Category: Legal

When to Hire a Lawyer: Top 3 Situations

There are many situations you may encounter in your lifetime which may require the help of a lawyer. To help you avoid the difficulties of figuring out which situations these are, we’ve compiled a list of the top three situations you may experience sometime in your life that may be better handled with the assistance of a lawyer.

If you are wrongfully terminated from your workplace

Unfortunately, there may be a time in your life where you experience an unfair dismissal from your employment. If this is a matter which can incur you significant losses and you feel that your termination is unjust, you may consider making a claim for unfair dismissal.

A lawyer can help you do this by assessing the conduct of your employer and pursuing a claim on your behalf. By doing so, a lawyer can also help remove the blemish from your career portfolio while getting an outcome that is favorable for you.

Lawyers experienced in handling work-related disputes will know how to protect your rights and provide you with professional advice regarding your circumstances. Although every wrongful termination case is unique, there are certain formulas lawyers can apply to determine whether the case is strong enough to pursue. In the case that yours is, lawyers can also help you bring the claim to the Fair Work Commission or the relevant State Industrial Relations Commission for evaluation. 

If you are starting your own business

There are many things a lawyer can help you with if you are starting your own business. It can be stressful to start a business by yourself (especially if you are unaware of your legal obligations) so an experienced lawyer can definitely help in providing some grounding for you. 

Lawyers can help you start your business by:

  • Registering your business name with you
  • Assisting you with deciding on a suitable business structure (for example, sole trader, company, partnership, or trust)
  • Registering trademarks for your intellectual property and assets.

Trademarking in particular is an important task lawyer can help you with, as they effectively protect your intellectual property and assets from misuse or as subjects of plagiarism. Making sure your business names, designs, artworks, products, and artworks are protected and trademarked will help your business find footing in the industry and set you off for a secure start.

When you are drafting your own will

Unfortunately, there comes a time where you will need to prepare your own will to detail the sharing of your assets once you pass. Your will is an important, legally binding document that explains how you want your assets to be shared, to whom you want your assets to be shared, as well as any plans you may have for your funeral. Depending on whether you have young children, your will may also outline who will be their primary caretaker.

Due to your will being such an important document, it needs to be structured correctly and drafted according to government regulations. As a result, it is always best to work with a lawyer or a public trustee so that they can draft your will correctly for you. They can also make updates to your will in the event that your circumstances change. 

Remember to hire a lawyer

Be sure to remember the above three situations and how a lawyer can help should you ever experience them! Wrongful workplace termination, starting your own business, and drafting your will are three of the most important situations which a lawyer may help with.

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How To Get Student Loan Forgiveness

Student Loan Forgiveness is a procedure of canceling or discharging student loan, usually when you meet specific criteria. With exception of bankruptcy or debt settlement, at which most or all forms of debt can be discharged, student loan forgiveness doesn’t negatively affect your credit, because it can be the best way of helping you pay back. Here is all you need to know.

Differences Between Forgiveness, Discharge and Cancellation

The terms forgiveness, discharge and cancelation entail the same thing, although they are applied in various ways. If you are no longer needed to make payments on your loans because of your work, this is commonly referred to as forgiveness or cancellation. If you are no longer needed to make payments on your loans because of other situations, like a permanent and total disability or the suspension of the school where you received your loans, this is typically referred to as discharge.

How Do Student Loan Forgiveness Programs Operate?

There are several specific sorts of student loan forgiveness programs. Student loan borrowers can take full advantage of, and they always apply to federal student loans. Almost every program can have its specific set of standards and the percentage of forgiveness that it provides. After all, there are really particular qualifications that you must meet in order to be eligible for loan forgiveness or to seek support with repayment. Loan forgiveness ensures that you don’t have to pay back any and all of your loan. You never know exactly what you might be eligible for, so take a closer look at the possibilities below.

1. Teacher Loan Forgiveness

You may be eligible for forgiveness of up to a total cost of $17,500 on eligible federal student loans if you teach full-time for five complete and consecutive academic years in specific educational service agencies. These agencies should support low-income families, and satisfy other qualifications.

2. Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)

You will qualify for forgiveness of the whole remaining balance of your Direct Loans, if you work full time for a not-for-profit organization or a government. This will be possible after you have made 120 qualifying payments, that is, 10 years of payments. You can repay your federal student loans under an income-driven repayment plan in order to benefit from PSLF.

3. Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) Plan

When you repay your loans on a repayment plan based on your financial situation, any remaining balance on your student loans will be forgiven. But this is possible if you make a certain amount of payments for a certain duration of time.

4. AmeriCorps

The Segal AmeriCorps Education Award is received by participants. These participants must complete national service in the AmeriCorps approved program. The program includes AmeriCorps NCCC, AmeriCorps VISTA, or AmeriCorps State and National. Once you have fully achieved your service, you are eligible to receive the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award. It can be used to repay eligible student loans.

5. Closed School Discharge

You may be eligible for discharge of your federal student loan if your school closes while you’re enrolled. Loan discharge is the withdrawal of your responsibility to repay the loan under specific situations. In order to apply for a closed school loan discharge, some eligibility conditions exist. To receive a discharge, you must apply. If your school closes, it is essential for you to obtain your financial or academic support documents. If you want student loans discharged or intend to attend another school, you will need those documents.

6. Perkins Loan Cancellation 

It is accessible only for Federal Perkins Loans. You may be qualified to cancel or discharge all or a portion of your Perkins Loan. It is based on your employment or volunteer service. 

7. Total and Permanent Disability Discharge

This is available for FFEL Program loans, Direct Loans, and Perkins Loans.

You can qualify for a discharge of your federal student loans or Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) if you are permanently and completely disabled.

8. Borrower Defense to Repayment

This is available for Direct Loans.

If you take out the loans to attend a school, you might be qualified for forgiveness of the federal student loans based on borrower defense to repayment. Depending on when you received your loan, the particular requirements for qualifying for a borrower defense to repayment discharge differ.

9. Unpaid Refund Discharge

This program is available for FFEL Program loans and Direct Loans.

You may be eligible for a discharge of the portion of your federal student loan(s) that the school failed to return if you withdrew from school and the school failed to make a necessary return of loan funds to the loan servicer.

How to Apply For Forgiveness

If you think you qualify, please contact your loan servicer. If you have a Perkins Loan, you should call the school that has made the loan or the loan service that has been designated by the school.

Great Lakes and Student Loan Forgiveness

Great Lakes is a student loan service provider. It owns thousands of federally guaranteed loans across the United States. The organization operates with more than 1,000 lenders and 6,000 schools to assist students attend school. Great Lakes does not provide student loans. It serves as a loan servicer or guarantor to countless number of lenders across the nation. Great Lakes manages a wide range of student loan based services, including federal consolidations, repayment plans, and student loan forgiveness programs. As a result of its collaboration with the Department of Education, a number of loan forgiveness programs are available to qualified borrowers. If you’re looking to explore your Great Lakes Student Loan Forgiveness Options, you can contact local agencies for help such as SLR.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and Great Lakes 

You might qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness with Great Lakes as a full-time public employee in Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. You will need to have loans that are eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Your student loans may become eligible for forgiveness, after you have met the criteria. 

Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) Discharge Great Lakes

You may be eligible for a Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) Discharge, if you are an indefinitely disabled veteran or an individual with student loans. Once you are approved, all eligible loans will be transferred to the sole service provider of the DOE. It is called Nelnet and is the unique service provider of the TPD Discharge program.

Teacher Loan Forgiveness and Great Lakes

You might qualify for Teacher Loan Forgiveness through Great Lakes, if you work full-time in a poor school. Based on your qualifications, Teacher Loan Forgiveness provides up to $17,500 in loan repayment aid for eligible loans.

