North Carolina divorce attorney Lee Rosen honored for excellence in eLawyering
If you go to the Rosen Law Firm's website, North Carolina Divorce Law, you’ll find a video in the center of the page. Click on it and Lee Rosen is ready to help:
“Welcome to North Carolina Divorce. I’m Lee Rosen...I want to be a part of helping you manage your situation. At the end of this short video, I’m going to give you my direct phone number and my email address and I want to hear from you if you need anything at all.”
Rosen, the President of Rosen Law Firm in North Carolina, received the James I. Keane Memorial Award for Excellence in eLawyering at the 2010 ABA TechShow.
Rosen’s interest in technology dates back to his teenage years when his Commodore 64 was the latest gadget on the market. Rosen Law Firm started its online presence in 1996 with an informational website. The response from the public was overwhelmingly positive, he said.
“We thought, ‘Well gosh, this is kind of fun and we’re helping people. This feels good’," Rosen said, "What do they say...if it feels good do it. So we did it.”
The response from the legal community was a different story. Rosen said other lawyers were uncomfortable with the idea of “giving away” free services.
“The reality is the average lawyer would rather practice law than be involved in the marketing of their practice or in educating the public," Rosen said. "It just isn’t their interest.”
For Rosen, though, public service is at the core of his practice. He learned to value public service from his grandfather and father, both lawyers, and said the Internet can facilitate lawyers’ success on multiple levels.
“The Internet, public service and the marketing of your business all really come together nicely," he said. "You have to have the business component to be able to fund that public service component.”
The Rosen Law Firm website is jam-packed with family law resources: articles, FAQ pages, videos, forums, podcasts, video podcasts — the list goes on. The firm is also boosting their mobile and local search engine presence to reach more people. Expanding the content they offer to include ancillary issues is another one of the firm’s goals, Rosen said.
“We started a site called StayHappilyMarried.com," he said, "that’s fairly innovative in our arena where people think they should be undoing marriages rather than helping them to work out.”
Rosen said lawyers, as a whole, are prone to change resistance and will need to adopt technology rapidly to catch up with everyone else. Even so, he said, finding ways to innovate and staying ahead of the curve is something that’s getting harder these days.
“Our question is, 'What’s next?'" Rosen said. "Because we want to be there. That requires constant scrutiny of your crystal ball with your reading glasses on.”
