WWU, Seattle, Vancouver Visit 2008
Hi Friends,
Dan, Cicely and I flew over Oregon and headed up to LexBlog Country in the great Northwest. We were there to do some interviewing of computer folks... but we also had some fun (Seattle/As game, Vancouver and more :).
Dan and Cicely ran the booth at Western Washington University. We met a lot of great people.
Then it was off to Seattle to meet Kevin O'Keefe at the LexBlog offices to talk blogs and to see a baseball game.
Then off to beautiful Vancouver for fun...
... and a visit the UBC Computer Science Department.
more on copyright and codes later this week...
Peace,
Tim
:: Crystal River, Mudcrutch by Mudcrutch
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Cease, Desist & Resist - Oregon's Copyright Claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes
Hi Friends,
Last week, the State of Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee sent Justia a notice of copyright infringement and demand to cease and desist. In its letter, Dexter Johnson, the Legislative Counsel, asked us to remove a copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes stored on our servers (or pay a licensing fee) by April 30, 2008. The letter claimed copyright on many parts of the Oregon Revised Statutes:
[T]he Committee ... claim[s] a copyright in the arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables the index and annotations and such other incidents as are work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law.
Now, the letter is more detailed than the copyright claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes website:
The Legislative Counsel Committee claims copyright protection in those parts of Oregon Revised Statutes that are legally subject to copyright protection.
My take after reading the above claim on their website was that the State of Oregon was claiming a copyright to the annotation section and not the code itself. Accordingly, our copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes did not include the annotations. Needless to say Oregon's copyright claim on the code itself was a surprise (understatement).
As requested in the letter, I called Oregon's Sean Brennan the same Friday and Sean explained their position, reinforced the copyright claims in Dexter Johnson's letter and said he would get us some licensing information (which is $30,000 for 2 years). He also said that Oregon had been talking with other states about how to raise licensing revenue for their codes. That was somewhat disturbing, as we want states to open up their public laws and regulations.
After the call with Sean, I talked with and sent a copy of the letter to Carl Malamud, who being a former Oregon fire fighter, has a special affection for the state of Oregon. Carl checked out the site, and wrote some letters to Dexter Johnson seeking clarification of their copyright claims.
Thursday, we (Carl Malamud, Nolo's Stephen Elias and I) had a pleasant and constructive conversation with Dexter Johnson and his team. The Oregon folks are going to think through some different options. If Oregon comes up with a solution that promotes free and open access to the laws, then we will likely avoid litigation. If not, then we will likely have to ask the courts to determine whether state governments can prohibit others from downloading, reproducing or distributing the laws. I hope that given Oregon's public interest focus, the State will adopt an approach that promotes open access to laws instead of one that maximizes licensing fees. We should know more next week.
Some prominent legal bloggers have commented on Oregon's copyright claims. See Professor Tim Armstrong's post "Can States Copyright Their Statutes?" on Info/Law and William Patry's post "Oregon goes wacka wacka huna kuna" on the The Patry Copyright Blog and Sam Bayard's post "Oregon Claims Copyright in Its Statutes -- Well, Sort Of" on the Citizen Media Law Project Blog. We agree that public policy demands that state laws remain in the public domain. To otherwise permit the State of Oregon or any other governmental body to restrict access to the laws that govern all of us would make a mockery of the legal doctrine that all persons have presumed knowledge of the law. Fortunately, many courts have rightfully declined to recognize such copyright claims asserted by states and municipalities.
Peace,
Tim
:: Sugaree, Grateful Dead Download Series, Vol. 10 by Grateful Dead
* For those interested, we are working with folks from Public.Resource.Org, Cornell's Legal Information Institute, AltLaw, EFF, Creative Commons, Stanford & Cal, FastCase, as well as many other law schools, commercial organizations, courts, and government agencies on compiling a large archive of law that will be continuously updated and freely shared. Part of that is just getting the raw law, which includes cases, codes, and regulations. As we (quickly) move forward though, we will also have shared annotations and shared publishing tools. We will then want to have copies of the law along with secondary materials on thousands of servers. In addition to providing free access to all at many online locations, we want to provide the opportunity for each government institution, court, law school, nonprofit, company, and blogger to have their very own copy of the full corpus, as well as an easy way to keep it updated. It won't be easy, but it is doable. And it helps that we are working with folks from the government. Hopefully, we will soon be able to work with and include the State of Oregon. :)
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Message from Ithaca
We are waiting... but will not wait too long.
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Add BlawgSearch.com Search Results to your Website or Blog
Hi Friends,
We have added the ability for you to have BlawgSearch search results on your Website or Blog with your own look and feel.
The html code for adding the Blawg Search results to your Website or legal Blog is given here: http://blawgsearch.justia.com/friendsearch.aspx
We provide a small amount of html and Javascript code that uses AJAX to pull just the BlawgSearch results to your Web page. You just need to paste the code we provide where you would like the results to appear. You can return 5, 10 or 20 results at a time.
You can view a generic search page here.
BLAWG CATEGORY SEARCHES
You can also limit search results to any of the categories of the BlawgSearch directory. You just select the category you would like to search and the code will be generated for you (with an option to search all of the legal blogs as well).
For example one could search Civil Rights or all of the Legal Blogs with a generic header and footer.
Of course you can choose your own category to focus on, for example Law Librarian Blogs, Law Practice Blogs, California Legal Blogs, or even a particular law school, such as Stanford Law School Blogs (our puppy, Little Sheba the Hug Pug, has a Dog Law Website with the Animal Law blogs category).
ADD SEARCH TO BLOG OR WEBSITE SIDEBAR
The search and search results can also fit in the side bar of a blog, like we have just added to our legal marketing blog on the left hand side of this page). We are returning 5 results at a time for the sidebar legal blog search.
