Lawyers should have their own domain name and host their own website where they can control the look of their site. It’s a lot easier to do than most lawyers think. And it’s not that expensive either.
You should be able to have a website with your own domain and also an email address that uses that domain. And it shouldn’t cost you more than $5/month once you get the site up.
Here’s how to do it.
First, go to Hover.com and see if the domain you want is available. If it’s not then keep searching on their excellent home page. Once you find a domain that you like pay the $35/year and get the domain with 1 email address.
Next go to Weebly.com and get a free website. They have templates there that are very nice, and you can use one of those and then tweak it to your liking. The process of tweaking is pretty much a drag-and-drop deal, which is easy once you get the hang of it. It might take you two or three hours to set up a basic website with 2 or 3 pages.
If you don’t want to do the tweaking yourself then hire someone. If you don’t know anyone then go to Elance.com and bid out the job. It’ll cost you $5 to place a job for bid, and you’ll get a bunch of people who will offer to do it at various prices. Pick the person who seems most qualified and factor in the price after you make that assessment.
You can probably create your own site, and you can definitely get your domain without any help. The trick will be setting up the email, and also getting the domain to map to your Weebly page. So that’s what you’d be asking someone to do for you.
Don’t feel intimidated by Elance. It only costs $5 to test it out; you’re not obligated to accept any offers so it’s worth checking out just to learn how outsourcing works. You can have a silly website that is offered by Westlaw or Lexis or some other provider, or you can have a really elegant site that reflects your personal taste, and has your own domain.
Seems like a no-brainer to me.