New Justia Law Review Blog covering Legal Research and News
Hi Friends,
We have just started the Justia Law Review Blog, a new blog which will be focused on legal research, information and news. It will allow Ken, me and the Justia Team to provide information and commentary on a broad range of legal issues. The new Justia Law Review Blog will be a nice editorial addition to the Justia legal portal site. We look forward to posting our non-marketing ideas on the blog... and hopefully it will be pretty good. Now back to work while listening to the Colts - Patriots game :)
Peace - Tim
:: Scarlet Begonias, Grateful Dead From the Mars Hotel by the Grateful
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Bloggers and Fair Use and... PerezHilton.com - from KCET
Hi Friends,
Everybody loves Hollywood and their protection of IP. And KCET, the public television station in Los Angeles (in Hollywood) is covering the latest IP action... PerezHilton.com's unauthorized usage of X17 Online's celebrity photos (and other companies' photos as well, X17 are just the ones who are suing PerezHilton's Mario Lavandeira).
You can watch a video on this The Fight Over Celebrity Photos on KCET's Life & Time's blog (and I added my prediction - X17 wins, PerezHilton loses). And you can read more about fair use on the Stanford Copyright & Fair Use Center.
On a side note, I used to volunteer at KCET, setting up a catalogue database of all their old videos from the 70s and 80s. Every morning for months I would drive down from my rent controlled apartment in Santa Monica to Hollywood for a few hours of work before going to my real job. I watched hundreds of hours of KCET news and education programs in fast motion, writing down the scenes and the time of the scene was in the tape. That way when a producer needed a video of environmental pollution they could easily find it. There were a lot of videos from the 1970's when movie director Taylor Hackford was the news reporter. And I watched a lot of Huell Howser Videologs (Huell would stop by our room in the studio between assignments - he was just like he is in the videos - super nice guy). You can subscribe to a Video PodCast of Huell's California's Gold series on his California's Gold Website, and check out the California Gold's Google Earth Overlay and KCET's California Gold interactive map of Los Angeles with short video segments.
What does this have to do with marketing? Well I am promoting the KCET and their video and blog post... thus the marketing aspect :) And it is an interesting case for bloggers... as Nolo's Rich Stim wrote... there is a "Fifth" Fair Use Factor: Are You Good or Bad?.
Check out KCET's Video, Blog Post and Commentary
Peace - Tim
Original Huell image can be found on Jeff Caffrey's Santa Monica College Media Center page.
:: California's Gold with Huell Howser
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Face Off: Drunk Driving v. DUI
This one surprised me a bit. I thought drunk driving would be the most popular search term, but DUI beats out both DWI and drunk driving. I didn't realize how ingrained these acronyms were within our vocabulary.
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Watch Your Words
Today, former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki posted an interview with Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick. I enjoy reading Guy's blog because he writes in an engaging and easy-to-read style that most of us would love to emulate. Anyways, in the interview, the Heaths explain the Curse of Knowledge:
Think of a lawyer who can't give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can't follow. And we're all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise.
To put it succinctly, "when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it."
This is particular true regarding the lexicon of legal professionals. Since our 1L days, law schools have drilled terms like torts, negligence and standard of care into our heads, such that when we want to describe a personal injury action, we often turn to these familiar terms and concepts—familiar to us, that is. After a while, it becomes difficult to determine whether lay persons also refer to drunk driving as DUI or an error made by a doctor as medical malpractice.
However, I do know that the Heaths' explanation does not apply to all lawyers. Many trial lawyers are able to breakdown complex legal concepts and explain them to a client or a juror without resorting to jargon. When writing for your law firm website or blog, strive for the same goal. Communicate to your readers by using their vocabulary so that when they search using their own words, it will be your words as well.
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What Type of Lawyer Are You?
How do you describe your practice areas on your law firm website or blog? One way would be to carryover the phrases your firm had successfully used in a magazine or yellow pages ad. When I flipped through the Valley Yellow Pages today, I noticed that the personal injury attorney ads exclusively used the term auto. In print, auto accident, car accident or vehicle accident may all be used interchangeably. Someone seeking a lawyer that handles car accidents will recognize that a law firm that handles auto accidents will work just fine.
However, the online world is different. Someone searching for a lawyer that handles car accidents won't necessarily find your law firm website or blog if you only mention that you handle auto accidents.
Just take a look at the search volume for various search terms using Google Trends. Car accident far outpaces auto accident or vehicle accident, and understandably so. In our daily conversation, we simply do not use the term auto. For one week, try replacing the word "car" with the word "auto" and see what happens.
"Whose auto are we going to take?"
"Can I drive your auto to school today?"
So, while automobiles or motor vehicles may be broader and more encompassing terms, cars is how we like to call them.
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