Again, here is where you go to add Blawg Search search results to your Web site or Blog or even an Intranet Web page: http://blawgsearch.justia.com/friendsearch.aspx
Feel free to try it out, and if you have any feedback, that will be greatly appreciated (feedback from the first version got us to switch from iframes to AJAX :)
Peace,
Tim
:: The Core, Slowhand by Eric Clapton
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BlawgSearch.com Current & Historical Blawg Rankings
Hi Friends,
We have added historical snapshots of the most popular blawgs on a monthly basis since we released BlawgSearch in October of 2006. For each month we have listed the 200 most popular blawgs overall, as well as the top 20 blawgs in each category.
While we have been showing the most popular blawgs on BlawgSearch on the BlawgSearch home page, the historical rankings seemed interesting (and are likely to be more interesting in a few years :).
You can check out the monthly historical snapshots here and the overall leaders since the beginning of (BlawgSearch) time here. And note: the Justia BlawgSearch legal blog directory allows you to sort blawgs by popularity on a daily, weekly, monthly or all time basis as well as alphabetically or by last post date.
We rank the blawgs based on the number of visits or podcast plays the blawg receives from the BlawgSearch.com and Blawgs.FM sites. We also include any visits that comes from the AJAX or iframe search results being used by others on their sites (more on that tomorrow :). We have some protections in place to guard against rankings click fraud and we have slightly discounted our own Blawgs (no Justia team clicks :). There are different weights depending on where the clicks occur, but basically if people see your blawg on BlawgSearch and decide to visit your Blawg, your blawg is ranked higher.
You might want to compare the category rankings we have with those on Blawg.com (the highly respected and well known directory and search engine of legal blawgs).
And the most "popular"? Above the Law. AtL has been leading now for a number of months and seems to be at or near the top everyday.
In this blog's category... the most popular legal marketing blawg of "all time"? a blog by some guy named Kevin who works at LexBlog but Professor Eric Goldman is starting to catch up. Check out the current and past leaders in any of the hundred plus categories from law professors to technology.
Finally I am not sure how meaningful the rankings are, they do not indicate what is a good blawg or bad blawg (I second everything Bill wrote in his post), but people love law blog metrics.
Peace,
Tim
:: Popular, High/Low by Nada Surf
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Gino Wins!!!
Stacy, Dana and I went to the Contra Costa Bodybuilding, Figure & Fitness Championships on Saturday to cheer our friend Gino Eagle Johnson on in the Ultra Grand Masters category.
The Ultra Grand Masters is the division for those over 60. Gino is 70 years young and he won his class! Gino is a personal trainer at Gold's Gym in Mountain View (where we work out :), and he plans to compete in the Nationals in Pittsburgh this July. What an inspiration!
Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler performed as the guest poser. He put on a great show posing and also talking individually to fans. Mr. Olympia shared the inspiring story of how he won the Olympia after being told he would never win it or compete professionally for that matter. Through hard work and determination he achieved his life dream.
Other Mountain View Gold's folks also competed. Doug placed 2nd in the Grand Masters division. And Saraya placed 4th in her very first bodybuilding competition with a salsa-inspired posing routine.
There are more pictures in the extended entry.
Congratulations to all!
Peace,
Tim
:: Eye of the Tiger, Ultimate Survivor by Survivor
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Pacific Northwest Meeting with LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe
Hi Friends,
No trip to the great Northwest can take place without a meeting with the blog man himself, Lexblog CEO Kevin O'Keefe. Well this time we met up in Bellingham right in the middle of Dirty Dan Days in Fairhaven.
KOK found a parking space and then walked the walk to the Bellingham Fairhaven Boardwalk. And here are a few more pictures.
Kevin and me ...
... Kevin and Cicely ... and ...
A guy we met who makes frogs and birds out of shells he finds on the beach. Some of his frogs were in the movie "The Ring".
We had Coffee & Diet Pepsi at Village Books and then headed out to dinner at a nice restaurant. We talked a lot of blogging and little free case law. It will be a great future :) Next time I hope to check out LexBlog's new Seattle Offices!
Peace,
Tim
:: Even Flow, Ten by Pearl Jam
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Linuxfest Northwest
Hi Friends,
As part of our Bellingham recruitment trip we went to Linuxfest Northwest... to find Bellingham linux people and perl/python programmers.
Me with The Bird.
Google recruitment table :)
Second Life & Silicon Mechanics - the sponsors of... The Party.
The organizers table... While we were at the table some guy asked for a s-load of raffle tickets and then bought a 100. I wonder if he won... We got an EFF Fair Use bumper sticker.
Chuck Robinson, owner of Village Books, with Linux and Programming Books (Bellingham traveling note: Village Books is a great bookstore, stop by, you can have coffee on the second floor and look out over the bay like Kevin O'Keefe and I did later that day).
Cicely and her Mom and The Bird.
Peace,
Tim
:: Can't You Hear Me Knocking, Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones
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Fun in the Sun at the Western Washington University Career Fair
Hi Friends,
Cicely and I went to Bellingham and the Western Washington University Career Fair, and met a lot of great students and people who wanted to put up free case law :).
Cicely and Ocean View
We are also going to be hanging out this weekend at the Linuxfest Northwest and meet with LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe. And the northwest weather is pretty good, not too cold, not too wet, and a little sun now and then :)
Peace,
Tim
More Photos on the extended entry.
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SF Giants Opening Day
Hi Friends,
I "skipped" work today and went to the SF Giants opener with Acendi Software CEO Charlie Moore (who took us all -- thanks!!!!), one of my many attorneys Ruben Sundeen, bike photographer Kent Williams and Acendi team members (others were also going to home openers :). Charlie used to work with my previous attorneys at Venture Law Group (now part of Heller Erhman) and worked with Yahoo! and others when they were just starting out. The Giants lost by a touchdown, but it was nice day to talk code and Acendi's new online forms service RocketLawyer.com, which allows users to create legal documents online. And I took a lot of Barry and Barry pictures (in the extended entry :)
Peace,
Tim
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Justia Regulation Tracker Beta - Tracking Federal Regulations, Rules, Proposed Rules and Notices
Federal regulations affect the practices of a broad spectrum of lawyers. For corporate counsel, federal regulations may directly touch on their company's core business, or they may impose additional general compliance requirements, such as in human resources, as an example. Attorneys in both private practice and public interest law face a similar impact whether they practice labor and employment, immigration, criminal law or in a completely different area.
