Expert Witness Marketing Book by SEAK, Inc.

SEAK has just completed a ground breaking book on Expert Witness Marketing.

How to Market Your Expert Witness Practice: Evidence-Based Best Practices is the first ever research based roadmap to expert witness business development. How to Market Your Expert Witness Practice is 400+ pages of extensive research from both successful expert witnesses and the trial attorneys who hire them.

Buy a copy today, and quickly and dramatically expand your expert witness practice.

http://www.seak.com/shopping/Books/How_to_Market_Your_Expert_Witness_Practice_colon__EVIDENCE_dash_BASED_BEST_PRACTICES/index.html

Expert Witness Practice Management Tools

I recently received an email from an expert who was looking for practice management tools to utilize in his practice:

"Hello, I perused your site looking for suggestions/comments on a practice management tool for expert witnesses. I've read many blogs (Lawyerist.com, themaclawyer.com, etc.) and have a good stable of options at this point, but wanted advice from the expert witness point of view. Two leading candidates are Clio (www.goclio.com) and Rocket Matter (rocketmatter.com). Has anyone within SEAK come across these tools or have opinions in this space? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated."

If anyone has experience with these tools or others, please leave a comment.

Thanks,
Alex Babitsky, MBA
Partner, SEAK, Inc.
www.seakexperts.com
www.testifyingtraining.com

Expert Witness Deposition Preparation - SEAK

Article - Expert witnesses are frequently inadequately prepared by retaining counsel for their depositions. In traveling across the United States and working with experts, this refrain and complaint has been expressed to the authors over and over again by experts from all disciplines. The size of the case does not seem to matter. Experts are ill-prepared by counsel in small, medium, and even large dollar cases.


Enjoy!
 
Alex Babitsky
Partner - SEAK, Inc.
http://www.seakexperts.com/
http://www.testifyingtraining.com/

How successful are your expert witness directory listings?

Measuring the effectiveness of your expert witness directory listings is critical for you to determine which marketing effort is working for you, and which is not. I like to base this on a Return on Investment analysis (ROI). If you pay a few hundred dollars per year to be listed in a directory, (let's call it $400 to use a round number), than anything you take in beyond that is well worth it, and provides you with a positive ROI.

Each forensic case you receive is worth such a large amount of money, let's call it $5,000, that even if you list in a directory for 10 years and get  only one $5,000 case, it's still well worth it. You paid $4,000 and took in $5,000.

In my opinion, many experts make the mistake of taking a too short term look at marketing such as this. I can tell you, that if I could take $4,000 invest it and get back $5,000, I would do it all day long.

Yes, some directories may provide more (or less) referrals than others, but as long as you are getting back a positive ROI, than you should consider continuing them.

Alex Babitsky, MBA
Partner - SEAK, Inc.
SEAK Directory of Expert Witnesses

Expert Witness Technology Resource - PhoneTag

I've been using a service for a few months, which I have found to be a great time saver, and I thought I'd pass it along (and I'm not getting paid to plug this). This could be very useful to experts along with many other professionals as well.

The company is called PhoneTag, and they have a service which converts your voicemails to text, and then emails them to you. This is excellent if you travel or if you just want a hard copy record of your messages. They send you the transcribed voicemail along with an audio file of the original message to your PDA, Smartphone or email account. I don't travel all that frequently, but this service saves me the time of checking my voicemail for messages, writing the message down and then calling or emailing my assistant asking her to take care of the task.  This way I can simply forward her the PhoneTag message, with a brief note. Here is their website, http://phonetag.com/ they have different pricing plans depending on the number of messages you receive on a monthly basis.

Alex Babitsky, MBA
SEAK, Inc.
www.seakexperts.com

Google tip for expert witnesses

Consider setting up a Google Alert for specific terms/phrases. Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. This allows you to keep current on a specific industry, you can setup an alert for a colleague/competitor (so you are notified any time their name is published on the web).  If you are a Real Estate Expert, consider setting up an Alert for the phrase "Real Estate Expert" or "Real Estate Expert Witness".  At a minimum I urge you to setup an alert for your own name. This is a quick and simple way expert witnesses can stay up date.

Alex Babitsky, MBA
SEAK Directory of Expert Witnesses

Experts should return phone calls promptly

I was speaking with an attorney the other day who was trying to contact an Ophthalmology expert who is listed in our SEAK Expert Witness Directory (and who shall remain nameless).  The attorney had called and left a message for him and hadn't heard back from him in 24 hours. The attorney was going to call him one more time and if he did not answer, she was moving on, and was going to call the next Ophthalmology expert on her list.

The moral of this story, is that experts should be responsive when receiving calls from prospective clients. Return the call as soon as possible. If not, they will simply call someone else.  Consider listing your cell phone number, rather than your office number, in the marketing you do for your expert witness practice, such as expert witness directory listings.

Alex Babitsky, MBA
SEAK, Inc.
SEAK Directory of Expert Witnesses
www.seakexperts.com

Getting the most from your expert witness directory listings - part 1

Experts should take the time necessary to fully understand how each expert witness directory that they are listed in, is setup and how it works functionally.

A few

1. Make sure the specialty areas that you want to be found under, are included in sections that are actually searched/indexed. I see many experts that include specialty terms in sections that do not get searched.

2. Review your expert witness listings every 6-months or so, to make sure the information is current and accurate. Experts move, change phone numbers, email addresses, etc. and often do not update their directory listings, or the directory service may make a typo.

3. When appropriate, try avoid using exact numbers in your directory listings. For example, if a directory asks for number of years in practice, instead of using a number such as 21 Years in Practice, you may want to use a general: 20+ Years in Practice. This way you don't have to update it each year.

Stay tuned for more tips!

Alex Babitsky, MBA
Partner - SEAK, Inc.
SEAK Expert Witness Directory
http://www.seakexperts.com/

Featured Expert Witness Listings now available on seakexperts.com - NEW!

Featured Expert Witness Listings are now available on http://www.seakexperts.com/


We've received a lot of feedback from our directory members, looking for a way to have their online directory listings stand out.  These new premier listings appear in a special "Featured Experts" section on page one of each applicable online search.

SEAK Featured Expert Witness Listing
 This is an exclusive offer available only to our Directory members.

We limit the # of Featured Listings, to 3 per phrase.

Enjoy!

Alex Babitsky, MBA
SEAK, Inc.
alex@seak.com