It being about 4:00 PM on a Friday, most of the group was tired, but I was exhausted. Tom had asked me to share some of the non-traditional marketing techniques that I employ but none of which I consider to be advertisement.

But first, I had to get something off my chest. I had witnessed a sudden and catastrophic physical breakdown of a lawyer against whom I had spent several hours litigating the day before. I had thought at the time I made my speech he had already passed away. The experience, gave me pause and an opportunity to reflect on the enormous pressure we all put on ourselves to advertise, market, tweet, blog, Facebook and get high search engine optimization (SEO) placements on Google. It made it all seem just “less urgent” when, in the end, anyone of us can get in our car, drive to the office and just … die.

And if you are still reading this, I imagine you too are focused on how you can market without advertising. This blog post, like just everything I do in terms of “marketing,” is part catharsis, part pleasure and part pain. In other words, I try very hard to communicate everything I do from my heart. It will defy those things that true “marketing geniuses” will tell you about the latest “keywords” or the newest “social media trick.” It’s just to be me. It may or may not make a lick of sense to anyone–and it may not even work–but I suspect it does.

So I wrote a book, not because I imagined it would become an Amazon Best Seller, but because I wanted to inspire kids from my heart to become lawyers. I wrote “Sara Rose, Kid Lawyer” to express to my own kids and their friends what daddy does for a living. All they see each morning, if they are even awake when I leave, is a daddy gulping down coffee and running out the door in a loud suit and pink tie. Occasionally, they will see me on the evening news talking about this injustice or that — when I force them to watch, that is. But why, how and who becomes a lawyer is a thing that most kids don’t know.

I decided to donate the proceeds of the book to a charity, Lawyers to the Rescue. I created my own charity because I was not “feelin’” that any other group I belong to was doing what was needed: changing the general public’s perception that lawyers are ambulance chasing scoundrels. Lawyers to the Rescue is a not-for-profit. It operates a free legal clinic for the homeless inMiamiand helps provide relief to those around the world when catastrophe strikes. We work with local law schools and their students who participate in our clinics get credit as well as the opportunity to work with lawyers side-by-side. More importantly, we hope to inspire law students (soon-to-be lawyers) to consider public service as a payment back for the blessings of having a law license.

I wrote a second book, “Make It Your Own Law Firm,” to give hope and direction to the thousands of law students who are graduating from law schools without jobs or any hope of ever becoming a lawyer. Having worked with Lawyers to the Rescue’s efforts across the country I find it to be a sad irony that so many people cannot get access to lawyers with so many lawyers unemployed. How is this possible?

Many people are amazed at the amount of publicity my cases garner. The truth is that to most effectively use the media, it has to be done as a public service and in your client’s best interest. Nobody but you is probably going to be interested in an old lady slipping on a banana peel at Wal-Mart, but if there have been an unusual number of falls, at a particular place, or an effort to conceal a danger at a hospital or by a manufacturer the public will want to know. Be careful not to try the case in the media; don’t push your story but the danger to the public.

And be careful. Most defendants do not want to see their name in the papers or on TV. They will try to buy you and your client’s silence with confidentiality agreements and then later claim that the event never happened. The media is a weapon and a tool, but not a marketing advantage. It should be used cautiously and only for the greater good of the public.

Spencer Aronfeld is the founder of Aronfeld Trial Lawyers in Miami. For more information, visit www.aronfeld.com or check out his blog at www.floridainjurylawyer-blog.com. 

Remember: it’s not too early to start planning for next year — ROI 2012 is May 2-4 at the Sandpearl Resort in Clearwater Beach, FL. Register now by clicking here.

To date, more than 30 firms have agreed to work with KidsAndCars.org as local spokespeople for the organization. After some initial training, many firms have already taken the next step — connecting with the community and speaking with local media on behalf of KidsAndCars.org.

In fact, Robyn Madden, an Injury Board member and attorney with Strom Law Firm in Columbia, S.C., recently spoke on camera with ABC News Columbia after an 8-month-old boy died of vehicular heat stroke just two weeks ago. In the report, she was able to offer tips for avoiding such tragedies.

Another way to serve as an expert in your local community and educate the public is to create your own public service announcement. Mike Lewis, an Injury Board member and attorney with Mike Lewis Attorneys in Winston-Salem, N.C., created his own PSA about the dangers of leaving children in vehicles. See the clip below.