Here are some federal regulations that attorneys in the corresponding practice areas or industries may find of interest:
| Regulatory Agency | Practice Areas / Industry |
| US Citizenship and Immigration Services | Immigration, Employment |
| Internal Revenue Service | Estate Planning, Tax |
| Patent and Trademark Office | Intellectual Property |
| Federal Energy Regulatory Commission | Energy, Government Relations |
| Food and Drug Administration | Personal Injury, Pharmaceutical, Government Relations |
| Department of State | International Law, Immigration |
| Thrift Supervision Office | Financial Services |
| Securities and Exchange Commission | Financial Services, Securities, Consumer Law |
| Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation | Labor and Employment, Employee Benefits |
| DOJ Antitrust Division | Antitrust, Business, Consumer Law |
If you practice in an area affected by federal regulations, you probably already recognize that keeping abreast of new regulatory developments is essential. To assist you, Justia has released the free Justia Regulations Tracker, found at http://regulations.justia.com/ (currently in beta). Justia Regulations Tracker allows a user to focus on regulations originating from a specific federal agency and subscribe to an RSS feed of those regulations.
Better yet, you can further refine the RSS feed by specifying the type of regulation or stage in the regulation making process (i.e., rules, administrative orders, notices, proposed rules, executive orders, and proclamations) or even defining certain search terms, such as all regulations that mention bovine spongiform encephalitis.
If you aren't already on the RSS bandwagon, now is a great time hop aboard. RSS feeds allow you to take a particular set of data and view it using your RSS reader. So, instead of opening a print newspaper and reading the articles that the editors have selected for you, and RSS reader allows you create your own custom news and information source from data sources that you select. For lawyers, this means reading the federal regulations, court filings, legal commentary and other resources that you decide are worth tracking. Enjoy!
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Dockets.Justia.com -- beta 2 - More Updates & Faster
Hi Friends,
As I noted in a previous post (Federal Court Case Filings - Dockets.Justia.com).... we put up a "beta" free Website of new civil case filings. Well it has been a few weeks, and "beta 2" is here :)
Here is what we have fixed up.
1. We are now updating the dockets database continuously --- multiple updates each day.
2. We are checking for updates of previous dockets to pick up changes and corrections.
3. Faster. We have moved dockets to a very fast machine and have optimized the database for faster search results.
4. We have added additional docket information, including
a. the cause of action
b. the presiding judge (and referring judge if given)
c. whether a jury trial was demanded, and if so by which party.
5. We have put in additional links from each listing into relevant online databases, some specific to the type of case, such as patent searches for patent cases.
6. Additional interface changes. They are small, such as replacing the case number with the cause of action in the result listing pages, but they should make things more intuitive.
Anyway, we thought we had enough changes to announce a Dockets.Justia.com Beta 2. We have a lot of additional free features we are working on... but you will have to wait a bit longer for beta 3 :)
Peace,
Tim
Peace - Tim
:: Peaceful Easy Feeling, Eagles by the Eagles
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Federal Court Case Filings - Dockets.Justia.com
Hi Friends,
We put up a Website with the new civil case filings in the US District Courts with links into Pacer for the full docket and filing information and News, Finance, Web and Blog Internet resources. The URL is: http://dockets.justia.com
It allows you to search and track when new cases are filed by State, Court, Lawsuit Type (eg Patent Law) or Party name... or any combination. We are updating this daily (but note the courts often post the filings a day or two after they are received).
RSS FEEDS
One feature we like is the RSS feeds. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of all of the new cases for a State, Court or Lawsuit Type, or you can do a search and subscribe to an RSS feed of the search results (which you can add to your MyGoogle or MyYahoo! page). The RSS feed is nice because you can track the new cases without redoing your search everyday.
For example you could track all of the Federal Court Patent cases or all of the Federal Court cases filed against Microsoft with an RSS feed, or just those Microsoft cases that are filed in Washington State. Whatever the search criteria, you can track new cases with an RSS feed.
LINKS TO PACER, BLOG, NEWS, FINANCE & WEB INFO
Each case has an individual page with a link to the Pacer info page (you do need a subscription to access these documents at 8 cents per page - easily worth the costs for a case you care about) as well as Blog, News, Finance and Web searches on the party names. Depending on the particular case, you can often get some good background information on the parties. For example the page on Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Apple Inc. iPhone trademark dispute.
LAW FIRM MARKETING VALUE - CLIENTS/COMPANY TRACKING
The value of the database could be seen as a tracking mechanism for:
- tracking client - you may know when they get sued before they do,
- tracking companies - eg Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!
- finding new clients/cases - eg if you were a Palo Alto patent lawyer, you could track Patent cases filed in California Northern District Federal Court or all of California or the entire USA.
DAILY UPDATES
There are over 300,000 case titles since January 1, 2006, and we are updating it daily.
We are still making some user interface changes, and just added subscribe buttons for MyGoogle, MyYahoo!, Bloglines etc... yesterday, and we are going to add more functionality and editorial groupings of parties in the future. We are always looking for ideas, so if you want any additions or changes, feel free to let us know.
You can check the Justia Federal Court Filings Site out at http://dockets.justia.com/, and Happy Valentines Day.
Peace,
Tim
Peace - Tim
:: Wish You Were Here, Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
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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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BlawgSearch.com & Blawgs.fm - New Legal Blog Search Tools from Justia
Hi Friends,
We have released the first beta version of BlawgSearch.com for searching legal blogs... and our first alpha version of Blawgs.fm for searching legal podcasts and blog posts with audio or video media files attached.
