therefore, yes, there is a lot of green in the chart, but a lot of pink for a very important ranking factor.

The above screenshot lists the top 8 ranking websites for “Denver personal injury lawyer”. The entries with the small icon and no number to the left are Google Places rankings.

I’m concerned with the entries indicated by a number 1 through 8.

What do all these numbers mean? The following is a legend.

The items in the chart are many factors that contribute to ranking well in the search engines for a particular keyword. The hardest part of ranking in the top 10 for “Denver personal injury lawyer” will be amassing enough backlinks.

It’s possible and fairly easy to get backlinks so I deem going after this keyword is doable with time and effort.

A brief note about backlinks. The lowest ranking website in our chart has 1,582 links to the entire site. That does not mean getting 1,583 backlinks will punt that site from it’s spot.

Not all backlinks are created equal. Generally links from higher PR sites are better.

With my software I did backlink analysis and the results showed that this site has the following backlink distribution:

• PR 5: 4
• PR 4: 14
• PR 3: 13
• PR 2: 13
• PR 1: 22
• Remainder PR 0 or PR -.

What this backlinks distribution tells me is that if a Denver law firm website managed to get 10, 20, 30 or more backlinks from PR 5 or higher websites, then there’s a really good chance it could outrank the existing site in spot #8. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s likely.

This is part of being a sniper SEO. All this data tells me exactly what must be done in order to rank in the top 10.

Rather than blindly going after “Denver personal injury lawyer” now you could methodically go for a top ranking. Note that just because you take the sniper approach does not mean you can rank without effort. You still need to optimize your website properly, publish content, and build quality backlinks to your site.

Moreover, simply doing the above analysis, you can decide quickly whether it’s even worth trying to rank for a particular keyword. In fact, you might decide to simply rank for a slew of low-competition keywords rather than going for a few or one highly competitive keywords.

Understand you do not need to limit targeting only one or two keywords on your website. Each web page is an opportunity to rank for a different keyword. Go for the most searched, yet attainable keyword on your home page, and then go after many other keywords on other pages and blog posts on your site.

Also, in my experience it’s best to go after 5 to 10 keywords at a time rather than 50 or 100 at a time. You can focus your campaign more effectively on 5 to 10 keywords rather than 50 or 100 keywords. Once you rank for your first 10 chosen keywords, go for another 10. In time, you’ll be ranking well for many keywords and enjoying a great deal of website traffic.

What software does the above keyword analyses?

It’s Market Samurai. I find it probably the most useful SEO tool in my arsenal. However, if you prefer to go the free route, you can using an amalgamation of free online tools. It takes longer going the free route … but it is free. Those tools are as follows:

• Google Keyword Tool to determine search volume.
• Keyword Spy (a Firefox browser addon) to check domain age, number of backlinks and type of backlinks.
• Yahoo! Site Explorer for checking the number and type of backlinks.
• Search in Google with “” surrounding your keyword to see the number of competing websites.
• Go to each of the top 10 websites and right click your mouse and select “view page source.” Look for the <title>, <description> and <h> tags to determine if the web page has the keyword in these meta elements.
• Go to DMOZ.org and Yahoo! Directory to see if the other studios are listed with these directories (arguably the two best directories from which to receive backlinks).

There’s no need to guess what needs to be done to rank well in Google. Stop guessing and get scientific with your SEO. The scientific approach means you’ll only do the bare minimum to rank well and you’ll be able to know when ranking on page 1 is not going to happen (like trying to rank on page 1 for “yoga” – you’d need a lot of time and resources to make that happen).

