Righi Hernandez - Arizona Women's Leadership Forum

Righi Hernandez Sponsors Women's Leadership Forum

Righi Hernandez was a platinum partner of the Arizona Women’s Leadership Forum held on November 18, 2010 at the Phoenician Resort & Spa. Sponsoring this important event is just the latest example of their commitment to the community.

Righi Hernandez is a Phoenix law firm that serves the legal needs of the construction industry, insurance industry, businesses and individuals throughout the states of Arizona and New Mexico. The firm's staff and attorneys give back in a myriad of ways from serving on school organizations, supporting the arts, supporting local charities, serving on church councils, to coaching soccer. Numerous attorneys or staff members at Righi Hernandez have served or are currently serving on the boards of the Maricopa County Bar Association's Construction Law and Corporate Counsel Sections, the Arizona Association of Defense Counsel, the AADC Construction Defect Special Interest Group, the AADC Young Lawyers Division, the Women's Metropolitan Arts Council (WoMAC) of the Phoenix Art Museum, the 2010 DRI Women's Seminar, Esperanca, the State Bar of Arizona, the Maricopa Lawyer Editorial Board, the Friends of the Phoenix Boys Choir, and the fundraising board of the Junior League of Phoenix. Additionally, their attorneys are active members of the Arizona Women's Law Association (AWLA), AAABA, and Los Abogados - Arizona’s Hispanic Bar Association and volunteers for the Wills for Heroes program, the Arizona Animal Welfare League, and the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services & Education.

Attorney at Law - November Edition

Attorney at Law Magazine - Nov Edition
The latest edition of Attorney at Law Magazine just hit newstands. In my article this month, I talk about the critical function web developers have in the website creation process. These are the folks that do the critical, behind the scenes work that make a website functional. Helping me with the article was Nate Kennedy, a senior web developer at FindLaw.

What You Don’t See Can Make a Critical Difference

When you look at a website, you can see the design and the content. If you have been involved in creating your law firm’s website, you probably notice the keyword phrases in the title tags and throughout the copy.

But there’s an essential task that ties all those elements together and makes a website work in just about any browser, on many different computers and mobile devices, and for people with disabilities. Website developers make it all work the way it’s supposed to.

One of the great resources we have at FindLaw, the company I represent, is a team of experienced, dedicated developers. Our developers – technically known as web producers – do not do this as a small part of their jobs. It’s their full focus 40 hours a week — and they’re good at what they do.

Anybody can build a website, right? There are companies that can take your design and your content and have your site up and running tomorrow. Believe me, it won’t work the way you expected it to. There’s no assurance it will display correctly each time on any computer using any major browser.

No matter how low the cost of overnight development, it isn’t worth it.

“A law firm’s website is the 24/7 face of the firm,” says Nate Kennedy, a senior web producer at FindLaw. Nate and all the members of the development team keep that in mind as they develop more than 2,500 websites a year.

The team stays current with industry trends, best practices and accepted industry standards. They make sure the sites they develop are user friendly (including disabled users) and meet the criteria of the major browsers. They know that clean, understandable code makes sites more accessible to users – and more readable by search engines.

From day one, technology makes the process seamless. When a customer talks to a FindLaw team (project manager, writer, designer, search consultant), the information for the website is already being placed in a sophisticated, proprietary tool. The site map is created within the tool, and all writing and search marketing notes on the call are entered into the tool. The site is written, copyedited and sent to the law firm — all using our publishing tool.

After the customer has approved the content, it is sent to development — still within the writing tool. By not bringing information in from various tools and sources, there is less chance of error and confusion.

Web producers pull the elements together. They make the website happen. They get the approved design and specs from the designer and the approved content from the writer and make it all work together.

The design needs to be coded so that it looks and operates the way the designer intended. While dropping in the site map and content is largely an automated function, it always requires the skilled eyes of a web producer to see that every element is where it belongs, that all the parts mesh as planned.

Then the quality assurance (QA) process begins. The producer runs the new site through several different browsers to make sure it works in all of them. Though the site has been thoroughly spellchecked and copyedited, they run another spelling check. They look at the print view for each page of the site. They check the links and fix any broken links. They make sure all the customer’s products were fulfilled.

