What is a Special Needs Trust?

A special needs trust, also referred to as a supplemental needs trust, is designed to answer the single most pressing question for a parent of children with disabilities: “What will happen to my child after I'm gone?” Families are often anxious when considering the care their children will receive after the parents’ death. Understandably, many parents fear that, after their death, their child’s quality of life will suffer due to insufficient resources, the lack of effective advocacy, and the absence of the family home. Most parents, however, do not have the resources to provide quality lifetime care for their child without the assistance of government programs such as social security income (SSI) and Medicaid. While government benefit programs offer substantial services in terms of health care coverage, the available cash benefits are small. The goal, therefore, is to preserve the child’s eligibility for government benefits with additional funds available to supplement these benefits. The Supplemental Needs Trust (also, referred to as the Special Needs Trust) accomplishes this goal.

For more in-depth information, see this Special Needs Trust FAQ. It is written by Attorney Neal Winston, a Massachusetts estate planning attorney who is experienced in creating special needs trusts. Attorney Winston is the current president of the Special Needs Alliance, a national, nonprofit organization composed of attorneys who advise and represent individuals and their families to create and administer special needs trusts.

Add Twitter To Your Law Firm Marketing Mix

Here's a quick pointer to my article on Amy Campbell's Law Firm Marketing Blog regarding using Twitter as an integral part of your marketing mix. In Making the Case for a Firm-Branded Twitter Presence, 5 of the top reasons to consider embracing Twitter to protect and promote your law firm brand are:

1. Protect your brand. The most important reason to start a Twitter account is to claim your name — so that you own it, not someone else.
2. People are listening. Among the folks that follow Twitter are journalists scouring the site for trends and story ideas for their next pitch meeting.
3. Search engines eat it up. When set up properly, your firm’s Twitter account can contribute to your SEO efforts.
4. The best way to learn it is to do it. Starting a firm-branded Twitter presence is a safe and easy way to start. It is an excellent way for you and your marketing staff to lead by example and to become better able to help your professionals embark on their own Twitter exercises.
5. Build your Twitter infrastructure and network now, for when you need it later.
Read the full article and expanded explanation of benefits here: Twitter for law firms.

Lessons from the Recession for Law Firm Marketers

A recent survey by the Alterra Group found that despite the sour economy, a number of professional services firms actually held their revenue steady or even increased it in the past 12 months. What separates the firms that thrive? Our research found that these more successful companies had distinctly different marketing practices and priorities than those whose revenues declined in the past year.

Reader the full article at: Lessons from the Recession: How Marketing Practices and Priorities Can Make the Difference.

New Hampshire Attorneys

New Hampshire law firm Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell has launched a new web site with a new site map and attorney and professional bio indexing. The following list updates the URLs where attorney bios now reside, awaiting a fresh indexing by Google's crawler. Come and get it Google

New Hampshire Attorneys and Professionals at Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell, Concord, NH:

• Charles P. Bauer
• R. Matthew Cairns
• Michael R. Callahan
• Karen Carter
• Peter Cline
• Beth Deragon
• W. John Funk
• Christopher C. Gallagher
• Jon M. Garon
• Donald E. Gartrell
• Dodd S. Griffith
• Susan B. Hollinger
• Hannah K. Irving
• Heidi L. Kroll
• Denis J. Maloney
• Lauri Main
• Marla B. Matthews
• Erik G. Moskowitz
• Jan P. Myskowski
• Erik Newman
• Donald J. Pfundstein
• Ari B. Pollack
• Susan M. Richey
• Michael D. Ruedig
• Donald R. Saxon
• Lisa K. Shapiro
• Erik W. Taylor
• Paul A. Worsowicz

Andrew C. Meyer, Jr. on Social Value of Med Mal

Today's Boston Globe article on the settlement between and family and Boston hospital regarding a wrongful death lawsuit has an interesting quote by Andrew C. Meyer, Jr. attorney for the plaintiff.

“The settlement was a recognition of the kind of mistakes that happen all too often in our hospitals. “It’s gratifying to see that the family was able to receive exposure for this horrific event — and not to sweep it under the rug — to ensure that policies are changed so that this will not happen again.’’ — Andrew C. Meyer, Jr.

