Support

Introduction For Attorneys

Administrator — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:25:00 GMT

Welcome to the Divorce and Child Support Assistance Center, a free service of Legal Pond, an organization dedicated to helping people through some of life’s toughest challenges. We are completely staffed by caring volunteers and funded by generous philanthropists. Our services are provided without charge to everyone, including Attorneys.

Every day, hundreds of internet savvy people come to us looking for answers. They’ve been to all the Legal Matching / Lawyer Finding websites and know better than to trust the most significant event of their life to the highest bigger with a finely crafted sales pitch. They have decided to take charge of their own legal health by doing a little research into their problems before deciding on a proper course of action.

We provide support forums for every major US city to allow people to post questions or comments that they wish to discuss with others. As an attorney you are invited to monitor the discussions in your area and interject a little common sense wherever necessary. By doing so, you are establishing yourself as the local expert for everyone who reads your words. When the inevitable happens, and they make the decision to seek professional help, there's only one attorney they can trust… you.

Let us be perfectly clear, we're not encouraging you to give billable legal advice for free on this site. Instead, we are inviting you to help educate people who may be getting in over their heads about their need to have a qualified lawyer in their area and offering your services in the process.

For your convenience, we have established a direct phone line for attorney use only. If you have any further questions, please feel free to call (702) 940-7943.

The first step is to establish a sign-in name and set up your profile.

Creating Your Sign-In Name and Setting Up Your Profile

Administrator — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:54:00 GMT

The steps for creating your sign-in name and setting up your profile will take less than five minutes of your time.

1. To create your sign-in name, click the “Join” button in the upper right corner.

2. On the Join page select a sign-in name that is easy for you to remember. We highly recommend that you use your real name without any spaces as your sign-in name, for example, BenFranklin. This name will appear in several areas of our site, so if you decided not to use your real name pick something professional looking. Your password can be anything that is easy for you to remember.

The email address you enter is very important. All client activity in your area will be sent to this address, so be sure it’s one you check on a regular basis. This email address is not visible anywhere on our site to prevent junk mailers from mining our pages for lawyer’s email addresses. Later you can optionally select a secondary email address that is visible. Select the correct time zone for your location and then click the “Join now” button.

You should see a Welcome message indicating that you are now signed in.

3. Next click “Edit Profile” in the upper right corner.

4. Your “Signature” will appear on every message, email and reply to make to clients. We suggest you put your contact information in this box. Items such as your phone number or website address are perfectly acceptable. This box also accepts html code so you can even put a link directly to your website.

Since many attorneys don’t know html, if you want to put a link to your website, type this into the signature box. <a href=”www.yoursite.com”>www.yoursite.com</a> substituting “yoursite” with your actual website name.

For your “Bio” say something positive about your law firm. This is visible to clients who look up your profile to get more information about you.

After you have finished filling in your Signature and Bio, click on the “About” tab to continue.

5. Under the “About” tab enter your name, or your law firm’s name and the location of your practice. Be sure to list your location with both city and state, for example, San Francisco, CA.

You may leave Interests, Gallery and Recommended Reading blank. Also leave the Birthday as Not Set.

If you have a website, enter it for the Web Address. Be sure to begin your web address with http://, for example, http://www.divorce-and-child.com. If you have a Blog on our site, please enter its full address for “Blog”. If you don’t have a Blog and want to supercharge your online marketing exposure, visit our Blog Basics for Attorneys page.

6. The Avatar tab is where you change the default grey silhouette picture of yourself to something more interesting. Your avatar image should be one that looks good at a size of 100 pixels by 100 pixels. Use the “Browse” button to locate the picture you want on your computer then click the “Update” button. Don’t be overly concerned if you don’t have a picture handy, since you can always come back and do this step later.

7. The Email tab is where you enter your Public Email address. This is the email address that you want to display to clients who desire to email you directly rather than use our built-in messaging features. You may use the same email address as you did for “Private Email” if you prefer. If you use any of the instant messengers listed and want to publish them on our profile you may fill in the appropriate fields, but you can also leave these blank.

8. Now, click the save button. You have successfully created your sign in name and set up your profile. The remaining tabs can be left alone since they don’t have anything to do with how clients see you on our site. The items under the remaining tabs are self-explanatory.