But wait, there’s more. After all that QA, the site’s web producer sends the site to another group for what is called “first impressions.” A fresh set of eyes goes through a checklist of items for one more check to ensure the site works properly. Only then does the working site get sent to the customer who has an opportunity to review the site before it goes live.

Nate Kennedy tells me that he and the other web producers – as well as the members of the first impressions team – take pride in developing sites that meet industry standards and customer expectations. Even after a site is live, as long as it is serviced by FindLaw, the team is available to make changes.

This is just part of the professional team that backs up every FindLaw site I sell. If you want to know more about FindLaw or simply want to talk about legal websites, you are always welcome to call me. I represent FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business. We develop websites for lawyers and no one else.

Cameron Hall Wins $1 Million Dollar Judgment in Unpaid Wage Case

Cameron Hall Wins Unpaid Wages Judgment

Congrats to Cameron Hall on winning a judgement of $1,033, 518 in an employment law case. In the case, Cameron proved that his client's employer, Noble innovations failed to pay him wages of $169, 602 . In a motion for partial summary judgement, Cameron's client was awarded the full amount, attorneys fees, pre-judgement interest, and treble damages.

Congrats Cameron!

Did You Know??? Cameron Hall received a full ride scholarship to University of Virginia Law School after scoring a perfect score on his LSAT.

Google Algorithm Change

Big Changes With Google Places

Google has been making some major changes lately. Now the fact that there are changes shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Google admits to making around 6-8 changes to their search algorithm every day! But in the last week Google drastically changed their algorithm and end user interface. The biggest change involves Google Places (formerly known as Google Maps) and how they are displayed on the search engine results page or SERP. In the past when you did a local search like “Phoenix Divorce Lawyer” – a map and 7 local listings would often appear at the top of the search engine result page. This was known as the “7 pack”. On October 26th , Google unveiled a new search result page that gives much more prominence to local search results. The map is on the right, the 7 pack is gone, and the Google Local results are now intermixed with the organic search results. This is a monumental change in the way Google delivers search results and makes local SEO a critical component to any online marketing strategy.

Although this is evolving daily, in early tests we are seeing that the new results blend local and organic results – meaning both organic and local optimization is now critical for ranking success.
For example, after the change, the Google places page for two of my clients comes up 1 & 2 in the SERP. However, prior to the change, http://www.sdsfamilylaw.com/ was #1 in the “7 pack” but ranked #3 organically. Today he is number 1 overall, but no longer gets the benefit of having two listings on the first page of results. The attorney who was first previously in organic results , http://www.bishoplawoffice.com/ is now featured second overall - despite not being optimized for local results previously.

Keys To Local SEO
Just like organic SEO, there are now steps you can take to better optimize your position in Google Places. If you haven’t done so already, its important that you claim your Google Places Business Listing. I recommend that you do so at http://www.getlisted.org/ as you will also be able to sign up for Yahoo Local, and Bing Local at the same time.

The proximity of the business’s address to the city center plays a key role for local search. This is especially true for competitive markets and is a major component of local search visibility. However, like organic search, Google Places is evolving. Today there are 3 main qualifiers Google uses to determine location of interest in a relevant search:

-Geo qualifying keywords used in a search phrase
-IP Address detection
-Location Detection via a mobile device.

These three qualifiers can be used individually and/or in combination to represent the searcher’s intent. It is both Google’s determination of the searcher’s intent plus the business location that produce local search results.Importance of Business CitationsSending and aligning the geo-local signals of a business are of the utmost importance for Local Search optimization. Even more important is that the signals come from trusted and authoritative sources. Having credible business citations, that have correct address information and that point to your place page, is the #1 way to establish a solid foundation for any local search effort. Findlaw, the company I work for, has a proven local optimization program that can help your firm harmonize clear, distinct and attractive GEO signals to your Google Places Page.

What’s Coming
Google estimates that 1 in 5 searches have a local intent. With the rise in usage of mobile devices – those numbers are sure to go up. Currently Google is Beta testing “Google Boost” in a few select cities. Google Boost is a new paid search option for local businesses, priced from $100 a month. A Boost result will look like an organic result, but will link to a business’ website or its Google Places page.

There are important implications of the new change. Moving forward, it will be imperative that firms pursue both an organic and a local SEO strategy.