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Mark Zamuner and The New Style Virtual Pitch

For CEOs like growth consultancy agency CEO Mark Zamuner, one of the biggest challenges of the lockdown which we have been through over the course of the last 5 months has been not being able to meet clients and customers face to face, which has had a big impact on pitching. The inability to take clients out, showcase the business through events or simply to have a chat in their offices has forced ad and media agencies to get creative and to switch the focus around what they are doing when it comes to pitches, and here is how they have adapted. 

Back to Basics 

The ad pitch has become incredibly creative over recent years and more and more agencies are trying to be as novel as possible in order to get the better of the competition. As Mark Zamuner rightly puts it however, businesses aren’t looking out to be entertained and as he has stated “There is a greater focus on specifics, deliverables, case studies, capabilities and providing examples of output”.This has seen ad agencies take things back to basics with less razzmatazz and more focus on action and high speed performance. 

Touches of Sparkle

Some ad agencies are still recognizing the need to add a smattering of creativity with their pitches, be it changing the background on their screen or sending a drink to the client which they can share on the call. The important stuff is what Mark mentioned but many agencies are still aware of the fact that there is a competition on their hands. There is a need to do something to make up for the lack of body language and feeling which you can convey when you are in a room with someone, something that just doesn’t come across through a computer screen. 

Graphic 

More and more companies are looking to create great content such as pre-made videos which they can use as part of their pitch, and this has now taken on far more importance than it ever has. Previously videos and graphic displays were still used but not in the way that we are seeing them presented at the moment. This now forms a far larger percentage of the pitch. 

Sentiment 

The conditions around how we go about getting more business has changed, much in the way advertising has with regards to the sentiment and the mood of any pitch. The last thing a struggling business which has just furloughed staff needs is a pitch which is trying to make light of the situation, so gauging mood is something far more important than it has ever been. A slight misjudgment and the essence of the whole pitch could be lost, this requires more careful planning and more empathy within the pitch than anyone would normally have considered. 

Sentiment analysis is contextual mining of text which identifies and extracts subjective information in source material, and helps a business to understand the social sentiment of their brand, product or service while monitoring online conversations. There are many sentiment analysis website out there.

The changes which have been made around pitches could very well be something that we see continuing into the future, rather than a click of the fingers and everything back to normal, as the truth is there is no definitive end to all of this. 

Everything You Need to Know about Attorney Advertising Rules

When it comes to attorney advertisements, the advertisements have some limits, which cannot be broken. If law firms go past the attorney advertisement ads, the ad will become irrelevant and they might not influence the audience.

For attorney advertisements, you need to be relevant; the language that you use should be very professional. Every word used in the advertisement can put you in trouble so you need to be super vigilant for your words.

The Specific Words That Cannot Be Used For Attorney Advertising

When you are making an attorney advertisement, you need to be super vigilant of what words you use. You need to keep a special eye on the stuff you publish. The words that you use in the ad might backfire later.

Lawyers say when you are constructing law firm SEO, and you need to keep in mind that you don’t use words like “specialist,” “ specialized,” “expects”, “best service,” “Guaranteed” in you advertisement. If you use such words and you fail to deliver the same thing, you might lose goodwill.

Attorney References

When you are constructing anything like Attorney SEO and law firm SEO. You need to keep in mind to mention the references for them. You cannot randomly put in a statement in your attorney advertisement. You need to put in the exact references of the clause and give the name of the state whose law you are using. A real attorney must back up the information.

When you post anything on a normal website, they usually have an attorney backing up the statement given in the law firm’s SEO. When the site is of the law firm itself, it needs to have more attorneys backing up the information.

Put the Legitimate Address and Location of the Law Firm in the Advertisement

When it comes to attorney advertising, you need to show the legitimate physical address in your advertisement. Or else your advertisement will not receive approval.

You need the address because attorneys are real people who need to have a physical presence. You cannot hire artificial intelligence when it comes to attorney advertisement. That will be a crime. People will also find it super difficult to trust in the advertisement if a physical office or a site does not support the advertisement.

Conclusion

Law firm and attorney advertisements are very different from other advertisements. If you mess up anything in other ads, you might not get in big trouble. False claiming can cause many problems for attorney advertisements. You need to follow a set of rules and take many things in measure to make a successful attorney advertisement.

