By now, every lawyer has a website.
Every website has photographs.
Every website tells how great you and your firm are.
But how do you really distinguish yourself from all the lawyers who compete with you on a daily basis?

In most jurisdictions, including New York, you are not permitted to badmouth any other attorney. Nor can you compare yourself to another law firm or attorney by name. How then can a prospective consumer make an educated decision about which attorney is right for them if attorneys cannot objectively compare themselves to other similar attorneys?

If you haven’t guessed by now, the answer is with “Video.”
Video allows you to be yourself. It allows the viewer to see you, hear you, and begin to trust you before they even pick up the phone to call you. So how will that distinguish you from everybody else? Simple. Just be yourself.

In the “old days” a lawyer would distinguish themselves in the yellow pages by offering the following:
“Free parking,” “Easy credit card payments,” “Free consultation,” “No fee if we don’t win,” “We’ve recovered millions.”

After a while, all yellow pages ads said the same exact thing. From a consumer’s standpoint, it would be difficult, if not impossible to distinguish one lawyer from another simply from reading those ads.

Video allows you to explain.
Video allows you to ask questions and to answer them.
Video allows you to educate your potential clients. No other form of media allows you to do this as cost efficiently as video.

Conclusion:

If you truly want to distinguish yourself, get onto video today.

About Gerry

Gerry is a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer in practice for over 20 years. He has produced and created over 170 educational and informative videos to help consumers understand how lawsuits work in the State of New York. Gerry created the Lawyers’ Video Studio to help laywers get onto video. If you’d like help getting onto video, give me a call. I can help you. If you simply need guidance and help with creating your own video, I’m available for consultation on an hourly basis. If you want an all in one turnkey system, I can do that too. What are you waiting for? Take that first step to star in your own video today. It will be the best return on investment you can make. I guarantee it.

To get onto video, call me at 516-487-8207 or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com- I welcome your call.

Just published another article at Law.com about, what else?
Video Marketing Tips for Lawyers.

Read the article to find out why you should never tell viewers how difficult your area of law is. It’s an eye-opener.

Click here to read the full article in the Technology section of Law.com. I promise you’ll learn something new.

For those of you following my helpful tips for creating video for lawyers, you should definitely read the Legal Technology section of Law.com for a series of articles I’ve written. These articles will help you create and produce better informative and educational videos.

Here’s the beginning of the article:
“What you should never include in your video that 99 percent of attorneys include: YOURSELF!

Let me repeat that. Do not talk about yourself. Here’s why.”

Read the full article about video tips for lawyers here, to learn more.

I saw a great marketing tool today in action while on vacation in Florida.

My six-year-old son jumped into the pool and a moment later, came up for air excitedly telling me that “Daddy, there’s a scuba diver in the pool!” He eagerly went into the deep end and watched the scuba diver in 11 feet of water. A few minutes later of treading water, my son popped his head up above water and exlaimed “Dad, the diver is playing with me!”

A few minutes later the scuba diver came over to the shallow end of the pool, and asked my son if he wanted to see something cool. Of course, you know the answer. What did he show him? Out of all the scuba gear he had by the side of the pool, he reached in and pulled out a pair of swim fins- just the right size for my son. The smile on my son’s face was a mile wide. Then he reached into another bag of goodies and pulled out a face mask. You could see my son waiting with anticipation while the diver put a kid-sized mask over his head and adjust it properly. After he got used to the face mask, my son asked where the oxygen tank was and if he could use it.

When the scuba guy pulled out the air regulator which was attached to his oxygen tank, you could see the excitement in my son’s face and body language. He listened carefully as the diver explained how to put it into his mouth and breathe normally. After 30 seconds with the air regulator in his mouth, and his head above water, without being told to go under water, my son jumped the gun and began following the scuba diver’s feet. It was fascinating to watch.

I didn’t realize what was going on from a marketing standpoint until about 15 minutes later, when the scuba guy told me about how he’ll be here all week giving scuba lessons each morning. When I returned to the pool a few hours later, the scuba guy was still in the pool giving demonstrations to eager young kids. Once they were hooked, the scuba diver knew that the happy parents would eagerly fork over money for scuba lessons for the entire week. He knew it so well that he told me that each of these kids would be talking about scuba diving for the entire week. He wasn’t wrong.

My son hasn’t stopped talking about his exciting morning in the pool. (Luckily for me, he’s a little too young for lessons, but the scuba guy happily told my son that he’d work with him each morning and let him scuba dive with him).

