BALTIMORE, Feb. 4 Online directory & news service — Local-Attorneys.com has announced its recommendations for online marketing activities for law firms in 2008.

Forget the television commercials, radio ads, and other gimmicks. This is a year that law firms are focusing on their presence online. Not only will a great online presence boost the brand and image of your law firm, it can also be a great tool for generating traffic to your firm’s website, which in turn can become leads, which in turn can become clients.

Here are the top online activities law firms should do in 2008.

1. Optimize your own website.

If you don’t already have a website, you have probably heard from
someone or read somewhere what a great promotion tool a website can be for law firms. If you are considering getting a website, a great starting point is to plan what you want your website to look like and write some content pages to put on the website. Then, contact a firm about building a
professional website that your law firm can be proud of. If you have a
website, but you are not getting the traffic from it you think you could,
consult an internet marketing agency. One firm, Ephricon Web Marketing
(http://www.ephricon.com), based in Baltimore, MD offers clients search
engine optimization which includes on-page optimization, content creation
and link building as well as pay-per-click services to help online
searchers find what they are looking for easier.

2. Add new content to your website.

New content can be in the form of new pages your site may need, such as information about your firm’s practice areas or informal articles about law topics in the news or tips on a legal topic for the layperson. A quality internet marketing agency can take an article and send it to various sites that accept articles. Particularly, sites on legal topics that accept articles would be especially beneficial. The main purpose of the articles is the fresh content that they provide your site but adding a couple links in an article that is posted on other websites helps boost traffic to your website.

3. Announce news with press releases.

Most internet marketing agencies can help spread your news to
newspapers, television stations and industry sites on the web through
services like PR Newswire and Market Wire. Because of their ability to be
picked up by many sites, press releases are a fantastic way to add bursts
of traffic to your website through links that you may include in them.

4. Add photos to your website.

Pictures of the firm’s partners and other staff, a photo of the office building if it’s in a desirable location, or a photo of inside an
attractive, professional office can give visitors to your website a reason to trust you and can convey that your firm is a successful one. One Baltimore, Maryland firm, Ingerman & Horwitz LLP (http://www.ihlaw.com) has a photo of their Park Avenue office location and photos of the firm’s
principals on the homepage. These help put a face on the firm, making it
easier for website visitors to relate. Photos are especially powerful for
professional service organizations, such as law firms.

5. Send an email blast a couple times a year.

Gather a few hundred client email addresses and send a mass email.
Topics in the email newsletter could be informative information from the
articles, interesting cases worked on or new laws that may be of interest
to the public.

6. Join directories that will link to your website.

Both directories that you must be paid to be listed in and directories that are free give links to websites along with a one or two sentence description. Local-Attorneys.com is a directory specifically for law firms that list lawyers by region and specialty. For example, search under tax and Maryland and you will find law firms like Fried & Rosefelt, P.A. (http://www.frtaxlaw.com), who focus primarily on tax-related legal issues.

Another worthwhile pursuit is to try to get listed on sites that are
specific to your practice area. In the tax law space, for example, exists a notable website for tax problem resolution specialists — the website for the American Society of Tax Problem Solvers at http://www.astps.org. Steven N. Klitzner, P.A. of Florida Tax Solvers (http://www.floridataxsolvers.com)
is listed on this site, which can provide quality, relevant traffic. A
handful of directories are also profile sites, which are basically the same as directories but allow you to expand upon your description, instead of a couple sentences, usually a couple of paragraphs.

If you want to improve the amount of leads your firm receives, consider the online activities above. Though offline marketing activities like print brochures can also see much value, focusing attention online is very useful because your clients come to you, searching on what they need and then
finding your site. Doing it right means you can spend less time on
marketing and more time practicing law.