For more on Fennell and her organization — or to learn more about teaming up with her group — please visit KidsAndCars.org.

ROI 2011: Janette Fennell – Framing Your Identity: Getting Involved at the Local Level from ROI 2011 on Vimeo.

Extreme Heat Threatens Children, Pets, ABC Columbia

After Child Deaths, KidsAndCars.org Renews Challenge to G.M., New York Times

Group Urges GM To Recall Cars After Kids Die In Trunks - Wall Street Journal

Website Strives to Keeps Kids Safe Around Cars – Fox News, Kansas City

By Mark Wolfe

Marketing experts tell us that the most effective from of “advertising” is “word-of-mouth advertising.” This makes sense when you consider consumers’ main fear when hiring a service provider: that the service provider will not fix the problem.

Consumers looking for a service provider often seek advice from friends and family to assuage this fear of making a bad choice. With so many attorneys using mass media (TV, Internet, print, etc.) to advertise their services, consumers needing legal representation are often overwhelmed with choices.

This can be a benefit to you if you have properly and effectively harnessed the power of your Radius of Influence to secure recommendations and referrals from your contacts in the community.

REPUTATION + RELATIONSHIPS = RECOMMENDATIONS.

However, before your contacts can recommend your legal services to their friends and family, they must remember you.

Our egos as lawyers tell us that our clients and contacts in the community will never forget us. But this is simply not true. Once we, as lawyers, have “fixed” a problem for the client, they move on. Yes, some clients will always remember you, but a vast majority will not. This leads to missed opportunities for new business.

Staying connected to your contacts is critical for securing future recommendations. A law firm newsletter is an excellent tool to stay connected. It keeps your name and/or your firm’s name in front of your contacts on a regular basis.

A good newsletter will also spotlight your activity in the community and serve to better “personalize” you with your contacts. It also provides an opportunity to express your desire to help those people in the community with certain or specific legal problems.

Finally, an effective newsletter will provide helpful information to your contacts about safety and legal issues of concern for your community.

Mark Wolfe is managing partner for Botteler, Finley & Wolfe.

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Remember, it’s never too early to start planning for next year — ROI 2012 is May 2-5, 2012 at the Sandpearl Resort in Clearwater Beach, FL. Registration is now open at a special early bird rate — a $300 discount!

Don’t forget to reserve your room at the Sandpearl Resort. We have negotiated a rate of only $229/night. These rooms will sell out! Make your reservations today by calling 877.726.3111.

By Brian Tannebaum

The legal profession has turned the Internet in to a sewer of lawyer marketing. A lawyer’s goal used to be to develop a network of people that would refer cases and clients, and through the lawyer’s hard work and the satisfaction of clients, more cases and clients would come.

Now, the goal is simply to get on the first page of Google. This goal has resulted in lawyers abandoning true “networking,” and instead finding their way onto every website and social media forum that is available — treating them as billboards for their law practice. Lawyers too busy to produce their own content on websites and blogs have outsourced their marketing; thereby, outsourcing their ethics to marketers whose interest is not the lawyer’s ethics, but the race to the top of Google — otherwise known as the race to the bottom of legal marketing.

Can you say that the best case you got was from the Internet?

Erik Turkewitz’s coined phrase “outsourcing marketing = outsourcing ethics” defines those lawyers who are using non-lawyer and former lawyer marketers to write their content, spam blogs with comments linking back to their own websites and accept that “puffing” (lying) about their credentials (i.e. “My team and I closed a $450 million deal,” when the only thing the lawyer did was read documents) is OK.

Ethics rule number 1 for lawyers is 8.4 — it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.

Lawyers also need to be vigilant about checking out the backgrounds of marketers and should never pay a former lawyer to do their marketing or to provide social media advice.

Lawyers are getting caught in their marketing lies, and other practitioners are writing about these unethical lawyers and the Google searches for their names are turning up their unethical marketing. Ironically, lawyers are getting the attention they so desperately wanted — it’s just not the right attention.

Lawyers also need to be mindful of Rule 7.3 regarding direct contact with prospective clients. Do not ask people to like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter.

Why? Not because it may cause someone to say you were overreaching, but because you wouldn’t do it in person. Remember that online marketing and offline marketing are not mutually exclusive. If you wouldn’t go to a cocktail party and ask someone to like or follow you, why do it online?

