July 2010 Archives

What's in an 'intern?' A go-fer and coffee fetcher? Another pair of hands? Just another person to keep busy during the summer months? FindLaw's Eagan, Minnesota office has confronted these challenges and stereotypes head on in the 3 years since they began and developed the FindLaw Customer Operations summer intern program. With a focus on real world experiences and real world results, the team leaders and mangers at FindLaw and their interns have developed an experience that gives as good as it gets.

The FindLaw internship program draws from full time students at university and grad programs from around Minnesota such as the University of Minnesota, William Mitchell School of Law and Bethel University. The program has been structured to provide a consistent base of experience starting at the beginning with the recruitment and interview process. The structure then allows the employees at FindLaw to give and get what their interns need most, meaningful assignments from a project based program. Each intern is given a mentor at the beginning of their time with FindLaw. With that mentor, they plan goals for their time with the company. The mentors meet often with their interns and then meet with the team leads to insure all feedback on work projects is communicated.

Welcome to another post from our "Meet the FindLaw Team" series. "Meet the FindLaw Team" provides insight into the day-to-day lives of our colleagues. Today we feature Elena Gochberg from our Marketing Communications team. Get to know Elena by reading about her experiences at FindLaw below.

What is your current title?

Marketer

When did you join the FindLaw team/how did you get here?

I joined FindLaw in 2005 as an Account Manager. My primary responsibility was to act as online marketing contact, advocate and product consultant to our law firm clients. After two years in that role I transitioned to the marketing area.

FindLaw goes international: the FindLaw UK website (www.findlaw.co.uk) has its public unveiling this week, and we are of course very excited about the new site.

Just like the U.S.-based FindLaw site (www.findlaw.com), FindLaw UK is primarily a collection of free legal resources for consumers. It includes many helpful articles with free legal information; a question-and-answer community forum; news feeds provided by Reuters; and tools to help consumers find a solicitor to assist them with their legal issue via FindLaw UK's Contact Law service.

Attorneys are always trying to get their name out to the right kind of clients. What if there was an easier way to naturally build your practice? One way is to use search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, uses techniques such as developing and analyzing a website's html code, visible content, and structure in order to help the website appear more prominently in the naturally occurring organic search results of Internet search engines.

It is a technique that FindLaw offers that really brings results to law firms. To help you understand what SEO can do for your firm, we've rounded up the top 4 reasons why you should be using FindLaw SEO:

Consumers often get a renewed interest in an established area of law thanks to current events. For example, the Toyota recall had many consumers asking about product liability, the downturn in the real estate market led to consumer questions about foreclosure alternatives, and the BP oil spill had consumers asking about legal implications in the Gulf. When news stories like these unfold, FindLaw organically creates Timely News Content Centers in order to meet current consumer demand for legal information.

A Timely News Content Center showcases the legal issues that surround a national news story that affects Americans all across the country. While each Timely News Content Center varies based on consumer needs, it typically provides an overview of the legal issues, frequently asked questions, and other resources that a consumer may need to better understand and act on a pressing legal issue.

At FindLaw we are always looking to find new ways to connect with our audience. You may remember our earlier post on our legal wiki, LawBrain. Today we highlight another community-focused product, our FindLaw Answers forums. Launched in 2008, the FindLaw Answers concept is straightforward: users can ask questions on almost any legal topic, and get answers and information from our community of users.

Thousands of new questions are posted each month on all sorts of legal topics, from when one can invoke the Fifth Amendment to whether it's a breach of a lease for a landlord to try to sell the home mid-lease. Any FindLaw user can ask a legal question and leverage the collective knowledge of the FindLaw community to help find insight and information.

FindLaw is always looking for ways to meet potential customers and reconnect with its established customers. One of the ways that FindLaw fosters these connections relationships is with a presence at important legal conventions such as the American Association for Justice (AAJ) Annual Convention.

FindLaw is ready to welcome the 1,700+ attendees for this year's AAJ Annual Convention in Vancouver, British Columbia. The convention will take place from July 10-13, 2010 at the Vancouver Convention Center. The convention will feature continuing legal education seminars, networking events, keynote speakers, an impressive array of exhibitors, committee meetings and opportunities for members to unite advocating for those who have been injured or harmed.

There are a lot of marketing solutions that can deliver contacts, but how do you ensure that the contacts your firm receives are high quality? According to William A. Cirignani of Cirignani Heller & Harman, LLP, it's all about finding a law firm marketing solution with real expertise. That's why his firm trusts FindLaw with their law firm marketing needs.

In this video, William Cirignani explains how FindLaw's search engine expertise has helped his firm to establish contact with clients that are more likely to need the exact kind of services his firm provides. Check it out: