Celebrating 10 Years on the Web
I was older then, I'm younger than that now!
Thank you to every client that has trusted me to handle their case!
On October 7, 2000, just a few days before the birth of my son, www.CharlesRowland.com went live. On December 4, 2000 I launched my first DUI defense page: www.OhioDUIdefense.com. I spent at least seven months working on how I thought the pages should look and meticulously scratching links onto a legal pad that I wanted on the site. The final pages consisted of a banner, an introduction and several hundred research links. It was nothing more than a glorified business card combined with my AOL (yeah AOL!) favorites page that I used for legal research, but to me it was state-of-the-art. I think I paid the outrageous amount of $500 to have it built by a friend who knew a guy.
I was one of the first attorneys I knew to have a site and I remember how reluctant I was to admit that I had a web site. The words sounded so pretentious coming out of my mouth and I would have rather died than “advertise” the site. Who did I think I was…IBM? Attorneys, ever slow to accept new technology, were not “on-line” and some old-timers considered it shady, or a gimmick. Our office was so old school that we did not have the internet at the office. If I wanted to view my site, I had to go home and dial up.
Who would have guessed that 10 years later, and with many lessons learned, we would still be going strong and providing a web site/blog/twitter feed/facebook page/squidoo lenses and dozens of partner sites that fulfill my original intention; to empower clients with information. I now spend much of my non-court time updating my site and scouring the internet for legal news. The majority of my clients “check me out” before they come into the office and I spend considerably more than $500 on the site. I hope to continue to provide these services well into the future.
If you want to see the early versions of my sites click on: http://web.archive.org/web/20001204150500/http://www.ohioduidefense.com/
If you want to see an early version of CharlesRowland.com go here: http://web.archive.org/web/20001007211921/http://www.charlesrowland.com/