Set in Style

California Supreme Court To Decide Interplay Between Severability-of-Interests Clause And Intentional Acts Exclusion

by Patrick McKinney

Can an insurance company deny coverage to a homeowner who did nothing intentional because another insured under the policy committed a crime or intentional tort?

The first line of this article suffers from a problem that plagues us all — putting things out of place.

No doubt, the author didn’t intend because another insured . . . . to modify a homeowner.

I’m sure the author meant this:

Can an insurance company deny coverage to a homeowner because another insured committed a crime or intentional tort?

By inserting another phrase (who did nothing intentional) between the modifier and what it’s meant to modify (homeowner), it seems as if the author is asking about coverage for a homeowner who did nothing intentional because another insured committed a crime.

That’s how we first read it, and that’s because of its syntax.

Now . . . it takes a reader just an instant to realize what modifies what, but the reader shouldn’t have to go through that effort. The writer (or his editor) should make sure the readers’ job is as easy as can be, especially so in the intro.

If the reader gets the sense that an article is going to be a chore to read, he might not go past the intro. And that means the article is ineffective (i.e., you can’t influence people with what they won’t read).

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* This is one in a series of posts on how to gain and maintain a reader’s attention. In other words, how to get a return on your investment in SEO.

If you’re responsible for the content at your firm’s web site, take my advice — do regular maintenance on the site, like it was a car that needed its oil checked every so often.

A web site — a site with lots and lots of content — is the sort of appliance that needs regular maintenance to keep doing it’s thing — attracting potential clients and leaving them with a favorable impression of your firm.

Let’s say a potential client is looking for some information on copyrights, and he discovers this page that looks to have just what he’s looking for.

He clicks this link on the page and gets nothing in return. Ditto when he clicks this link, or this one, or this one.

That’s not good, because this potential client isn’t likely to form a favorable impression of the firm, simply because the firm’s web site isn’t working right.

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Here’s what you should do if you’re responsible for a site with lots of content: establish a regular maintenance schedule that includes a daily, weekly, or monthly review of the site’s error logs.

If you don’t know how to do that, call me.

I can help you prevent potential clients from getting a bad impression of your firm just because everyone’s too busy to keep track of the web site — and that does happen.

I’m doing some research for an article I’m writing when I find this article (“Lawyers, Laptops, and the Border” published by the Texas Bar Journal) republished by a law firm (the firm of the author of the article).

The first page looks great, but there’s something strange about the second page — the type looks fuzzy. The page is an image!

The next two pages look good, but then there’s another page that’s an image, and another. What the heck?

And then it comes to me. The pages that are images have been altered. The ads that appeared on them have been removed. In the process (the wrong one to use), the pages became images.

Does it matter? You bet, and here’s why.

The firm republished the article to help attract prospects (via the magical powers of SEO). There just might be someone out there searching for information on “lawyers facing border searches,” and republishing the article means that that someone (a potential client, perhaps?) might discover the firm and that could make the article very worthwhile.

Ah . . . the wonders of SEO . . . .

But that someone isn’t going to discover the firm because a search for “lawyers facing border searches” won’t reveal the article. The page containing that phrase is an image, rather than text. So far as search engines are concerned, that page is a blank page.

And blank pages (blank to search engines, that is) have no SEO value at all.

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Some law firms don’t know all the ins and outs of publishing. Or maybe they do, but they’re trying to hide something.

Let me show you what I mean. Consider this article (“The fine art of actually collecting legal fees” published by the National Law Journal) republished by a law firm (the firm of the author of the article).

It’s a photocopy of the original!

Now . . . why would a law firm republish a low-res photocopy of an article when it can publish a high-quality reprint of the article?

I can think of two reasons:

1. The firm can’t afford reprint rights and wants to hide the fact that it’s republishing NLJ articles without permission, or
2. The folks in marketing simply don’t know how to use modern office equipment (e.g., computers).

