Check out our latest posts from our legal blog!

To Be Or Not To Be A Sole Trader

General LegalLegal Advice To Be Or Not To Be A Sole Trader

When you are starting a business there is a multitude of decisions that you need to make with everything from the company name to your choice of commercial lawyer on the list of options that you need to finalise.

Another decision you need to make is exactly what sort of business entity you are going to operate as. By business entity, we are not referring to the business sector or niche you are going into but rather the legal status of the business you are creating. Depending on the size of the business you are creating and the initial capital you are investing you have a number of choices.

These include a corporation for larger-scale businesses, a limited company, a partnership, or it could be that you setting out in one of the simplest forms of business you can start and that is as a sole trader.

Starting as a sole trader has its pros and cons and it is by weighing these up that you can decide whether it would be the most appropriate for your situation or not. Obviously, we would recommend you speak to your commercial lawyers for more detailed advice, but for now here are some of the basics you need to know about running a business as a sole trader in Australia.

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How To Prepare For Your First Meeting With Your Divorce Lawyer

General LegalLegal Advice How To Prepare For Your First Meeting With Your Divorce Lawyer

Going through a divorce can be a highly emotional and stressful experience, however, there are several ways you can reduce the angst. One of those is hiring an experienced and accomplished divorce lawyer and helping them as much as you can to make the best possible case they can for you throughout the negotiations, and at court, if the need arises.

Now, it is unlikely that you will have kept a divorce lawyer ‘on hold’ as it were and paid them a retainer just in case your marriage ever went awry…at least we hope you didn’t. It can seem like a cynical world sometimes, so we assume you wanted your marriage to work, rather than expecting it would not, by having a divorce lawyer on standby.

Once you hire a divorce lawyer, one of the most important meetings you will have with them is the first one. This is important for several reasons, but one that is key is that it will confirm, or not, that you are comfortable discussing your marriage and other aspects of your personal life with this particular divorce lawyer.

Depending on how amicable or not the split is, or how likely or not a negotiated settlement might be, there is always the possibility that the divorce will end up in court. If it does, your ex-partner’s lawyer will quite rightly do all they can to make their case, and that could involve bringing up elements of your personal life that you might find uncomfortable.

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3 Reasons Why You Should Always Consult An SEO Expert

SEO For Legal Firms

Search engine optimisation (SEO) can be tricky, especially when it comes to competitive fields and industries. Lawyers and law firms throughout the world spend huge amounts of money every year in an attempt to maximise the online presence and visibility. However, inefficient practices mean that they don’t always get the best return on their money.

Hiring a professional SEO consultant can help you get much better returns on your SEO investment. An experienced consultant will know what they are doing, will be able to make the small changes necessary to boost your website up the search engine rankings and should be able to drive a lot more organic traffic to your firm’s website.

My top 3 reasons why you should always use an SEO expert include:

  1. They Will Do Things Right

SEO mistakes can have severe negative impacts on your law firm’s organic search engine rankings. Unfortunately, it’s possible to make large SEO mistakes without even realising it, especially if you don’t have a lot of training or experience in the field. This often happens when lawyers attempt to take control of their site’s SEO.

Hiring a professional SEO consultant will help make sure that your SEO is done right – the first time. They will follow all best practices, and won’t waste time doing things that won’t have any effects on your overall rankings.

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Benefits Of Using A Social Media Specialist To Manage Your Law Firm Profiles

Social Media Marketing

Social media should be an important component of any law firm or lawyer’s digital strategy. A huge percentage of the world’s population uses social media in some form or another, and you would be stupid not to take advantage of it.

Sure, most people don’t jump on Facebook to look at a law firm’s page or content, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get through to them with well planned, cleverly constructed content. Some people manage their company’s social media profiles by themselves, but I would recommend using a social media specialist.

A few of the benefits associated with using an experienced social media manager to look after your law firm profiles include:

They Know What Sort Of Content People Want To See

As a lawyer, you will be able to create and post content which is correct, valuable and informative. However, you might have a bit of trouble turning it into something that people can really connect with and relate to.

A social media specialist should understand exactly how to interact with people and how to create content that will have the biggest impact. This means that more people will be interacting with your different profiles or pages, which in turn means that more people should be visiting your website. In the end, that’s the ultimate goal of social media marketing.

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What Does ‘Local SEO’ Mean And Why Is It Important?

SEO For Legal Firms

SEO for lawyers and law firms can be complicated and difficult. There is a lot of competition between firms, especially in larger cities and more populated regions. It is therefore important to make sure that you get on top of all aspects of SEO for your law firm to make sure that your organic search ranking is as good as possible.

Local SEO is a huge part of law firm SEO in general. A lot of people don’t understand the difference between local and general SEO, and this negatively impacts their optimisation efforts.

What Is Local SEO?

Basically, local SEO refers to optimisation with location based searches in mind. Searches with a physical address or location allow people to find law firms and other services in their area. If you run a relatively small firm that works in a specific geographical area, then you need to make sure you put plenty of time and effort into your local SEO efforts.

Why Is Local SEO So Important?

A huge percentage of people use Google or another search engine to find local businesses offering the services that they want. It has been estimated that over 50% of local customers who search for a local business – such as a law firm in their area – will visit a store the same day. Surely you can see how boosting your organic ranking using local SEO could have a positive impact on your store.

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SEO Secrets For Lawyers To Boost Your Traffic

SEO For Legal Firms

SEO for lawyers and law firms can get competitive. It’s fine to spend thousands of dollars on things like guest posting and content creation, but did you know that there’s a lot of small things that can boost your website straight up the organic search rankings?

Google looks at over 200 ranking factors when crawling your law firm website. Some of these are more important than others, but they all count. Unfortunately, a lot of lawyers ignore some of the easiest ranking factors. The following law firm SEO secrets should help you get the most out of your optimisation efforts:

Make Sure You Maintain A Local Focus

No one cares if you hit the top of the search engine rankings in another part of the world. Your SEO efforts need to be focused on searches that are happening within the area that you work in. This means that you need to identify local keywords and build your content around these.

Make sure that your address and contact details are listed properly in as many online directories as possible, and make sure that you’re using a free Google My Business account. Working on your local SEO efforts can lead to huge short-medium term increases in the amount of traffic arriving on your website, so it’s worth doing.

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