3 caveats when doing SEO:

• There are no guarantees with SEO. You could do everything the numbers indicate and still not achieve a top ranking. It’s likely you succeed, but not guaranteed.
• Using this scientific approach does not mean you’ll be able to achieve top rankings for every keyword. In fact, when you analyze the competition in this manner, you’ll discover the keywords for which you have very little chance of achieving a page 1 Google listing. This helps you avoid wasting time on a hopeless endeavor. That said, no keyword is bullet proof. With enough time, money, persistence, and dedication, you can rank well for any keyword. However, you must assess whether it’s worth it and more to the point, whether you have the time and resources.
• The number of backlinks listed by Yahoo! Site Explorer and Market Samurai are approximated. There is no software I’m aware of that is 100% accurate in revealing the number and type of backlinks to a particular website.
• There are many ways to get backlinks. Some are white hat, some grey hat, and some black hat. I won’t get into these methods here, but in the long run you’re best-served taking the white hat approach.

Related posts:

1. How To Take Your Law Firm Article Marketing & SEO 1 Step Further?
2. Lawyer Marketing Action Plan For Tons of Website Traffic

My firm’s sites went from 0 monthly website visitors to 3,450 (and climbing) within 1 year.  This article and much of this website is about lawyer marketing with a focus on lawyer internet marketing.

Lawyer Marketing Mass Traffic Action Plan

A.  Build your own websites:

I can’t overstate how valuable it is being able to build your own websites and blogs.  The time you invest in it will pay dividends immediately and for years.  Here is, in a nutshell, what I do:

B.  My Internet Lawyer Marketing Approach is Simple:

1. Get great website hosting:  Bluehost.  Great customer service, cheap, and you can build unlimited websites.  Bluehost shows you how to install WordPress.
2. Use the WordPress platform (install very easily inside your Bluehost account) and get great looking WordPress themes:  StudioPress and/or iThemes (I use both).  These WordPress premium themse are low cost, look great, built-in SEO, very well coded, outstanding support, and they both have a large variety of themes available.
3. Learn on-site search engine optimization (how to write and research keywords for your websites):  SEOBook.
4. Build tons of high-quality links to my site using Linkvana (read my Linkvana review here) and reading 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity.
5. Once I build and get traffic to one site, I do it again, and again, and again.

C.  Let me elaborate:

First, you’re probably what are your various websites to be about?  Each website targets different clientele.  For example, if you’re a criminal defense lawyer, do a spousal assault website, a DUI website, an insider trading website, and so forth.

If your law firm practices in several areas, create websites (and blogs) for each practice area.  Then build websites to sub-practice areas.  These specific practice area and sub-practice area websites are called microsites.

Second, you must learn how to choose keywords and where to place keywords in your websites.  You can’t learn about keyword research and use better tools than at SEOBook.

Third, write loads of great content and don’t stop.  Don’t have time?  Hire quality writers at Custom Content and/or Need an Article.

Fourth, don’t forget optimize your local Google Maps listing.  Read David Mihm – he about covers it all for local Google Maps.

Fifth: a little about link building – which is integral to internet lawyer marketing.

• Top Google listings come from link building.  Go for quantity and quality.  Quality links are from websites with high page rank.  Google page rank if you don’t know what this is.
• Take charge of building all the links you want to all the websites you want (plan on building many sites) with Linkvana.  One flat rate each month lets you build all the links to your site you want.
• Read 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity.  This article covers it all as far as I’m concerned.
• If you want to submit your sites to online directries and RSS aggregators (recommended), then automate it with Directorybot and RSSbot.

Sixth: Lawyer marketing is not complete without analyzing your competition.  At Yahoo Site Explorer, enter your competitions’ URLs (the competitors who are ranking in Google higher than you) and see where they get links.  Get links from the same or better websites.  For example, if your competitor has eight PR 6 links, you should get at least 9 PR 6 links.

You can get high PR links from blog comments, forum participation, paying for high PR directory listings, and writing articles for publishing on sites with high PR.

Seventh: Give you prospective clients the chance to talk to you (or your office) live right on all your websites with live chat.  You’ll get more clients in your office doors if you communicate with them while they are on your site.  I haven’t used live chat yet for my firm because I have a staffing shortage.  However, I intend to try live chat on all my sites shortly because I have no doubt if I can answer website visitors’ questions immediately and book an appointment immediately, I’ll get even more clients.