This scuba diver knew that by giving away his services for free for a few hours in the pool today, he would be guaranteed to get paid for his scuba lessons for an entire week- all without any advertising at all. What an amazing concept.

As an attorney, you might want to consider this approach if you offer clients services for a fixed cost, like a simple will. How could you do it? Offer a simple will for free, and then explain why they’ll need a trust and an estate plan that you can charge for. Give it away for free, and your clients will eagerly pay you for your other services.

I saw a great marketing tool today in action while on vacation in Florida.

My six-year-old son jumped into the pool and a moment later, came up for air excitedly telling me that “Daddy, there’s a scuba diver in the pool!” He eagerly went into the deep end and watched the scuba diver in 11 feet of water. A few minutes later of treading water, my son popped his head up above water and exlaimed “Dad, the diver is playing with me!”

A few minutes later the scuba diver came over to the shallow end of the pool, and asked my son if he wanted to see something cool. Of course, you know the answer. What did he show him? Out of all the scuba gear he had by the side of the pool, he reached in and pulled out a pair of swim fins- just the right size for my son. The smile on my son’s face was a mile wide. Then he reached into another bag of goodies and pulled out a face mask. You could see my son waiting with anticipation while the diver put a kid-sized mask over his head and adjust it properly. After he got used to the face mask, my son asked where the oxygen tank was and if he could use it.

When the scuba guy pulled out the air regulator which was attached to his oxygen tank, you could see the excitement in my son’s face and body language. He listened carefully as the diver explained how to put it into his mouth and breathe normally. After 30 seconds with the air regulator in his mouth, and his head above water, without being told to go under water, my son jumped the gun and began following the scuba diver’s feet. It was fascinating to watch.

I didn’t realize what was going on from a marketing standpoint until about 15 minutes later, when the scuba guy told me about how he’ll be here all week giving scuba lessons each morning. When I returned to the pool a few hours later, the scuba guy was still in the pool giving demonstrations to eager young kids. Once they were hooked, the scuba diver knew that the happy parents would eagerly fork over money for scuba lessons for the entire week. He knew it so well that he told me that each of these kids would be talking about scuba diving for the entire week. He wasn’t wrong.

My son hasn’t stopped talking about his exciting morning in the pool. (Luckily for me, he’s a little too young for lessons, but the scuba guy happily told my son that he’d work with him each morning and let him scuba dive with him).

This scuba diver knew that by giving away his services for free for a few hours in the pool today, he would be guaranteed to get paid for his scuba lessons for an entire week- all without any advertising at all. What an amazing concept.

As an attorney, you might want to consider this approach if you offer clients services for a fixed cost, like a simple will. How could you do it? Offer a simple will for free, and then explain why they’ll need a trust and an estate plan that you can charge for. Give it away for free, and your clients will eagerly pay you for your other services.

By Gerry Oginski, Esq.

SOME LAWYERS ARE WORRIED AND SCARED TO GIVE AWAY FREE INFORMATION

I have spoken to lawyers who feel that they need to hold onto their legal secrets and only want to release those precious secrets if the potential client comes into their office and pays them a consultation fee. A trusts and estates attorney told me that it is her policy not to talk to anyone on the phone about their problems. Instead, she makes these potential clients make an appointment to discuss their legal issues. This way, she makes sure they pay a hefty consultation fee before giving any information away. “I don’t give free consultations like you do in accident and injury cases,” she told me. Those same lawyers do not want to give any information away for free for fear that a potential client may rely on the information to their detriment, or for fear of losing a consultation fee.

That way of thinking is so contrary to the internet’s purpose. It’s penny wise and pound foolish.

Think about this:
As a lawyer, your job is to provide information. Every day you give information and determine how the facts that a client gives you will apply to the law in your specialty. You interpret the law and give advice based upon the specific facts in your client’s case. Re-read this paragraph again. Your job as an attorney is to give information and provide legal counsel. You are an educator! You educate and enlighten these clients. Now, carry this over to online video. The primary purpose of creating online video is to educate potential clients.

Those lawyers who think it’s beneath them to give out “free” information on their websites or on video lose the incredible opportunity to educate potential clients. They give up any chance that a website viewer will call them instead of their competitor. Those lawyers who fail to give information away lose the chance to get these viewers to come to them for legal help.

If you provide a viewer with the idea that you have the information they want, they will call you. How do you give them this idea? Not by telling them you have the information they want, but by giving them the information they want. Otherwise, I guarantee that website visitor will go elsewhere.

