For those who may not be aware, LRSconnect.org is an online directory of all nonprofit lawyer referral programs in the United States. It is organized as a 501c3 nonprofit and its mission is to provide legal consumers with high-quality legal information about managing the attorney-client relationship, as well as quick and easy information about lawyer referral services in their community.
An Overview of 2016
2016 was a great year for LRSconnect. Since officially launching in August 2016, through December 31, 2016, the website had 32,578 visitors with 89,717 pages viewed.
By any measure, that's a lot of traffic.
A special thank you goes to the American Bar, the Chicago Bar and the Akron Bar for being the top three non-Google referral sources (oh, and Bing). If you haven’t done so yet, please add a link to LRSconnect from your website using a message akin to the following “Do you need a lawyer outside of our area? Go to LRSconnect to find the lawyer referral service near you.”
Top Searches and Profiles
In 2016, the five most searched locations were Los Angeles County, New York County, Cook County, Harris County, and Philadelphia County.
The five most visited profiles were the Alabama State Bar LRS, the Illinois State Bar Lawyer Finder, the Knoxville Bar LRIS, the New Hampshire State Bar LRS, and the LRS of Central Texas.
Get an Enhanced Listing to Get the Most from Your Profile Views
If you haven’t done so yet, please consider helping further the mission of LRSconnect by getting an enhanced profile for your LRS program. It will give your program priority placement among the results for your area, help people learn more about your program, and make it possible for them to contact you directly from the LRSconnect website.
The amount of your annual enhanced listing fee is up to you, and of the LRS programs with enhanced listings so far, the average enhanced listing fee has been $858.
Other LRSconnect News:
Overflow Call Center
The LRSconnect Overflow Call Center is still in development as we explore the extent of the service offerings, funding opportunities, and management of call center staff. We’ll keep you in the loop through the Listserv on all significant developments as we look forward to a launch with a pilot program sometime soon.
The goal of the call center will be to help LRS programs answer more calls more cheaply than if they were to hire additional staff, with LRSconnect earning some income that will go directly into additional LRSconnect marketing for lawyer referral programs.
American Bar Endowment Grant
Still no word from ABE on our grant application to fund LRSconnect social media advertising and we have our fingers crossed.
Additional Content for the LRSconnect Website
We made contact with another nonprofit in Los Angeles called Fair Warning that produces high-quality, consumer-oriented legal content to see how much it would cost to license their content. In a remarkable act of generosity, they are allowing us to use their content (with certain limitations) on the LRSconnect website free of charge.
It's expected that much of the content—under the menu link of "Articles," "Legal News," or maybe simply "Blog"—will be of great interest to the legal consumers we're trying to reach. By offering this content, our goal is to keep them on the website longer in order to increase the chances that they'll take the desired action: "Contact your local LRS."
We’ve already received content from about 20 bar associations so far, but if you have any content that you think may be of interest to legal consumers on the LRSconnect website, please considering sharing and we’ll publish it up there.
App Development
We are currently discussing the development of an LRSconnect smartphone app called “Pocket Legal Assistant” (working title) that will make it easy for people to access legal information and find lawyer referral programs.
LRSconnect Accreditation Seal
Finally, don’t forget to apply for the LRSconnect Accreditation Seal. It’s free: http://lrsconnect.org/for-lrss/
