48 hours … checking in.

So it’s been roughly 48 hours since the launch of biglawrefuge.  Here are some stats:  Ready to be blown away?

Stats

• 130 total sign ups
• 3 reviews! (one is mine)
• 15 job listings (13 are mine)

So … not very impressive at all so far.  That’s ok.  It’s still early in the launch, so there’s definitely room to grow.  Also, OCI season has not kicked into full swing yet for law students, which is when I expect they’d find the site more useful.  However, it does raise the question, “how does one market a new webapp?”  This is something admittedly, that I don’t know the answer to.

What me, market?

My plan was to target legal forums (the top being http://www.top-law-schools.com), and actually it’s the only place I’ve announced biglawrefuge.  I considered also reaching out to various career services departments at law schools around the country, but don’t know whether that’s a good idea or a bad idea.  On the one hand, they might be friendly and circulate the website to their students, seeing how it’s a valuable resource for them.  On the other (more likely) hand, I think they would outright reject the idea for being in “competition with them” or bringing their clandestine statistics to light, or (most likely) they would just ignore me completely.

I’ve also thought about reaching out to some old law professors at SLS to see what they thought.  Actually, while their thoughts would be useful, it would be more useful for them to just tell their students about the site.  I also don’t want it to feel like I’m attacking the law school or any law school in particular.  That’s definitely not my intention.  My intention is to let the stats speak for themselves, and to let law students and lawyers make the judgments.  After all, biglawrefuge is only the platform.

So in the end, I’m pretty much reliant on word of mouth, for now, at least.  Hopefully it starts picking up some steam and law students start seeing the value.  In the meantime, I’ll stay positive and continue to add features.  I recently just added the ability to post up a company review anonymously.  Cool stuff!