With my videos, I decided to give viewers information that they want to know. Not what I think they should know.
Caveat: You do not want to create an attorney-client relationship with your website visitor. Nor do you want to give legal advice that they may rely on to their detriment, or that may not apply to their case.

So what do you talk about?

The process. Viewers eat this up. They love learning about how lawsuits work. They love hearing about your success stories. They love listening to a happy client explain how great you were during their trial. Client testimonials, if done according to your State’s ethics rules, are powerful video tools to get a viewer to call.

Don’t believe me? Think about the last time you went online to research a new car, TV or electronic product. Didn’t you check the online reviews before deciding to buy? If many people were raving about how great a product was, didn’t you feel more comfortable making that purchase because impartial third-parties were giving you their opinions about the product they bought? You certainly believe their opinion more than the company brochure telling you how great their product is.

Have you ever thought why magazines and websites that review products and services do so well? Because potential customers look to see what others who have used and tried these items think. The same holds true with a satisfied client. If a website visitor sees that you have ten satisfied clients on your website extolling how wonderful you are and what a great trial lawyer you are, I guarantee you that those impartial testimonials will have greater effect on a viewer than you telling them how wonderful you are.

Join me for the next installment when I discuss why traditional attorney advertising simply isn’t good enough anymore.

About Gerry:
Gerry Oginski is a New York medical malpractice, wrongful death and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law in the State of New York. He’s been in practice since 1988 and has currently created and uploaded over 120 educational video tips on medical malpractice and injury law for consumers to view.

Gerry is a prolific writer and in addition to publishing informative articles online, he is an “Expert Author” at www.Ezinearticles.com, and writes a regular column called YouLaw, devoted entirely to evaluating lawyer videos.

Potential clients call Gerry after watching his videos, not only to thank him for providing the information, but asking for more.
Gerry is available to help you create your educational online videos and can be reached at 516-487-8207, or lawmed10[at]yahoo.com.

YOULAW: SHOW AND TELL IN THE COURTROOM
By Gerry Oginski

Watch the Video

TechnoScore: 1.0
1 = Lowest Possible Score; 5 = Highest Possible Score

Think you know your way around a courtroom? Jeff Roberts of the Roberts Law Firm will personally show you in his video, Jeff Roberts — Skilled Trial Attorney in Newport Beach, CA.

You may recognize the judge’s chair, the witness chair, and the jury box. It’s almost as if a viewer has never watched any TV … in their life. Seriously. I hope Roberts is not really like this in front of a jury.

Here’s my question: If a potential client is looking for a trial attorney online, is a tour in and around the courtroom going to convince them to pick up the phone and call you? Don’t you think the viewer expects that you know where everyone is positioned in the courtroom?

To read the rest of my review, go to Technolawyer Blog. It’s a great read!

By Gerry Oginski, Esq.

PRODUCTION

This is it. The video shoot. A team of people come in and take over your office. They’re setting up lighting, setting up their video camera, plugging in electrical devices, setting up sound equipment and microphones. If they’re really good, it will take them about 20-30 minutes to set up their equipment. (I’ve been able to get it down to 10-15 minutes when I do my video shoots.)

Then there is the calibration of lighting and sound checks to make sure everything works properly. You must do a white balance calibration in order for the camera to know what is really white. The camera then adjusts all other colors accordingly. If you do not set your white balance, I guarantee your video will come out dark and the results will be poor.
A sound check is also critical.

Aside: Did you know that for the third and final debate of the presidential election between Barack Obama and John McCain at Hofstra University, the video team from the Committee on Presidential Debates determined that an air conditioner unit created so much noise that special sound muffling equipment had to be put in to have a quiet studio?

Have you ever just sat in your office and listened to the sounds? If you did, I bet you’d hear traffic, a siren, a horn, a hum from your computer, the cackle of secretaries laughing at some joke, your partners walking by your office talking loudly, your phone ringing, and on and on.

When you are deciding on a place in your office to shoot video, you must consider all of these elements and ways to eliminate or reduce these ambient sounds. Otherwise, your pristine looking video will have unwanted background noise. Yes, that noise can be minimized in the post-production phase with video editing software, but the better practice is to eliminate it while taping instead of later during editing.

