The Merry Go Round Charity Golf Tournament - Sep 8th

The Merry Go Round, a therapeutic riding program for handicapped individuals will be holding their inaugural charity golf tournament on September 8th, 2008 at the Orange Tree Golf Resort in Scottsdale AZ. 1:00 pm shotgun start.

The golf tournament is being organized by insurance bad faith attorney Steve Ryan, who has become intimately involved with the Merry Go Round program over the past year.

The organization helps handicapped and special needs individuals, both children and adult, go through 6 weeks of "lessons" where they learn about the care and grooming of horses. More importantly, they actually get to ride horses under very controlled and safe circumstances. The students all have significant disabilities, ranging from mental retardation to cerebral palsy to Down's syndrome. I would encourage you to view this slideshow. The exhilaration and sense of accomplishment these riders feel is truly inspiring and definitely worthy of your support.

To build support for this event in its inaugural year, the cost per player is only $200. If you commit and pay for a foursome before August 1st, the cost is just $700 or $175/player. I have personally committed to at least two "FindLaw" foursomes that I need to fill up. So if your interested in joining me for a fun afternoon of golf please let me know. If your not a golfer and would like to support the Merry Go Round organization please visit their wishlist page.

Phoenix Video Shoot - August 12-13th

Online video is becoming increasingly important, both in search results and client conversion. People would much rather see/hear vs. reading. In fact we are finding that people are 56% more likely to hire a lawyer if they have seen a video first. FindLaw now has a world class online video production program. Here is a great video example of our work.

FindLaw has a video shoot coming up in Phoenix August 12-13. We will only do one studio shoot this year in Phoenix, so this is a great opportunity to get ahead of the curve. For the two days, we have just 11 slots. These slots are going fast so try and get back to me this week or next if you are interested.

Million Dollar Advocates Forum - Arizona

Congrats to Barry E. Lewin on being named to the Million Dollar Advocates Forum.

The Million Dollar Advocates Forum is recognized as one of the most prestigious groups of trial lawyers in the United States. Membership is limited to attorneys that have won million and multi-million dollar verdicts, awards and settlements. Fewer than 1% of U.S attorneys are members.

Barry joins a number of other FindLaw clients who are also members including Paul Englander, Craig Knapp, Steve Leshner & Robert Hommel.

Updating Your AVVO.com Profile

Last year http://www.avvo.com/ was launched amid a lot of controversy in the legal community. Using a secret algorithm, the site ranks lawyers on a 1-10 scale based on publicy available information such as years of experience and known disciplinary actions from the Bar. This black and white system has produced a number of embarrassing results, including having a Supreme Court judge rank lower than a disbarred attorney. In fact, Avvo is facing a number of class action lawsuits. That said, Avvo does provide a unique search experience and it is increasingly showing up in search results--particularly for attorney name searches.



Therefore, it is important that you "claim" your Avvo profile and update your information. Just by updating your score will likely improve. So here then are the steps you need to take in order to update your Avvo profile;

1.Go to www.avvo.com and look for the “Search for your lawyer” box
2.Click on the tab that says “Lawyer name”
3.Enter the lawyer’s name within the fields and click on the “Search” button
4.Click on the link that says “Claim and update your profile for free.”
5.Click on the button that says “This is me, let’s claim my profile”
6.Enter the verification information, which includes credit card information
7.Check your email account that was used in the verification form and click on the link to access your profile

*special thanks to the FindLaw SEM team and Lela Phommasouvanh on providing me with this.

FindLaw Consultant Websites

Looking to build a legal website, but your firm is not located north of Thomas Rd. in Arizona? FindLaw has over 140 reps from around the country that can help you build a successful web presence for your firm.