Eighth: Collect, build, and communicate with all your clients and prospective clients with email management: aWeber or iContact are inexpensive robust options that offer forms you can easily place in all your WordPress websites.

That’s all there is to it.  Follow these steps and you can create all the targeted traffic you need to get tons of clients.  Don’t stop building websites, adding content, and building links.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to do all this, but still want massive traffic, check out LoveClients SEO for a full service SEO service.

Related posts:

1. Social Bookmarking SEO: Traffic-Bug Review
2. How to get a Great Lawyer Website or Law Firm Websites
3. Website or Blog? What Should a Lawyer or Law Firm Use

My favorite article submission and publishing directory is EzineArticles.com.  In a nutshell I like submitting an article to Ezine so much because it gets results – my articles get read, they perform well in the search engines, and as a result I’ve had many visitors to my firm’s websites from my Ezine articles.

This post sets out my modest, but improving statistics, the results I get from Ezine, why I use Ezine, how to promote your articles, and why I don’t publish on other fairly prominent article directories (for now).

My article Ezine submission statistics (as of this post date):

• Articles published:  20
• Date I published my first article:  August 24, 2009.  However, I published 18 of my 20 articles since December 2009.
• Article views:  2,668
• Profile views:  700
• URL clicks: 152 (this is the magic number because this means 152 people clicked through to my sites).

These are not earth-shattering stats; fairly modest in fact, given the biggest publisher on Ezine is Sean R. Mize with 22,167 articles published.  My point is that even a few articles (20 isn’t that many) will get plenty of visitors to your site(s).

More importantly, those visitors are quality visitors because they are interested in the article topic (i.e. your legal practice areas) and more likely than not trust you (at least a little).  The fact is you’ve presold that visitor with your article.

At this point I have not promoted my articles much at all.  I may have linked to two or three articles from my websites.  I intend to start promoting my articles more aggressively so my articles themselves get better search engine rankings.  That said, given I’ve promoted little, my articles still deliver for me.

Why I love marketing by publishing articles on Ezine?

• It’s free.
• It works – I get visitors to my websites.
• I like writing – it’s great for people who life writing.  If you don’t like writing, hire someone to write articles.
• The people who click through to my sites are more likely than not pre-sold on me.  They are starting to trust I can help.
• Ezine gets incredible search engine results (if you use well-searched keywords).
• You can use pen names within your account.  You are only allowed one Ezine “account per human”, so unlike other online publishing platforms such as Squidoo, open one account and add pen names.
• Syndication: publishers (website and blog owners) may add your article to their site – which gives you more links to your site and gets your handiwork read by more people.

Ezine submission and publishing tips:

1.  Read Ezines’ editorial guidelines so you get your article Ezine submission right the first time.  I’ve had articles blocked; it’s time consuming to fix them.  For example, I wrote some legal articles specific to my jurisdiction.  I included my jurisdiction in my article titles.  However, that proved to be a problem.  Once I removed the jurisdiction from my title, my article published.  Sometimes articles get blocked even when you’ve read the rules.

Note, I’m not saying including a jurisdiction is necessarily a problem for all articles; it just was for me given the content of the articles.

2.  Build links to and promote your Ezine Articles (see below).

3.  Research your keywords.  Be sure your keyword phrases are actually searched.  Then place at least one keyword phrase in the title of your article and throughout the article.

4.  Big debate: is it okay to publish your exact blog posts / website articles on Ezine?  Ezine doesn’t care (after all, Ezine approves of other website owners taking and publishing your articles).

Instead, it’s a search engine results issue.  Many SEO folks and internet marketers argue that the duplicate content scare is a myth with respect to the same article on different sites (the duplicate content issue is real within sites).  I don’t know for sure; I’ve done no testing on this issue.

My practice is to only publish only unique articles on Ezine.  In fact I write articles that complement and/or presell whichever blog or site or web page I link to in my bio box at the bottom.  Since Ezine gets a lot of readers, I work on crafting good articles for Ezine.

