No company can succeed without early adopters. In our case, we lucked out in that we had contributors and readers from day one, and clients as soon as we started selling marketing opportunities.
One of our earliest clients was CaseSoft, now LexisNexis CaseMap. At the end of the year, Greg Krehel, CaseSoft's co-founder, will retire.
(Unfortunately, because so many companies use words like "retire" as euphemisms after layoffs, reorgs, mergers, and so forth, people always wonder. However, in this context, its true meaning applies. Greg really is retiring. The decision was his. He just announced it recently.)
Greg Krehel along with his partner Bob Wiss shook up the legal industry by creating new categories of litigation software, raising the bar for customer service at a time when many software companies had begun cutting back, and using new marketing techniques, including the Internet, to reach lawyers. I'm proud to have played a small role in this inspirational American success story.
I spent the summer of 1998 developing TechnoLawyer's first service — an email advertising vehicle called TechnoRelease Tuesday (now just TechnoRelease) and an accompanying methodology for using it called Serial Storytelling. In August, I released our first media kit and legal vendors immediately started buying TechnoReleases. But I could not persuade anyone to try Serial Storytelling.
That same year I saw an article about CaseMap 2.0 in Internet Weekly magazine. Impressed, I wanted to meet the person who convinced an Internet magazine to publish an article about legal software. Soon enough I met Greg Krehel. Actually, he sought me out.
TechnoLawyer had no office space at the time so he met me outside my apartment building and we walked to a Starbucks. To this day, I don't know why I didn't just meet him at Starbucks to better disguise the fact that I had no office. Nonetheless, he still ordered a year's worth of TechnoReleases. It was our biggest sale ever at that point in time. And it was CaseSoft's first of nine consecutive one year campaigns in TechnoLawyer (including 2007, its first year as LexisNexis CaseMap).
Greg proceeded to roll out several campaigns using my Serial Storytelling methodology. I don't think I ever told him it was just a theory of mine that no one had ever put into practice, but fortunately it worked — in large part because Greg is not just a talented entrepreneur, but also one heckuva copywriter.
One particularly memorable campaign was a series of tips on creating case chronologies that Greg wrote over the course of seven TechnoReleases. He later used these tips as the basis for a popular white paper entitled Chronology Best Practices still available to this day.
My favorite campaign of Greg's was the very successful launch of TimeMap in 2000. You can get a clear sense of the story he told just by reading some of the TechnoRelease titles (note how he alternated between offers and tips, advertising and content):
Countdown to TimeMap: T Minus 1 and Counting
Two More Demonstrative Evidence Ideas
TimeMap Done; Download Final; 7 Days Till Special Price Kaput
Why Thinking Backwards is Forward Thinking
If TimeMap Doesn't Live Up to Our Claims, Get it for Free
Using Chronology Graphs in Briefs
Designing Effective Visuals: Choosing Fonts and Colors
Greg often credits TechnoLawyer with CaseSoft's early success, but I think the converse is the truer statement. Though small, CaseSoft was the larger company by far. Greg's validation of TechnoReleases as a cost-effective marketing vehicle helped pave the way for our success. At the time, Google had not yet sold a single advertisement. Advertising on the Internet and especially in email newsletters was perceived as risky or at least untested, especially in the conservative legal industry. Many people have forgotten those days. Not me.
By my count, Greg wrote 230 TechnoReleases from 1999-2006. I enjoyed reading and publishing each and every one of them. I doubt anyone else will ever write that many. Even more impressive is the fact that Greg's TechnoReleases represent just one facet of the terrific job he did as CEO of CaseSoft.
The legal industry won't be the same without Greg, but it will continue to benefit from his vision and the products he created. On behalf of everyone at TechnoLawyer and our many subscribers who enjoyed reading his TechnoReleases, we wish Greg much happiness and thank him for all the great memories and for his help and friendship.
About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.
