Business development is an uncomfortable subject for some attorneys.  More at home dissecting tricky legal issues or formulating newer and better arguments, attorneys often find the day-to-day operation of a private law practice frustrating or tiresome – a distraction from the real legal work they’ve been trained to do.  Nevertheless, law firms are still businesses and care must be given to ensure that those businesses are stable and successful.  This has never been truer than it is today, in the midst of a global economic crisis.

Though the practice of law is still mostly confined to courtrooms and quiet offices, the business of law – research, news, advertising, and more – has increasingly shifted to the web.  The web offers attorneys numerous opportunities to develop their business, but it’s difficult to maximize those opportunities without being able to monitor relevant news, articles, blogs, and other sources. 

While attempting to follow so many different and varied sources may seem like an impossibility – or at least a wasteful time-sink – existing web-based technology offers attorneys the opportunity to access a tremendous and diverse range of information with minimal time investment and – in most cases – zero financial investment.  Two examples of this technology are RSS feeds and Google Alerts.

RSS Feeds

The flexibility of the web as a publishing platform has led to a proliferation of specialized news and information sources.  A tax attorney, for example, might be interested in reading a wide variety of web sites, including general news sources such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, or the ABA Journal; blogs like the TaxProf Blog; and other tax-specific web sites including the Tax Policy Center, the ABA Section of Taxation’s Public Policy page, or a state or local bar association’s tax page.  The number of possible sites multiplies with each additional geographic or practice area an attorney covers.

All of these pages contain useful information that can help an attorney stay at the top of his or her chosen field – a key step in building a healthier and more prosperous practice.  But visiting that many web sites on a regular basis can seem prohibitively time consuming and tedious. 

Really simple syndication – more simply “RSS” – offers a solution.  Rather than visiting each individual web page or news site, one can subscribe to an RSS feed – a direct channel that sends the content from your favorite web sites to your feed reader.   Using RSS, the hypothetical tax attorney wouldn’t need to waste each morning navigating through dozens of web pages; the attorney would simply open her feed reader and see a list of headlines culled from all of her favorite sites. 

How do you get started?  Simple:

1. Get a feed reader. Feed readers can be web-based (Google Reader, iGoogle, Bloglines), software-based (Feed Demon, NetNewsWire), or they can be incorporated into existing software (Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox, Outlook 2007).  You can visit Wikipedia for a lengthy list of popular feed readers.
2. Find RSS content. Most blogs, news web sites, and other regularly-updated pages have an RSS feed.  Look for links labeled “subscribe,” “RSS,” or “XML.”  The links will often be in bright orange.
3. Add the feed to your reader. This process will vary based on the feed reader you’re using.  For some, you can simply click on the RSS logo or link on a web page and it will bring up an option to add the feed to your reader.  In other cases, you may need to go to the RSS feed (if it looks like a mash of strange code, don’t panic!) and copy and paste the web address into your reader.
4. Follow your feeds. Once they’re added to your reader, all that’s left is to read them.

Google Alerts

RSS feeds are a good solution for regularly updated publications, but in many cases attorneys are interested in tracking a specific issue more so than a specific publication.  For example, an attorney might want to know whenever her name is mentioned on the web – favorably or unfavorably – to help develop (or safeguard) her professional reputation.  Likewise, attorneys focused on client relations may want track issues of interest to their clients or their clients’ competitors, thereby offering their clients a higher level of personal service and attention.

Google offers a simple – and free – resource that allows attorneys to track exactly these sorts of topics.  The service, called Google Alerts, harnesses the power of Google’s vast search engine index to deliver alerts directly to a user’s inbox whenever a pre-defined search term shows up on a web page.  Any topic you can search for on the web – names, publication titles, important or controversial issues or cases – can be added to an alert.  Users can receive the alerts daily, weekly, or whenever Google happens to find a new or changed page with the appropriate search query.

Setting up a Google Alert is easy:

1. Using your favorite web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, FireFox), visit http://www.google.com/alerts.
2. Enter the search terms you’d like to follow in the box in the upper right corner of the page.
3. Select the type of sources you’d like Google to check: news, blogs, the web, videos, groups, or "comprehensive" to search everything.
4. Choose how often you’d like to receive alerts.
5. Enter your email address.
6. Click "Create Alert" to complete the process and have Google start watching for your search terms. Repeat the process for each topic you’d like to track.

Conclusion

When it comes to business development –and to the profession in general – information is power.  Tools like RSS feeds and Google Alerts put information at attorneys’ fingertips in a way that would have been unthinkable just 15 years ago.  While they are by no means a magic bullet, attorneys who take advantage of these tools provide themselves a significant edge in developing their practice and ensuring that it flourishes in the years to come.