In all the debate over health care reform and limiting medical malpractice awards, this is part of the argument that should not be lost.

The Globe report also states:

"The state Department of Public Health investigated the case in November 2007, determining that the fall led to O’Donnell’s death, and cited deficiencies in procedure. The hospital’s own analysis found that the operating room staff was busy or preoccupied and that the safety belt’s removal was not verbally communicated..."

See full article here.

Nine at GCG Named Best Lawyers (New Hampshire)

CONCORD, NH — Nine New Hampshire attorneys at the law firm of Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell, P.C. have been named to the 2010 edition of Best Lawyers®, the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession. Best Lawyers publishes an annual referral guide, The Best Lawyers in America, which includes 39,766 attorneys in 80 specialties, covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia. For a list of the 9 attorneys listed Best Lawyers in New Hampshire, see the firm's press release.

Christine Hamori Cosmetic Surgery Voted Best of South Shore Boston

Christine Hamori Cosmetic Surgery + Skin Spa, in Duxbury, Massachusetts, has been voted "Best of the South Shore" by South Shore Living magazine. The plastic surgery center and medical spa is selected as best Cosmetic Surgery Office under the category of Health Beauty & Fashion. The annual awards are announced in the September issue. South Shore Living covers lifestyle issues that are special to the communities south of Boston.

Law Firm Business Development and the Recession

Download a free whitepaper on Law Firm Business Development topics from Amy Campbell's web log. Her latest entry includes a link to a PDF from Law360, which has compiled an 80-page white paper on lessons for law firms from the financial crisis. To download the PDF, click on: Law360 Presents Lessons For Law Firms.

What Employers Need To Know About H1F1 Flu Response

Massachusetts employment lawyer Robert M. Shea writes in his law firm's blog, "As flu season approaches, employers should consider measures to respond to the threats presented by the 2009 H1N1 flu." He points to a guidance released by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) recommending actions that non-healthcare employers should take now to decrease the spread of seasonal flu and 2009 H1N1 flu in the workplace. The blog post lists links to the CDC H1N1 Flu Communication Toolkit. Read the entire post at: Employers Should Consider Steps to Respond to H1N1 Flu Threat.

Plastic Surgeon Massachusetts

Massachusetts plastic surgeon Christine Hamori has launched a new plastic surgery web site that is integrated with her blog: What's New in Plastic Surgery.

Christine A. Hamori, MD is a board-certified, plastic surgeon who is recognized for her delicate skills in cosmetic enhancements that yield natural-looking results for a healthy, happy lifestyle. She specializes in:

• Breast augmentation/implants
• Liposuction/SlimLipo™
• Face and neck contouring
• Facial fillers and Botox® (injectables)

Serving Boston’s South Shore, Cape Cod and Nantucket: With a state-of-the-art surgery suite and attending surgical staff in her Duxbury, Massachusetts office, Dr. Hamori allows you to choose a location that suits your needs—the quiet, confidential setting of her private office, or one of the following hospitals:

• South Shore Hospital
• Jordan Hospital
• Nantucket Cottage Hospital.

Mind the Links

Notes to self

compete.com
quantcast.com
wordtracker.com
komarketing.com
trellian.com
trustplus.com

New Facebook Pages: A Guide for Social Media Marketers

New Facebook Pages: A Guide for Social Media Marketers

Posted using ShareThis

Article about how new Facebook changes open new doors for brand experiences...

Law Firm News

Law Firm News Wiki on Zimbio...

This is a test in progress to gauge the impact of posting articles to Zimbio to improve SEO. Check back here in the future for any conclusions or comments. That's all for now.

Christina Fernandes Joins MBBP as Associate

WALTHAM, MA — Law firm Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton has announced another new attorney hire — Christina M. Fernandes. According to a news item posted to its law firm web site, Ms. Fernandes was formerly an associate with Goodwin Procter in Boston, MA. She practices general corporate law, representing clients in mergers and acquisitions, corporate financings, fund formations and other corporate matters.

For more law firm news at MBBP, click the link.