Either way, since it’s a photocopy, the NLJ can’t rely on search engines to see if the article’s been republished by those who haven’t paid for reprint rights.

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Try this. Do a search for The financial reform law signed into law. Put the phrase in quotes (and don’t include the period).

If you use Google to do the search, there are nine results, each beginning with the phrase The financial reform law signed into law by President Barack Obama on July 21. And they all point to the NLJ article.

Fine!

Now search for as money flows into nonprofits. The only result is this article published by the San Francisco Business Times.

Compare that article to this one.

The latter is a photocopy of the original, and that’s why it doesn’t show up in the search results — so far as Google is concerned, it’s a blank page.

In fact, the page is so blank it cannot be discovered by potential clients or the publisher that holds the copyright to the article (American City Business Journals, known to actively search for copyright violations).

The SEO value of a photocopied article is nil.

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I’ll say it again — attorneys who don’t ever bother to look at their firms’ web sites are not practicing the sort of due diligence they claim to use in all they do.

I believe that’s not wise.

You join a new law firm, and a few days later, they arrive: your brand new business cards. You open the box they came in, withdraw one card, and study it. And then you discover an error!

A mild case of excitement becomes a small disappointment.

This is an error that MUST BE FIXED!

You are not going to hand out business cards with your name misspelled. Who would?

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Attorneys should apply the same sort of reasoning to their firms’ web sites — those electronic billboards posted along the information super highway. And every attorney, I say, should examine his bio. An error there could be just as intolerable as an error on a business card.

Note: I am still tracking an attorney whose bio (for the past three years) claims he graduated from Hardvard. What does that say of the attorney?

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There are others who serve attorneys, and one of them should make sure his firm’s web site is working OK.

Here are a few things you (if you’re the one responsible for such things) should do regularly:

Check the site’s activity and error logs at least once a day

How many visitors did the site get yesterday? How does that compare to one year ago? Are the errors significant? Are they brand new, or have they been there forever?

Make sure Google is including the site in search results

Copy a line from something that was recently posted at the site. Ask Google to find it. If it does, fine. If not, you may have a serious problem on your hands. It just might be that someone’s hacked your firm’s web site.

Ouch!

Check the site’s latest content

Did someone just post something he should not have? A former staffer who still has administrative access? An associate who has no idea that you can’t just republish news articles?

Check the site’s oldest content

Are you advertising an event that happened a year ago? Why? Does that make a bit of sense? Oh . . . I see . . . you’re caught up in the SEO craze — publish anything and everything on the assumption that more traffic means better results.

Check other sites for your site’s content

Grab a string from some of your site’s new content and from some of its old content. Do a search on both. Does either string show up on some other web site? Which site, and why? Did you give permission?

There’s much more you can do to make sure your site is working OK, that it’s not been hacked in recent days, that others aren’t appropriating your content without your consent, that Google hasn’t stopped reporting results from your site, etc.

PS: If you don’t have the time or the wherewithal, consider commissioning a Webitor’s Audit of your firm’s site.

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An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
– Benjamin Franklin

“I used to be paranoid.
Now I’m sure they’re following me.”

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When it comes to marketing, a following is something to achieve, not avoid. And when it comes to followers, the more the merrier.

How many followers do you have? How can you tell?

If you’re on LinkedIn (and — if you provide legal services — you should be), it’s the number of Connections you have.

If you’re on Twitter (a curious form of communication that some find effective), it’s (literally) the number of followers you have.

If you have a blog or a web site, it’s not followers (usually) so much as visitors.

How can you tell how many visitors your blog or your law firm’s web site get each day?

That depends. Whoever maintains your blog or your web site can look at the access logs to find the number of visitors, as well as what they looked at and how long they visited. (You can even use the logs to see who visited your site.)

There are also a number of services that anyone (including competitors) can use to get an idea of how many visitors you get.

One is Site Analytics from Compete, Inc.

