Shannon McNulty – Clifford Law Offices

Shannon McNulty - Clifford Law Offices
Shannon McNulty is a Partner at Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, Illinois. She handles many complex litigation cases, in particular, class action lawsuits.

Learn more about Clifford Law Offices at http://www.cliffordlaw.com

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Shannon McNulty - Clifford Law Offices
Shannon McNulty is a Partner at Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, Illinois. She handles many complex litigation cases, in particular, class action lawsuits.

Learn more about Clifford Law Offices at http://www.cliffordlaw.com

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Originally seen here

Susan Capra – Medical Malpractice Lawyer and Partner at Clifford Law Offices

Susan Capra - Medical Malpractice Lawyer and Partner at Clifford Law Offices
Susan Capra is a Partner at Clifford Law Offices on the Medical Malpractice Legal Team at Clifford Law Offices. She is also a registered nurse. She has been a medical malpractice lawyer for 25 years, working with Bob Clifford.

Get the answers and justice you deserve. Contact Clifford Law Offices at http://www.cliffordlawoffices.com

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Susan Capra - Medical Malpractice Lawyer and Partner at Clifford Law Offices
Susan Capra is a Partner at Clifford Law Offices on the Medical Malpractice Legal Team at Clifford Law Offices. She is also a registered nurse. She has been a medical malpractice lawyer for 25 years, working with Bob Clifford.

Get the answers and justice you deserve. Contact Clifford Law Offices at http://www.cliffordlawoffices.com

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Originally seen here

Robert Clifford – Founder and Senior Partner at Clifford Law Offices

Robert Clifford - Founder and Senior Partner at Clifford Law Offices
Bob Clifford is the Founder and Senior Partner at Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, Illinois. http://www.cliffordlawoffices.com. He marked his 40th year as a personal injury attorney. He talks about the care, dedication, and expertise his firm brings to all cases to support the families and individuals they serve.

Contact Clifford Law Offices for representation on complex cases including aviation, medical malpractice and product liability.

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Robert Clifford - Founder and Senior Partner at Clifford Law Offices
Bob Clifford is the Founder and Senior Partner at Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, Illinois. http://www.cliffordlawoffices.com. He marked his 40th year as a personal injury attorney. He talks about the care, dedication, and expertise his firm brings to all cases to support the families and individuals they serve.

Contact Clifford Law Offices for representation on complex cases including aviation, medical malpractice and product liability.

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Originally seen here

Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Lawyer Kevin Durkin

Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Lawyer Kevin Durkin
Kevin P. Durkin is a Partner at Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, Illinois. He has been practicing personal injury and wrongful death law for over 25 years. Learn more about Kevin Durkin at: http://bit.ly/2qvntv3

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Lawyer Kevin Durkin
Kevin P. Durkin is a Partner at Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, Illinois. He has been practicing personal injury and wrongful death law for over 25 years. Learn more about Kevin Durkin at: http://bit.ly/2qvntv3

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Originally seen here

FutureLaw 2017: Attention, emotion, and disintermediation

By far my favorite moment at Stanford Law School’s FutureLaw event was during the Dan Katz panel titled The Perils and Promise of Predictive Analytics in Law. Part of the reason that this write-up is so tardy is that I waited for CodeX to release the video of the panel so I could review it, react to it, and utilize all the juicy tidbits.

The panel focused on how data analytics and predictive technologies are shaping and will continue to shape the future of legal. It featured Dan Katz from Chicago Kent IIT Law School, Josh Becker CEO of Lex Machina, Gipsy Escobar from Measures for Justice, John Nay from Scopos Labs and Dera Nevin eDiscovery counsel at Proskauer Rose.

All the panelists were great (it’s no secret that I’ve long been a Dan Katz fanboy) but Dera Nevin blew me away. Using the themes of attention, emotion, and disintermediation, she gave specific and provocative examples of the legal system in the age of data.

Attention

Data analytics is bringing society’s collective attention and much-needed transparency to the algorithmic nature of law. As Dera put it:

Law is an algorithm, it’s an analog algorithm that is full of bugs and holes, but it is an algorithm. The opportunity in digitizing the legal system is to make our assumptions transparent and add bandwidth to generate more legal outcomes. We are in the dial-up era of our legal infrastructure. With greater bandwidth we can generate not only better but more legal outcomes.

The idea that the legal system can be represented in mathematical or programming terms is not new. The application of analytics to law will reduce what is otherwise perceived to be a complex unpredictable system with many possible outcomes to a more predictable one in which outcomes are mathematically represented. This reductive analysis will, in turn, expose the assumptions – good, bad, and arbitrary – that underpin our legal system.

Just as Dera suggested, knowledge of the underlying assumptions will not only improve our legal decision-making but also enable legal systems to scale in order to serve more people.

Emotion

Emotion also plays a central role in the legal system and legal decision-making whether cool, logic-driven lawyers want to admit it or not.

