1. Today were going to look into the future and try to imagine what the next generation of law firm website will look like.1

2. Will it include holograms? Will you be able to touch it? Will we get to meet Robert Downey Jr.? Probably not. But, there will be some pretty cool stuff coming. Ive identified five different trends on which Ill be asking our esteemed panel of legal marketing CMOs to weighin and offer their view-points.2 3. The trends are: 1. The Death of the Practice Area 2. Advanced Visitor Tracking 3. Mobile Computing 4. Websites Becoming Software 5. Enhanced Attorney Bios2 4. So, heres the way this will work. I will present the trend, and then ask Lynn and Joe three questions: 1. Does this idea excite you? 2. Do you think that this makes sense for a firm like yours? 3. What are the pitfalls that you see in implementing it?3 5. New Trend #1: The Death of the Practice Area The reason why I think this is exciting: this has the potential to truly align the firms website with its business goals. In my opinion, practice area descriptions have long been the neglected stepchildren of legal marketing. And traffic data tell us that barely anyone visits them.4 6. Great Jakes did a study a few years ago and found that the majority of the traffic that happens on a law firm website happens in the bios section. And, a much, much smaller percentage goes to the practice areas And that just doesnt seem right. Somethings wrong. They should be getting more. The obvious solution is that we just need to buckle down and make better, more enticing practice areas5 7. But! Lets be realistic If youre a sizable law firm with 60+ different practice groups that means having 60 different messages to 60 different audiences. In theory you could create a remarkable practice area page for a few of those practice groups. But most firms wont. They dont have the budget or resources to support this kind of effort for 10 never mind 50 or 60 different groups. So, whats the answer6 8. I believe that firms will begin to consider doing less with their practice areas I think that theyre going to get comfortable with the fact that their Structured Finance practice area may always be a page with dull, undifferentiated text. And instead of redoubling efforts to make that into a compelling section of their website theyll begin to focus their online marketing efforts around a small handful of Emerging Issues.7 9. So, whats an emerging issue? These are issues that contain three key characteristics: 1. Are just coming onto the radar of your clients 2. Are disruptive, and have the potential to reshape an entire industry 3. And most importantly they deal with matters that your firm could sell profitable services around. Emerging issues are often centered around Big new laws, like Obamacare, orNew disruptive technologies like nano techOr, a disaster like the BP oil spill.8 10. An emerging issues section might look like this Basically a dossier of cutting edge thought leadership, resources and people all packaged together in one place. The reason why I think that this idea will catch on is because emerging issues are exciting. Big change that has the potential to alter entire industries is exciting. Turmoil is exciting. And if there is something new, exciting and poorly understood, people will be seeking out information on that topic. And its that intersection that we want to place our firms in the middle of._________________________________ So what do you think? Does this idea excite you? Can you imagine9 11. reallocating resources away from practice areas and instead focusing your website around a small number of emerging issues? Does the Emerging Issues concept makes sense for a firm like yours? Why or why not? What are the pitfalls/challenges that you see in implementing it?9 12. New Trend #2: Advanced Visitor Tracking The reason why I think this is exciting: These tools will yield actionable sales data and thats going to allow marketing to have a bigger seat at the table. The current crop of visitor tracking tools, like Google Analytics, can occasionally provide interesting insights. If you spend enough time getting your head around the data they may suggest some possible improvement you can make to your website. However, most of the visitor data currently available to legal marketers are not actionable data. They do not directly help attorneys sell their services.10 13. Over the next five years, this will change. A new generation of tools is now emerging that offers much more actionable sales data. And I believe that this will transform our industry.10 14. These tools will be able to: Identify your website visitors by name. Tell you what pages each person visited and what actions they took while on those pages. Keep a record of all past visits and let you know when a visitor returns. Imagine what you can do with this level of specificity?11 15. This is how this new type of visitor tracking software works. It starts when a visitor does something to identify themselves. For example, they could: Click on a link in an e-alert email Or subscribe to a newsletter Or register for an event. And A tracking cookie is placed on their computer. From that point forward, the system will track everything that person does on your website: What pages they visit What events they register for12 16. What documents they download And heres the best part. All of this data automatically go into your CRM so you have a permanent, centralized repository of their activity that can be referenced by anyone in the firm. So what does all of this data do for you?12 17. Two things: First, you will be able to share actionable sales information with your attorneys. If a known prospect has stopped by your website 5 times over the past week, and visited 25 web pages, read 5 articles and downloaded 2 whitepapers youll know. And your biz dev team can take the appropriate action. And the second thing is Quantifiable Success Metrics. You will now be able to show how your marketing efforts directly lead to new business. For example: Imagine if you post a white paper on your website and it attracts lots of attention. And then, over the next year, some of the readers of that white paper become clients. Advanced visitor tracking tools will allow you to show cause and effect.13 18. Youll be able to explain the exact path that a person took from being a prospect to becoming a client. What articles they read, what bios they visited and what events they registered for. This type of cause-and-effect data marketing will move the business of legal