LENGTH OF YOUR VIDEO

How long will your video clip be? The short answer is “Not too long.” The longer answer is “Not too short.” Think I’m being funny? I’m not. The amazing thing about online video is that there is no answer. You are not limited to thirty or sixty seconds of a quick commercial of you screaming at potential clients that they must come to you. With online video, you can use your time to explain to clients how you can help them. That’s the key. Again, if you’ve taken the time to watch some attorney videos, you will see that most videos do nothing to help explain anything to potential clients. A terrible wasted opportunity.
Most website companies will tell you they need to shoot a few hours of video in your office that could take most of the day. You think “Ok, that’s fine. I expect to get lots of usable video for all those hours, right?” No, you’re wrong. These same companies take your video and multiple re-do’s of the same topic and will edit them into maybe four or five video clips. “Four or five hours of video shooting, and all I get is four or five video clips?” Yes, that’s true. “But how long is each video clip?” “About 1-2 minutes each,” comes the suave reply.

“Wait a second…you’re telling me that after spending four, five or six hours shooting and re-shooting videos; spending an entire day disrupting my office schedule doing this video stuff, all I can expect to get is a total of eight to ten minutes of video??!!” Yes, that’s correct. “I don’t get it! I’m paying all this money, spending all this time, and this is the end result? That’s crazy!”
Yes, it is crazy. These same website companies tell you that potential clients have limited attention spans. This has some truth to it. They also tell you that in their “experience” viewers can absorb only one to two minutes of video. I disagree. I think one to two minutes of video are not very helpful and do not give you enough time to explain a particular legal concept or answer a particular question.

What most website companies do not tell you is that if they create videos that are longer than 1-2 minutes, it becomes more expensive for them to “host” them on their server. You see, the longer the videos, the bigger the bandwith and the more expensive it becomes to host and store these videos.

If you put your videos on video sharing sites like YouTube, Google Video, AOL Video, Yahoo Video, Blip.tv, Metacafe, Mefeedia, etc. you don’t pay a dime to have these sites host your video. However, there is a drawback to only using these video sharing sites to “host” your videos: Most video sharing sites reduce the quality of any video you upload in order to accommodate everyone’s videos.

I firmly believe that your video clips should be anywhere from two to four or five minutes in length. I have found that if a viewer has found your video and has a pressing legal issue, they have no problem watching a few minutes of your video if you are answering a legal topic that applies to them. In fact, I have had people call me telling me that my videos were so helpful, educational and informative, that they spent hours and days watching all of my videos.

That’s impressive since I currently have over one hundred and thirty educational videos online about medical malpractice, wrongful death and personal injury law in New York.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

To give you some insight into how I create my own videos, it takes me 15 minutes to set up my equipment, one to two hours to get one full hour of video tape, and 10-15 minutes to take down my equipment. From that one hour of video, I can usually obtain four to five usable video clips that average from two to five minutes in length.
Now we enter the post-production phase.

POST-PRODUCTION

What happens now that the video-shoot is over, and the video techs have left your office? The video tape has to be uploaded to a computer. If I’ve shot one hour of video, it takes one hour to get the video onto the computer. Once it is physically on my computer, I must edit it using video editing software. This is very time consuming and labor intensive.

VIDEO EDITING

For a one hour video, it will take at least six hours (or more) to edit the video, add graphics, background music and convert the video file to a file that is internet-compatible and ready to be uploaded to your website and the video sharing sites. This is by far, the most time consuming part of making the actual video.

Once your video clips have been edited and are now “ready for upload” they must be optimized for the video search engines, and the regular search engines. The videos are useless if they’re not recognized by the search engines and indexed by sites like YouTube and Google Video.

The editing is the “behind-the-scenes” work that makes your video come alive. Most attorneys just want to see the final product, and that’s ok. However, when a video editor spends 8 hours to edit your videos, you will begin to understand why these website companies charge so much money.

Join me for my next installment when I review some of the big website companies that create video for lawyers. You don’t want to miss it!

About Gerry:
Gerry Oginski is a New York medical malpractice, wrongful death and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law in the State of New York. He’s been in practice since 1988 and has currently created and uploaded over 120 educational video tips on medical malpractice and injury law for consumers to view.

Gerry is a prolific writer and in addition to publishing informative articles online, he is an “Expert Author” at www.Ezinearticles.com, and writes a regular column called YouLaw, devoted entirely to evaluating lawyer videos.

Potential clients call Gerry after watching his videos, not only to thank him for providing the information, but asking for more.
Gerry is available to help you create your educational online videos and can be reached at 516-487-8207, or lawmed10[at]yahoo.com.

By Gerry Oginski, Esq.

HOW TO DISTINGUISH YOURSELF WITH VIDEO

In my opinion, online video is the only way to distinguish yourself from all of your competitors. A video tells a viewer who you are; what you are; how you speak; how confident you are; what you look like; what you sound like, and whether you know enough to convince a potential client to call and ask you questions.