BlawgSearch.com
Blawg Search. BlawgSearch.com allows legal researchers to search over a 1,000 editorially selected legal blogs. The database is updated throughout the day with new posts. BlawgSearch.com allows you to sort your search results by relevance or posting date, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of your searches, to continuously track newly updated posts that match your search terms.
On the search front, we will be adding some advanced search functionality, as well as some other core functionality and features... but more on those when they are ready.
Blawg Directory. We also provide a directory of blawgs by subject category and locality (state and country) focus, as well links to other Blawg directories like Blawg.com's Blawg directory. This may be helpful in finding other legal blogs on a topic you are interested in. We are still fixing up the categories somewhat (Antitrust will be its own category soon :), but it is a pretty good start.
Blawg Rankings. Everyone loves rankings (except Michigan Football). We rank the blogs on a variety of factors, including how often a blog is clicked on in a search result or directory listing and the last post date (blogs with more recent posts are valued higher). Clicks from different parts of the site (eg top ranked blawgs on the home page, search results, blawg directory pages) are attributed different values. And there are some click spam protections built in. The overall system algorithm is still being fine tuned somewhat, but it seems to be working pretty well.
We still have 1000s of more legal blogs to check out in the weeks ahead. If you have or know of a legal subject matter blog you think should be included, please click here and fill out a form to suggest the blog. We are very focused of adding more blogs into the directory.
Blawgs.fm
While working on BlawgSearch.com, we noticed that we could tell from the RSS feeds when there were audio or video files. So we added some small icons to indicate there was a multimedia file, and then added a flash player so people could quickly listen to audio of a particular post right there in the search results. But on BlawgSearch.com, the audio or video files would only show up once in awhile in the search results*.
So we made Blawgs.fm, a new search interface for searching blawg posts with multimedia files. Blawgs.fm searches all of the posts that are included in BlawgSearch.com, but just returns those posts that have multimedia files attached to them.
In addition we have started a legal podcast/vidcast directory categorized by subject and locality, and a ranking of the podcasts (like BlawgSearch.com). The podcast directory only includes blogs that are either focused on providing multimedia content (like Coast to Coast) or primarily text based but have a substantial number of multimedia posts (like Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground). If we were able to find a special podcast feed (like the Stark & Stark's New Jersey Law Blog's Podcast feed) we included that podcast feed in addition to the general blog feed.
But again, not all of the search results will be from blogs that are in this podcast directory. The search will have results from blogs that might not be podcast blogs, but have a multimedia post or two.
You can listen to audio files for a particular post using the flash player if you wish. What is nice about this, is that you can do a search and see what individual podcast posts have matching descriptions. Then you could either visit the original podcast page or do a quick listen using the flash player before deciding to subscribe to the full podcast. I have found it useful in finding new podcasts, and I will bet others will too.And like the BlawgSearch.com, we are also looking for more legal Podcasts to add into the directory. So if you have a legal Podcast you like us to add please click here on the Podcast and fill out the Podcast suggestion form.
Ok... that is it for now. We will announce some more features in the near future...
Peace - Tim
* We will include the media search only functionality into the advanced search options of BlawgSearch.com as well, but we thought it would be nice if there was site that just searched multimedia files from the get-go, and thus Blawgs.FM is being launched as a separate site.
::
These Are Days, Our Time in Eden by the 10,000 Maniacs
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Visiting the Northwest - Seattle & Bellingham
Hi Friends,
I went up to the Pacific Northwest to visit some friends and scout out the tech landscape. Seattle was sunny as always as....
... I took the ferry with LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe to visit Bainbridge Island.
KOK kicked back on his porch with the dogs as he explained the greatness of the Seattle area, while his son tried to explain Notre Dame's strugles with Georgia Tech (we will all be "watching" the Michigan v. Notre Dame Game on September 16).
I also visited Bellingham, Washington to check out its technology scene.
It sort of reminded me of a combination of Berkeley and Ann Arbor. Most of the produce seemed anti-tech, as it was all organic. One of the Stanford FogDog guys is starting a business Yapta.com in Bellingham.
Both places were very nice, and sunny and warm... at least until October :)
Peace - Tim
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Justia clients' Web sites honored by the Internet Marketing Attorney Awards
Hi Friends,
The Internet Marketing Attorney's Micah Buchdahl has released the 2006-07 INTERNET MARKETING ATTORNEY AWARDS and 2006-07 Nifty 50.
We are happy that Web sites we have worked on with our law firm clients have received IMA honors.
The Internet Marketing Attorney Awards are given to law firm Web sites that are using best practices. More than just giving awards, the goal is to provide legal marketing professionals with ideas and examples of design, content usability interactivity and intangibles that they might want to use on their own Web sites. We ourselves studied the examples before we started our Web site building business. Hundreds of clients later... we are now studying the latest installment, and happily this year some of our clients' Web sites are included as award recipients and examples of best practices.
The Nifty 50 examines components on law firm web sites that go beyond the basics of bios, practices, offices and news. The Silverberg Zalantis LLP Website was shown for how they integrated their New York Zoning and Municipal Law Blog into their Web site. Silverberg Zalantis represent municipal, corporate and individual clients in New York.
Stark & Stark, a multipractice law firm in New Jersey and New York won a Platinum Internet Marketing Association award for Small & Mid-Size firms. The firm was recognized for end-user effectiveness, search engine optimization and the creative integration of numerous blog feeds into the site. The Stark & Stark site incorporates over 100 different blog feeds into their site for immediate updating of new posts. We worked with Stark & Stark's Director of Business Development Richard DeLuca on the Web site and with LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe on the Web site blog integration. And don't forget to subscribe and listen to their New Jersey Legal Update Podcasts.
And our first client and good friend David Swanner (whose site went live last year) won a Silver Internet Marketing Association award. He was the sole solo to win an award. We worked on the site with David and the late Kerry Randall (whose team carries on as AVALANCHE: The Lawyer Marketing Group), who developed the David v. Goliath theme, and Kevin and LexBlog on integrating the South Carolina Trial Law Blog with his Web site. David’s site was also recently named one of the best small law firm Web sites in South Carolina by Lawyers Weekly
One thing to note about all of these law firms is the high value of their content and their willingness to blog. And it is no accident that those firms that blog produce better Web sites as well... something to think about. You can design and optimize, but great sites come from great lawyers who write.
