Can Your Law Firm Live Without Microsoft Vista?

General Legal News /

Good article on the new Windows vista system from law.com. Vista is the successor to Windows XP, the PC operating system currently used by over 400 million people. After more than five years of intensive efforts, Windows Vista is finally complete. This new operating system is a major Windows update with lots of new functionality and features. The words Microsoft uses to present its new operating system are "Confident, Clear, Connected." It is a complex product and a big product, 50 million lines of code. It’s the first Windows version to provide developers with a major new programming model in ten years. This article looks at what is new about Vista, pros and cons of upgrading, hardware requirements and how this new operating system will impact the technology path of your office.

Can Your Law Firm Live Without Microsoft Vista? Read More »

Can Subdomains Violate a Trademark?

Legal Internet Marketing /

Article from ClickZ about a lawsuit involving how far trademark infringement can go when applied to a subdomain. A lawsuit that had the potential to define how far trademark infringement can go when applied to subdomains has been settled out of court. The lawsuit was filed by California non-profit religious organization Jews for Jesus against Google in response to a blogger who set up a blog critical of the group at jewsforjesus.blogspot.com. According to attorney and Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman, the case could have set some precedent about third-level subdomains (like the "blog" part of http://blog.clickz.com). While trademark law has been shown to apply to a regular domain name, it has not yet been applied to third-level ones, and it’s not clear that it would apply, he said. It would also help define Google’s responsibility in what subdomains it allows to be registered. The case was settled by Jews for Jesus and the blogger, who transferred the site over to them. Since the issues were never decided by a judge, the world will have to wait for the next lawsuit to find the answers to those questions.

Can Subdomains Violate a Trademark? Read More »

Law Firm Web Sites: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

General Legal News /

Good article about law firm web design by Jim Austin of The Legal Intelligencer. Some interesting highlights… Fewer firms are using "splash" pages — animated graphics or Flash presentations with little to no content. Splash pages increase download times, confuse search engines and can discourage visitors looking for content. Also, firms are moving away from tired legal clip art — columns, scales, briefcases, etc. The decrease in splash pages and big, boring graphics also lets firms make better use of the real estate on their home pages for constantly changing content, to highlight big news and upcoming events, and to tie print advertising campaigns to the firm’s Web site. "Lawyer bios are still the single most important part of a law firm site," Buchdahl said. He said he is particularly impressed with firms like Arent Fox, which has made of point of adding a "life beyond the law" section to lawyer biographies, outlining lawyers’ hobbies, interests and other details of the person behind the legal credentials.

Law Firm Web Sites: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Read More »

How To Setup Custom Domain Name For Blog

Domain Names /

You can create a basic blog using most blogging services like Typepad or Blogger but your then stuck with a generic domain name. If you want to use a customized domain name like www.legalsearchmarketing.com, you must first setup some advanced settings in the blogging software and then also with your web hosting or domain accounts. Here are the steps needed at Typepad to setup a customized domain name with your registar. 1)  Setup your blog with Typepad and then goto the control panel, choose "site access" and then "domain mapping". Then you need to run through the wizard to setup the domain. 2)  Setup your domain name with your registar like Godaddy.com and make sure the domain name is parked. 3)  At Godaddy.com, choose Total DNS Control and create a CNAME record and enter the information from the Godaddy wizard in step #1. 4)  Then once the CNAME record is setup, go back to the typepad blog and the domain mapping section and set the domaim name as "active". That’s it, now instead of having a long domain name with the typepad.com address, you can have a geographic specific keyword rich domain name like Chicago Estate Planning Law. Not all registars will allow you to make advanced DNS changes and sometimes you might have a domain name that is already setup with a web hosting account, in that case you can usually make the same kind of edits with your web host.

