Bob Rider Web Seminar

Our member Bob Rider is going to host a webcast on Thursday October 30th from 2-3 PM called "Get Discovered-- How to Drive Quality Leads With a Web Site." From the press release:

Are you currently generating high quality clients from your law firm's Internet presence? Attend our live, one-hour Web cast and learn first-hand, from a practicing attorney and a 30 year veteran in the legal industry, how you can stand out from your competition and generate the high quality clients you're looking for.

Register today for this online event.
This Web cast will show you how the following elements are essential to generating better cases, more cases and a professional Internet image.
• Visibility: Attracting qualified leads through search engines and online directories
• Design: Going beyond good looks to encourage visitors to stay on your site
• Content: Relevant content to maintain interest and increase conversion likelihood
• ROI: Evaluating your return to determine the most effective usage of marketing dollars

Here is the registration link, and good luck to Bob, who I don't think needs to "go beyond good looks."

UPDATE: Bob's seminar is archived on the web-- click here to see it.

Historical Society of Western Virginia Goes Online

Our member Bill Hackworth wrote to let me know that the Historical Society of Western Virginia has a new "virtual museum" online-- here is the link. Click on the Virtual Museum link at the top of the page. I have looked around a little and the collection is pretty impressive-- clearly a lot of work has gone into scanning documents and photographs. This is a great way to make a hard to search collection searchable and accessible.

Washington and Lee Students Will Serve Poor Elders at Hill's Boyhood Home

The new October 2008 Virginia Lawyer magazine (official publication of the Virginia State Bar) has a great article with more details about the Washington and Lee Community Law Center at the Oliver Hill House.

W&L Community Law Clinic at the Oliver Hill House

The new W&L Community Law Clinic at the Oliver Hill House is set to open very soon. Here are details from Washington and Lee. Please read the article to get the full picture. Note that ""Volunteer mentor attorneys from the Roanoke Bar Association, in addition to law school faculty, will review students' work and provide feedback and guidance."

Here is the Virginia Lawyer's Weekly piece on the Clinic.

Dean Smolla will speak about the new Clinic at our membership meeting in December.

Please volunteer today. Email or call Roy Creasy at 342-072.

A Treasure Trove of Old Roanoke Pictures

I started looking for a Christmas card image today and ran across this incredible collection of old photos and postcards of Roanoke. WARNING: If you start to look at this, you'll be out of commission for hours. The image reproduced above is from page 77; it depicts Campbell Avenue and Jefferson Street, looking south, in 1932. If you click on the picture you will get an enlargement. Note the Colonial American Bank at 204 South Jefferson Street, with clock.

CLASS

This is an article from the PilotOnline about a ten year old program in Virginia Beach called Virginia Lawyers Advocating Spousal Safety, or "CLASS." Accordign to the article, "roughly 150 attorneys volunteer a Friday morning every six months to argue for spousal-abuse petitions." This looks like a great program. The City of Virginia Beach web page lists it here, along with their CASA program.

We have a lot of volunteer programs in our area; the bar is involved in some (but far from all) of them. There are a lot of needs to fill. I will try to blog about worthy things that other Virginia lawyers do, so that we can constantly evaluate the services we provide and the needs in our community.

Guardian UK: The View from Roanoke

A British journalist with the London newspaper The Guardian, Gary Younge, is in Roanoke to cover the US Presidential election. Here is a page with all of his articles and videos. Our member Tony Russell is featured in a photo on the page. Read the articles and watch the videos for a very interesting picture of a small city no one in England has ever heard of.

Mr. Younge says (in his introductory video) "There's nothing remarkable about Roanoke; that's why we're here. Its an average American town. But distinct, in many, many ways."

Mr. Younge started his reporting on September 30 and says he plans to report from Roanoke for two weeks. If you only have time to read one of the articles read this one. And the introductory video is great as well.

Thanks to the Star City Harbinger for the link.

October 14 Meeting

Our next membership meeting at the Shenandoah Club will feature Dr. Todd Peppers of Roanoke College. Dr. Peppers is a 1990 W&L Graduate, a U.Va. law grad, and a Ph.D (Emory University) in Political Science. He practiced toxic tort law in Atlanta before entering academia. He is the author of Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of Supreme Court Law Clerks ,which has been highly praised by no less an authority than Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit: “This is a meticulous work of historical scholarship, tracing the evolution of the Supreme Court law clerk from its beginnings in the nineteenth century up to the present day. Refreshingly free of the gossip, politics, and rumors that have disfigured previous accounts of this important institution, the book manages to be not only scrupulous, but fascinating."


This is going to be an excellent program. Congratulations to our excellent Program Chair and President-Elect, Roy Creasy, who has managed to line up four top-notch published authors in Governor Holton, Professor Pepper, Judge Martin Clark, and Dean Rod Smolla, in our first four speaking slots.