It reports the number of visitors to most all sites but for those that get very, very little traffic.

It also lets you compare traffic at a number of sites (e.g., yours and several others).

And it lets you do something more important than finding how many visitors your site is getting. It lets you see if your site got more visitors last month than last June. That is, it lets you see if you’re more popular now than then.

That’s good to know.

At the beginning of 2007, Larry Wescott, an attorney with a strong IT background, started the Electronic Discovery Blog as a forum to discuss, in part, court rulings related to electronic discovery. Last week, he shut it down after an attorney from LexisNexis threatened legal action to stop Wescott from violating its copyrights.

Before he started the blog, Wescott asked LexisNexis for permission to post cases concerning electronic discovery. He was told he could post 10 cases in one year.

After that first year, Wescott continued posting cases: 10 a year. It’s not that he meant to take more than LexisNexis was willing to give — the time limit slipped his mind. And it must have slipped the mind of the good folks at LexisNexis because — until last week — he’d heard nothing from them at all.

All of a sudden, Wescott is contacted by attorney for LexisNexis telling him to knock it off (in very stern fashion). Wescott looks back at the original authorization and sees that he has exceeded his authority to post cases published by LexisNexis. So, he pulls the plug.

That’s especially unfortunate, as the award-winning blog was very popular with those interested in legal developments in electronic discovery.

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This got me to thinking (once again) about the way some law firms use copyrighted material (especially news stories) without permission.

Take a minute to compare this post to this post to this post. Notice any similarities? That’s right — they’re all based on this story.

And — via their copyright notices — they claim they own the rights to the story. That’s a far cry from fair use, is it not?

This happens a lot, and not just with small firms. Some great big law firms do it too — even firms that specialize in IP and advertise their enthusiasm for finding and prosecuting those who violate their clients’ copyrights do it!

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I suppose it just might bite one of them one day, and I suppose it’s very likely to be the firm of Hayman & Kirshenbaum, a firm that republishes entire news articles (some owned by such familiar names as USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and Knight Ridder) verbatim.

When that happens, lawyers will be scrambling to review their web sites (which they never, ever do, I can assure you). They’ll write volumes of alerts and such advising clients that using what belongs to others for promotional purposes requires permission. Otherwise, it’s illegal.

Who knows? One of these days, the AP might decide it’s had enough and set about making an example of someone. And what could make a better example than some great big law firm with a large IP practice?

This is part of a series titled Type & Image.

It’s about how you can set type on an image so it looks good and is very legible.

The whole discussion began with this comp I found at a law firm’s web site:

Since the firm’s site uses variable text on a variable image, we set a lofty goal for this series: how to set very legible captions to foreign-language films.

If you want to know how we came up with that as our goal, read the series. It starts right here.

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Let’s start out with this familiar image:

In an earlier post, we made the distinction between logos (images) and logotypes (stylized text).

In this and subsequent posts, we focus on the latter.

If you want your firm’s logotype to look good to everyone — including those with iPhones and Blackberries and who-knows-what’s-next — then make sure it’s produced correctly.

The most recognizable logotype of all bears the name of Coke’s signature soft drink:

Most logotypes are not so highly stylized as Coke’s. Consider Google’s logotype:

Note: Notice the trademark symbol at the end of Google’s logotype. It’s small, but legible.

Like Google’s, most law firm logotypes are only mildly stylized. And some are registered trademarks.

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Now, the goal of this series is to help you set your firm’s logotype so it always looks its best, on line and in print. Before we get into the details, let’s take a closer look at on-line  type.

Go to Google’s home page and zoom in on the logotype.

To Zoom:

Macintosh — Command + (plus sign) to zoom in; Command – (minus sign) to zoom out
PC – press and hold the Control key, rather than the Command key

The logotype looks sharp at one size. If you zoom in or out, it gets fuzzy.