5.  Publish quality articles because you are evaluated once you’ve published 10 articles, and again once you’ve published 35 articles.

6.  Get 10 quality articles published as fast as you can because once you’re a Basic Plus member, you’ll enjoy much faster publishing rates.  I’ve noticed a difference in publishing time.  At 35 published articles, if approved, you become a platinum member – which apparently speeds up publishing time even more.

Note, because I had some problems with titles while publishing my first 10 articles, I was only promoted to a Basic Plus member.  It is possible after 10 articles to be directly promoted to a platinum member – the highest level of membership.  Once you are platinum, you can publish an unlimited number of articles as long as they comply with the editorial guidelines.

How to promote your Ezine Articles?

• Link to your published articles from your sites.
• Link to articles form other articles you publish and/or other Web 2.0 sites you use such as Squidoo, HubPages, and Triond.
• If you send out an e-newsletter, insert links to your published articles.

Do I publish on other prominent article directories?

I’ve published a few articles on GoArticles, Buzzle, iSnare, Article City, Triond, Squidoo, and HubPages.  However, I found that I received by far the most views of my Ezine articles.  At the end of the day it takes time to add articles to additional publishing platforms.  For me the extra time isn’t worth the small traffic I get.

I do, however, use Unique Article Wizard (UAW).  UAW publishes unique articles I write on numerous article directories. It’s an automated article submission service.

The result: a lot of exposure and links with minimal time investment.

Since Ezine isn’t one of UAW’s target directories, I manually upload unique articles to Ezine because it’s well worth the time.

If you like writing, I can’t recommend starting an article publishing campaign.  Increasing my article Ezine submission rate has delivered beyond my expectations for a fairly minimal investment of my time.  Besides, I like writing.

This blog has an affiliate arrangement with UAW.

Related posts:

1. Become a Big Time Article Publisher on the Internet With this Article Writing Tool
2. Magic Article Rewriter Review – SEO Rewrite Software – Publish Unique Content Fast
3. Social Bookmarking SEO: Traffic-Bug Review

1.  What is a virtual law office?

A virtual law office is a when legal services are delivered solely electronically via the internet, telephone, online meetings, video conferencing, e-mail, fax, and even cloud computing document storage and sharing websites.

Some might argue that a pure virtual law office requires no verbal contact between lawyer and client.  I’m of the view that if the legal services can be delivered without in-person presence, that qualifies as a virtual law office.

The typical services provided virtually revolve around standard document preparation such as wills, family law documents, intellectual property, small business services, estate administration documents, most document-based legal services.

However, with the growth in micro-niche legal practices that are research-based, many lawyers are developing virtual law practices that are research-centric rather than document-centric.

Virtual office locations can be at home, on the road, or traditional fixed office location. What defines a virtual law office is that all services are delivered electronically; the entire legal service delivery from start to finish is done without in-person client contact.

That said, a home office isn’t necessarily a virtual law office if the lawyer or professional meets in-person with clients.  The same is with a mobile or remote office.  Likewise, you can have a virtual law office in a commercial setting – it’s just clients don’t attend the office.

2.  Virtual Law Office Advantages

• Security breaches: if your computer system is breached, it can compromise your clients.  However, nearly all traditional firms have this same issue.
• Lower overhead: it’s not necessary to rent commercial space and you can invest more into technology than human resources.
• Lower cost to clients: lower overhead means you can compete on price and use technology to increase volume.
• Client convenience: clients don’t need to visit your offices; they can instruct you using the computer.
• Work flexibility: work when you want – break free of traditional firm hours.
• Work from anywhere: turn your laptop into your entire office and work from anywhere in the world.
• Micro-niche the practice: clients are global which means a lawyer can specialize in a very specific area that serves clients globally.
• Leverage services: using technology and delivering electronically gives rise to leveraging existing products for faster and more cost-effective legal services.
• Global reach – not restricted to local clients.  Can market and deliver legal services anywhere in the world.
• You get to work using plenty of technology.  This is only a plus if you love technology.
• Job protection – it’s a way to adapt to the changing practice of law.  Law is changing; some people see it becoming commoditized.  Embracing technology could very well be an excellent method for job protection.
• Staffing convenience – a virtual law office easily enables telecommuting and virtual assistant arrangments.

