May Day: LOMAP Offers Free ‘Super’ Marketing Conference

Tired of marketing conferences that cost money and aren’t super? Super lame, I know.

We hear you now, though. That’s why LOMAP, in partnership with the Massachusetts Bar Association, is holding its own free Super Marketing Conference, on May 26. The Conference will feature a ½ day of CLE programming and following networking reception. Did I mention that the programming was free? Okay. Did I mention that the reception was also free? I did not, not explicitly. Well, it is. Everything is free. This is how we roll, along with General John Stark.

The CLE programming will cover a diverse range of legal marketing subjects, from online reputation management, to referral marketing, to market research, to social media marketing, to advertising ethics, to managing media relationships, to something called “the engine of you”, which is probably a little like the little engine that could . . . market a law practice. Featured national speakers Allison Shields and Erik Mazzone, respectively, will kick-off and wind-up the programming. Featured vendor presenters Conrad Saam of Avvo and Keith Schneider of NetDocuments will appear back-to-back in the middle of the conference, and will be sandwiched by TED-style talks from popular local presenters Bob Ambrogi, Alan Klevan, Gabriel Cheong, Katherine Kenney, Dorie Clark and Tomeeka Farrington.

That’s one hell of a lineup, right? The 1927 Yankees of legal marketing, as it were. (Actually, scratch that: I hate the Yankees. Let's call it the 1946 Red Sox of legal marketing. That's better. I was feeling rather unclean before.) Want to see what they’re going to be covering? Check out the program agenda, here.

RSVP for the conference here.

In addition to the CLE programming, you’ll also be getting that free networking reception, to boot, which’ll provide a unique opportunity for you to engage presenters, attendees and colleagues all interested in discovering new and effective ways to market law firms.

A special thank you is due to the program sponsors who have made this conference possible: Avvo, NetDocuments, Clio, Concord Law School and the Massachusetts Bar Association.

Local Yoke III: Be Present in Your Community

This week's Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers E-Journal Law Practice Management Section Featured Practice Tip comes from LOMAP. This week's Tip, the last in a three-part series on local marketing tactics, offers some thoughts on marketing your practice where you live and/or work.

Read the Tip here.

MoreSquare: More about Foursquare

Since Jared’s most recent Tip of the Week undoubtedly piqued your interest in Foursquare, we are, of course, providing an extended look at its potential utility for attorneys.

Foursquare is a two-way street, of course: There are the businesses that claim their locations and manage the corresponding accounts; and there are those who check into locations. That makes two distinct decisions for an attorney operating his/her firm:

(1) Do you want to utilize Foursquare’s marketing potential as a business?

(2) Do you want to use it as an individual by checking into places?

Marketing via Foursquare as a Business.

There are a couple obvious ways and some potentially more creative ways to market your firm using Foursquare.

Jared identified the most basic form of Foursquare marketing in his tip: A Foursquare listing, particularly along with shouts and reviews, increases SEO value. This seems like a worthwhile endeavor, since it necessitates doing nothing more than setting up your Foursquare account and perhaps a link soliciting Foursquare reviews on your website and in a few tweets. You are on Twitter, right? Jared and Rodney are.

Foursquare marketing very commonly involves offering discounted services or products. The most basic, and probably most sensible, way for an attorney to engage in this realm would be to offer a discount in order to encourage a single check-in, shout, or a review. While not a grand-scale marketing campaign, such an effort would publicize your firm name among your clients’ networks and drive your SEO value a bit.

Campaigns that are a bit more aggressive, yet less tailored for use by law firms, capitalize on consumers’ impulse- and convenience-driven decision-making, which is made possible by geotagging. Geotagging facilitates the following example of this type of Foursquare marketing: A user checks into Whole Foods at Charles River Plaza and a coupon for BoYo pops up. I don’t think I’d ever be persuaded to stop into a law firm just because I’m nearby and/or because there’s a little deal. But, then again, say a person checks into a funeral home, and your firm, specializing in wills and estates is a block away… A little dark, but, there may be a point there.

A third variety of Foursquare marketing campaign seizes on customer loyalty by rewarding repeat check-ins. Essentially a frequent-buyer card gone digital, this strategy is ill-suited for businesses used only on necessary occasions. If you can think of a way to make this useful for a law firm, we most certainly encourage non-spam comments here at the Mass LOMAP Blog. Have at it.