Search Engine Positioning Tool

Just a quick note: Add this handy tool to your SEO toolbelt: Search Engine Keyword Position tool from the folks at SEOChat.

Two Great Tools for Web Marketers

Check out these two great free tools for web marketers. First is a Google Site Map generator — a handy tool for managing the sitemap.xml file as part of Google's WebMaster Tools. The second is Ping-o-matic for getting the word out on RSS feeds — especially useful if you have any manual RSS feeds.

If you have a favorite tool to share, please comment. Thanks.

Injectables and Facial Fillers Continue To Offer More Non-surgical Alternatives to Anti-aging Treatments

In her latest plastic surgery blog post, Massachusetts plastic surgeon Christine Hamori, MD, speaks to the uptrend in what is known as the "Radiesse lift." States Hamori, "This non-surgical, mid-facelift really helps smooth out folds around the nose as well as recreate the "apples of the cheeks" that so many patients loose in their 30's and 40's."

In her blog, Hamori often talks about the trends she sees in her cosmetic surgery and skin spa practice as well as introducing new procedures. The board-certified plastic surgeon has been dramatically increasing the number of non-surgical treatments she offers while continuing to maintain a busy surgical practice. For more information, go to her web site at christinehamori.com, which contains many before and after photos.

Boston Malpractice Lawyer RSS Feed

Keep up with news from Lubin & Meyer, PC: Boston medical malpractice lawyer Lubin & Meyer PC now publishes an RSS feed in conjunction with its medical malpractice web site. To keep abreast of the latest verdicts and settlements and other news accomplished by the innovative leaders in med mal law, you can subscribe to the medical malpractice news feed. Each year the firm leads the way with the most settlements of $1 million or more as tracked by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and has achieved several of the state's largest medical malpractice verdicts. The firm's attorneys are also licensed to practice in New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

Will Binding Arbitration Replace Med-Mal Lawsuits?

This via Medical Malpractice Law News, which carries daily news headlines — a trend by West Coast physicians to require patients to sign binding arbitration agreements to reduce medical malpractice claims according to a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer titled, Arbitration a growing trend in health care.

Social Security Disability Lawyer Gets New Look

Social Security disability lawyers at Doherty, Cella, Keane & Associates have a new look and new web site to facilititate handling claims for social security disability claimants. With offices in Beverly, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., the firm services disability and beneficiary claimants nationwide. Senior partners Christopher Doherty, Laura Cella-Donovan and Martin Keane are highly experienced and focus their practice exclusively on Social Security law.

In addition to representing disabled persons, the lawyers also provides services to long-term disability carriers in these areas: file review and case recommendations; training staff in Social Security disability practices; recovery of overpayments, via electronic transfer through an attorney escrow account; obtaining status of Social Security claims; filing applications for dependent benefits; providing online accessibility to our database for updated case status and user-driven reports; and preparing specialized reports tailored to insurance company needs.

Medical Malpractice Jury Verdict Rules Against Surgeons

LOWELL — In what is being called one of the largest jury verdicts in the Merrimack Valley, the estate of a Lowell woman who died 19 days after surgery to remove ovarian cysts, was awarded approximately $2.5 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit against two surgeons. See the full article on this case in the Lowell Sun. The case was handled by Boston medical malpractice lawyers Lubin & Meyer.

Good SEO Research Tool

Just a quick note on Smart Page Rank, a great tool for researching back links for SEO purposes. Don't know how accurate it is, but I'm assuming it is. Please provide your feedback on this tool... whether you like it, or find problems with it... Or please suggest another, better one! Thanks.

Law Related Blogs

Two law blogs of note with Massachusetts roots: Massachusetts Consumer Rights Blog and Medical Malpractice Law Blog. The second is a general news and resouces site with special focus on med mal happenings in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Just a note to bookmark and see where these go.

Duplicate Content Got You Down?

Use this little tool to find out if your web site has duplicate content issues.
Duplicate Content Checker
There is also a link to follow with more details on the duplicate content issue. Every web publisher should be aware of this issue.