For attorney advertisements, you also need to be vigilant about your law firm SEO and attorney SEO. Before publishing information, you will need an attorney read it for you earlier so that you do not post anything that can put you in trouble in future

Ranking Your Law Firm Website In Five Steps

Let’s face it.

As lawyers, we are VERY good at what we do. Unfortunately, marketing isn’t one of these skills.

As a result, we may go through feast or famine phases in our business, which has nothing to do with our abilities as attorneys.

It doesn’t help that directories like FindLaw, Justia, and SuperLawyers are filling up Google and making it harder for law firms to rank their sites.

Even with these directories and stiffer competition on Google, it’s still possible to outrank them and hit the top of the first page.

Here are five tips to help you rank higher:

Redesign Your Site

Many law firms treat their website as an afterthought. Poorly designed websites that provide a poor user experience and usually aren’t optimized to rank on Google.

Because of this, you may have trouble ranking any higher than on the 2nd page of Google.

A new website can grow your business in two ways:

  1. If someone lands on your site and you build trust with them and make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for, they’re more likely to become a client.
  2. If people visit your site and stay for an extended period instead of leaving immediately, Google will notice this and decide to rank your page higher.

Sometimes, it’s worth getting a full website redesign instead of trying to do a patchwork SEO job.

Optimize Your On-Page SEO

The next step is to optimize the on-page elements of your site.

Let’s run through a few of the on-page issues we had on our site:

  1. Slow Speed

These days, users expect websites to be fast. When your pages take too long to load, they will find their solution elsewhere.

Site speed is also now a Google ranking factor. In other words, if your site is slow, Google will take notice and negatively adjust your rankings accordingly.

  1. Thin Content On Service & City Pages

If you don’t have enough content on your pages, you’ll have trouble getting them to rank.

We wanted to rank for keywords like “DUI Attorney + Our City”, but the service pages didn’t have enough content to rank.

You see, Google likes to rank pages with lots of authoritative content. This shows you know what you’re talking about and have a solution for a searcher’s problem.

Realize a common theme here?

Google wants to offer searchers the best solution for their searchers.

  1. Poor Site Structure

Your site structure refers to how your site is setup page by page. This not only allows your readers to navigate your site easily, but it also can give Google an easy roadmap to index all of your site’s pages.

We’ll talk about this a bit more in the next step…

Create Location Pages

You probably practice in more than one city. In my case, I’ve had clients in over a dozen different counties across Michigan.

If you want to extend your reach outside of your city, your best bet is to create city pages. These are pages that are highly targeted to a specific area.

For example, let’s say you’re a criminal defense attorney in Grand Rapids, but you also service Detroit, Lansing, and Ann Arbor, then you would create a city page for each of the additional communities.

The site structure would look like this.

Criminaldefenseattorney dot com

  • Criminaldefenseattorney dot com/Detroit
  • Miamidivorceattorney dot com/Lansing
  • Miamidivorceattorney dot com/Ann-Arbor

City pages in smaller surrounding areas can quickly rank and send you a steady stream of leads.

Consider Blogging

Blogging is another great short and long-term strategy to increase your site’s traffic.

What we’ve found is that our ideal clients will search Google for answers to specific legal questions like, “What’s the difference between DUI vs. OWI?” and “How much does a DUI cost?”

If we’re able to answer these questions, we can get them into our marketing funnel, then get them in for a consultation.

Get Backlinks

A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. These are important for SEO because they allow Google to determine which sites are more valuable than others.

When a site links back to your site, it basically acts as a thumbs up in Google’s eyes. The more backlinks you get from authoritative sites, the more authoritative your site will be. As a result, you will rank higher on Google.

We build backlinks through two strategies:

  1. Guest Posting: Writing high-quality blog posts on high authority sites like Legal Services Link
  2. Content Marketing: Writing informative blog posts on our blog that eventually get linked back to as a source by authoritative sites in our niche.