Martindale-Hubbell Offers New Email Service for Legal Professionals; Free Service Provides Permanent Email Address With Domain Name Tied to Profession
11:01 a.m. Sep 15, 1998 Eastern

NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 15, 1998-- Martindale-Hubbell, publisher of the definitive Internet resource for finding information about lawyers and law firms, Tuesday announced a new feature on their popular Web site (http://www.martindale.com) that enables legal professionals to obtain free Web-based email service with a choice of domain names that are independent of their Internet Service Provider (ISP) or place of business.

The new offering provides lawyers and other legal professionals with a variety of email domain name choices -- some of which are linked to the legal profession, such as "lawyers.com" -- to supplement their office or home address. It also offers them the flexibility of picking up their email via a Web-based service so they are not dependent on accessing internal email systems while traveling away from the office.

According to Carol Cooper, associate publisher of Martindale-Hubbell: "This new service offers a valuable communications tool for professionals in the legal community. It provides them with a free, permanent email address that works independently of an ISP and never changes -- even if you change ISPs or jobs.

"Web-based email means that your mailbox is actually a Web site, permitting seamless integration of Web capabilities and your email," said Cooper. "In addition, this service provides global access to your email from any Internet-connected computer."

To sign up, visitors merely come to the martindale.com site and follow the directions to register for email service. They input their personal name (e.g. john) and then choose their preferred domain name (e.g. john@attymail.com), with four options for free service and dozens of others -- such as "lawyers.com" (e.g. john@lawyers.com) -- for a small annual fee of $14.95.

To collect incoming mail, users can either go to the martindale.com site and enter their email password, or simply forward all incoming mail to another email address they most frequently utilize. In addition, they have the option of having their mail stored and accessing it directly on the Internet with their preferred email program, such as Microsoft Outlook or Netscape Mail, for an upgrade cost of $2 monthly.

The martindale.com site now averages 30,000 to 40,000 attorney searches daily, and is expected to facilitate more than 7 million total searches in 1998, more traffic than any other legal directory on the Internet.

The heavily trafficked Martindale-Hubbell Web site has been recognized with a number of Internet content awards, such as the prestigious "Four Stars" rating from Magellan Internet Guide and "Product of the Year" awards from both Law Technology Product News and Lawyers Weekly USA. In addition, last year the site was listed in the "10 Must-Have Sites for Every Lawyer's Bookmarks List" by legal.online.

Since 1868, generations of lawyers have relied on Martindale-Hubbell as the authoritative guide to the American legal profession. The database is now regarded as the most comprehensive and most widely used research source for information about attorneys and law firms around the world.

The Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory is published by Martindale-Hubbell, a member of the Reed Elsevier plc group. The company has headquarters at 121 Chanlon Road, New Providence, N.J. 07974, phone: 800/526-4902.