Congrats to the firms and thanks to Micah for considering us and them!!!
Peace - Tim
You can learn more about justia's Law Firm Web Site Design Services and our Lawyer Blog Design Services on our Marketing Solutions Web site.
:: Can't Stop, By the Way by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
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Free Cobranding of our Supreme Court Center and Cases for Web Sites & Blogs
We have updated the Supreme Court Center (which features US Supreme Court cases since volume 1) to allow anyone to cobrand the center or a case by adding their own graphics and a linkback to their Web site, Web page or Blog.
You can add a graphic with a linkback in the header and, for individual cases, a graphic with linkback on the top of the case resources box. The linkback and graphics will remain on pages as individuals, who visit from your site, browse cases and do searches in the Supreme Court Center.
You can have the linkback take the user back to the home page of your Web site or Blog or you could have different links on different pages or posts - each taking the user back to the page of the original link.
Here is what the cobranding looks like with Little Sheba the Hug Pug graphics and a link to her Blog at HugPug.com
To make your own cobrand of the Supreme Court Center (or just a case) here is what you need:
1. A URL to linkback to (required)
This URL could be your home page URL or the URL of a blog post. Any URL will do.
example: http://www.hugpug.com
2. The URL for a 360px width X 55px height image for the header of the page (optional)
example: http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/hugpug.jpg
If you do not provided an image we will show the following default image:
3. The URL for a 200px width X 120px height image for the header of the page (optional)
example: http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/sheba_pup.jpg
If you do not provided an image we will show the following default image:
COBRANDING A CASE, THE SEARCH AND THE SITE
You can link to and cobrand an individual case, the Supreme Court Center home page or a year or volume of the cases and your linkback and graphics will be included on all of the cases and search results in the Supreme Court Center reached from that initial link.
LINKING TO AN INDIVUDAL CASE
Here is the URL for the link in the screen shot above:
http://supreme.justia.com/us/544/04-368/case.html?friendurl=http://www.hugpug.com
&friendlogo=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/hugpug.jpg
&friendcaseimage=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/sheba_pup.jpg
Note: Keep the URL on one line. We have only added line breaks to make them easier to read on this page.
This URL can be broken down into a few parts.
A. URL of the case:
http://supreme.justia.com/us/544/04-368/case.html
B. a question mark: ?
C. The URL you want the graphics to linkback to (this is required):
friendurl=http://www.hugpug.com
D. An ampersand: &
E. The image (360px width x 55px height) that shows up in the top right hand side of the page (this is optional):
friendlogo=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/hugpug.jpg
F. Another ampersand: &
G. An image (200px width x 120px height) that will show above the case resources box (this is optional):
friendcaseimage=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/sheba_pup.jpg
NOTE: If you give us just the URL and nothing else, we will provide you two fine looking generic graphics (seen above) that will linkback to your Web site.
Here is a an example where we only receive the URL
http://supreme.justia.com/us/544/04-368/case.html?friendurl=http://www.hugpug.com
Also If you only provide one graphic, we will use the generic graphic for the other one.
COBRANDING SEARCH
You can also add your link and graphics to the Supreme Court Search. Just replace the 3 variables friendurl, friendlogo and friendcaseimage with your own (or just the ffriendurl without the other two).
--- begin text copy ---
<p>
<form action="http://supreme.justia.com/scripts/search" method="post" name="fulltextsearch">
<input type="text" size="50" name="q" value="">
<input type="hidden" name="friendurl" value="http://www.hugpug.com">
<input type="hidden" name="friendlogo" value="http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/hugpug.jpg">
<input type="hidden" name="friendcaseimage" value="http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/sheba_pup.jpg">
<input type="submit" name="Search" value="Search Cases">
</form>
</p><p>
Browse by >>
<a href="http://supreme.justia.com/us/index.html?friendurl=http://www.hugpug.com
&friendlogo=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/hugpug.jpg
&friendcaseimage=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/sheba_pup.jpg">Volume</a>
|
<a href="http://supreme.justia.com/us/year/index.html?friendurl=http://www.hugpug.com
&friendlogo=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/hugpug.jpg
&friendcaseimage=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/sheba_pup.jpg">Year</a>
</p>
--- end text copy ---
Note: Keep the browsable Volume and Year line URLs on one line. We have only added line breaks to make them easier to read on this page.
The Result will look like this (try a search :)
COBRANDING THE HOME PAGE OR A SECTION
You can also cobrand other pages in the Supreme Court Center and include the linkback and your own graphic. The graphics and linkback will continue to show as users search and browse the cases from the entry point (click on one of the links below and check it out).
Here are sample cobranding link codes:
Supreme Court Center Home Page
http://supreme.justia.com/index.html?friendurl=http://www.hugpug.com
&friendlogo=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/hugpug.jpg
&friendcaseimage=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/sheba_pup.jpg
Volume 379
http://supreme.justia.com/us/379/index.html?friendurl=http://www.hugpug.com
&friendlogo=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/hugpug.jpg
&friendcaseimage=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/sheba_pup.jpg
Year 1964
http://supreme.justia.com/us/year/1964.html?friendurl=http://www.hugpug.com
&friendlogo=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/hugpug.jpg
&friendcaseimage=http://www.hugpug.com/photos/images/sheba_pup.jpg
Note: Keep the URL on one line. We have only added line breaks to make them easier to read on this page.
Okay there you go, now you can be just like Little Sheba the Hug Pug and have your own Supreme Court Database with your own graphics and links back to your site. (and Little Sheba will be making an additional cobrand soon - for her Dog Law site :)
Peace - Tim
:: Californication, Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
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Dog Law with Little Sheba the Hug Pug
Hi Friends,
Well it has been two years since Little Sheba the Hug Pug came to live with the pack, traveling by car from her home in Los Angeles in rented Red Mustang. Sheba is very happy to be here playing with the programmers everyday and barking at the lawyers on the phone.
