IT WAS 1979 when John M. DeProspo entered the legal profession. He typed his briefs and memos and tried to get clients the old-fashioned way: by doing good work and by advertising in the Yellow Pages and newspapers.

But about a year and a half ago, a friend of his working in Silicon Valley convinced this Brooklyn-based personal injury attorney to get connected. That was a foreign concept for the 49 year-old Mr. DeProspo, who had never used the Internet or e-mail before. After some urging and hesitation, he purchased a computer and got on-line."Once I got on, I got hooked," said Mr. DeProspo excitedly.

He was so hooked in fact, that the first thing he did was start his own Web site. He registered personalinjuryhotline.com and many other domain names and created a very basic site for his practice.

But months went by and not one person visited his site. So, in desperation, Mr. DeProspo contacted a technical expert who explained to him that he had to submit the site to the different search engines. Without doing this, the search engines like Yahoo, Google and Alta Vista will not list the Web site and it will not appear after a search. With the help of a computer specialist, Mr. DeProspo developed a more complex site that pops up on the top search engines. He claims this is getting him business - five cases since its inception six months ago.

"What this shows is that people really are accessing this site. And a good number of them are potential clients," said Mr. DeProspo.

According to Christine S. Filip, an attorney and a marketing specialist, success on the Internet partially depends on the attorney's practice. Practitioners with consumers as clients, such as personal injury and trusts and estates lawyers, fare better, and as a result have been faster to embrace the Internet.

Yet unlike small-business owners, most small-firm lawyers still do not see the Internet as a tool for getting business, said Ms. Filip. Of those that do, they often get inquiries but not that many clients, she said.

Mr. DeProspo does get hundreds of inquiries: two to three e-mails almost every day, most without producing business. Unfortunately, many individuals who contact him live outside New York State. He has even received e-mails from Pakistan and England.

Yet this is not a nuisance to Mr. DeProspo because every once in awhile an out-of-state e-mail can generate work. For example, a family from California retained Mr. DeProspo after finding him on the Web. They got in an accident in a taxicab on their way to the airport and needed a New York lawyer.

Even if he is not getting dozens of clients from his Web site each month, Mr. DeProspo still says there is no more cost-effective way to advertise a practice.

"It's cheaper than other forms of advertising," he said. "It's like an ongoing 24-hour commercial. If you were going to have something on TV, it would cost you millions of dollars," he added.

He said he has gotten more for the $ 2,000 he spent on having a professional design his site than from the $ 70,000 it costs annually to publish a full-page advertisement in the Yellow Pages, a volume overrun with legal ads. Besides its expense, the Yellow Pages works on a seniority system, said Mr. DeProspo. So a lawyer who signs up for a full-page ad today would be listed last, behind every other lawyer already in the phone book.

To have an effective Internet site, lawyers need to do more than just present the name of their firm and its address on a Web page, said Ms. Filip. A good site will have informative content about the law and the lawyer that is periodically updated and will be highly interactive, with contact information and a place to register for free e-mails. A lawyer needs to provide practical information to the consumer that has the potential of drawing them back to the site, said Ms. Filip.

"[Lawyers] need to provide useful content and interactivity and not just 'here's my practice,' " she said.

Mr. DeProspo is so happy with his Web site that he is trying to convert all his friends and make some money in the process. Just a few weeks ago, he started a new site, called www.metrolawyers.com, which he hopes will become a directory of personal injury lawyers in the metropolitan area. For $ 200 a month, the site would provide lawyers a link to their own Web sites and will use the money to advertise collectively on radio and television.

So far the only lawyer listed on metrolawyers.com is Mr. DeProspo. He said that it is a tough sell to get lawyers on-line. Also, in order to join his network a lawyer must have his own Web site first, which many of his colleagues do not yet have.

But no matter how stubborn or conservative lawyers are, it is just a matter of time until they discover the virtues of the Internet, he said. "I think in a year or two most attorneys will have a Web presence and the Web presence will be their own dot.com site," Mr. DeProspo predicted. "It's more fun than practicing law," he said with a laugh.

© Copyright 2002, The Success Group

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