9. The next step is to let us know that you are an attorney so that we can put a “Real Lawyer” icon on your client replies. This is how clients differentiate between actual attorneys and everyone else on our website. To let us know that you are an attorney, send a private massage to our inbox at http://divorce-and-child.com/forums/AddPost.aspx?ForumID=0&UserID=2100 or simply click here.

The private message window uses the same interface as in our forums so ignore the text about lawyers being notified and responding, as it does not apply. The message can be short and simple, for example, you can put “I am a Lawyer” for the subject and tell us your sign-in name in the message body. When you are finished, be sure to click the “Post” button to send your message to us.

10. The final step is for you to “Subscribe” to the client forums for your area. Once you have selected your subscriptions you will be notified by Email whenever there is client activity in those areas. You are not limited to the number of subscriptions you may have, but it’s probably a good idea to be within driving distance from your intended clients.

Now would be a good time to mention that if you don’t see a forum for your area, go up to step number 9 above and send us a private message to add your city. We will immediately include a forum to match your exact needs.

There are several methods for subscribing and un-subscribing to different areas. The easiest way is to point your browser to http://www.divorce-and-child.com/forums/ForumSubscriptions.aspx or simply click here. Go down the list to find the forums for your area and change the “Subscribe” column to “Yes.

Welcome to our growing online community. You will now receive automatic notifications whenever there is client activity in your area. Unless you are taking advantage of our highly targeted divorce and child support Blogs, there is no reason to return to this site until you receive an automatic notification in your Email.

Blog Basics For Attorneys

Administrator — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Today, if you want to be found on the Internet, you need a Blog. It's no secret that search engines like Google and MSN favor timely dynamic Blog articles over old static web sites in their rankings. It is common to see a well written Blog article rise to the first page of Google after only a week on the Internet. Your webmaster and Search Engine Optimizers don't want you to Blog because there's no profit in it for them, yet Blog articles make the perfect companion to your existing optimized website. Blogs can be laid out to stand alone so clients can call you directly from your articles or they can be set up to drive traffic to your website for contact information, the choice is yours. Either way, attorneys who maintain a Blog on the Internet are enjoying a stream of clients widely overlooked by the competition.

Blogs were invented to make it simple for anyone to get their message on the Internet without requiring any knowledge of web design or complicated page coding and today's blog articles are easier to write than ever. In fact, the page you are reading now is a Blog article. By following the simple instructions below, you can create blog articles that will keep you at the top of the search engines.

1. The first thing you need to do is Sign in. Click the "Sign in" button in the upper right of the main home page.

2. Put in your existing Sign in name and password to continue as shown below.

3. After you are signed in, click the "Control Panel" button that now appears on the navigation bar.

4. Once you are in your Control Panel, you can click the button that says "My Blogs".

5. Next click the button that reads "Write a Blog Post"

6. Make up a catchy title for your article. This title will be plastered all over the Internet, so try to make it interesting and accurate. You might also consider using your city name in the title. For example a family lawyer in San Diego writing an article about divorce should include the words "San Diego Divorce" in the title. A title such as "Save Money With San Diego Divorce Mediation" would be perfectly acceptable.

7. Now just type the body of your article. Do not try to sell yourself here, there are plenty of features of your Blog that can do that nicely. Instead, use this opportunity to share some uncommon knowledge with your readers and let them get to "know" you and your personality. Be mindful of your word choices and try to use search terms wherever possible. Sticking with our title example above, using words like "San Diego Divorce Lawyers", which is a major search term for San Diego California, would be a good choice.

8. Once you have written the body of your article, you should put some search terms in the "Tags" field. Tags are another word for search terms commonly used on Blogs and make it easier for people to search for you. At a minimum, always put your city name followed by either "Divorce" or "Child Support". You can put as many tags as you like, just separate them with a semi colon.

9. Now just click the "Publish" button and you're all done. That was easy.

10. To exit the Control Panel and go back to the front page, click the button that reads "Exit Control Panel and Return to Site".

Please note that your blog article will not instantly appear on the front page of the site, it takes a few minutes for the server to run it's routines and put you there. While you are on our front page, you benefit from the extra exposure of our own advertising and marketing advertising, so its a good idea to add a new article whenever you no longer appear on our front page.