Tuesday, January 23, 2007 7:53 AM
When people ask me questions about using the web to track down information about law firms and lawyers (and just about everything else, really), I often respond in kind. That is, I ask a question: "how do you use the web to track down information?" The point being that how each of use the web for information-tracking is probably pretty close to the norm for the world at large.
Think about the last time you were looking for information about opposing counsel, the judge assigned to your case, or law firms to which you might apply to work. Did part of your process involve a web search? If you are anything like most of the world, it probably did. And, given that Google and Yahoo combine to capture almost 75% of all web searches, chances are you used one of these two websites.
Let's say you conduct a search for a person or law firm on Google. What were the results? More specifically, what were the results on the first page or two, as the chances of people looking beyond the first couple of pages of "hits" are increasingly slim. Focus on the first page of hits, the ones that you quickly skimmed. What did you find there? And, flipping that question around, what would someone searching for information about you or your law firm, find there?
I bring this topic up, because I am increasingly seeing examples of lawyers who spend significant time striving to present themselves professionally to the world (and potential clients) in every setting...except the web. The web, they ignore. Perhaps because they don't understand how it works. Perhaps because they don't think it matters. The reasons why are many and varied.
And, yet, more and more the web is a central focus of how people search for them. I have done searches for lawyers where the top few "hits" in the search results are unflattering potraits of the lawyer, culled from myriad sources, including Wikipedia (mainly for former public figures now back practicing law), newspaper articles, discussion/forum/social type websites and even weblogs. Perhaps the unflattering potrait was written by someone with an axe to grind. Perhaps it is totally inaccurate. That is almost beside the point; because the fact is, that potrait is the first thing people searching the web for you, will see.
I realize that part of the evolving web is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to control the message. Fortune 500 companies are spending a lot of money on this issue and are still struggling. There is no simple answer; but that is not my point for this post.
My point is simply that too many lawyers are not even trying to engage. Engage by presenting (and updating!) their experience and qualifications in web and search engine friendly streams. Engage, by responding to Wikipedia and similar websites' entries with accurate information and material. Engage, by simply searching for yourself on Google, Yahoo and the like, on occasion, just to see what the world is finding when they look for you.
I certainly hope this is not the case, but you might not like what you find...