Gerry Oginski is a New York medical malpractice and personal injury lawyer. He will teach “Creating Online Videos for Attorneys” at Solo Practice University®.

Gerry has been in practice since 1988. He is a graduate of Touro College, Jacob Fuchsberg College of Law in Huntington, NY and he is admitted to practice law in New York and Connecticut. He started his legal career working for a defense firm on Wall Street representing doctors, hospitals and businesses who were sued. Four years later he felt the gravitational pull to represent injured victims of medical negligence and accidents. After doing defense work, he joined a personal injury law firm in Brooklyn, NY representing injured victims, and then four years later, joined forces with a large law firm in Queens, NY. While there, he was in charge of the medical malpractice department. Six years later, Gerry decided he could best serve his clients by opening his own office for the practice of law in cases dealing with injured victims of medical negligence, medical malpractice, wrongful death, personal injury and accident cases. As of September 1, 2002, Gerry has been a solo practitioner, and the name of his firm is The Law Office of Gerald M. Oginski, LLC. His main office is located in Great Neck, Long Island, and he has affiliate offices in Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Gerry has become a prolific writer and publishes a monthly newsletter full of legal news, fun trivia games, and a never-ending fictional story that has won him accolades with all who read his newsletter. In addition to his newsletter, he has produced and created an entire video library of instructional videos that help consumers learn about medical malpractice and accident law in New York.

To learn more, please visit his New York Medical Malpractice and Accident Law Blog and, when you’ve finished reading his blog, jump over to his video blog where he has most of his videos posted.

---

Syllabus – Creating Online Videos for Attorneys

• History of advertising
• Pitfalls of traditional advertising
• Cost
• Limited Run
• Limited message/ not educational
• Cheesy ads that scream at you
• Dawn of internet
• Websites- Name/ rank/ serial #
• Photos/ flash animation
• Lack of information
• No distinguishing features
• Focused Web Sites
• Better/ fancier/ more expensive
• Still limited information
• No communication with viewers
• Google
• King of Search
• Importance of high ranking on google for your search terms
• If you’re not on 1st page- nobody will find you
• Content is King
• Video Revolution
• Google video
• YouTube- $1 Billion Dollars
• 20-30 Video Sharing Sites
• The defining standard for communicating with viewers
• Not real-time video chat
• Benefits of video
• Allows viewers to see who you are/ how you sound/ how you act
• Allows viewers to get to know you before ever calling you
• Allows you to distinguish yourself from all other competitors
• Levels playing field with biggest/ largest law firms in New York & Country
• Longer time to get message across
• Video Sharing Sites
• Viral video
• Video improves search engine ranking
• Who am I, and why should you listen to me?
• NY Medical Malpractice & Personal Injury Trial lawyer- 20 years
• Produced >100 educational videos
• #1 on Google organic search results for NY Medical Malpractice lawyer
• Did it all myself/ no big video company/ no IT guy
• Online reviewer of lawyer videos for Technolawyer.com

____________

Video Techniques/ Content/ Style

• What you should never include in your video that 99% of lawyers include in their video
• What you should always include in your video that most attorneys do not include
• What to talk about- Topics
• “Out of the Box” creative ideas
• Length of videos- compare to what most video companies give you
• Do-it-yourself v. Hiring web video company// Pitfalls v. Benefits
• Style of video-interview/ direct/ animation/ slide show with narration
• Educate & inform is key!
• Viewers starved for information
• Single shoot videos v. multiple videos
• Update videos- fresh content/ inability of web video companies to create multiple series of videos
• Ethical concerns with video- No legal advice
• Video on website alone isn’t great way to drive visitors to your website
• Multi-prong approach to saturate web with your video
• Video testimonials/ client testmonials
• Cost to do video for one series of limited video [$7,000-$30,000]
• Companies that do video: Findlaw/ Einstein Law/ iMarketing & others
• Problems w/ web video companies: Good product/ inability to update/ create multiple new, fresh videos on regular consistent basis/ very expensive
• What I do: Benefits of monthly membership program to create new, fresh video:
• Cost effective
• Best return on investment anywhere
• You be the critic: Let’s review some lawyer videos- see for yourself

FAILURE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ONLINE VIDEO:

• Lawyers lose opportunity to connect with website viewers
• Lose the chance to educate viewers
• Lose the opportunity to show viewers that you are the expert
• Fail to answer a viewer’s unasked question
• Fail to give useful information which will guarantee that a viewer go elsewhere