Ask any website company what they think of online videos for lawyers and I guarantee they will tell you that it is the hottest tool to connect viewers with you. Website companies are now scrambling to get lawyers onto video. Why? Because it is the best way to distinguish yourself from every other lawyer.

Why else? These website companies see big money in creating video for lawyers. But there’s a big catch that you need to know about before getting sucked into that cycle that the yellow pages reps use to generate nice commissions. “Just do one video…that’s all you need. Really. It’s not that expensive. People will love you…”

Well, here we go again…it’s the same merry-go-round with the company reps. The next year, they’ll call and tell you that you need another video. You plead with the rep that this video barely brought in any emails or calls. “Why should I spend even more money, when this one video did nothing for me?” you ask aggressively.

The website rep says carefully, “Believe me…do another video; get better visibility; it gets your name out there…” Yes, it gets your video out there into the netherworld of the internet goo…never to be found again, except maybe for your cousin or best friend who feels bad that you have only 6 views of your video. (You did not want to tell him that of those six video plays, you viewed your own video four times.)

WHAT’S THE SOLUTION?

Before I tell you the solution, I have to explain the problem with many website companies that are going to ask for your advertising dollars. Right now, there are a handful of website design companies that have created video teams to put lawyers on video. I will confess and tell you that many of these companies, who I will name later, have excellent products. The videos they create are top notch, very professional looking and sounding, and any lawyer would be proud to have a video from these companies.

What’s the problem then?

The main problem is the length of time and cost to create these videos. The other problem is that what you get for your money is usually very few video clips. Yes, these companies create a beautiful video player you can put on your website. Yes, the quality of the videos are beautiful. Yes, the attorneys are well rehearsed, and appear natural in the videos. So? What’s the problem?

To understand the problem, I need to explain how video is created, produced and uploaded. Then, you’ll see the problem and the solution.

VIDEO PRE-PRODUCTION

This phase involves strategy with the lawyer to determine what they want to talk about and how to best get their points across. Before any videotaping is done, you need to put pen to paper and identify at least five key points you want to get across to your viewer. You need to think about information that a potential client wants to know. Not what you want to tell them. That’s a significant difference. Most website video producers fail to recognize this key point. Many attorney videos discuss how long the attorney has been in practice; how many different areas of law they practice; where they went to school; blah, blah, blah. In my opinion, this is just filler for the website company to bill you for useless video time. Really. A potential client does not really care about this- for the most part.

What a potential client wants to know while searching for an attorney online is whether YOU CAN HELP SOLVE THEIR PROBLEM. That’s it. If you can explain to them that you can solve their problem, you’re half-way there to getting them to call you, instead of your major competitor.

You should also ask yourself what questions do new clients typically ask you when they first come into your office for a consultation? You know you have ‘stock’ answers that you give to every potential client when they ask the same question. Guess what? Those frequently asked questions and the answers to those questions will form the basis for creating your first “set” of videos.

I say “set” of videos, because once you do one video shoot, you will want to do multiple video shoots, since you begin to realize that you have so much more information to put in a video and to put online. More on this later.

Once you have identified your topics and your FAQ’s that you want to explain, you need to watch a few videos of other lawyers to see how you might want to do your video. For example, there is an interview style, where you are looking away from the camera, as if someone is interviewing you while you answer. Another format is to look directly at the camera, as if you are talking one-on-one to the viewer.

I’ve had the opportunity to view hundreds of lawyer videos while researching online video, and I currently write a feature for Technolawyer Blog, where I review lawyer videos called “YouLaw” which comes out every two weeks. To see a recent review, go to http://blog.technolawyer.com/2008/10/youlaw-law-offi.html. To see them all, sign up for free at www.Technolawyer.com.

To find different attorney videos, go to http://www.YouTube.com and type in “Medical Malpractice lawyers,” or “Criminal defense lawyers,” or “Real estate lawyers,” or whatever your specialty is. Take a few minutes to become a movie critic and look carefully not just at the style, but also at the substance. Stay away from the 30 second video clips that are nothing more than commercials. They’re useless.

Think like a potential client. Pretend you’re looking for a lawyer in your specialty and have lots of questions but do not know which attorney is best for you, or which attorney can answer your questions. When you start thinking like a potential client, you’ll soon start to realize what is wrong with 99% of all lawyer videos currently online.
This completes the pre-production stage.