Lawyers play a critical role in the assisting clients in the legal decision-making process. Dera expertly explained that while law is an algorithm, law is experienced and perceived by the consuming public as a storytelling machine. The lawyer’s role is to assess the client need in light of the legal storytelling machine and determine what in the client’s situation needs enforcing and to what ends it should be enforced. A lawyer should help the client make that enforcement decision based on logical factors, not emotional ones. If for example, a client’s reason for wanting a divorce is a momentary frustration, not based upon a breakdown of trust and respect, then divorce may not be the client’s best option. The lawyer’s job is to use the transparency that data and analytics are creating so that individuals in the legal system understand when they are making a logic-based decision or an emotional-based decision. Emotional-based decisions don’t need to be deflected entirely. Instead, emotional-based decisions become inflection points for us as a society to make judgments about whether and how the legal system needs to change.

Dera concluded that the transparency of data analytics will make sorting logical and emotional decisions easier. Legal professionals of all types will be able to focus on changing the system in order to remedy injustices inherent in the system and scaling it to serve more people more effectively.

Disintermediation

Finally, disintermediation. Disintermediation, which means a reduction of use of intermediaries in given transaction of interaction, is frequently a scary term for lawyers. A disintermediated legal system means consumers interacting directly or more directly with the legal system without going through a lawyer. While data analytics has the potential to disintermediate the legal space by providing clients with information that may make the client less likely to hire a lawyer, it also presents an opportunity. While lawyers might be disintermediated by data, data presents new opportunities for lawyers to add value in new ways. One way is in being a counselor. Paraphrasing Dera:

Lawyers can counsel their clients about the prudence or likelihood of success of a given approach using data analytics because, as the old adage suggests, clients can be smart or they can be right and one is going to them more. There are situations, such a social justice, or areas in which a society is trying to stretch the law, when being right is important or the cost of not being right can be life-altering. In these cases the law should make a change despite the odds. There are cases where pursuing an expensive unlikely outcome due to an emotional reason, a business reason, a social reason, or even a process reason – a legitimate process reason – is the right thing to do. The availability of data analytics will help inform better decisions in these types of situations which will ultimately contribute to a better allocation of resources.

Another opportunity for lawyers in the age of data analytics will be asking questions. Again, paraphrasing Dera:

Law school trains law students to ask better questions. That will be a key skill in the future because while a computer may be able to “run” the legal algorithm it must first be asked a question. And, at least for the foreseeable future, computers will not have the ability to ask questions of clients in order to determine what the clients’ interest really is and whether what the client is saying is what they actually want. The risk of being a lawyer is that you implement exactly what the client says and it turns out that that’s not what the client wants. That’s why it’s both important for lawyers to hone the skill of asking questions and for algorithms to be built to be challenged (as noted above) so that clients can divert out in the event of a miscommunication between lawyer and client about what the client wants.

Finally, separate from the three themes Dera emphasized, the panel also responded to a question from the audience about how the legal system can create the same confidence in decisions driven by data analytics that judicial decisions enjoy. Again, Dera was spot on:

Humans will grow to accept data driven judicial decisions in the same way that humans have evolved to accept a judge. If you think about it, when you’re having a dispute with somebody why on earth would you go and have a man or woman and 12 random people you’ve never met to help you resolve it? It makes no sense but in the context of our society we have grown to accept it because those people – a jury of our peers and to a lesser extent the judge – reflect back to us stories about society that we believe to be true. And they accept our notion of social order the way we as a society understand it. The history of our law has consistently included a conversation – sometimes starting from the outside, sometimes from the inside – about why we believe those stories to be true. The data analytics revolution will be another example. Our society will have a new way of creating stories and because I believe in the plasticity of human imagination to adapt I believe we ultimately will accept this new way of telling societal stories.

Dera’s analysis was so compelling because it applied the emerging data analytics field to specific situations in the life of a practicing lawyer or client. And, while the work that all of the other panelists are doing is interesting and really important, whether and how data analytics plays out at the level of the everyday lawyer and everyday client may ultimately determine how the discipline is adopted in the legal sector more broadly.

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

By far my favorite moment at Stanford Law School’s FutureLaw event was during the Dan Katz panel titled The Perils and Promise of Predictive Analytics in Law. Part of the reason that this write-up is so tardy is that I waited for CodeX to release the video of the panel so I could review it, react to it, and utilize all the juicy tidbits.

The panel focused on how data analytics and predictive technologies are shaping and will continue to shape the future of legal. It featured Dan Katz from Chicago Kent IIT Law School, Josh Becker CEO of Lex Machina, Gipsy Escobar from Measures for Justice, John Nay from Scopos Labs and Dera Nevin eDiscovery counsel at Proskauer Rose.

All the panelists were great (it’s no secret that I’ve long been a Dan Katz fanboy) but Dera Nevin blew me away. Using the themes of attention, emotion, and disintermediation, she gave specific and provocative examples of the legal system in the age of data.

Attention

Data analytics is bringing society’s collective attention and much-needed transparency to the algorithmic nature of law. As Dera put it:

Law is an algorithm, it’s an analog algorithm that is full of bugs and holes, but it is an algorithm. The opportunity in digitizing the legal system is to make our assumptions transparent and add bandwidth to generate more legal outcomes. We are in the dial-up era of our legal infrastructure. With greater bandwidth we can generate not only better but more legal outcomes.

