If this is all a foreign language to you, think of it this way: a law firm can place large amounts of information about itself, its lawyers and its specialties before a world-wide audience of well educated, high-income potential clients for less than the cost of a typical Yellow Pages blurb. As a rainmaking tool, it is working well for Siskind and Susser, who practice immigration law. Their market is one of the two types of potential clients who Siskind says are already using the Internet to help find and hire lawyers. They are:

-- Clients who need lawyers who can practice in any state. Because it involves clients from all over the world and is not cluttered up by various state laws, immigration law is perfectly suited to marketing through unbounded cyberspace. So, Siskind says, would be patent law since it involves only federal law.

-- Clients who need to find a lawyer in another location – for example, someone in another state who needs a Tennessee lawyer or a Nashville firm.

"It’s great for me because people abroad can’t find an immigration lawyer in the U.S. very easily," Siskind says. And by their very nature, Internet clients – even those from countries considered "Third World" – tend to be the most desirable kind: "Ninety-nine or more have master’s degrees. They pay their bills, and also the cases are usually pretty winnable," Siskind says. But Siskind also predicts that the number of Nashvillians who are able to access the Internet will keep growing so quickly that a "Web site" will make sense even for local marketing. "It’s just a matter of time before (the Internet) becomes just another tool, like the Yellow Pages or local referrals," he says. Siskind says Internet sites are better than the Yellow Pages because they offer potential clients far more information and easy e-mail access to the lawyer, and because they can be updated throughout the year.

Despite a deluge of newspaper, magazine and television reports and new computer programming that make cyberspace as easily accessible as a cable television station, the Internet remains a mystery to many Americans. It is a vast exploding worldwide network of computers and the information they contain are carried by telephone and data transmission lines.

While some businesses – including Boult, Cummings – are linked directly and constantly to other Internet host computers, smaller businesses generally use a local Internet provider. Siskind has a dedicated data line from Telalink attached directly to the computer at his desk, making accessing the Internet as easy as changing from one computer program to another. Cheaper and only a little more troublesome is the use of dial-up services such as The Nashville Exchange and The Sounds of Silence (local) or America Online, Prodigy, or Compuserve (national). These are accessed using a modem and telephone line.

Once the Internet has been accessed, a number of different features are available:

* Worldwide electronic mail, generally at little or no additional cost;
* USENET newsgroups, in which individuals with similar interests discuss and exchange information on a chosen topic;
* File transfer, in which information and computer programming can be sent from one computer to another over the data or telephone line;
* A mindboggling assortment of databases that can be accessed by use of a program called a "gopher" or a "WAIS"; and
most recently, an exceptionally user-friendly research tool called the World Wide Web.

The Web, or W3, is a research system based on "hypertext" – highlighted text (usually blue or purple) that is linked to other documents. The reader, using various programs called "Web browser," finds a "home page" that is of interest. A home page is the doorway of information, generally containing one or more graphics and introductory material with hypertext scattered throughout. To read more about a topic of interest, the reader simply points the computer cursor at the hypertext and clicks the mouse button.

The use of hypertext in on-line advertising makes it easy for readers to select only the information that interests them without have to wade through multiple screens full of text. Currently, the Boult, Cummings home page uses hypertext only for e-mail addresses – readers can click on the addresses for marketing coordinator Louise Green or information systems director Terry Crum and instantly access a pre-addressed form for electronic mail.

Siskind makes far more extensive use of hypertext, allowing readers to move to detailed biographical information about him and Susser or to descriptions of the services they can provide or to the latest edition of Siskind’s monthly Immigration Newsletter with the click of a mouse button. He also has a hypertext link allowing readers to subscribe to the newsletter, which is transmitted to some 3,000 e-mail addresses each month. Having e-mail addresses in hypertext is a huge advantage, Siskind says, because "a lot of people feel intimidated about picking up the phone and calling a lawyer. They find it less intimidating to send e-mail."

Moses, the Telalink consultant with whom Siskind works, says a basic but effective Web site can be created and posted on the Internet for about $1,500 in start-up costs and $150 a month in maintenance fees. More elaborate sites would carry additional costs. But Siskind says the price is a bargain, considering all the perks that go along with Internet marketing. For example, he can get a periodic report on exactly how many people have accessed his home page (762 during a single week in April) and relatively detailed demographic information on those readers.

Crum, at Boult, Cummings, Conners & Berry, says marketing is only one of the uses for the Internet that his firm has found. Already, all of the attorneys there have Internet e-mail addresses, and they are doing legal research on the relatively inexpensive Internet first, before resorting to the more comprehensive but far more expensive on-line law research databases like Lexis-Nexis. The Internet, he says, is also very useful for downloading updated versions of computer programs directly from the vendors especially since it is free. Boult, Cummings has its Internet link through a local provider called ISDN-Net, whose consultants helped design the experimental Web home page the firm introduced late last year. Crum says the Web site is being brought in-house and will eventually include hypertext links to biographical information on all of the firm’s attorneys. Boult, Cummings attorneys are also using the Internet to electronically file documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which Crum says creates a significant savings for clients when compared with the cost of having SEC filings printed.

Siskind is looking in new directions as well. He is exploring the use of the Internet for teleconferencing, which he says can be done for no more than about $500 in equipment and programming. And he is also optimistic about the use of InternetPhone, a program that allows the transmission of voice calls over the Internet without the expense of long-distance telephone charges.

Internet surfers who want to check out Siskind and Susser’s home page should point their browsers to http://www.telalink.net/siskind/index.html. The Web site address for Boult, Cummings home page is at http://rex.isdn.net/bcch/.