Attorney At Law Magazine – April Edition

The April edition of Attorney at Law Magazine just hit newstands. The online version of the Magazine can be found here.

As always, I feature a different website and customer testimonial on the back cover of the magazine. This month I featured my long time client Robert Kleinschmidt and his medical malpractice website.

Normally I write a column on Internet marketing. However, this month the Magazine did a feature story on the work that I do instead. I gave the writer, Sue O’Donnell, a number of clients to interview for the story. Regrettably that also included funnyman Bill Black – who couldn’t help himself….

“You hear so much about Alex Morris, you expect someone resembling Superman to walk in the office,” said attorney Bill Black. “But he turns out to be a down-to-earth guy with his

laptop half open as he walks in full of energy and with a power cord dangling.”

Morris sells a highly technical product (optimized legal websites) to a well-educated clientele (Arizona attorneys), but, as Black said, at first glance Morris does not fit most ideas of how a sales rep looks or acts. No expensive suits. No studied closing strategies. No focus on quotas or sales deadlines. Instead, Morris brings an in

tense passion to every client he contacts. “I have a passion not for what I’m selling, but for what it can accomplish for my clients,” Morris, marketing consultant for Findlaw, said in an interview. “The Internet is changing every day and my clients expect me to stay on top of it so they can concentrate on what they do best – practice law.”

He isn’t the person central casting would choose to play Superman or even Super Sales Rep. But according to Black (general practice, Law Offices of William D. Black, Phoenix and Scottsdale), “He works hard to capture the personalities and practices of each client and turn that into a unique marketing approach. He has so much energy and accomplishes so much that when he leaves you want to say, ’Who was that masked man?’”

Another client, family law attorney Scott David Stewart (Law Offices of Scott David Stewart, Phoenix), said, “The bottom line is Alex genuinely cares about his clients’ success. If a particular product doesn’t work, he’ll find one that does work. He relentlessly searches through market trends to find the right solution for a client.” The words “relentless,” “obsessive” and “energetic” come up frequently when Morris is mentioned, as well as his commitment to build long-term relationships rather than work for a quick sale. He credits his twin brother Andrew for showing him the importance of building relationships. While Alex was playing basketball at West Point, his brother Andy was already involved in sales. “Andy got into the business world right out of high school and quickly moved to sales,” Alex said. “He always had a quiet professionalism, a genuine empathy for his clients, and a thorough knowledge of the medical systems he was selling and how those systems could work for doctors’ offices and hospitals.”

Alex and Andy both had a near-obsessive dedication to work right out of the starting gate. While Andy Morris started a business career, Alex Morris played on the United States Military Academy’s basketball team. As the point guard, he was at the center of action and knew his teammates depended on him to know the plays, handle the ball well, and keep the game moving. His West Point coach Dino Gaudio (now an analyst for ESPN) said, “He was a terrific leader and led by example.” He came to practice early and stayed late. “West Point athletes have a lot of demands to meet. They carry 17 to 20 semester hours in academics, they have incredibly demanding requirements within their company, and their sport is incredibly demanding. He played through a lot of injuries and gave our team the personality of toughness.”

After graduating from West Point with a degree in political science, Morris served as an Army officer. As he thought about what he wanted to do in civilian life, he didn’t want to be in sales at first, but he admired the way his brother approached sales as a way to create success for his clients. Alex Morris worked in the medical sales field and then, five years ago, joined FindLaw. He quickly set a challenging pace for a team of 150 marketing consultants nationwide. His manager, Jason O’Neil, said, “He’s the thought leader of the sales force and a huge resource to me and my team. The sales force migrates to him for knowledge and assistance.”

In fact, Alex maintains 7 design BLOGs which are used by attorneys and consultants across the country to use to From his first day at FindLaw, Morris, now 36, demonstrated his obsession to know everything possible about legal websites. Then and now, he studies websites nationwide, collecting traffic data on spreadsheets, making connections, drawing conclusions, rechecking the data. According to O’Neil, he has photographic recall of that data. This extraordinary attention to every detail serves his clients well, as he puts what he has learned to work on their websites. His clients and FindLaw know they can count on Morris’s extensive databases and instant recall of seemingly obscure data. Bankruptcy attorney Mari Jo Clark (Clark Law Offices, Phoenix) recalls how she explained her vision for what she wanted her new site to look like. “Alex selected a FindLaw designer whose style he knew would be a good fit for what I wanted. Thanks to Alex and his team, I receive compliments from clients on a near daily basis, saying that my website was the main reason for choosing my law firm.”

Morris works closely with his clients to make sure their websites bring new clients to their law firms – and ensure the websites continue to perform at a high rate year after year. That has paid off for his clients, for Morris and for FindLaw. For the fifth year, he’s on track to be the company’s top rep measured in terms of new sales, percent of quota met and retention. He is most proud of the fact that 60 percent of his new sales come from existing clients. However others may define him, Morris sees his reputation as a result of plain old hard work – work he loves. “I like the satisfaction of figuring something out, of finding solutions that help my clients be successful. No one studies what constitutes an effective legal website as compulsively as I do, and I have gained insights into what impacts ranking on Internet search engines and what drives traffic to a website.”

Another factor that keeps him visiting clients’ law firms, consulting with his FindLaw colleagues and studying website data for an average 80 hours a week: “I work with a lot of smart people, and I have great respect for their profession, their intellect and the legal work they do.” Morris shares what he knows with his clients. His websites and blog postings are a resource to his clients and anyone else who reads them. At his blog (https://www.azlawyermarketing.com/), he posts his Attorney at Law columns and news about his clients. He also maintains 7 practice specific design BLOGs. For example, http://www.criminallaw-websites.com/, http://www.personalinjury-websites.com/, and http://www.businesslaw-websites.com/ show a catalog of legal websites nationwide. His monthly column in Attorney at Law magazine covers a wide range of website-related topics in an effort to educate and inform lawyers. Subjects have included marketing focus, search engine optimization, website content, website design, blog writing and other topics aimed at creating and maintaining effective legal websites.

In writing his column and his blog, he relies on his own experience as well as the knowledge of his FindLaw colleagues. “At our Minnesota headquarters, we have creative and technical professionals who focus all their work on creating legal websites,” Morris said. “The amount of dedicated legal website experience in one building is astounding. I can present their work to my clients with complete confidence.” Morris is meticulous in his research and attention to detail to ensure that attorneys’ marketing dollars gain a maximum return on investment. “In any economy, attorneys cannot afford to make a mistake with their marketing budgets. Thanks to the research I do, I am confident I can present a prioritized list of solutions for any practice area or client need.”

Edmundo Robaina, a partner in the Phoenix law firm of Robaina & Kresin, PLLC, has been a client of Morris’s for nearly four years. “We do employment law, and we get many, many more inquiries now through our website than we did before we began working with Alex. “He’s got a lot of knowledge about Internet marketing and he sells a great product, but he also adds a lot of value because he teaches his clients, too. He’s got great customer service skills and he’s very, very good at what he does.”

The respect is mutual between Morris and his law firm clients. He modeled his focus of building relationships and working for his clients’ success on his brother’s example. When Andrew died from cancer six years ago, Morris was struck by how many of his brother’s clients made the trip to his funeral. “It was a great testimony to his sales approach and clarified to me what is truly important in life.” Family holds a central place in Morris’s life. When he isn’t with clients, he is working from his home office where he can share his time with his wife, Heather, and their three children, Samantha, 9, Casey, 7 and Evan, 5.