The idea that the legal system can be represented in mathematical or programming terms is not new. The application of analytics to law will reduce what is otherwise perceived to be a complex unpredictable system with many possible outcomes to a more predictable one in which outcomes are mathematically represented. This reductive analysis will, in turn, expose the assumptions – good, bad, and arbitrary – that underpin our legal system.

Just as Dera suggested, knowledge of the underlying assumptions will not only improve our legal decision-making but also enable legal systems to scale in order to serve more people.

Emotion

Emotion also plays a central role in the legal system and legal decision-making whether cool, logic-driven lawyers want to admit it or not.

Lawyers play a critical role in the assisting clients in the legal decision-making process. Dera expertly explained that while law is an algorithm, law is experienced and perceived by the consuming public as a storytelling machine. The lawyer’s role is to assess the client need in light of the legal storytelling machine and determine what in the client’s situation needs enforcing and to what ends it should be enforced. A lawyer should help the client make that enforcement decision based on logical factors, not emotional ones. If for example, a client’s reason for wanting a divorce is a momentary frustration, not based upon a breakdown of trust and respect, then divorce may not be the client’s best option. The lawyer’s job is to use the transparency that data and analytics are creating so that individuals in the legal system understand when they are making a logic-based decision or an emotional-based decision. Emotional-based decisions don’t need to be deflected entirely. Instead, emotional-based decisions become inflection points for us as a society to make judgments about whether and how the legal system needs to change.

Dera concluded that the transparency of data analytics will make sorting logical and emotional decisions easier. Legal professionals of all types will be able to focus on changing the system in order to remedy injustices inherent in the system and scaling it to serve more people more effectively.

Disintermediation

Finally, disintermediation. Disintermediation, which means a reduction of use of intermediaries in given transaction of interaction, is frequently a scary term for lawyers. A disintermediated legal system means consumers interacting directly or more directly with the legal system without going through a lawyer. While data analytics has the potential to disintermediate the legal space by providing clients with information that may make the client less likely to hire a lawyer, it also presents an opportunity. While lawyers might be disintermediated by data, data presents new opportunities for lawyers to add value in new ways. One way is in being a counselor. Paraphrasing Dera:

Lawyers can counsel their clients about the prudence or likelihood of success of a given approach using data analytics because, as the old adage suggests, clients can be smart or they can be right and one is going to them more. There are situations, such a social justice, or areas in which a society is trying to stretch the law, when being right is important or the cost of not being right can be life-altering. In these cases the law should make a change despite the odds. There are cases where pursuing an expensive unlikely outcome due to an emotional reason, a business reason, a social reason, or even a process reason – a legitimate process reason – is the right thing to do. The availability of data analytics will help inform better decisions in these types of situations which will ultimately contribute to a better allocation of resources.

Another opportunity for lawyers in the age of data analytics will be asking questions. Again, paraphrasing Dera:

Law school trains law students to ask better questions. That will be a key skill in the future because while a computer may be able to “run” the legal algorithm it must first be asked a question. And, at least for the foreseeable future, computers will not have the ability to ask questions of clients in order to determine what the clients’ interest really is and whether what the client is saying is what they actually want. The risk of being a lawyer is that you implement exactly what the client says and it turns out that that’s not what the client wants. That’s why it’s both important for lawyers to hone the skill of asking questions and for algorithms to be built to be challenged (as noted above) so that clients can divert out in the event of a miscommunication between lawyer and client about what the client wants.

Finally, separate from the three themes Dera emphasized, the panel also responded to a question from the audience about how the legal system can create the same confidence in decisions driven by data analytics that judicial decisions enjoy. Again, Dera was spot on:

Humans will grow to accept data driven judicial decisions in the same way that humans have evolved to accept a judge. If you think about it, when you’re having a dispute with somebody why on earth would you go and have a man or woman and 12 random people you’ve never met to help you resolve it? It makes no sense but in the context of our society we have grown to accept it because those people – a jury of our peers and to a lesser extent the judge – reflect back to us stories about society that we believe to be true. And they accept our notion of social order the way we as a society understand it. The history of our law has consistently included a conversation – sometimes starting from the outside, sometimes from the inside – about why we believe those stories to be true. The data analytics revolution will be another example. Our society will have a new way of creating stories and because I believe in the plasticity of human imagination to adapt I believe we ultimately will accept this new way of telling societal stories.

Dera’s analysis was so compelling because it applied the emerging data analytics field to specific situations in the life of a practicing lawyer or client. And, while the work that all of the other panelists are doing is interesting and really important, whether and how data analytics plays out at the level of the everyday lawyer and everyday client may ultimately determine how the discipline is adopted in the legal sector more broadly.

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Originally seen here

Negative SEO for lawyers: How to know if you’re a victim and how to fix It

Negative SEO is the act of performing spammy, unethical, or otherwise malicious optimization tactics on another person’s website. It consists of off-site tactics because the party doing it most likely does not have access to your website.

