The landscape of generating new business for law firms has drastically changed over the last 2-3 years. Arguably, “the billable hour” is on life support and Alternative Fee Agreements (“AFA”) are revolutionizing the industry. Lawyers need to find new ways to develop business while teetering on the line of violating the self promotion and direct marketing rules governed by the American Bar Association (“ABA”). Thus, firms are turning to technology to solve this problem by allowing potential clients to find them via social media, search engine optimization (SEO), and other “tech” methods. Knoodle has an inexpensive tool that can help as well.

Knoodle is a “cloud based” (hosted) tool that allows novice users the ability to synchronize audio and/or video files with PowerPoint presentations in a dual-panel display in a matter of minutes. The presentation can be saved and viewed in a branded learning environment on the Knoodle platform simply by sharing a link to it or exported as a Portable Presentation (standard movie file) that can be viewed on mobile devices, emailed, embedded in a website or blog, or uploaded via social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.

Many of Knoodle’s clients use the tool to create an online classroom/training learning environment, where users can add downloadable PDFs, documents or hyperlinks and chat live with the presenter and other participants. Moreover, it allows users to make comments and other annotations to the presentations. Some universities use Knoodle to teach online classes; however, the legal industry could benefit by taking its power a step further.