Contact
Kevin O'Keefe
411 First Avenue
Seattle, WA 98104
206 340 8204
cell 206 321 3627
Web site
AIM: prairielaw
Short Version
I am lawyer, who represented average folks for 17 years, turned social entrepreneur. I have five kids, ages 10 to 16, and a wife who is a saint for putting up with me. We live on Bainbridge Island, Washington, a thirty minute ferry ride across Puget Sound from downtown Seattle.
The Long Story
I help passionate, experienced and caring lawyers communicate and interact with real people about what the lawyer does and how the lawyer can help people faced with a legal situation. I do it by setting up weblogs (blogs) for lawyers and then teaching lawyers how to use their blog - their own personal publishing platform - to reach real people.
I've also founded a nonprofit corporation, Project Lawyers Serve, which will develop and maintain a Web based application allowing lawyers to help people via the Internet by answering their questions.
I practiced law for seventeen years standing up for the rights of ordinary people and small business owners. I was a sustaining member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and a board member of my state's trial lawyer's association. I loved every minute of it.
In 1996, I stumbled onto the Internet. I began answering people's legal questions with general legal information. The volume of questions people were asking and the thanks I received were overwhelming. I worked with AOL to develop a consumer law community and put up my own law firm Web site offering down to earth content to help folks. Though I loved being a trial lawyer, I decided I could help more people, both lawyers and lay people, by closing my law office and working on the Internet fulltime.
I moved my family across the country to Seattle and for four years worked on Internet and technology based projects focused on providing low- and moderate-income people improved access to the law and lawyers. My goal was not only to help lay people but also to provide good lawyers a better medium to use in marketing themselves. I found the Internet, properly used, much more tasteful, informative & cost effective than glib yellow page, television or radio ads. In pursuit of that goal I founded Prairielaw.com, a legal Web site for consumers and small business people, and following its acquisition by Martindale-Hubbell, served as a Vice President of Business Development for Martindale in the development of their new lawyers.com Web site.
I know the term 'blog' sounds funny. I feel strange supporting a family of seven by providing 'blogging services' to lawyers. But I care immensely about average people in this country. I know these folks need to be able to find passionate & caring lawyers to help them when faced with a legal situation, what ever that may be. Over two-thirds of people use the Internet as their 'go to' place for information and services. As lawyers we can use the Internet so that people may find good experienced lawyers as opposed to ones with glib ads.
The way to make that happen is for lawyers to publish practical information on the Internet about the area of law they practice and what they do as well as begin to Interact with the public. Blogs are an ideal way to accomplish this. Lawyer Web sites have failed the public and lawyers. Generally, they have little helpful information and are not updated regularly so as to perform well enough in the search engines for people to find the Web sites.
My approach is to educate lawyers how a blog can be used to present themselves to the public, the media and clients - past, current and prospective. Once lawyers understand the opportunities, I layout the alternatives & costs and go to work. I teach lawyers how to use their blog and provide support, both technical and educational, on a continuing basis.
Drop me an , give me a call - I am always open to questions. I love helping good lawyers help people.