May 2011 Archives

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 FindLaw Architect, Gary Sole. Get to know Gary by reading about his experiences at FindLaw below.

What is your current title?
Architect

When did you join the FindLaw team/how did you get here?
I joined FindLaw in September 2006 from West where I was a Lead Software Engineer in the Content Tech Shared Services group working on KeyCite migration projects. Interestingly, a Halloween costume competition was held the same day I started, which made for an entertaining first day at work.

We continue our Friday round-up of what is newest, best and brightest at FindLaw.com. Below, you will find this week's offerings from various areas of FindLaw's unique content, including: core legal content, blogs, news and case law. Take a look at what's new:

Legal Blogs

• States Can Punish Businesses That Hire Illegal Immigrants: FindLaw's Decided breaks down a 5-3 ruling in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Arizona on Thursday, stating that federal immigration statutes do not preempt a 2007 mandatory E-Verify law that also punishes businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. This decision is a big coup for Arizona and other states that have sought to curb the hiring of undocumented workers, also marking the state's first big "win" in its battle against illegal immigration.

Should lawyers blog? Of course the kind of blogging we are speaking of here does not include a personal blog sharing the world's best bread recipe, or even the details of how the judge chewed out opposing counsel in front of a full courtroom yesterday. But should lawyers spend the time and money and gain the expertise necessary to make a smart, well-trafficked legal blog part of their law firm marketing plan? You might expect FindLaw, the market leader in legal website creation and marketing, to be a proponent of legal blogging, but you need not take our word for it, the numbers speak for themselves.

At this time, the legal profession has become aware of and even quite savvy regarding online legal marketing and the way it can bring not just more clients to a practice, but bring in the kind of clients that a practice most values. So to keep one step ahead of the pack what should a smart marketing strategy include? Whatever the details of the answer are for any individual practice, the answer should include a blog. For example, even with the increase in blogs, a 2010 article in eMarketer found that by 2014, 60% of those online will read blogs, but only 13% will be writing them. The math clearly shows that those with blogs will wield a significant amount of influence over a huge audience.

It's no secret - FindLaw is growing. And so too is FindLaw's Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Team. Most recently, a newly expanded SEO team has been hired into our Sunnyvale, California office in order to keep up with growing customer demand for search marketing services.

FindLaw's SEO Team brings a wealth of knowledge that will make an immediate positive impact for FindLaw clients. The new members of the team bring an average of 5+ years of experience in online marketing and lead generation. Additionally, a benefit of having a search marketing team in the Bay Area is the proximity to so many local clients.

We continue our Friday round-up of what is newest, best and brightest at FindLaw.com. Below, you will find this week's offerings from various areas of FindLaw's unique content, including: core legal content, blogs, news and case law. Take a look at what's new:

Legal Blogs

• Supreme Court Upholds Warrantless Marijuana Odor Search: FindLaw's Decided details how if police smell a marijuana odor, and hear movement or a flushing toilet, they can break down your door. And if police, after smelling and hearing, conduct a warrantless search, Kentucky courts following U.S. Supreme Court precedent will now refuse to suppress the evidence found. The Kentucky Supreme Court had ruled that marijuana and pills seized after police smelled burning marijuana, then broke down the door to an apartment, had been seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed.

FindLaw.com visitors know that this is the site to come to for useful, practical legal information. Our consumers and our attorney clients rely on FindLaw.com to provide the kind of legal background to current events and trends that others just don’t offer. This helpful information can always be found in our daily blogs, news articles, constantly updated legal content and legal answers and wiki communities. However, FindLaw also prepares surveys, news releases and other sources of information to bring legal news to an even wider audience.

We continue our Friday round-up of what is newest, best and brightest at FindLaw.com. Below, you will find this week's offerings from various areas of FindLaw's unique content, including: core legal content, blogs, news and case law. Take a look at what's new:

Legal Blogs

• Billionaire Raj Rajaratnam Guilty in Insider Trading Case: FindLaw's Decided details how Raj Rajaratnam, billionaire investor and founder of the Galleon Group, was found guilty of insider trading, fraud and conspiracy. Rajaratnam was convicted on all 14 counts by a federal jury in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

With more than a million pages of legal content, from case law to consumer legal information, it is easy to see why FindLaw.com is the number one online legal resource. Putting all this information in an easy to access location requires a lot of complex technology and behind the scenes coordination. Located in California’s Silicon Valley, FindLaw.com is at the epicenter of technological innovation. The advanced systems that power the site represent the latest and best of what local-technology companies have to offer.

Much more than just powering a website, the technology behind FindLaw.com is responsible for creating and maintaining both internal and customer facing systems. Some of the hardware that makes FindLaw.com possible includes: F5 BigIP LTM Load Balancers, Network Appliance F3160 HA cluster, Dell M1000e blade chassis populated with M605 and M600 blades, Sun Fire x4150 servers for VMWare, and Sun Fire x4140 servers for Oracle RAC 10g cluster.

FindLaw.com is always on the lookout for chances to interact with legal professionals. Many of you are, after all, our current and potential customers. Attending legal conventions is just one way that FindLaw is able to further foster these relationships and stay educated on the latest legal topics.

This month FindLaw will do just that at the Ohio Association for Justice annual convention. FindLaw will present a CLE Seminar during the Annual Convention.

We continue our Friday round-up of what is newest, best and brightest at FindLaw.com. Below, you will find this week's offerings from various areas of FindLaw's unique content, including: core legal content, blogs, news and case law. Take a look at what's new:

Legal Blogs

• Can a Court Force Release of Osama Photos?: FindLaw's Law & Daily Life looks the Freedom of Information Act and how it may be able to force the U.S. to release photos of Osama bin Laden's body. Or maybe not.

Continuing in our efforts to constantly bring more to our visitors, the five most popular FindLaw legal content centers are getting a facelift. Learn About the Law is the starting point for help understanding the law - whether visitors are looking for information about a broad legal concept such as family law or a niche issue such as credit repair, Learn About the Law has it all. In addition to legal information and self-help, these content centers provide a range of resources to learn how to find an attorney and other legal aid services.

Keeping up with the latest changes to the law and keeping the information written in an accessible format are the two challenges that our writers and editors for the various FindLaw content centers are constantly working to improve. The newly revamped content centers reflect this commitment to our users. Family law, criminal law, personal injury, DUI and employment law will all feature changes that include Optimost testing to ensure usability, new consumer-friendly landing pages, increased content and categories and other additions specific to the legal practice area.