Negative SEO can be a major problem, especially in hyper-competitive industries like the legal vertical. Successful lawyers at some point or another have probably encountered negative SEO or know someone who has.

Ultimately, there is no foolproof way to stop someone who is intent on doing harm to your brand, but there are steps lawyers can take to be prepared.

Are you a target of negative SEO?

If you think you’ve been a victim of negative SEO – or just worried that you might be – it helps to understand why some lawyers get hit and others may not. This can also help you decide if it’s worth the time, energy, and cost to prepare.

Here are some of the top reasons why firms become victims of negative SEO:

  1. The firm is extremely successful: This is no surprise. Any time a firm becomes successful, it paints a target on its back (which is pretty much true for success in general).
  2. The firm has made an enemy: Think back to your past business dealings. Are any organizations or people who are angry with you? For some practice areas (criminal, personal injury, etc.), there may be too many to count.
  3. The firm is in a competitive practice area: Firms in personal injury law, criminal law, immigration and perhaps bankruptcy tend to face a lot of cutthroat competition, especially in major metropolitan areas. For attorneys in rural areas or those in practice areas like family law, contract law, estate law, etc., negative SEO may not be as prevalent a threat (and therefore not worth your time to monitor).

How can I tell if I’ve been hit?

Unfortunately, no Google tool or third-party alert system will tell you when someone is deploying negative SEO on your site.

Typically, this sort of behavior manifests itself in an eventual loss of rankings or, in more serious scenarios, a complete de-indexation of your site (a.k.a., removal of your domain from Google search).

It can take a trained eye to uncover a pattern of malicious behavior, but here are some red flags:

  • A rise in referring domains that you or your SEO company do not recognize or did not build.
  • A rise in very low-quality referring domains (spam sites, foreign sites, pornographic sites, and sites with low DR in general, are all red flags).
  • Negative reviews on GMB profiles or other web properties from people who were never clients.
  • Excessively duplicated content on other domains.
  • Attempts to gain access to your hosting provider’s server or your website files.

If you see one or more of these things, it does not automatically mean it’s negative SEO, but you should initiate further investigation.

Protect yourself from negative SEO

As we mentioned, there is no way to completely block people from doing bad things to your site, But you can always be prepared.

Set up Google webmaster tools

Google won’t send alerts that say “Negative SEO is happening”, but configuring your site on Google’s Search Console (which is free) can give you early warning of things like referring domains, manual penalties that may result from an excessive number of spammy links, and other issues with your site. Google will let you know if malicious files have been placed on your site, too.

Use Ahrefs to monitor your backlink profile

Ahrefs is a tool that lets you monitor the quantity and quality of inbound links pointed at your site. It’s not a real-time tool, but you will be able to tell day by day and week by week if someone is building bad links to your site. Ahrefs also offer a tool that makes preparing and submitting a disavow links request super-easy. A basic account costs a couple of hundred dollars a month.

Remove links ASAP

Spammy links are one of the most common forms of negative SEO, and also one of the most damaging. They can be difficult, if not impossible, to remove manually. You can, however, submit a file to Google with all of the bad links on your site, and ask Google to ignore those links in its ranking algorithm.

This request should be submitted as soon as the bad links are discovered. Of course, having site owners remove bad links manually is the best possible strategy for fixing the damage.  Also, keep in mind that the scope of the bad links should be large enough to warrant submitting a disavow links request.  Google is now more adept at devaluing bad links so the file submission may not always be necessary.

Point positive links at your site

Some say the best defense is a good offense. The more positive links you have pointing at your site – and the stronger your SEO – the harder it is for someone to knock it off the first page.

Conclusion

It’s important to point out that negative SEO is not something attorneys need to constantly worry about. It does happen, however, and it never hurts to keep an eye on things. But it is not a frequent occurrence. Knowing what to look for and catching violations early are the best ways to combat bad SEO behavior.

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Negative SEO is the act of performing spammy, unethical, or otherwise malicious optimization tactics on another person’s website. It consists of off-site tactics because the party doing it most likely does not have access to your website.

Negative SEO can be a major problem, especially in hyper-competitive industries like the legal vertical. Successful lawyers at some point or another have probably encountered negative SEO or know someone who has.

Ultimately, there is no foolproof way to stop someone who is intent on doing harm to your brand, but there are steps lawyers can take to be prepared.

Are you a target of negative SEO?

If you think you’ve been a victim of negative SEO – or just worried that you might be – it helps to understand why some lawyers get hit and others may not. This can also help you decide if it’s worth the time, energy, and cost to prepare.

Here are some of the top reasons why firms become victims of negative SEO:

  1. The firm is extremely successful: This is no surprise. Any time a firm becomes successful, it paints a target on its back (which is pretty much true for success in general).
  2. The firm has made an enemy: Think back to your past business dealings. Are any organizations or people who are angry with you? For some practice areas (criminal, personal injury, etc.), there may be too many to count.
  3. The firm is in a competitive practice area: Firms in personal injury law, criminal law, immigration and perhaps bankruptcy tend to face a lot of cutthroat competition, especially in major metropolitan areas. For attorneys in rural areas or those in practice areas like family law, contract law, estate law, etc., negative SEO may not be as prevalent a threat (and therefore not worth your time to monitor).

