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Lawyers.com not worth the money : leading writer on solo and small firm practice

Carolyn Elefant, a practicing lawyer, leading writer on solo and small law firm practice and publisher of MyShingle, warns solo and small firm lawyers not to waste money on LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell’s lawyers.com service because of the LexisNexis name.

Per an article in ClickZ News, LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell has begun selling two sponsorship products on its Lawyers.com. Lawyers can purchase either sponsored links or content sponsorships on lawyers.com. There’s three price levels: Nationwide, from $900 per month; statewide, from $160 per month; and by county, starting at $50 per month.

Elefant’s response:

Sounds good, except for one thing – the service won’t work.  The journalist who wrote the article noted that in, for example, a search for medical malpractice attorneys in Los Angeles, only two paid listings showed up. If other users obtain those same results, they’ll look for lawyers elsewhere on the Internet, not on lawyers.com.  So anyone paying $900/month (or even $50/month) for exposure won’t be attracting anyone.

Elefant goes on to explain that even a lawyers.com listing will not even give lawyers broad exposure on the Internet.

If you’re listed in lawyers.com, try googling your name on the Internet.  It’s likely that your lawyers.com listing won’t even show up.  Even if you google your specialty – say, Maryland civil rights law – and lawyers.com appears at the top of the list, users aren’t going to want to deal with a scroll through menu.  Rather, they’ll just go to the lawyer with the weblog on Maryland civil rights law who comes up at the top of the listing – or the lawyer who bought the Google ad words ‘Maryland civil rights’ whose links appear in a feature box.

I agree with Elefant when she says “Maybe once upon a time, Lexis-Nexis-Martindale were the gold standard of lawyer advertising.  Not so anymore with the Internet.”

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