With the recent news of Internet Brands partnering with lawyers.com, many law firms and solo attorneys are excited and anxious to see what this merger will hold.

On August 30, 2013, Internet Brands and Lexis Nexis announced a partnership agreement between the two entities.

Please click here to see the original article.

While this original article seemed to highlight the opportunities for both businesses, it became clear earlier this week, regarding the overall strategy behind the merger. If you have tried to contact your Lawyers.com rep, and are now speaking with a Call Center, you might already know the overall strategy.

On October 24, 2013, Lexis Nexis laid off 205 personnel (click here for the article).  While the article does not highlight what roles these personnel played, it is clear. Lawyers.com is migrating from a local consultative presence, to one that will now service your account, directly from a call center.

Both Lawyers.com (also known as Lexis Nexis, Martindale, and Reed Elsevier) and FindLaw.com (also known as West, West Publishing, SuperLawyers, and Thomson Reuters), have based their businesses on a strategy that uses a highly efficient local presence of Web Marketing Consultants.  FindLaw employs roughly 250 Law Firm Consultants, while Lawyers.com employed roughly 205 Marketing Consultants.  Often times, these Consultants provided lawyers with significant marketing strategy and competitive awareness for their client base.  Lawyers would rely on their local consultant to be their advocate, and source of guidance regarding significant marketing expenditures.  Both Lexis Nexis and Thomson Reuters, have been known across the industry a significant amount of financial capital to ensure their Consultants were up to date on the latest marketing tactics, Google algorythms, seo techniques and other online marketing initiatives.

With over 8 years of experience in consulting to law firms, I have recognized a few trends within the industry.
1. Lawyers are tired of paying high fees to Lawyers.com and FindLaw.com
2. With Lawyers.com, there always seems to be the need to “Upgrade” as the “marketplace has become more competitive.”
3. Having a person that lawyers can trust, is important to every attorney I have ever worked with.
4. The desire to save costs on a law firm marketing budget is becoming more important, as the average lawyer is currently spending $17,000.00 annually on their website seo services. In certain metropolitan areas, this number is over $25,000.00.
5. Lawyers still don’t understand seo, and they have no way of quantifying the value from their services.

If you are a current client of Lawyers.com, you have an opportunity to migrate your services to Three Vistas, which is known throughout the industry as a small service oriented web consulting firm to numerous businesses and countless law firms. Currently, Internet Brands is actively trying to place you into a new internet/seo/web services contract. There is an alternative, and that alternative is Three Vistas.

For all law firms that come to us from Lawyers.com, we will allow you to keep your existing design, and we will offer you a reduced rate on seo services for your website. The process to migrate your website away from Lawyers.com will take less than 30 days.

Again, allow me to reiterate.
1. Lawyers.com just laid off their entire sales force.
2. There is an option, and that option is known as Three Vistas.
3. You can keep your existing design, content, blog posts, and seo.
4. Three Vistas is offering a reduced contract rate for all existing Lawyers.com rates.
5. If you are still not convinced, we will leverage our relationships across the industry to consult with you regarding the best option for your law firm, even if you choose to not work with Three Vistas, we will help place you with a seo provider that is the best fit for your law firm.