How can I tell if I’ve been hit?

Unfortunately, no Google tool or third-party alert system will tell you when someone is deploying negative SEO on your site.

Typically, this sort of behavior manifests itself in an eventual loss of rankings or, in more serious scenarios, a complete de-indexation of your site (a.k.a., removal of your domain from Google search).

It can take a trained eye to uncover a pattern of malicious behavior, but here are some red flags:

  • A rise in referring domains that you or your SEO company do not recognize or did not build.
  • A rise in very low-quality referring domains (spam sites, foreign sites, pornographic sites, and sites with low DR in general, are all red flags).
  • Negative reviews on GMB profiles or other web properties from people who were never clients.
  • Excessively duplicated content on other domains.
  • Attempts to gain access to your hosting provider’s server or your website files.

If you see one or more of these things, it does not automatically mean it’s negative SEO, but you should initiate further investigation.

Protect yourself from negative SEO

As we mentioned, there is no way to completely block people from doing bad things to your site, But you can always be prepared.

Set up Google webmaster tools

Google won’t send alerts that say “Negative SEO is happening”, but configuring your site on Google’s Search Console (which is free) can give you early warning of things like referring domains, manual penalties that may result from an excessive number of spammy links, and other issues with your site. Google will let you know if malicious files have been placed on your site, too.

Use Ahrefs to monitor your backlink profile

Ahrefs is a tool that lets you monitor the quantity and quality of inbound links pointed at your site. It’s not a real-time tool, but you will be able to tell day by day and week by week if someone is building bad links to your site. Ahrefs also offer a tool that makes preparing and submitting a disavow links request super-easy. A basic account costs a couple of hundred dollars a month.

Remove links ASAP

Spammy links are one of the most common forms of negative SEO, and also one of the most damaging. They can be difficult, if not impossible, to remove manually. You can, however, submit a file to Google with all of the bad links on your site, and ask Google to ignore those links in its ranking algorithm.

This request should be submitted as soon as the bad links are discovered. Of course, having site owners remove bad links manually is the best possible strategy for fixing the damage.  Also, keep in mind that the scope of the bad links should be large enough to warrant submitting a disavow links request.  Google is now more adept at devaluing bad links so the file submission may not always be necessary.

Point positive links at your site

Some say the best defense is a good offense. The more positive links you have pointing at your site – and the stronger your SEO – the harder it is for someone to knock it off the first page.

Conclusion

It’s important to point out that negative SEO is not something attorneys need to constantly worry about. It does happen, however, and it never hurts to keep an eye on things. But it is not a frequent occurrence. Knowing what to look for and catching violations early are the best ways to combat bad SEO behavior.

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Originally seen here

4 simple ways to increase your productivity as a lawyer

If you’re like most lawyers I know, life is coming at you faster than you can manage it. You feel busy but not necessarily productive. You’re thinking too much, juggling too much, and doing too much.

Before I became a law professor, I was a lawyer myself. A few years in the trenches left me overwhelmed and burnt out. I gave up my hobbies and began to think of my life in six-minute increments. After entering academia, I became a productivity nerd, devouring every resource imaginable on how to construct a healthier, happier, and more effective work life. I started a coaching program, Effective Lawyer, to share these resources with overwhelmed attorneys and save them up 20+ hours per month.

Here are four strategies you can implement right away to get started.

1. Calendar everything

A typical day in my life as an attorney went something like this:

  1. I get to the office determined to do work. I start writing a brief that’s due later in the week. This feels good. I’m getting real, actual work done.
  2. 20 minutes into my productive session, I get a phone call from a partner with a question. She asks me to pop into her office for a chat. I oblige, and we spend the next hour talking.
  3. I return to my office only to see the massive onslaught of email notifications. I decide to tackle my inbox instead of returning to that brief. While I’m diligently eliminating one email after another, a colleague pops into my office and asks, “Up for lunch?” “Sure,” I say. The day is long, and I can take care of the brief in the afternoon.
  4. The afternoon comes, and two meeting notices pop up in my schedule. I attend them, ignoring my inner disciplined voice that tells me that the brief is far more important than these meetings.
  5. It’s 5 pm. I’ve written only one page.

Looking back on this experience, I realize that I wasn’t being proactive enough to protect my time. When you’re in defensive mode, you’re reacting to other people’s agendas. You’re attending their meetings, tackling their to-do lists, and answering their questions.

You must protect your time. How? Calendar it. Do you have an important contract to draft? Carve out a 4-hour block on your calendar. And treat that time like a hearing date or a deposition. If someone asks you whether you’re free for a meeting during that block, the answer is a firm no. You’re unavailable.

Only the active protection of your time can yield the extraordinary progress you’re seeking.

2. Stop moving your pianos

Frank Sinatra’s tour schedule brought a new definition to the term “crazy.” Yet he managed to maintain his sanity and put out work that stood the test of time. He had one simple trick: He didn’t move his own pianos. He focused on his one unique ability: Singing. Everything else, he left to others.

Could Sinatra have become truly great if he were moving his own pianos, handling the lighting and staging, and hustling to sell his concert tickets? No. He focused on the essentials so he could bring out the best of himself.

Most lawyers that I work with move their own pianos. They’re so busy handling the minutiae of day-to-day life that they don’t have time to focus on the essentials and figure out the song that only they can play.

If something can be done 80 percent as well by someone else, delegate it. I use a virtual assistant on a daily basis, and I couldn’t be happier.

3. Batch similar tasks together

If you’re anything like me when I was in practice, you switch from writing to email to a phone call, back to writing, back to email…all in a span of 20 minutes. You can’t afford these constant interruptions. Depending on the research, each hit of distraction costs you anywhere between 15 to 45 minutes to completely regain your focus. This squirrel mode of working leaves you distracted, unfocused, and exhausted.

Instead, try batching similar tasks together. Write down the calls you need to make, and do them all at once. Where possible, schedule meetings back to back so that you’re not interrupted when you’re in deep work mode.

The idea of batch processing applies to email as well. There is no need to check email at 2:03 pm and again at 2:14 pm and again at 2:23 pm. You will survive and so will others who depend on you.

4. Eliminate distractions

Silicon Valley is spending billions of dollars to distract you and get you hooked on the latest technology. You can take small steps to resist these distractions.

Begin by disabling all email notifications. I’m still surprised to see how many lawyers haven’t switched off the default setting on their email program that notifies them of each incoming message. Even if you don’t respond to these emails, the email notification will linger in your brain and distract you from the far more important task you’re working on.

Do the same for your phone by disabling all notifications. It’s hard to get work done when Facebook, Twitter, and CNN news alerts are screaming their 100-decibel sirens for attention.

If you need help managing distractions, try the Freedom app, which works on your computer and mobile devices. Freedom allows you to block the entire Internet or only certain websites that are particularly distracting for you.

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

If you’re like most lawyers I know, life is coming at you faster than you can manage it. You feel busy but not necessarily productive. You’re thinking too much, juggling too much, and doing too much.

Before I became a law professor, I was a lawyer myself. A few years in the trenches left me overwhelmed and burnt out. I gave up my hobbies and began to think of my life in six-minute increments. After entering academia, I became a productivity nerd, devouring every resource imaginable on how to construct a healthier, happier, and more effective work life. I started a coaching program, Effective Lawyer, to share these resources with overwhelmed attorneys and save them up 20+ hours per month.

Here are four strategies you can implement right away to get started.

1. Calendar everything

A typical day in my life as an attorney went something like this:

  1. I get to the office determined to do work. I start writing a brief that’s due later in the week. This feels good. I’m getting real, actual work done.
  2. 20 minutes into my productive session, I get a phone call from a partner with a question. She asks me to pop into her office for a chat. I oblige, and we spend the next hour talking.
  3. I return to my office only to see the massive onslaught of email notifications. I decide to tackle my inbox instead of returning to that brief. While I’m diligently eliminating one email after another, a colleague pops into my office and asks, “Up for lunch?” “Sure,” I say. The day is long, and I can take care of the brief in the afternoon.
  4. The afternoon comes, and two meeting notices pop up in my schedule. I attend them, ignoring my inner disciplined voice that tells me that the brief is far more important than these meetings.
  5. It’s 5 pm. I’ve written only one page.

Looking back on this experience, I realize that I wasn’t being proactive enough to protect my time. When you’re in defensive mode, you’re reacting to other people’s agendas. You’re attending their meetings, tackling their to-do lists, and answering their questions.

You must protect your time. How? Calendar it. Do you have an important contract to draft? Carve out a 4-hour block on your calendar. And treat that time like a hearing date or a deposition. If someone asks you whether you’re free for a meeting during that block, the answer is a firm no. You’re unavailable.

Only the active protection of your time can yield the extraordinary progress you’re seeking.

2. Stop moving your pianos

Frank Sinatra’s tour schedule brought a new definition to the term “crazy.” Yet he managed to maintain his sanity and put out work that stood the test of time. He had one simple trick: He didn’t move his own pianos. He focused on his one unique ability: Singing. Everything else, he left to others.

Could Sinatra have become truly great if he were moving his own pianos, handling the lighting and staging, and hustling to sell his concert tickets? No. He focused on the essentials so he could bring out the best of himself.

Most lawyers that I work with move their own pianos. They’re so busy handling the minutiae of day-to-day life that they don’t have time to focus on the essentials and figure out the song that only they can play.

If something can be done 80 percent as well by someone else, delegate it. I use a virtual assistant on a daily basis, and I couldn’t be happier.

3. Batch similar tasks together

If you’re anything like me when I was in practice, you switch from writing to email to a phone call, back to writing, back to email…all in a span of 20 minutes. You can’t afford these constant interruptions. Depending on the research, each hit of distraction costs you anywhere between 15 to 45 minutes to completely regain your focus. This squirrel mode of working leaves you distracted, unfocused, and exhausted.