Now, I will quickly throw out some more creative ways a law firm might make use of Foursquare’s marketing potential (none of which I thought of); consider offering discounts, free stuff, etc.:

• Making a presentation? Holding a seminar? Organize a swarm.
• At a conference or convention? Make a venue for your booth.
• Try to get in on Foursquare’s broadcasting partnerships with third parties.

You can’t look at all the above without seriously wondering whether the time it takes to create such campaigns could possibly be worth it, particularly as an attorney, taking time away from doing work for clients. So, I’d caution in favor of a little cost-benefit analysis before investing the time into any of the above efforts. You were going to do that anyway. I know.

And, before determining if anything is worth your time, you’d hopefully think about potential ethical issues. There is little literature guiding the attorney’s use of Foursquare; but, I’ll include what we’ve managed to find closer to the end of this post.

And one last thing here, 3 Geeks makes a good point in suggesting that a law firm should be concerned about other firms seeing who their patrons are. I don’t think Foursquare visitors are so different from Facebook fans or Twitter followers that you’d want to sacrifice its marketing potential altogether; but, that’s your call.

Marketing via Foursquare as an Individual.

The other side of Foursquare is that of the individual who checks into locations. An attorney, perhaps particularly one in a solo or small practice, might consider their check-ins to be something of a potential marketing tool. Ridiculous? Maybe. But, maybe the “Hey, everybody! Come see how hard I work!!” strategy would pay off. Or, it might annoy people. Roll the dice, if you please.

These check-ins take fractions of seconds, so I look at this as less of a time-focused cost-benefit analysis, and more of a risk-focused cost-benefit analysis. A fine transition into the ethical implications of Foursquare for attorneys.


A post on the Lawyerist Blog does a good job highlighting some potential sources of ethical issues of social media, generally, and it is rather on-point for Foursquare, specifically. The Bottom Line Law Group illustrates one of those issues in its “Ethics Tips for Lawyers Using Social Media”. And although Foursquare check-ins are now encrypted by default, there is still a privacy loophole that could definitely threaten an attorney’s maintenance of client confidentiality. It might be wise to think through a variety of hypothetical situations, and create a Foursquare-specific social media policy.

And, there's this “Lawyer’s Guide to Foursquare & Yelp” out of Florida that says nothing of ethics except that “bar advertising regulations presumably apply” to the description a firm writes for itself. Okay, there's that.

Finally, it never hurts for a business to consider showing support for a cause, and there’s a way to do that using Foursquare, too.

Foursquare has quite the range of marketing possibilities. As with any decision, a firm should let its unique situation dictate what extent of Foursquare's potential it should engage. And again, as with any use of social media, a firm should approach its use with cautious regard to ethical considerations.

Local Yoke II: Not FourSquares

Last week's Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyers E-Journal Law Practice Management Section Featured Practice Tip comes from LOMAP. Last week's Tip, the second in a three-part series on local marketing tactics, offers some suggestions for attorneys’ minimal involvement with marketing on FourSquare.

Read the Tip here.

LOMAP Introduces LinkedIn Page

In our continued quest to be on social media, in what has become an undisclosed plot for world domination . . . (. . . Damnit! Forget you read that last part, okay.)

We are introducing our LinkedIn page. We feel as though it would be hypocritical to state often, and often at great length, our belief in the usefulness of social media for marketing your law practice, and then not to be on social media ourselves. First, it was Facebook. Now, it’s LinkedIn. Maybe next, it’s Zoosk. I don’t know. I don’t know what the LOMAP program does on the weekends. Not my business.

Now, while I can’t promise you that our LinkedIn business page will be as exciting as our Facebook business page (Wait, You missed the Harlem Globetrotters promotion? Actually, that didn’t go so well.), I can promise you that it will be less exciting . . .

. . . At least for now, at least until LinkedIn improves the functionality of its business pages. But, for now, you will discover LinkedIn as another place to learn more about our services, and to access our blog posts and Twitter feed. Of course, we’ll add bells and whistles, as LinkedIn allows.

Now, if you know us and like us, or even if you have heard of us for the first time through this blog post, and think that we sound cool, won’t you follow us on LinkedIn? And, if you’ve accessed our services to your advantage (or know someone who has), and if you’re comfortable doing so, it would be downright neighborly of you to recommend one or all of our Law Firm Consultations, Marketing Group and/or Start-Up Meetings.

Thank you.

. . .

Liner Notes

For the past few years I’ve written almost exclusively about elderly gentlemen and ladies whose bands mostly don’t even exist anymore. When I’m not doing that, I’m writing about country music. And, nobody in New England likes country music. (Haters.)