To celebrate her two year anniversary, Sheba is announcing her very own Dog Law Web site which she made with us and her friends from Nolo (especially Mary Randolph !!! :).
Sheba's Dog Law site is in continuous update mode... so look for more and more information in the days and weeks ahead - including more pictures :)
Peace - Tim (and Little Sheba the Hug Pug)
:: Dani California, Stadium Arcadium by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
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Intuit Intranet Legal Portal
Hi Friends,
One of the side things we do is make stuff for friends in the area. Recently we helped make Intuit a legal portal for their Intranet. Nolo provided the content, while we did the programming. If you work at Intuit, you can login and check it out.
For our estate planning clients - Intuit and Nolo will give a free one year professional license of the Quicken WillMaker for making client wills - normally priced for $500 (Individuals can buy WillMaker directly form Nolo for personal use as a download for $39.99). Nolo has been doing a quite a bit in the last year to bring their products for the professional market. If you interested in a professional license of their products see Nolo's Professional Use Licenses information page. And there is some other stuff coming out of Berkeley for lawyers... but I will wait until they say it is okay to post about it :)
Peace - Tim
:: Parallel Universe, Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
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New MacBook Pro
Hi Friends,
I just got a new MacBook Pro. It is faster than my previous PowerBook, and the screen is much much nicer.
It came from China, by way of Alaska and Indiana.
Sheba likes it too!
Peace - Tim
:: The Ties That Bind, The River by Bruce Springsteen
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Justia's Little Sheba the Hug Pug on Monster.com
Hi Friends,
Little Sheba the Hug Pug and Justia were written about on Monster.com as part of a Take Your Dog to Work article by Heidi LaFleche. Once again, Sheba was using her cuteness and connections to get Justia some attention, after all - It is her job :)
But Sheba is not just in the office sleeping waiting for writers to call. Smiling Sheba often works 24 hour days to make things go on the product side. Helping make stuff like... free case law in the US Supreme Court Center - which is now in its Alpha-Beta 2 release - and of course Sheba came up with the free part of the free law firm Web sites on Freedom.Justia.com. And Sheba even has her own line of Hug Pug tshirts, posters and mugs. Not to bad for a puppy :)
Peace - Tim
:: Arc of a Diver, Arc of a Diver by Steve Winwood
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Justia Launches Free US Supreme Court Decisions on First Monday with Oyez and US Court Forms
Well, the first Monday of October has finally arrived and changes are already afoot. The US Supreme Court returned from its summer recess and welcomed a new Chief Justice to the helm. With the nation's air waves abuzz this morning over President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, it seems that the Washington's attention has been focused on the Supreme Court as of late. Our focus has been on the US Supreme Court as well, but for entirely different reasons.
Today, Justia, Oyez and US Court Forms are proud to release the first beta version of our new US Supreme Court Center. Many features are still under development, but the center does include all US Supreme Court decisions since volume one (1).
You can visit the new center at http://www.Justia.us
This site is meant to complement the multimedia materials developed by Northwestern Professor Jerry Goldman's Oyez project. We have also provided links to Supreme Court current awareness information from On the Docket by Northwestern Journalism Professor Jack Doppelt, as well as selected Supreme Court and Constitutional Rights Blogs on the Web.
We will be fixing and improving the interface of the center in the next few days/weeks/months, and will also be adding and incorporating additional US Constitutional and Supreme Court content and community features. But we wanted something up this Monday, so the beta is officially launched. And we had two hours to spare :)
Thanks to Oyez and US Court Forms.
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Google Mini and Little Sheba the Hug Pug Puppy Photos & Fun
Hi Friends,
We just got a brand new 1U blue boxed Google Mini for full text indexing of a new database we are setting up. It took about an hour to get it out of the box, install and index our content set (although we are doing some extra work fixing up our search result templates and scripts to make the output real nice and pretty).
More on our content set later... for now, please enjoy some pictures of Little Sheba the Hug Pug and her newest bestest Google toy.
And a few Google Mini notes: The Google Mini is very easy to install - open box, turn on, set IP addresses, select URL to index, click mouse, check indexing status. If you want your own machine with Google search software to index 100,000 documents for only $2999... visit the Google Mini Site... and be sure to read the Google Mini Legal Services Success Stories or other industry Google Mini success stories. We hope to be one ourselves some day :)
Peace - Tim & Sheba
:: Wanna Be Your Dog, Back to the Noise by Iggy & The Stooges
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Legal Marketing Blogs' Headlines - the Latest Legal Marketing Blog Posts Updated Throughout the Day
Hi Friends,
The Justia gang has listed a set of the legal marketing blogs (and few other selected blogs that periodically mention legal marketing) we like to read and has set up a site of links to their most recent posts (updated throughout the day and night). The URL is
The idea is to give you a quick overview of today's legal marketing news as determined by the experts, maybe find a post or blog that interests you that you have not seen, and then a link to the blog so you can subscribe to that blog directly (also note - this is a first version, and we will be improving this site over time).
We list the latest headlines of the different blogs ordered by date/time. Each headline simply links to a blog's post. If you are in the archive and want to be on the top of the list... simply make a new blog post.
We list the blogs currently in the index on the side with links to the blogs themselves.
Lawyer Marketing Blogs
Here are the legal marketing blogs we are starting this site out with...
- Bruce Allen's Marketing Catalyst
- Larry Bodine's Professional Marketing Blog
- HTMLawyer's Micah Buchdahl's The Marketing Attorney Blog
- Ken Chan & Tim Stanley with Justia's Legal SEO Blog
- Lawyers Court's Chris Costa's Legal Search Marketing
- Philip Franckel's Lawyer Advertising Blog
- Sanestorm Marketing's Andy Havens' Legal Marketing Blog
- Tom Kane's Legal Marketing Blog
- Mark Merenda - Smart Blog
- Morningstar Multimedia - Law Firm Marketing
- LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe Legal Marketing with Lawyer Blogs Blog
- Ed Poll- Lawbiz Blog
If there are additional legal marketing blogs out there that we should link to, please email us and we will add the RSS feed. We are looking for blogs that are focused on providing marketing news, information and commentary, not just the marketing of a firm's products or services (although having periodic marketing, like our FindLaw FirmSite to Justia Web Site post is okay with us :).