Here are some tips to consider:

• Nothing false, misleading, deceptive.
• Nothing that would cause someone to claim you were soliciting them as a client.
• Put yourself on social media.
• Be a part, not apart, of the conversation
• Act like you would at a networking event.
• Shake hands, talk about non-business topics.
• Share interesting aspects of your practice.
• Death, injury, despair is not interesting.
• Open an account.
• Talk to people.
• Listen.
• Don’t pay for social media advice.
• Don’t hire a former lawyer to do anything regarding your marketing

*Update – 6/27/2011* – Watch the presentation in its entirety.

Brian Tannebaum is managing partner for Tannebaum Weiss PL. Tannebaum exclusively represents clients in the defense of criminal cases in state and federal court and in matters before the Florida Bar and the Florida Board of Bar Examiners. He currently serves as president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

By Michael Monheit

Implementing yogic principles may allow you to do well by doing good in your interactions with others in “social media.” Typically, when I think social media, I think of blogs such as The Injury Board’s blog network, social communities such as Facebook, professional communities such as LinkedIn and content sharing sites such as YouTube.

The common thread among these diverse social media sites is that the content is user-created, brimming with authenticity, organic in nature, raw and inherently more trustworthy. Social media sites tend to be conversational and informal and users of social media sites “opt in” to what they want to see and are drawn to share ideas with each other based on affinity relationships. The best of these relationships blossom into long-term, need-based conversations and information exchanges among friends.

Yogic principles include having good intentions, being authentic, timely, and truthful, being responsive to real needs, acting from a kind heart, remaining present, taking right action, doing your best and initiating action from a lighthearted and joyful attitude.

A yogi remains connected to their eternal self and controls their mental, verbal, physical and spiritual actions in a non-violent, pure, seated, restrained and singularly focused manner. Thus, when you act from deep, intensive love that is contemplative and merged with the infinite, then you are applying these principles to your actions.

In social media, you need to think about your audience and the message that you seek to convey to them. Thus, your intentions are very important. Every moment that we exist provides us with an opportunity to acknowledge our connection to each other and to the infinite oneness that is us all. Only our intention stands in the way or enables this recognition of divine connection.

As soon as you wish, your intentions can artfully express your opinions in social media in a manner that recognizes that you are part of a greater and continuous infinite whole that, by definition, includes you and your audience.

Likewise, authenticity and truth require that you act from your heart — not from your perception. When you are focused on things that matter to you, you will take consistent action that honors your spirit and your innate character. When you are at peace with your authentic self, you will not cave into the pressure and influence of material needs and material energy, which is simply the infinite taking finite form.

You find in authenticity the strength not to succumb to external pressure to be whom or what you are not. Thus, the world is free to choose to opt in or opt out of what you have to say, without you trying to fit yourself into a space in which you were not mean to fit. This produces a state that is true to yourself, one in which you hold yourself in high esteem and where you garner the respect of your readers. Truth strengthens the human spirit, and thus your spirit.

When you are timely with your words, your speech and writing take on apt, harmonious and decent qualities that provide pertinent information at the right time. You become aware of what the listener needs to hear and you realize that a whisper draws more effort from the recipient than a shout. Your internal stories of past and future fall away and what is left for you is each meditative moment.

When you write with kindness and in the present moment, you invoke a disciplined compassion for others. You then can create specific words for specific needs. You sense that the current moment is the only moment that matters and realize that at that moment you are exactly where you need to be. I urge you to be “there” when you write, imagining that the person to whom you are writing is right there in front of you. They are alert, attentive and in need. They yearn for each drop of knowledge that you offer. In short, don’t multitask; be there for them.

Finally, have fun. Begin with a light heart and an even mind. Honor your audience and do not be attached to either success or failure. Think of yourself like a pebble. You could remain isolated outside the flow of life’s river, or your could step into the river and get washed away. But as a yogi, you enter the river and stand your place, steadfast in your seat, offering who you are to the torrent without being washed away.

Michael Monheit is managing attorney for Monheit Law PC, located near Philadelphia, and manag­ing attorney in charge of all Internet business develop­ment for Anapol Schwartz Weiss Cohan Feldman & Smalley.

Join us this May in sunny Clearwater Beach, Florida for our third annual plaintiff law firm marketing conference, Radius of Influence 2012.

Here’s a quick look into the conference: