Attorney David Holtermann discusses holding client funds in trust through an IOLTA account.

Most attorneys know their firm's website needs to be optimized so it's appealing to consumers and shows up in Internet searches. But how do you accomplish this when consumers' preferences and the algorithms behind search engines (e.g., Google) are constantly evolving? In a recent post on Attorney at Work, Mike Ramsey provides six tips to help ensure that your website is serving your marketing needs. Here are two of them. 1. Use responsive design. Research shows that a growing number of consumers are accessing websites via mobile devices. For your website to have its greatest impact, it must look good on smartphones and tablets as well as traditional desktop computers. You do this by using a "responsive design" for your website, which means that it can adapt to different devices and look good on them regardless of their screen size. 2. Speed up your site's load time. If your website takes too long to load, you not only risk consumers going elsewhere, but you'll also end up lower in Google's search results. To help speed up your site, Ramsey suggests removing oversize images that "are just wasted space on a website." Google provides a free tool to check you site's speed, which you can access at https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/. Read Ramsey's article for the other four tips, which were summarized in the March Illinois Bar Journal Biz&Tek column.

The Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts announced Wednesday that the Eleventh Judicial Circuit judges voted to select Amy L. McFarland as associate judge of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit. Ms. McFarland received her undergraduate degree in 1996 from Illinois State University and her Juris Doctor in 1999 from the University of Denver. Ms. McFarland is currently affiliated with Bloomington Legal Services.

Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. Our firm is an 18-attorney firm based in San Diego. We are considering hiring our first legal administrator and have interviewed several candidates and have narrowed our search down to two candidates. One candidate has a strong financial background and has worked as a director of administration in several very large firms - 200 plus attorneys. The other candidate has a strong HR background, a weaker financial background, and has worked as a firm administrator in two different law firms - a 30 attorney firm and a 20 attorney firm. We like both candidates. Which candidate would you lean toward?