Join me for the next installment of this article when we look at PRODUCTION and POST-PRODUCTION of Attorney videos.

About Gerry:
Gerry Oginski is a New York medical malpractice, wrongful death and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law in the State of New York. He’s been in practice since 1988 and has currently created and uploaded over 120 educational video tips on medical malpractice and injury law for consumers to view.

Gerry is a prolific writer and in addition to publishing informative articles online, he is an “Expert Author” at www.Ezinearticles.com, and writes a regular column called YouLaw, devoted entirely to evaluating lawyer videos.

Potential clients call Gerry after watching his videos, not only to thank him for providing the information, but asking for more.
Gerry is available to help you create your educational online videos and can be reached at 516-487-8207, or lawmed10[at]yahoo.com.

VIDEO MARKETING FOR LAWYERS

Great Neck, NY

If you thought that internet video was for the MTV crowd, you’d be wrong. If you thought that video for your website was only for geeky, techno-lawyers, you’d be wrong too. If you thought that putting a video of yourself online was useless, you’d definitely be wrong. In fact, Google thinks you’re so wrong that they recently paid one billion dollars to buy a video sharing site called YouTube. To give you an idea about the reach that internet video has, consider a ten minute video clip by comedian and ventriloquist Jeff Dunham; his video has been viewed over 60 million times. Most attorney videos are viewed in the hundreds of time, but it shows the potential that video has. Plus, if done correctly, does not cost you anything if it is watched 100 times or 100,000 times.

Pre-historic times

In the pre-internet age, lawyer advertising was limited to television, radio, yellow pages, billboards, newspapers and magazines. Since the 1970′s when the Supreme Court of the United States decided that lawyers could advertise (Bates v. State Bar of Arizona), the general public has been bombarded with lawyer ads. Every jurisdiction in every state has their own peculiar set of ethical rules regarding what lawyers can and cannot say in their advertisements. Cheesy lawyer advertisements have been the bane of late-night talk shows and comedy shows for decades. Spoofs of lawyer ads make for great comedy, but do nothing to improve the image of the helpful and scholarly lawyer.

Lawyers trying to get a foothold into their particular market often looked upon lawyer advertising as a necessary evil. Many felt it was beneath them to advertise. Not many lawyers wanted to be in the same category as a salesman looking to pitch his latest slicer and dicer.

The new millennia- The Internet

With the dawn of the internet, attorneys began to develop web sites as an ancillary method to “get their name” into the public eye. Many New York lawyers felt, and still do, that they’d rather busy themselves practicing law, rather than marketing their services. The common thinking was “Hire a marketing person to do all that advertising for us.” The problem was that most marketing people had no experience with developing web sites for lawyers. Many did not know what a website could be used for and how it could be advantageous to a law firm. The early lawyer web sites consisted of only a few pages and held little information besides your law firm name, and the type of law that you practiced. It gave no real information and did nothing to distinguish you from your competitor down the street.

Skip ahead five years to the present day, where you can see how the internet has exploded with creative and useful ways to educate and inform millions of viewers. A “Google search” has made it common place to search for anything and anybody with a click of a button. Google has cornered the market on creating the easiest and arguably most powerful search tool on the internet today.

Why is this important for lawyers looking to market their services and their law firm? It’s not only important, it’s vital for a lawyer to understand how Google searches work. Only by understanding the concepts of how a search engine works, can a law firm take advantage of it with video marketing.

The Video Revolution

Millions of viewers go online every day to watch video clips about every topic imaginable. From ‘how-to’ videos where you can learn to build a house, to bizarre videos of no-talent singers pretending to be Tom Cruise in their dining room. From sports to politics to technology, there’s a video online to steal a few moments of your time.

Lawyers who initially started advertising with television ads would often spend enormous amounts of money to create and produce short television commercials lasting no more than 30 seconds. The more extravagant commercials lasted 45 to 60 seconds. It required hiring television production crews and then hiring a company to market that commercial in different time slots focused on your demographic choice. At the end of the day, it was not uncommon for a law firm to spend $25,000 to create a commercial and put it on the air. That’s just for one commercial! Of course the frequency and timing of the ad affected the cost of running the ad. Then the law firm had to either have a generic call center to handle incoming calls after their ad ran, or staff their office after normal business hours, and pay everyone overtime. For a small firm or solo practitioner, the costs were and are prohibitive.

The problem with lawyer commercials is that they offer no real information about why a potential client should go to that particular law firm. In reality, you could simply swap the name and phone number at the bottom of the ad for any law firm in the State, and a potential client would have no idea whether one law firm was any better than the other.