In any event, I should be hipper than this, right? Maybe it’s because I’m only a part-timer dreamer . . .

Little did I know that I was successfully connected to some more modern musical talent! Kate Kenney, of Legal Talk Network, who does a fantastic job producing my award-winning* internet radio show, is also a bona fide rock star! Who knew? Well, not me . . . for several months, at least.

But, it turns out that Kate is the lead singer of The Full-Time Dreamers, a very polished rock band (yes, they’re quite good) with a driving sound that listens to me kind of like The Pretenders standing with a spatula over a mixing bowl full of Blondie and Pearl Jam, with sprinklings of No Doubt, Jefferson Airplane and Garbage. (The band, not actual garbage. . . or, actual sprinkles, for that matter.) The Full-Time Dreamers are a quartet featuring pounding rhythm, crunching guitars and (of course) powerhouse vocals. You can check out a number of their tunes at their MySpace page. You can preview and purchase The Full-Time Dreamers’ debut album, “Too Loud At Any Volume”, here. If you want to see The Full-Time Dreamers in action, check out their video for “Tomorrow”, today.

*Show has not actually won any awards. Ed.

Guest Post: Happy One-Year Anniversary to the Massachusetts Data Security Regulations

March 1, 2011 marked the one-year anniversary of the effective date for the Massachusetts data privacy laws and regulations. We’ve offered consistent coverage of issues surrounding Massachusetts data privacy at the LOMAP Blog--at this root post, and linking back therefrom. In marking (somewhat belatedly) the one-year anniversary of the effective date of the data privacy laws and regulations, we are very lucky to have been given permission to reproduce here the following post. The below take on the one-year anniversary of the effective date of the laws and regulations is brought to us by C. Max Perlman of Hirsch Roberts Weinstein LLP. Max is a member of HRW’s Data Security Team, and is a frequent author and speaker on issues related to Massachusetts data privacy. Max has previously published to HRW's BLEG Blog on the topic of the FTC’s Red Flag Rules.

. . .

Earlier this month, the business community celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Massachusetts Data Security Regulations. And, by “celebrated,” I mean lamented, cursed, bemoaned and otherwise maligned. After all, the Massachusetts regulations, which are the strictest, most comprehensive set of regulations of their kind in the nation, have caused a number of businesses to spend massive amounts of time and money in their attempts to comply. Many other businesses, though, have disregarded the burdensome regulations, and now live under the cloud of fear of the potential consequences.

So, while the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the regulations might not be one to actually celebrate, it does serves as an excuse to renew a discussion of the law’s basic requirements, and of the stakes of non-compliance. Amidst considerable uncertainty regarding precisely how the regulations will be enforced, here are three maxims that HRW’s data security team has discovered:

(1) A company/law firm that has failed to adopt a WISP is taking a serious risk. The state Attorney General’s Office can and will commence enforcement actions against companies that fail to adopt a Written Information Security Program (WISP), seeking fines, multiple damages and fees. A year ago, it seemed that enforcement actions would stem mostly from data security breaches. It now appears that the AG’s office will pursue tips from dime-dropping employees. For this reason, any company that has not adopted a WISP is at the mercy of each and every one of its employees; the pains and penalties of an enforcement action are only one disgruntled phone call away.

(2) Going through the motions is not adequate. There are sample WISPs available generally on the Internet; but, the ones that I have seen are inadequate for all but the most rudimentary of businesses. It is unwise, then, for a company to use one of these samples without actually assessing its own specific needs for protection of personal information. The AG’s office might not give any credit to a company that does little more than add its name to a boilerplate template without serious consideration as to whether it fits. If you are getting your WISP the same way a school boy gets his first suit--off the rack--you could have a problem.

(3) Failing to follow a WISP can get a company in trouble, too. These regulations do not work like a Ronco rotisserie oven; they don’t allow businesses to ‘set-it-and-forget-it’. A company cannot simply adopt a WISP, file it away and hope for the best. Companies are required to make sure that they adhere to their WISPs; and, the AG’s office will pursue a company that has a data security breach due to a failure to follow its WISP. Further, the regulations require an annual review of the WISP, as well as disciplinary measures for employees who fail to follow the WISP.

In the year since the regulations went into effect, I have been encouraged by the great strides that the business community has taken in protecting personal information, and in becoming aware of the perils of identity theft. There will, however, be fallout for companies that ignore the requirements of the regulations, or that are too casual about their efforts to comply.