GCG Represents Bow Mills in Merger with Merrimack County

CONCORD, NH – Law Firm Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell, is pleased to announce the merger of Bow Mills Bank and Trust with and into Merrimack County Savings Bank became effective on May 1, 2007. Attorneys W. John Funk, Susan B. Hollinger and Denis J. Maloney represented Bow Mills in the merger with a total transaction value of $22,707,945. The branches will continue to operate independently until the weekend of July 21. Read more on the bank merger.

Pay-per-click Class

I am enrolled to take a full day class on Google Adwords pay-per-click in Boston and will report back here on the most startling revelations. Personally, I think Google Adwords is an overly complex and hard-to-navigate system with too many variables and too much mystery of the quality of clicks. I'm hoping to learn something valuable from it all that will change my mind. Recently, I have been exploring and experimenting with Google Adword campaigns and find it to be expensive. I prefer working for success in organic search results with tried and true, white hat optimization techniques. Nothing beats hot, fresh, steamy content that is timely and relevant. Quality information that serves humans is the best food for search engines. That's been my experience with professional services web sites... Everything from topics such as greenhouse gas trading, employment and immigration, legislative histories, consumer law, medical malpractice lawyer, etc. I'm getting more and more inquiries from businesses and law firm in Massachusetts (MA), New Hampshire (NH), Rhode Island (RI) and Maine (ME) and beyond, where clients are more aware about SEO but not always willing to pay for it. Google Adwords is still not well understood by mainstream public.

Duplicate Content Trap?

This tip from Jayde. Can anyone confirm or dispute it?

An easy step that can help avoid potential ranking loss from duplicate content reprimands is to make sure there aren’t four or five different URLs navigating to the same page. Google views these two domains below as separate entities and if the content is exact, they can take punitive measures against the offending site.

mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com

To address potential duplicate content penalties, manipulate your.htaccess file and redirect secondary domains to the preferred listing. This means every time a web user enters the mysite.com address without the preferred prefix, they are redirected to the correct domain.

Add the following code to your .htaccess file (change the "mysite" to your domain):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

Basketball Camps Massachusetts - Bill Curley Clinics in Duxbury and Plymouth, MA

Summer basketball camp dates have been set for Bill Curley Basketball Clinics in Duxbury and Plymouth, Massachusetts for boys and girls of many ages starting in June. Click here for more details at billcurleybasketball.com.

Vermont Personal Injury Attorney Web Site Indexed

This Vermont personal injury law firm is a big needle in the haystack. Efforts to overcome Google overlooking this site on keyword related searches has worked. No tricks, just straight up, honest, organic search engine optimization here. Results sometimes take a while, especially in the medical malpractice and personal injury world, which is highly competitive. The site may have been in the "sandbox" or being penalized for some optimization techniques used prior to our efforts. Sometimes you never know.

Google site map experience

I'm having mixed experience with Google's site map function. It's a bit of a cumbersome process and an excruciating waiting game. I'm finding increasing interest from law firm clients in raising their visibility on the web through both organic SEO techniques and dipping their toes into PPC advertising. So far, I see the PPC advertising as in the early mode. Most folks still ignore it, especially when trustworthiness is a big part of the purchase. This vermont personal injury law firm is an example where switching to a new URL has caused a drop in the visibility of their attorneys. Some sites are just not built to be search engine friendly. Once those shortcomings are corrected, and once Google finally makes a good index of the new swiss-cheesy site, then things tend to turn around pretty dramatically. I will report back on this as things go. For more info see this organic SEO article.

Vermont Personal Injury Attorney Gets New URL

Vermont personal injury law firm Sylvester & Maley, Inc. recently changed the URL for its web site. The new web site is located at www.sylvestermaley.com. Vermont personal injury attorneys practicing there include:
Alan Sylvester
John Maley
Michael Brow
Amy Sylvester
Christopher Maley

The Vermont law firm handles personal injury, automobile accident, medical malpractice and products liability claims arising throughout the state of Vermont. This includes representation of out-of-state residents who were harmed while in Vermont, traveling, vacationing, attending college, or who have received medical treatment at one of the state's health care facilities. We also represent Vermont residents for claims arising from injuries or deaths which occur outside the state.

SEO Tips

A long overdue pointer to this article titled Top Ten Ways to Improve Your Web Site's Search Engine Ranking.
That's it for now.