The Non-stop Lawyer Ad Everyone Is Sick Of Hearing

Many of the large personal injury firms in New York and throughout the country routinely used television commercials to attract injured victims. Late night commercials became routine. Why? The thinking was that since injured victims are always in pain, they cannot sleep at night. Therefore, they would be up at 3:00 a.m. watching TV. Daytime commercials for lawyers saturated the daytime soap opera market. Impressively, every ad had an official-looking lawyer standing in front of a legal bookcase who could always be heard spouting the mantra “Have You Been Injured In An Accident? We Can Help Get You A Cash Award!”

Again, each of these commercials said exactly the same thing, yet not one distinguished themselves or even explained to the viewer why they were the right lawyer for their problem.

Video For Lawyers

With the advent of interesting and focused lawyer websites, it is simply not enough anymore to have static websites with fancy graphics and photos. Why not? To answer that question, we first need to ask this question: Why have you spent money to hire a web design company to create a web site for you? The answer is simple: To advertise your services. It’s another device that allows you to tell the world what you do and how you do it.

OK, but how does that distinguish you from all of your colleagues who have also learned how to get a fancy website with nice pictures of tall buildings and cityscapes and serious looking lawyers with their arms folded across their chests like the Knights of King Arthur’s Court preparing for battle? The reality is that your website is probably not very different from your main competitors. Maybe your website uses different colors; maybe you have a different template and design; maybe your font is different. Put aside the design and focus on the substance. What is it that you are trying to tell a prospective client who is searching for an attorney online? What information do you offer that your competitor does not? How can a prospective client make an intelligent choice about whether to pick up the phone and call you, instead of the biggest law firm on the block? Does your website distinguish you and your firm from every other law firm practicing in your specialty? If it does, you have a distinct advantage. If it doesn’t you need to look critically at what you are doing in order to improve your online presence.

The Dangers of Distinguishing Yourself Online

Keep in mind that when trying to distinguish your law firm from others, there are significant ethical problems with comparing yourself to another lawyer or firm. You must never, ever, disparage another lawyer or law firm in an attempt to bolster your image or standing. Doing so will most certainly result in a grievance being filed as well as a possible lawsuit for libel or slander. Remember, when you put something online, the entire world can see it. Even if you take it off your site a day or two later, it is a permanent entry in the online world that can be searched, indexed and found.

If you cannot honestly compare yourself and your firm to those most likely to compete with you, how can you ethically distinguish yourself and stand out from the crowd? The answer is video. A number of savvy lawyers have created and posted their law firm videos online which can be viewed on their website and on video sharing sites like Google, YouTube, and Blip.tv, among others.

How does video distinguish you from everyone else? By creating a personal bond with your viewer. Admittedly, it’s a one-way conversation, but it allows the viewer to see you, hear you, and judge for themselves whether you sound confident and intelligent enough to want to call you. More than a handful of lawyers have said “I’m not going to create a video, who’d watch me talking? My kids wouldn’t even watch a video of me.” Another commented “There’s a reason why there are professional newscasters and broadcasters…a potential client does not want to see me with my bald head and stumbling voice explain why they should come to me.” One self-conscious attorney stated “Nobody wants to watch a video of me; I’m just not attractive to a viewer.”

In my opinion, these comments, are shortsighted. Why? If a client is enticed into an attorney’s office for a consultation, the potential client is going to judge the attorney in their office the same way they would by watching a video online. If the lawyer’s appearance is so offensive as to not create a video, what makes them think that a client sitting in their office would think any differently?

Importantly, most potential clients searching for a lawyer online are more interested in the substance of what the lawyer has to say rather than whether the video is 100% perfect, or the lawyer’s clothes or mannerisms are akin to a television celebrity. In fact, most marketers would probably agree that what the lawyer has to say is significantly more important than the attorney’s appearance.

So far, the biggest users of online video for law firms have been personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers. These attorneys have gotten in on the ground floor and are just now starting to “get it.” The ‘get it’ implies that these lawyers have learned how to optimize their videos so that the major search engines identify the videos and, here’s the key, improve their search engine ranking for their website. That’s the golden key that every attorney who advertises online appears to strive for. The bragging rights to be able to say, “Out of 4 million websites, Google thinks my site is #1 in their organic search rankings.” That is, indeed, a feat to strive for and emulate. However, beware the many internet companies and web design companies who claim to guarantee you top placement on any search engine. The fact remains that Google refuses to make public their unique algorithm on how they rank search results.