Instead, try batching similar tasks together. Write down the calls you need to make, and do them all at once. Where possible, schedule meetings back to back so that you’re not interrupted when you’re in deep work mode.

The idea of batch processing applies to email as well. There is no need to check email at 2:03 pm and again at 2:14 pm and again at 2:23 pm. You will survive and so will others who depend on you.

4. Eliminate distractions

Silicon Valley is spending billions of dollars to distract you and get you hooked on the latest technology. You can take small steps to resist these distractions.

Begin by disabling all email notifications. I’m still surprised to see how many lawyers haven’t switched off the default setting on their email program that notifies them of each incoming message. Even if you don’t respond to these emails, the email notification will linger in your brain and distract you from the far more important task you’re working on.

Do the same for your phone by disabling all notifications. It’s hard to get work done when Facebook, Twitter, and CNN news alerts are screaming their 100-decibel sirens for attention.

If you need help managing distractions, try the Freedom app, which works on your computer and mobile devices. Freedom allows you to block the entire Internet or only certain websites that are particularly distracting for you.

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Originally seen here

Five areas to focus on to deliver huge results in law firm SEO

Five areas to focus on to deliver huge results in law firm SEO

Most of the traditional strategies used for on-site law firm SEO at scale are simply not practicable. Due to the large scale nature of law firm sites, traditional SEO may be simply time consuming and tiresome to make a number one priority. In addition to time commitment that would be needed for traditional SEO, law firm sites tend to present a one of a kind set of difficulties that require addressing. For instance, average websites that have anything under a few thousand URLs, crawl budget would not be an issue since these sites will generally be crawled systematically. For websites that have millions of URLs, crawl budget becomes vital for SEO. Having impeccable optimized pages is much less fundamental than ensuring all areas of practice are crawled and indexed by search engines.

Here are five areas for law firm SEO that can lead to powerful organic traffic and revenue growth:

Site indexation:
It is important to consider crawl budget for large scale law firm websites. All of the on-site optimization in the world will not aid your site if Googlebot and other crawlers are not finding your content in the first place.
There are a few strategies one can use to improve site indexation. You can review the number of 5xx serve errors your site returns in Google search console. This is important because a huge number of server errors or connection timeouts shows poor site health.

Another feature to review is your sitemaps. One has to make sure that your sitemaps are actively updated to reflect the arrival of new areas of practice and the termination of the old ones. Finally, one should review their practice criterions. Most law firm websites will have  criterions that allow site visitors to taper, sort or otherwise refine their  searches.

On-page copy for category pages:
Listing areas of practice on a  category page provides almost no exhibition of what that page ought to rank for on Google. Crawlers prefer to see textual HTML content on a page to aid comprehend what search outcomes the page should appear in.
Using a two paragraph description of the  category provides crawlers with indexable content which in turn gives you a much better opportunity of ranking in search results. It does not really matter if the content is at the peak or bottom of the page, as long as it is visible to users and crawlers. This strategy is the most suitable because for most websites it falls into the realm of possibility.

Main menu navigation:
Although main menu navigation is vital for internal linking and SEO in general, it takes on a re-established level of urgency for law firm websites. The pages pinpointed in your menu are the ones most possibly to be indexed and ranked in search outcomes mainly because that menu will appear across thousands of pages. The worth of internal linking in main menu navigation is boosted for law firm websites.

URL structure:
When it comes to URL structure, the best solution is to keep your items as close to the root folder as possible. Although it may feel more sensible to have your items several directories deep, you are not going to need to adopt that system.

Having longer URLs means that searchers do not get to see your actual item name until the end of the URL. Almost all sites have their actual item listing pages in one or two folders away from the root directory. It is okay to include longer framework strings after the item folder but ensure that item name is visible in the URL for search outcomes.

Implementing these five strategies will show some noticeable SEO progress for law firm customers. Law firm SEO can have powerful effects on your revenue, and the tactics above are the greatest ways of jump starting on that SEO progress.

–END OF THE ARTICLE–

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Five areas to focus on to deliver huge results in law firm SEO

Most of the traditional strategies used for on-site law firm SEO at scale are simply not practicable. Due to the large scale nature of law firm sites, traditional SEO may be simply time consuming and tiresome to make a number one priority. In addition to time commitment that would be needed for traditional SEO, law firm sites tend to present a one of a kind set of difficulties that require addressing. For instance, average websites that have anything under a few thousand URLs, crawl budget would not be an issue since these sites will generally be crawled systematically. For websites that have millions of URLs, crawl budget becomes vital for SEO. Having impeccable optimized pages is much less fundamental than ensuring all areas of practice are crawled and indexed by search engines.

Here are five areas for law firm SEO that can lead to powerful organic traffic and revenue growth:

Site indexation:
It is important to consider crawl budget for large scale law firm websites. All of the on-site optimization in the world will not aid your site if Googlebot and other crawlers are not finding your content in the first place.
There are a few strategies one can use to improve site indexation. You can review the number of 5xx serve errors your site returns in Google search console. This is important because a huge number of server errors or connection timeouts shows poor site health.