Zoom way in, and it looks like so:

Note: When we zoom in, the trademark symbol becomes less legible.

The logotype for Coca Cola has a similar appearance.

But why? Why don’t these logotypes act like regular type? Why do they look fuzzy close up?

It’s because they’re stored as images (like logos), rather than text.

And why are they stored as images rather than text?

Well . . . we’ll get into that in our next episode of Setting Logotype.

Test Your Logotype

Display your firm’s home page. The firm’s logotype is displayed at the top of it, right?

Look at the logotype as you zoom in and out of the page.

Zoom in and out of a PDF file with your firm’s logotype.

Does it look good at all sizes, just a few, or none at all?

If it looks anything like the Coke or Google logotypes, then it’s probably OK.

But, if it looks anything like the following when viewed at normal size, it’s not OK.

Note: Notice the registered trademark symbol at the end of Venable’s logotype. It’s not legible.

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In upcoming episodes, we’ll review the steps you can take to make sure your firm’s logotype always looks sharp.

Some things can be measured, and some can’t. When it comes to law firm marketing activities and their costs, ROI can be measured in some cases, but not in others.

At least, that’s my opinion of it.

Years ago, when I was writing direct mail pieces, I measured response, and it made sense: there was a direct correlation between the quantity and the quality of what I mailed, and how many responded.

But now I’m pitching services, and there’s no practical way to measure the value I add in most of what I do. And that makes my job (of selling services, not of providing them) more difficult.

I can’t tell a firm that if I get $15,000 to revise the copy for the firm’s web site, then the firm can expect $150,000 in new business in a year. There is a correlation (at least, that’s what I believe) between that copy and the firm’s business, and it’s direct, but its coefficient is indeterminate. That, plus it’s just part of a much larger effort.

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Still, we may as well take certain measurements of progress, and the very end of the year is as good a time as any.

Here’s what you do: review the activity logs for your firm’s web site. Does the site get more traffic now than last year? Less?

Review the site’s News or Events section. Does the next upcoming event occur three months ago? Is the latest news nearly a year old?

Then look at the site’s error logs. Has the site been generating hundreds of errors a day, or just a few?

And ask Whois for the site’s stats:

1. Enter the URL for the site in the Whois Lookup field, and hit return.
2. When the Whois Record appears, click the Site Profile tab.
3. Scroll down to see the site’s Alexa rank.
4. Note the number of visitors the site gets per month.
5. Compare that to some other sites, like the sites of other law firms.
6. Click the Complete Rank number (#488,216 in the image below), and look at the site’s rank over time.

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Now, if you’re selling legal services and you want prospective clients to notice, then the more popular your site is, the better off you are.

And the better the site (including the copy, the graphics, the usability, and so many other aspects of it), the more popular it will become.

I can’t put a number on it, but I’m sure there’s a correlation.

Let’s say you’re a law firm. You have a web site and it has lots of links — hundreds of them — to things your firm has published: client alerts, newsletters, bylined articles, etc.

A key reason you publish these things (and provide links to them) is so people (esp. prospective clients) can learn about your attorneys: they can read their bios and what they’ve written.

Now, it’s time for a change. Either you’re redesigning the site, or revising it, or the IT department is changing things in such a way that the links to all these publications is going to change.

There’s a problem: a sizeable one at that. You see, other web sites contain some of those links too, which is good for you: it raises your visibility.

Suppose the National Law Journal (or the Wall Street Journal) mentions (and links to) something you published. Good.

Until the change comes along, that is. Then all the links to everything you’ve published stop working. When a reader clicks a link to your article (mentioned in either Journal, or any link to any of  your articles mentioned anywhere), a page-not-found error is displayed.

So far as readers can tell, the article no longer exists. And that does you no good at all.

This happens at large law firms all the time. All the links to all the firm’s publications get changed for a web site redesign or some IT project, and no one at the firm does a thing about it. The authors of those articles don’t even notice it.

What a waste.