3.  Virtual Law Office Disadvantages

• Less personable – no person-to-person contact.  You don’t watch the body language of clients; often a way of further understanding clients’ communications.  Also, you may miss working with people in person.
• End up competing on price.  It’s not always fun to compete strictly on price.  This need not be the case if you work in a micro-niche legal area.
• Fewer resources.  You most likely won’t have the human, technology, and other resources a larger firm has.
• You’re very reliant on technology – if problems arise, not good.  If you systems crash, business grinds to a halt.  This really isn’t a unique problem to virtual law offices because most firms these days are extremely dependent on technology – a crash affects a traditional firm as much as a VLO.
• Restricted to certain types of law.  You can’t deliver 100 percent of legal services electronically in most litigation matters.

A virtual law office isn’t for every lawyer; some will do it and love it, while others will find it restrictive, lonely, and too technology-centric.  That said, more firms, in my view, will add virtual law office aspects to their service delivery in order to gain the above-listed advantages.  Afterall, it’s hard to dispute the fact that electronic delivery of legal services is cost-effective and convenient for clients.  Firms that don’t see this will lose out in the long run.

I don’t presently have a virtual law office, but I’m looking into it.  My practice is a litigation practice, but I’m constantly striving to incorporating technology and electronic delivery in my litigation practice.

Related posts:

1. Paperless Practice
2. Set up a Paperless Office by Stopping Piles of Inbound Paper Mail
3. How to Take Your Law Office Paperless? Plan Workflow

Get your free SEO Guide for lawyers (and small business) below!

It’s here – my free 10 page search engine optimization guide for small business and lawyers titled “4 Steps to Top Search Engine Rankings for Lawyers.”

All you need to do is sign up to our e-mail list by filling out the form at the bottom of this post or on the sidebar.

Once you fill out the form you’ll receive a confirmation e-mail taking your to the download page.  We’ll then send you a confirmation e-mail  containing a link to your free search engine optimization guide for small business and lawyers for your records.

Why give away a search engine optimization guide?

Because this blog is an online guide to lawyer and small business marketing and technology.  SEO straddles both.  My SEO efforts for my own law firm delivers incredible results; it’s been a huge business builder and I now choose the files that I want to take on.

As I’ve said in other posts, the best business decision I ever made was learning how to build my own websites and do my own SEO.

This free guide will show you how to do your own SEO for a fraction of what it costs to hire an SEO expert, even if you completely outsource it as suggested in the guide.  Not only will you be able to do it, but you’ll do it as well or better than most SEO services out there.

My free 10 page SEO guide gets straight to the point for getting your lawyer or small business website top of search engine rankings.  SEO requires 4 steps – keyword research, competition research, content generation and optimization, and finally quality link building.  That is how you get great search engine results.

Our guide, in 4 easy-to-follow steps, sets out the following:

1. Quantitative keyword research techniques by explaining where to get the keyword research figures, what they mean, and how to then choose the best keywords.
2. Assess your competition and the competitiveness of the keywords you’re considering.  Learn how to assess your competition’s use of keywords – learn which keywords to compete for and which ones to avoid wasting time and resources on.
3. How to properly write great content, and more importantly how to make all of your web pages work for you and get them ranking on the search engines; it’s not only about your home page.
4. Step-by-step link building methods and the best link building tools that will surgically get all your pages ranking well.  This fourth step includes suggestions for completely outsourcing your SEO efforts to services that will automate your SEO activities for very reasonable cost.

Our free search engine optimization guide for small businesses and lawyers is short and to the point that will quickly get you up to speed for getting excellent ranking results for your websites and blog.

Fill out the form below or on the sidebar.

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Linkvana Review:

For more information about Linkvana, visit Linkvana Information.com.

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