How To Setup Custom Domain Name For Blog Read More »

Go Back In Time With The Wayback Machine

General Search Engine News /

Did you ever wonder what your law firms website looked like back in 1999? Well if the firm had a site back then, odds are you can see what it looked like if you visit the very cool Wayback Machine website. All you have to do is enter your firms website address and the wayback machine will then show you a page in chronological order of all the different versions of that web site. So for example the law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal has the first entry as of 5/25/98 and this shows you exactly what the site looked like back then, its funny because they have a logo for the "Year 2000 Computer Problem".  Then on the next version they have a ticker with a countodown to the year 2000. Then you can continue to look at each year and every time the site was updated, they have a * next to the date. Its not perfect because sometimes the page isnt available and sometimes the graphics dont appear, but for the most part it can show you the chronological growth of a firms website and is a good online research tool.

Go Back In Time With The Wayback Machine Read More »

Best Sites for Legal Research

Legal Marketing /

Nolo.com is one of the better legal reseach sites on the net. You can do legal research by topic in one of Nolo’s Law Centers, or research through one of Nolo’s features, which include: Nolo’s Legal Encyclopedia with articles on legal topics in an easy to understand style, Ask Auntie Nolo with questions and answers on a wide variety of legal topics, Nolo’s Law Dictionary, Calculators for number-crunching, and Statutes & Cases ****The Internet Legal Research Group is another good Web site for free legal research, and is divided into several sections, including: Legal Profession, Academia, Legal Research, E-Mail Updates, and Attorney Referral Network. The Legal Research Section is divided into three sections: Law Runner, ILRG Legal Bookstore, and ILRG Web Index. In the Law Runner section under Legal Research, you can go to the Global Index, or the USA Index. The Global Index includes home pages for every nation in the world, including all islands and territories. The USA Index has a listing for each state and then includes some or all of the following links to the following within each state: the state’s home page, judicial branch & case law sources, legislative branch, executive branch, and miscellaneous state government sites. SOURCE: Allbusiness.com

Best Sites for Legal Research Read More »

Virtual Law Libraries Provide Wealth of Material

Legal Internet Marketing /

Good article from Law.com about how the Internets virtual law libraries provide great legal research information. Some of the most extensive and accurate Web sites are virtual law libraries, such as those maintained by Cornell, Georgetown, Emory, Indiana and Washburn universities. In addition, the researcher can feel comfortable with the Internet Law Library, formerly maintained by the House of Representatives and now part of LawGuru; and the Law Library of Congress, just to name two of numerous sites out there. At Georgetown University’s law library, part of its mission as the research arm of the faculty and students of Georgetown Law Center is to "collect and organize information about research resources on the Web." This site, as well, is quick-loading, with extensive federal and state collections, and links to other research sources. Georgetown also provides a thorough tutorial section on researching statutory, case law and secondary sources.

Virtual Law Libraries Provide Wealth of Material Read More »

Google Hits All-Time High in U.S. Search Referrals

Google Search Engine /

Google’s U.S. search referral percentage hit an all-time high, climbing above 52 percent for the first time. According to independent research that was collected and analyzed by WebSideStory, Google’s search referral percentage – the percentage of search traffic it sends to other sites on the web – is more than double that of its nearest competitor and culminates a meteoric, four-year rise. This is no surprise to me because every site that I monitor gets more traffic from Google then anywhere else, always.

Google Hits All-Time High in U.S. Search Referrals Read More »

First Lawsuit for Click Fraud

Pay Per Click Marketing /

Article from the AP about a click fraud lawsuit. This is the first lawsuit Ive heard of being filed against Google and other pay per click engines. A Texarkana gift shop that advertises on the Internet has filed a lawsuit against America Online, Google, Yahoo and other Web-centered companies alleging they knowingly overcharged the shop and other companies for "pay per click" advertising. Lane’s alleges a conspiracy in which the companies worked with one another to create an online environment that harms advertisers. This might be pretty hard to prove but will be interesting to see what happens.

First Lawsuit for Click Fraud Read More »