Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
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What with the wigs and gowns and their ancient buildings in the Temple, barristers as a breed are not
generally associated with innovation and new technology. However, last year we brought together a
team of sixteen barristers with the aim of dispelling such an image.
Our goal was ambitious: to set up the largest legal email bulletin in the UK. Subscribers would get
experts giving them pithy summaries of all the important developments in their area for free in return
for which contributors would be receiving more publicity and coverage than most of them could possibly
achieve working alone.
Starting from scratch, this would be quite a challenge. However, our confidence lay in the quality of the
product. We had identified what might be described as the second stage of the development of online
information provision.
The first stage had simply been that of getting as much information as possible online and also perhaps
aiming to get as much of it as possible available to all at no cost. However, such projects almost
became a victim of their own success since consumers in most areas of the internet are now suffering
from information overload. This has resulted in the irony that whilst in the past lawyers may have read
the odd case summary that was passed around the office, they now read much less as there is nothing
to distinguish the useful cases from the mountain of others.
This is where the idea came into its own. We believed that the next stage in the evolution of online
information provision would be the growth in edited content written by experts in particular specialist
fields. As a team of barristers we were perfectly placed. Not only did we have our own professional
reputations as experts but we also had the brand of our profession itself as a guarantee of quality.
The bulletins are not intended to replace services such as Lawtel, which provides a far more
comprehensive service. However, it is a good alternative for those who prefer not to pay commercial
fees to legal information providers, or who simply want a short, snappy summary of crucial cases, rather
than detailed recitals of facts and arguments. It also goes one step further and provides cases which
have specifically been picked out as significant by an expert in a particular field.
For technical assistance, we have had the help of an IT expert, Garry Wright of 3001 Internet
(www.3001.co.uk) who designed the web-site and set up the database using free software called dada
mail (mojo.skazat.com). This is a web-based e-mail list management system. To quote from the Dada
website: "Dada Mail handles double opt-in/opt-out subscriptions, sending complex announce-only
and/or discussion mailing list messages, archiving/viewing/ searching/resending/syndicating (rss, atom)
sent messages and doing all this and more with style." We have also needed the assistance of a
programmer to tailor the software being used to our particular needs, in particular in setting up and
running the database.
In addition, there have been a number of publications which have agreed to cross-promote our bulletin
in return for promotion of their own products. An example of this cross-promotion is Mike
Semple-Piggott’s Legal Practitioner Newswire (www.lawinabox.net). Over time, the content is also being
taken up by publishers providing specialist hard copy magazines in particular areas of law such as EMIS
Professional Publishing’s Personal Injury and Property Law Services (www.emispp.com). We have also
worked hard to get as many links from other sites as possible in the knowledge that this is perhaps one
of the most important factors in achieving the all important ‘google rating’.
In terms of those that have signed up so far, the vast majority are solicitors and the other significant
group are barristers themselves. However, it is surprising how many people without legal backgrounds
have also signed up and this is perhaps an indicator of the underlying interest or curiosity that the
general public have in all things legal. We have had good feedback, with people not only finding the
bulletins useful themselves but also, in many cases, printing them off for further distribution or storage.
The team of barristers has now risen to 24 and is likely to grow further over the next few months. As
the number of subscribers increases, it is intended that Law Brief will launch specialist newsletters
within other areas of law in addition to those already existing in personal injury and employment law.
In addition, the first subscription service has also been launched. This is the Personal Injury Brief
Update Law Journal (www.pibriefupdate.com/pibulj.php) which is written by a team of around 30
barristers and other experts. The article titles are advertised in the PI newsletter and whilst the initial
issues have been free, later ones will be by subscription with xpl Publishing (www.xplpublishing.com)
who will publish bound copies every six months.
Whilst it remains to be seen whether the ambition of becoming the biggest legal email newsletter will
be achieved, what can be said with certainty is that we have surpassed even our own hopes for the first
year.
Tim Kevan www.timkevan.com and Daniel Barnett www.danielbarnett.co.uk are barristers at 1 Temple
Gardens. email TimKevan@1templegardens.co.uk and dab@1templegardens.co.uk.To sign up for the
free Law Brief Update, visit www.lawbriefupdate.com.
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Note from Delia: there are a number of very stylish email bulletins now being sent out by solicitors as
well as barristers and there are a number of sources of software available to handle this in a relatively
straightforward way. In the next issue, Nick Mundy of specialist property lawyers Mundy’s,
www.mundys.co.uk, will describe how he produces “The Mundy Morning Mail”, an HTML based bulletin
using facilities from www.groupmail.com.
Sending out email bulletins - a new type of marketing for barristers?
(And a new type of legal resource for everyone else?)
by Tim Kevan and Daniel Barnett Law Brief Update
With this in mind, the name for the project was fairly easy to come up with. A bunch of ‘briefs’ writing
‘brief’ case summaries led to the name “Law Brief Update”. The sign-in website
(www.lawbriefupdate.com) was launched last year. Since then, the number of people who have signed
up has already reached 8,000 and is rising steadily each week. Each month, a bulletin is sent out
containing around half a dozen condensed case summaries in each of the main areas of law (including
commercial, PI, family, employment, crime and property). Other bulletins and cross promotions
There have been a number of ways that we have achieved this sign up rate (8,000 so far). First, we
already had existing newsletters in our own specialist fields which each go out to over 12,000 people
in personal injury and employment law respectively (see www.pibriefupdate.com and
www.danielbarnett.co.uk). We were therefore able to promote Law Brief Update through our own
publications.