Local-Attorneys.com is a law firm directory that sorts attorneys by
practice area and region. For example, someone who visits the site having
been involved in an auto accident will click on auto accident and the state where they are looking for an attorney. With over 1,000 law firms listed so far, Local-Attorneys.com continues to grow. For more information on getting your firm listed, visit http://www.local-attorneys.com. Local-Attorneys.com
is owned by Net Focus Media. Visit http://www.netfocusmedia.com/lawfirms/
for more info.

Popularity: 100% [?]

“Violence in modern societies is … increasingly associated with the commission of property crimes as individuals are willing to resort to whatever means necessary to secure desired goods.”
- Louise I. Shelley
Crime and Modernization

A kid steals a candy bar because he wants to enjoy the taste; a dope addict sticks up a grocery store, shooting the owner, in order to get the money he needs to get “high”; a bank executive embezzles a million dollars so he can run off with his girlfriend to enjoy life in the Bahamas. What is the common motive behind these crimes? According to Jagad Guru Chris Butler, the desire for sense gratification. Chris Butler is “Jagad Guru”, or teacher of Yoga’s ancient spiritual wisdom.

Criminologists and social scientists have almost completely overlooked the fact that materialism is the root cause of crime. False identification of the body as the self leads people to believe that sense enjoyment will satisfy them; and most crimes are directly or indirectly connected to the attempt to find satisfaction in sense enjoyment.

The media saturates us daily with the message that the goal of life is sensual pleasure, and that success in life depends on the acquisition of those objects that make such sensual pleasure possible. From a young age, we learn that we should strive to be the controllers and enjoyers of all we survey. We are promised that such “lordship” is the way to happiness.

The criminal is just responding to this message the best way he knows how. He’s just trying to get the things the TV says he needs to be happy. He’s just trying to be the central enjoying agent—the lord—that he’s been taught he needs to be. So he needs a flashy car, fine clothes, a big house, a color TV, a gold watch, a yacht, etc.

Since no amount of sense gratification is ever enough to satisfy us, we always feel we need “more.” From the poorest person to the richest person, from the homeless to the person who lives in a mansion, everyone wants more sense gratification and thus more material wealth. If you are poor, you feel you need a color TV to be happy; if you’re rich, you feel you need a new yacht. “No amount of material wealth is ever enough” says Jagad Guru Chris Butler.

So we have crooks from all income levels. The poor crooks commit crimes so that they can get what they think they need; the rich crooks commit crimes so that they can get what they think they need. The street crook robs people so he can buy some nice clothes or drugs; the corporate crook robs companies so that he can buy 50,000 acres of land or a new Lear jet.

The fact that there are at least as many “wealthy” criminals as there are “poor” criminals effectively destroys the materialists’ theory that the root cause of crime is poverty and that the solution to the crime problem is to make everybody rich. Obviously, if poverty were the cause of crime, then no wealthy people would commit crimes. Besides, the term “poverty” is relative. A poor American, for example, would be a wealthy Ethiopian. In fact, criminals, whether rich or poor, are criminals not because they are poor or rich, but because they are in the illusion that material things will satisfy them. And, of course, the reason they are in this illusion is because they erroneously identify their body as themselves.

Because our materialistic society teaches that the acquisition of wealth and power is the goal of life, the more wealth and power you possess, the more “successful” you are considered to be. If you are materially poor, you are considered a failure in life, whereas if you are wealthy and powerful (regardless of how you acquired such wealth and power), you are considered a great success. So obtaining material wealth is not only essential for your direct sense gratification, but also for your feelings of self-worth.

In other words, you feel only as valuable as the things that you possess and control. Lacking appreciation of your real value as an eternal, blissful spark of life—falsely identifying the temporary body as yourself—you try to achieve feelings of self-worth by the acquisition and control of material things. To achieve such economic development, you may end up engaging in illegal activity—in other words, you may become a crook.

If people understand this practical knowledge about the root cause of crime, then they can effectively deal with the criminal problems facing us today. Only by knowing this real root cause can an effective solution be found.

For more materials by Jagad Guru Chris Butler, visit the Jagad Guru Chris Butler Wisdom page.

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