Selected Legal Technology, Marketing and Puppy Blogs
We have added a few legal technology and information blogs (the four we read everyday - beSpacific, The Common Scold, LawSites and the [non]billable hour ). There are many more we could add, but we did not want to overwhelm the list with non-marketing posts.
We have the official search engine blogs (Ask Jeeves, Google, MSN and Yahoo!), and one general marketing blog (Seth Godin's Blog - because we like his books). In reality we actually read many more general marketing and SEO blogs, but again to add them all would dominate the listings, and you would miss out on the "legal" marketing uniqueness of the more focused blogs.
If you have a general marketing, legal technology or legal information blog that has legal marketing information and you add/have a legal marketing category, then we would be happy to add or help you set up a category specific feed (easy to do in Movabletype or WordPress, harder to do with Blogger and TypePad. For Blogger and TypePad, see Richard Akerman Science Library Pad post on using Blogdigger for category based RSS feeds).
Finally we have included my puppy Little Sheba the Hug Pug's blog, simply because... I like my dog. And once again, the URL for the list of legal blog marketing headlines is http://blogs.justia.org/
Peace - Tim
:: Listen to Her Heart, You're Gonna Get It! by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
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FindLaw FirmSite -> Justia Law Firm Web Site :: Justia Web Site Design Before & After
Hi Friends,
A picture is worth a 1000 words...
BEFORE: FindLaw FirmSite (Thomson-FindLaw West Firm Site)
AFTER: Justia Law Firm Web Site
We made this new Web site for Wilson & Wilson, a LaGrange, Illinois Law Firm.
Wilson & Wilson services include estate planning, probate and estate administration, elder law and other services in the Chicago area. They also help set up Special Needs Trust and Supplemental Needs Trusts for families with disabled children.
Given Wilson & Wilson's target audience, we added in some additional accessibility features, such as optional white on black text and the ability to change the font sizes.
If you would like your own "After" version of this Before & After Web site example, feel free to call us at 888.587.8421 or contact us online.
Peace - Tim
:: Wishing You Were Here, The Very Best of Chicago - Only the Beginning by Chicago
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Integrating (50+) Unique RSS Feeds from your Blog into your Web site - Stark-Stark.com - designed by Justia
Hi Friends,
There has been a lot of talk about blogs and RSS and ATOM feeds the last few weeks/months/years (mostly by Kevin O'Keefe at LexBlog and (My) Yahoo! :)
Justia is focused on RSS and ATOM as well, and set up the Justia Web site development system to incorporate RSS or ATOM feeds from other Web sites or Blogs into Justia designed Search Engine Optimized Web Sites for Law Firms.
Recently we worked with Rich DeLuca and Cyndi Mark of the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia law firm Stark & Stark on their new Web site. After a couple of months, the 1000+ page Web site went live last week. And while it looks nice and clean (as all law firm Web sites should :), there is a lot of technology under the hood. The Stark & Stark Web site currently incorporates over 50 different RSS feeds generated by their two LexBlog designed Lawyer Blogs - Stark & Stark's New Jersey Law Blog and Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog. And 50 feeds is just the starting point, we will be adding more feeds for them over time.
Justia's RSS and ATOM feed tools allow Stark & Stark to place their new Blog headlines or posts anywhere in their Web site. For example the content on both the Stark & Stark News headlines and the Business and Corporate Press Mentions pages are produced from Stark & Stark's Web Blogs. Their Blog posts can show up in multiple unique RSS feeds, and the RSS feeds can show up in multiple locations within the Web site.
By incorporating RSS into their Web site, Stark & Stark can now make a Blog post and have that Blog post immediately show up in multiple places on their Web site. Of course we set up the integration of the RSS feeds such that these feeds will be indexed by the search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search, allowing Stark & Stark to easily create and update search engine friendly content.
And we are currently working on adding podCasts to the Stark & Stark site!
Justia Marketing Message: We are producing more Web sites with Blog, RSS and ATOM integration for law firms nationwide. If you would like to learn more about Justia Web services for your law firm, feel free to call us at 888.Justia.1 (888.587.8421) or Contact Us Online. Thanks!
Peace - Tim
:: It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. by Bruce Springsteen
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Justia Law Firm Web Design - Search Engine Optimization for Atlanta, Chicago & San Francisco Law Firm Clients
Hi Friends,
I would like to show you a few more samples of Justia's search engine optimized Web sites, before I move on to my post about Google Map's new satellite pictures, and how they can be used with Amazon's A9 street level photos to track...
Below are two more personal injury law firm clients in large metros (Atlanta and San Francisco) and a new Chicago estate planning lawyer client, that are now all doing very well in Web search results for multiple key words and localities. They do especially well in Google, but are also showing high organic result placements in Yahoo! Search and MSN Search.
Ken Shigley is an Atlanta Georgia personal injury and business litigation attorney. He was one of the first lawyers to have a Web site (back in the mid 1990s), and was already doing well for the key words Atlanta Injury Lawyer (his domain name is http://www.atlantainjurylawyer.com :). But his firm was not doing as well for many other key words and phrases, such as Georgia Injury Lawyer, Atlanta Trucking Lawyer, Georgia Trucking Lawyer, Georgia Trucking Attorney or Atlanta Accident Attorney ... Now he is doing well, in fact at the time of this post he is number 1 on page 1 on Google for each of those search terms. He is also doing well on most of those terms on MSN and Yahoo! (#1 for a some of the terms).
Of course the work that Ken did getting links to his Web site over the course of many years has really helped. We made sure he could take advantage of all those links coming to his Web site, by optimizing its structure and page layout.
Bostwick and Associates is a San Francisco personal injury and medical malpractice law firm . Their Web site was not performing well in the Web search engines. We redid their Web site and now... San Francisco Injury Lawyer (#1 - Page 1 on Google), San Francisco Medical Malpractice Lawyer (#1 - Page 1), California Medical Malpractice Lawyer (#2 - Page 1), Kaiser Malpractice Lawyer (#2 - Page 1) and for their Hawaii office, Honolulu Injury Lawyer (#2 - Page 1) and for their Denver office, Denver Injury lawyer (#7 - Page 1). They do well for many other terms as well (eg Anesthesia Injury they are #1 - Page 1).
And of course Chicago personal injury law firm William G. Pintas and Associates is still doing well (in fact even better that they were before :). You can read about how well they are doing for Chicago Injury Lawyer, Chicago Injury Attorney and more in the previous blog post and how William G. Pintas and Associates moved from Google result page 13 with FindLaw to number 1 - page 1 with Justia.
Well those are the first three personal injury law firm Web sites we have released. Three firms, three large metros - Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco - and three Justia clients doing well in the search engines.
And to show it is not just personal injury firms we are helping, Joel A. Schoenmeyer is a Chicago estate planning lawyer. His site went live last week, and he is doing pretty well for Chicago Estate Lawyer (Google #1 - page 1), Chicago Estate Planning Lawyer (Google #1 - page 1), Chicago Trusts Attorney (Google #3 - page 1), Illinois Estate Lawyer (Google #5 - page 1), Oak Park Lawyer (Google #1 - page 1 - Joel's office is in Oak Park).
In general our client's Google and MSN search rankings have improved relatively quickly after their Web site goes live. Improvement in the Yahoo! results has taken a bit longer, normally a week or two. The primary reason that Yahoo! Search is slower to update is that Yahoo! has the Site Match feed product, where companies pay money to have their Web pages included in the Yahoo! Search Web index, and have them re-indexed on a daily basis. If Yahoo! were to index sites quickly, companies for free it would compete with this paid product. The other search engines, Google, MSN Search and even Ask Jeeves have moved away from paid inclusion (see our take on paid inclusion in the Justia SEO center). That said, the Yahoo! Search results rankings do improve once the Yahoo! index update takes place.
Feel free to visit the Justia SEO center for free information on optimizing your Web site. It is what we read, and we wrote it :) And while talking about free, Justia does offer free Justia template Web sites, although they are not customizable and have less search engine optimization features than our paid offerings (but they are free :)
Or you if you want Justia to build you a custom search engine optimized law firm Web site contact us online or call us at 888.587.8421. We will build and fully SEO your Web new site, at a reasonable price (Justia Web Solutions' Prices), just like the Justia clients mentioned above did a few weeks ago.
Okay enough product marketing... onto Google Maps new satellite pictures feature!
Peace - Tim
:: Comes A Time, Comes A Time by Neil Young
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Overview - Justia's Free Law Firm Web Sites - Free Online Marketing for Law Firms Tool #1
Hi Friends,
I will start this series of posts on free marketing services for law firms with Justia's own free lawyer Web sites service.
Although we have only been up and running for a few months now, this has been the one project we focused on from the get-go. It is the same backend as our pay system, with certain limitations on the number of sections and pages, as well on the number of localities and practice area keywords for search engine optimization. Currently there are only three template designs, but we will be adding additional designs over time.
All Justia's free Law Firm Web sites include:
- Your Own Subdomain (firmname.justia.net)
- Template Web Design
- Search engine optimized pages
- Firm Home Page
- Firm Profile Page
- Firm Location Page
- Practice Area Profiles
- Attorney Profiles
- Web Resources Page
- Legal Articles Section
- W3C Web standards design & layout
- U.S. 508 and W3C's Web Accessibility Guidelines
Setting up a site basically is composed of a few steps.
- Registering into the system.
- Initial firm data entry with the Step by Step Editor
- Additional editing using the Site editor - if desired
- Previewing the site and/or Publishing
You do not need to publish the site immediately. The (unpublished) preview will allow you to see the Web site exactly as it will appear to users. You can add content and data multiple times, until you are ready and the publish the site.
You can update the site with our online editing tools 24/7. You can even change designs whenever you wish (limited to the templates we have in the system).
We save the data in database and publish static xhtml files for faster loading for users and search engine spiders.
Even if you already have a Web site, you can make a free Justia law firm Web site. You can even link to your current Web site.
So with that introduction, let's begin a walk through the application in the following blog posts.
Peace - Tim
:: I See a Darkness, American III - Solitary Man by Johnny Cash
* Justia's free Web site service was originally announced on Sheba's Hug Pug Weblog.
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1. Initial Registration - Justia's Free Law Firm Web Sites
Hi Friends,
Here is how you register into the system. This will seem obvious to most, but here it goes...
You begin on the Justia free Web site home page and click on the "New User >> Sign Up Now!" button.
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2. Initial Data Entry - Justia's Free Law Firm Web Sites
We are now ready to start entering data. You do not need to have everything ready, although it would be helpful to have some home page, firm overview, practice area(s) and attorney information ready for the application.
If you do not have some information, just continue in the application, you can always add it later before you publish your Web site, or you may add or modify your Web site after it is live.
I will show some of the input screens here (the others are very similar).
Enter you password and log into the system.
You will see an overview screen. This screen lays out the steps you be following in the application for the initial data entry.
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3. Additional Editing, Previewing and Publishing the Site - Justia's Free Law Firm Web Sites
We are now ready to preview the Web site....
Click on the "Preview" button
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Welcome to the Justia Legal Marketing Blog
Hi Friends,
Welcome to Justia's Legal SEO Blog. On this blog we will comment on the Internet and legal marketing industries, as well as introduce new Justia features and services.
We would like to thank Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog for helping us set up our own Marketing Blog.
Have a great day!
Peace,
Tim
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