It bears mention that when someone does a Google search there are two types of results that show up. The most important for lawyers and their advertising budget is the “organic search results.” The other is pay-per-click ads, which is found in the lightly shaded yellow portion of the page at the very top, and the entire column on the right side of the page. If you click on those sites, those lawyers get charged “X” dollars for every time someone clicks through to their site. It’s called pay per click advertising. The bottom line is that if you have an unlimited budget and don’t mind your competitors and others who are ‘just looking’ to use up your money by clicking on your ad, then pay per click is for you. If, on the other hand, you want your website and your attorney videos to show up naturally then you need to work at getting the search engines to recognize your videos.
Without your video being indexed in the search engines, it will never be found if someone does a search for your particular area of expertise.

To Video or Not- Why A Potential Client Would Pick You

If a potential client is searching for a lawyer online, what would make them choose one lawyer over another with the same credentials? You each have a website. You each have similar experience. You each charge basically the same for similar services. So, how are you different, and how can you communicate that to a nameless, faceless visitor to your website?

The answer to that question would take a few days to answer during a detailed and lively discussion of what to put into your online videos. Much goes into deciding the topic and length of video. If you are in a large firm, do you need to get permission from the managing attorney to do a video? Can you post your own videos and link them to your firms’ web site? A lot of discussion goes into deciding whether to do video on your own or hire a production company to do it for you. One thing you should never do is create a video using a cheap web cam attached to your computer. Those web cams, although convenient and maybe good for instant messaging with your kids, are never good enough to establish yourself as a serious and professional attorney. The quality of those web cams look as if your five-year-old created the video. Potential clients will not be impressed, and you will guarantee that your competitor gets the call.

A video that tells a visitor who you are and welcomes them, has already gained brownie points. It’s similar to the candidates running for President. We know what the issues are. The question is “Can the candidates go for any length of time without screwing up?” The same holds true for lawyer video. How long can you expect to hold a viewer’s attention? If you talk about how great you are and how amazing your credentials are, does the viewer really care? Or is the viewer more interested in how you can solve their pressing legal problem? If you can answer their unasked question through a video, not only will you have scored all the points, you can bet that person will be calling you and not your colleague down the street.

ABOUT GERRY:

Gerry Oginski is an experienced medical malpractice & personal injury trial lawyer practicing law in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, New York, Staten Island, Nassau, Suffolk & Long Island and has been in practice for twenty years. He has created, produced and put over 100 educational videos online about New York medical malpractice, wrongful death and personal injury law. Gerry’s website (http://www.oginski-law.com) consistently comes up #1 in the organic search results when you do a Google search for “New York Medical Malpractice Lawyer.”

Gerry is a graduate of Touro College, Jacob Fuchsberg College of Law in Huntington, NY and is admitted to practice law in New York and Connecticut. He started his legal career working for a defense firm on Wall Street representing doctors, hospitals and businesses who were sued. Four years later he felt the gravitational pull to represent injured victims of medical negligence and accidents. After doing defense work, he joined a personal injury law firm in Brooklyn, NY representing injured victims, and then four years later, joined forces with a large law firm in Queens, NY. While there, he was in charge of the medical malpractice department, and in 2002 opened his own office for the practice of law. His main office is located in Great Neck, Long Island, and he has affiliate offices in Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Gerry prides himself on knowing all the details of each case he handles. Cases are not handed off to associates. When a client calls, he doesn’t need to check a file to determine what happened last on the client’s case. He knows what happened, since he was the one who handled the matter.

Gerry has become a prolific writer and publishes a monthly newsletter full of legal news, fun trivia games, and a never-ending fictional story that has won him accolades with all who read his newsletter. In addition to his newsletter, he has produced and created an entire video library of instructional videos that help consumers learn about medical malpractice and accident law in New York.

Gerry welcomes all calls about any accident or injury from a doctor or hospital in the State of New York. 516-487-8207. He promises to give you a straightforward and honest answer about every question you ask. Take a look at his website, http://www.oginski-law.com, where he has over 200 FAQ’s, free reports about medical malpractice, wrongful death and accident cases, actual testimony of doctors in cases he’s handled, and an entire video library you really should see.

If that’s not enough, take a look at his blog where he offers free information about New York medical malpractice and accident law and when you’ve finished reading his blog at http://nymedicalmalpractice.blogspot.com, jump over to his video blog where he has most of his videos posted at http://medicalmalpracticetutorial.blogspot.com – you’ll be glad you did.