Another feature to review is your sitemaps. One has to make sure that your sitemaps are actively updated to reflect the arrival of new areas of practice and the termination of the old ones. Finally, one should review their practice criterions. Most law firm websites will have  criterions that allow site visitors to taper, sort or otherwise refine their  searches.

On-page copy for category pages:
Listing areas of practice on a  category page provides almost no exhibition of what that page ought to rank for on Google. Crawlers prefer to see textual HTML content on a page to aid comprehend what search outcomes the page should appear in.
Using a two paragraph description of the  category provides crawlers with indexable content which in turn gives you a much better opportunity of ranking in search results. It does not really matter if the content is at the peak or bottom of the page, as long as it is visible to users and crawlers. This strategy is the most suitable because for most websites it falls into the realm of possibility.

Main menu navigation:
Although main menu navigation is vital for internal linking and SEO in general, it takes on a re-established level of urgency for law firm websites. The pages pinpointed in your menu are the ones most possibly to be indexed and ranked in search outcomes mainly because that menu will appear across thousands of pages. The worth of internal linking in main menu navigation is boosted for law firm websites.

URL structure:
When it comes to URL structure, the best solution is to keep your items as close to the root folder as possible. Although it may feel more sensible to have your items several directories deep, you are not going to need to adopt that system.

Having longer URLs means that searchers do not get to see your actual item name until the end of the URL. Almost all sites have their actual item listing pages in one or two folders away from the root directory. It is okay to include longer framework strings after the item folder but ensure that item name is visible in the URL for search outcomes.

Implementing these five strategies will show some noticeable SEO progress for law firm customers. Law firm SEO can have powerful effects on your revenue, and the tactics above are the greatest ways of jump starting on that SEO progress.

–END OF THE ARTICLE–

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Originally seen here

Three Tips for New Law School Graduates

Three Tips for New Law School Graduates

Graduation from law school brings with it an odd combination of exhilaration and panic. The day-to-day grind of reading cases, preparing presentation briefs and mind-numbing examinations is finally over, and you have your degree. Before you can enjoy the moment for too long, you are hit with the reality of planning and starting a new career. If you are among those venturing into your own practice, here are three things you should not forget.

It’s a business

One of the biggest mistakes new attorneys make is giving away services. Lawyers make money by charging clients for their time and their legal expertise. Giving away advice or representing a friend for free might make you popular, but it won’t pay the rent on your office, cover your secretary’s salary or allow you to meet your other financial obligations.

Prepare a list of the services you provide and set prices for each of them. If you are unsure about what to charge, there are plenty of seasoned attorneys in your community willing to provide advice and guidance to a new lawyer.

Build your client base

Advertising and referrals are two methods for attracting new clients. Unfortunately, advertising costs money. Referrals, on the other hand, are free, but they require a bit of networking. Becoming active in community and business organizations and your local bar association provides opportunities for people get to know you and refer clients. It is also a good idea to take plenty of business cards with you when you attend meetings.

You don’t have to go it alone

Opening your own practice can be a lonely and overwhelming experience. The burden of making it a success is squarely on your shoulders, but there is help available for you. Speak to other attorneys about covering for each other when scheduling conflicts arise.

A common element in each of these tips has been taking the initiative to seek the help of  others when you need it. Your fellow attorneys were new and inexperienced at one stage in their careers, so they are  usually more than willing to become a resource of knowledge and guidance for a new lawyer.

-Dennis Masino

 

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Three Tips for New Law School Graduates

Graduation from law school brings with it an odd combination of exhilaration and panic. The day-to-day grind of reading cases, preparing presentation briefs and mind-numbing examinations is finally over, and you have your degree. Before you can enjoy the moment for too long, you are hit with the reality of planning and starting a new career. If you are among those venturing into your own practice, here are three things you should not forget.

It’s a business

One of the biggest mistakes new attorneys make is giving away services. Lawyers make money by charging clients for their time and their legal expertise. Giving away advice or representing a friend for free might make you popular, but it won’t pay the rent on your office, cover your secretary’s salary or allow you to meet your other financial obligations.

Prepare a list of the services you provide and set prices for each of them. If you are unsure about what to charge, there are plenty of seasoned attorneys in your community willing to provide advice and guidance to a new lawyer.

Build your client base

Advertising and referrals are two methods for attracting new clients. Unfortunately, advertising costs money. Referrals, on the other hand, are free, but they require a bit of networking. Becoming active in community and business organizations and your local bar association provides opportunities for people get to know you and refer clients. It is also a good idea to take plenty of business cards with you when you attend meetings.

You don’t have to go it alone

Opening your own practice can be a lonely and overwhelming experience. The burden of making it a success is squarely on your shoulders, but there is help available for you. Speak to other attorneys about covering for each other when scheduling conflicts arise.

A common element in each of these tips has been taking the initiative to seek the help of  others when you need it. Your fellow attorneys were new and inexperienced at one stage in their careers, so they are  usually more than willing to become a resource of knowledge and guidance for a new lawyer.

-Dennis Masino

 

[Read More …]

Thank you for reading our blog here at Smith Kendall Law Firm

Originally seen here