marketing away from being a kind of art, and instead make it a science, -- and in the process, it will transform all our jobs. ____________________________ Do you share my excitement about this? Do you think that this makes sense for a firm like yours? Why or why not? What are the pitfalls you see to implementing it?13 19. New Trend #3: Mobile Computing The reason why I think this is exciting: The number of iPhone, iPad and Android users is fast achieving critical mass. My company recently analyzed the website traffic for all our law firm clients from January 2012 to January 2014.14 20. What we found was that in the last 2 years, mobile traffic had increased a whopping 243%.15 21. After studying the trend lines, we are estimating that going into 2018, the percentage of people accessing your website via a mobile device could be nearly 40%. Thats remarkable considering that, just 3 years ago, that number was just 3%.16 22. So, what does this mean for websites? It means that we will need to cater to mobile users a lot more and tailor our websites to accommodate the various devices that they are using. And that means ditching the old mobi website and instead implementing something called responsive design.17 23. As many of you know, responsive design coding techniques make every page of your website mobile-friendly. The technology automatically adjusts the layout of each web page so that it looks good on any screen size regardless of the type of device thats being used to view it. Heres how it works18 24. This is what an attorneys bio would look like on a laptop.19 25. On an Ipad, vertical.20 26. And finally, on an iPhone. Note; all the content in this bio that you would have read while on a desktop or laptop computer is still visible when viewing it on a smartphone. Its just be adjusted to fit the size screen thats being used to view it. Challenge is that: a) This is not easy. Theres a lot of bad responsive design out there. b) Its not inexpensive to do this right. Its certainly another cost to be budgeted for. That said, as a fan of content marketing, I am particularly excited by Responsive Design.21 27. The reason is because the two main ways content is being shared today are by email and social media. And those just happen to be two of the primary uses of mobile devices. _________________________________ Do you share my enthusiasm or do you see this as just this years new shiny object?Do you think that this makes sense for a firm like yours?What are the pitfalls you see to implementing it?My opinion better to have no responsive than have bad responsive.21 28. New Trend #4: Websites Become Software The reason why I think this is exciting: Because it implies that your website will be updated ongoing and has the capacity to evolve and improve as your firm grows.22 29. Per Gartner Research, in just five years CMOs are going to be spending more on IT than CIOs. And thats not hard to imagine The best law firm websites being built today are infinitely more sophisticated and complex than the websites created just five years ago.23 30. This slide gives you an idea of the mixture of complex functionality and components that you would expect in a sophisticated law firm website built today. Going into 2018, this list will have exploded in size. So, what does all this mean for your future website? To make all of these work, the core code of your future website will continuously be updated with new features, functionality and code. For example, you know how when you turn your computer on, sometimes theres a little bubble on the bottom of your screen that says new updates from Adobe. Thats the direction websites are headed. Many updates will occur automatically.24 31. The result is a website that always has the newest functionality, lasts longer, and works better. Which is great -- but there is a flip side. These complex websites require much more technical supervision to make them work. The days of the simple $250-a-month hosting and maintenance package are coming to an end. A more sophisticated system requires more monitoring and code maintenance. Costs for many firms will be considerably more.So, basically this would mark the final step in the transition of your firms website from being a static online brochure to becoming a cloud-based enterprise publishing platform. Do you think law firms are ready to embrace this model, especially if it involves paying ongoing software licensing and maintenance fees to ensure that your website always has the latest functionality?24 32. New Trend #5: Enhanced Attorney Bios The reason why I think this is exciting: Attorneys will be better able to promote themselves.25 33. Weve known for some time that the majority of the traffic that happens on the law firm website is on the bio pages. But, its not just any traffic. Its in-house counsel. For these reasons and more, you can expect to see the onesize-fits-all attorney bio template disappear from law firm websites.26 34. The one thing that every attorney should strive to do with their bio is use it as a tool to demonstrate expertise. The one-size-fits-all format does not allow for that. It assumes that every attorney is the same. And they are not. Your T&E attorney may want to share one type of info, while your commercial real estate attorney may want to share something completely different. Their bios should be flexible enough to accommodate their varied needs.27 35. One way that my firm has addressed this is by introducing something called the Attorney Microsite -- essentially a small website for each attorney that fits seamlessly within the firms larger website. It can be configured with any number of pages and any type of content that an attorney needs to promote herself. Blog posts can appear here, tweets, upcoming events, articles, PPT presentations, podcasts, photo galleries, videos anything. Its designed to act like a repository where all of an attorneys reputationenhancing content can be easily accessed regardless of what that content is. Obviously, were very excited by this idea. This is a key component of our offering. But the reality is that creating a compelling and robust multipage microsite doesnt happen by itself. Firms need to allocate resources, time and money to this. And lets be honest, theres never enough to go around its likely that most firms won't be able to do28 36. this well for every one of their attorneys. _________________________________ Is your firm embracing enhanced bios? And how are you handling the resource allocations issues associated with this?28 37. 29