What Are The Best Ways To Market My Law Firm Online?

What Are The Best Ways To Market My Law Firm Online?

Online marketing is an essential part of running any modern law firm. It allows lawyers to get their name out there, to let people know that they exist, and to gain more clients. When people are looking for lawyers, the first place they go is online. This means you must build a strong, targeted online presence that will help you get more clients.

However, many law firms don’t know how to market themselves online. With this in mind, we will look at some of the best online marketing methods you should use. These include:

SEO

SEO, or search engine optimisation, makes your website appear highly in search engine rankings. When someone searches for something like ‘criminal lawyers in ‘your location’’, you want your firm to come up first. Many people will head to your website, contact you, and employ you for their law needs if it does.

There are many aspects to SEO. These include creating high-quality content for your website, ensuring that your site follows all of the search engine rules, and ensuring that many other high-authority sites link back to yours. Although this may sound difficult, it isn’t that hard – especially with the help of a professional SEO agency. However, it takes time to reach the top of search engine rankings.

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Online Reviews and Defamation

Online Reviews and Defamation

Oops… Watch What You Say – The Dangers of Online Posts
We live in a mobile society dominated by the Internet and all that it provides.  One particular hotspot is celebrity posts in various forms of social medial.  Typos, nipples, even misspelling can draw the ire or ridicule of millions and put people in the position of needing good commercial lawyers.

Debra Messing recently tweeted about gun violence while wearing a t-shirt with text that read: “Under the Gun.”  Kim Kardashian, a world renowned fashion icon misspelled the name of one of the most famous designers in the world – Giorgio Armani.

Not only do celebrities embarrass themselves writing about their lives, they also tend to flub when it comes to promoting products.  Scott Disick recently pasted manufacturer instructions for a protein shake into an Instagram post and Rito Ora promised to “drop” her new single if her tweet got 100,000 retweets (she deleted the post after it only got 2,000).

According to lawyers, even if celebrities are making mistakes online, far more troublesome activity is happening in the world of ecommerce.  We live in an era where buying decisions are dominated by what we find on the Internet.  A few telling statistics paint a vivid picture:  Half of adults under 50 routinely check online reviews before buying new items and a full 38% of adults consider online customer comments second only to price in importance.

There are other factors contribute to making a company’s web presence extremely important.  Websites remain in existence forever.  How many of us still have a Myspace account from years ago we haven’t deleted?  The truth is, once someone posts a negative review it can persist for years, if not decades.

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The Top Five Cybercrime Threats in 2018

The Top Five Cybercrime Threats in 2018

Businesses no longer have only their brick and mortar security to worry about.  Their presence online as well as local and cloud-based data are all at risk.  The news seems constantly filled with stories of data breaches, ransomware crimes, and hacking that has brought some companies to their knees.  It’s a criminal lawyers dream.

It’s no wonder that cyber-crime is at the top of the list of concerns most corporate boards are facing.  Even well prepared sophisticated companies have found chinks in their armor.  Below are five of the cyber-crime threats to face companies in 2018.

The Hoard Is Growing

The sheer quantity of cyber-criminals will continue to grow in 2018.  Why?  Because the technology enabling these people is becoming easier to learn, access, and deploy.  In years gone by you’ve needed to be a computer genius to even contemplate running a hack, but today that landscape has changed forever.  Today limited technical knowledge is required to launch sophisticated viruses.  And the press isn’t helping.  Every time a cyber-crime is publicized hackers take notice and redouble their efforts.  For example, many news outlets reported that ransomware was a billion dollar industry in 2017; how could any reasonable hacker resist such a juicy honey pot?

Are You An Unknowing Cryptominer?

According to criminal lawyers, Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin require vast amounts of computer power to “mine”, and with limited resources, hackers have become proficient at hijacking individual and company computers to do their mining for them.  Countless corporations have fallen victim unknowingly to this form of “cryptojacking”.  Unbeknownst to them, their internal computer networks have been working for another master, the cryptojacker who’s taken over and using their machines to mine for gold.

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3 Advantages of a Buy Sell Agreement

3 Advantages of a Buy Sell Agreement

There are many agreements needed in business. In fact, commercial lawyers would tell you that almost every contract is an agreement of some kind and all are important parts of running a business. But when it comes to the Buy Sell Agreement, some businesses don’t have one and this can really complicate matters. What is a Buy Sell Agreement?

It is a document that details what will happen should one partner suddenly die or be incapacitated. Other names for the document are Business Succession Agreement and Business Will. Having it in place will enable the business to continue running smoothly when and if a partner dies or has a stroke so that they are mentally incapacitated.

Having this document means the partners have agreed to buy out the share of the person who has died or become incapacitated. The funds that are paid will go to the family of the deceased and can really help them in their time of need. However, they may go to another person that is specified in the document.

It is important to have advice from a legal professional in drawing up such a document. What should it contain?

  • The value of the agreement – what should be paid? This can be defined through an independent valuation, a specified formula or an agreed value that is revised periodically.
  • The trigger for the payment – usually death or incapacity of some kind.
  • In what way the payment will be funded – there are many possibilities.
  • Tax consequences.

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A Grey Area in Property Contracts

A Grey Area in Property Contracts

When buying a property, few people fully understand every aspect of the contract, partly due to the terms that are used in it. This is why it is essential to have your property lawyers go over the contract and explain everything to you. Even then, they may miss something thinking it is obvious because they are used to it, whereas to the first home buyer especially, it may not be the least bit obvious.

One term that may seem obvious when given due consideration is often missed in amongst all the other terms and that is buying “as inspected’.  If the term is hidden amongst a lot of other jargon it can be less than clear – or people just don’t think about it. Even if they realise it means that the property they purchase will be in the same condition it was when they inspected it, they may not realise what the ramifications are.

In actual terms, it means that if something was broken or not working properly when you looked at the home, you can’t expect it to be fixed when you sign on the dotted line – or even before then. If the floors were in a dirty state or the flyscreen was torn when you inspected the property and agreed to buy it, the seller has no legal obligation to clean or fix it.

According to Clause 6. 1 (b) 2 of the General Conditions on the property contract all the seller is required to do is move their possessions, vehicles, chattels and rubbish from the property, leaving the property ‘chattels’ in place.

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7 Tips on Consumer Law for New Business Owners

7 Tips on Consumer Law for New Business Owners

The advent of the Internet has allowed many people to start up business buying and selling. These people are often not trained in business, so don’t know all the laws that govern them. Without commercial lawyers to help them they can easily break a consumer law without realising it, but ignorance is not considered an excuse, so they may still find themselves in trouble.

Since many of those Internet businesses are to do with selling goods of some kind to the public, here are 7 tips on Australian Consumer Law (ACL) that you may not have known, if you are a new start-up business.

  • If a customer finds a small defect or flaw in the good they purchased, they can ask for a refund, repair or replacement. Most will want the former, but in fact, your customer must accept the free repair if it is offered to them. It is only if the flaw makes the product dangerous or unsafe, if the product is different from what was advertised or displayed, if the product can’t be fixed easily or if the person would not have bought the product had they known about it, that your business must replace or refund it.

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