by J. Brooks Terry
Staff Writer
Realizing that a client’s search for the right attorney may be crucial to the outcome of most legal matters, CasePost.com, an online service making its way to Jacksonville, has taken a proactive approach to finding a suitable match.
“We’ve taken attorney/client matching to another level,” said Mark McCann of CasePost. “Basically what we’ve done is adopted a quantitative form of advertising so the consumer is able to find the exact attorney they are looking for. This way, no one is having to go back for that second or third time while they try to find someone suitable to represent them.”
Six years ago in California, CasePost founder and chair Steve Cox developed the idea for the service after he released the third lawyer in a probate case in which he was involved. In short, he thought it would be convenient for consumers to be able to post their legal concerns online where interested and qualified attorneys could respond. CasePost, which serves as that intermediary, was the answer.
“Believe it or not,” said McCann, “nearly six million people type the word ‘attorney’ in the different search engines on the Internet every year. If you do that, you’re going to get about 10 to 12 million different options. What we do is narrow that down by allowing the user to fill out a questionnaire and enter in keywords specific to their case so we can find a match.”
CasePost prides itself on being in the top three returns on most web engine searches for legal services.
According to McCann, after a potential client enters in their information anonymously, they should receive a response from up to four local attorneys subscribing to the service — they pay an annual fee — within 24 hours. In turn, the client, who pays nothing, is able to view the attorney’s profile so that they can become familiar with his or her legal experience and expertise before anything is signed.
“It works really well because what we’ve come to understand is that consumers want choices based on a variety of things,” he said. “In California, we have about 1,000 attorneys working with us who handle 10 to 15,000 cases a year and it‘s working fantastically. We‘re unlike other matching services because we’ve eliminated all of the unnecessary language and we can deliver on what we say we can do in an efficient manor. It‘s a truly fantastic medium.”
CasePost is also up and running in Atlanta and Houston.
Advertising focusing on “a larger audience” in the Jacksonville market should begin in September, and McCann said Orlando and Tampa operations aren’t too far from becoming a reality.
“We already have a dozen signed on locally and we anticipate many more will very soon. It‘s been a very fast rise for us,” he said. “Every attorney who sees what we do is blown away. I haven‘t see one yet who hasn’t been in awe.”