Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Blawgs, Law Firm Marketing

Unintentionally, the majority of posts selected for today's update are from the West Coast...but not all of them: we've also got David McCranie representing Florida, Jeffrey Mehalic from West Virginia, and Eric McLennan in Colorado.

• Second DCA: employer not estopped from asserting "exclusive remedy" defense - Orange Park attorney David McCranie in his Florida Workers' Compensation Law Blog
• Arkansas teachers sue company directors for risk taking - Financial risk manager Susan Mangiero of Pension Governance at her blog, Pension Risk Matters
• IP ADR Blog selected as "top blog" for LexisNexis Copyright Law Center - Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon in the IP ADR Blog
• EU data protection watchdog supports breach notification law - Los Angeles lawyer Jeremy Mittman of Proskauer Rose in the firm's Privacy Law Blog
• Chinese patent system: problems and best practices - Los Gatos attorney Kristie Prinz in her California Biotech Law Blog
• Is ESA rated "O" for over? - Seattle lawyer Kraig Baker of Davis Wright Tremaine in the firm's Technology, eBusiness & Digital Media Law Blog
• Appellate court allows "on-duty" meal period class action to proceed - Los Angeles attorney Anthony Zaller of Van Vleck Turner & Zaller in the firm's California Labor & Employment Defense Blog
• Study looks at foreclosures in Denver - Eric R. McLennan of HindmanSanchez in the firm's blog, HOA Legi-Slate
• Federal government calls polar bear threatened but limits impact - San Francisco journalist Dennis Pfaff writing in Thelen's Climate Law Update
• Court approves settlements, but refuses parties' request for confidentiality - Charleston lawyer Jeffrey Mehalic in his West Virginia Business Litigation Blog

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Congratulations are in order today for Gerald Pugliese at Disease Proof, who got some great press coverage in Sally Squires' health column from today's Washington Post. Commentary from Gerald and 9 other bloggers from around the country are included in today's batch of updates.

• More about COBRA: what is "gross misconduct"? - New York attorney Keith R. McMurdy of Fox Rothschild in the firm's Employee Benefits Legal Blog
• EPA unified agenda includes item on Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program - Washington, D.C. lawyer Lynn Bergeson of Bergeson & Campbell in the firm's Nanotechnology Law Blog
• Why we need an innocence commission - Waco attorney Walter Reaves in his Texas Criminal Law Blog
• DiseaseProof invades The Washington Post - Health blogger Gerald Pugliese at Dr. Joel Fuhrman's blog, DiseaseProof
• Governor of Montana successfully asserts sovereign immunity to takings claim - Sacramento lawyer Cori Badgley of Abbott & Kindermann in the firm's Land Use Law Blog
• New CFP standards effective July 1 - Minneapolis attorney David Flower of Lindquist & Vennum in the firm's OverReg'd Corporate Securities Regulation & LItigation Resource Blog
• Circuit Court could not reconsider denied post-judgment motions; appeal from later order was untimely - Birmingham lawyer Craig N. Rosler of Lightfoot Franklin White in the firm's Alabama Appellate Watch Blog
• Texas - right to arbitrate waived without proof of prejudice to opposing party - Houston attorney Andrew Wooley of Liskow & Lewis in the firm's Energy Law Blog
• The statute of limitations in veterinary malpractice actions - Texas lawyer Alison Rowe in her Equine Law Blog
• Oklahoma medical malpractice new filing requirement vetoed - Maryland attorney Ron Miller of Miller & Zois at the Trial Lawyer Resource Center

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David Rocks. Best presenter I have seen in years.

Who is he? Technologist, professional speaker, and commentator, probably best known as co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which has been described as 'a primer on Internet marketing.' Weinberger's work focuses on how the Internet is changing human relationships, communication, and society.

Key points on communication

• Broadcast era is ending, the one to many is decreasingly important.
• Youtube is social in that we point to them. I liked this, take a look. We point out to one another. Also not done talking - look at comments to YouTube videos, which in fact are conversation. One laughing baby video has 60,000 comments.
• Net allows us to create new ways of talking with one another, something impossible before. Now have 140 character conversation with Twitter.
• More interesting in talking with one another than anything. Look at conference program filled with great speakers and you'll gravitate to cocktails and networking.
• Control doesn't scale. Only way to do is 'Be China.' Only because control is taken out do things scale, ie, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube.

Evolution of how we find good stuff

• First order of organization. Put pictures in folders etc.
• Second order. Reduce rich info to a few lines of data describing. Card catalogue.
• Third order. We're changing who organizes and how. No one can anticipate how someone will browse or look for stuff. Users, we, get to control the organization of stuff - imagine book store that allowed this. Amazon is good example of not having info organized in one way. Click on term or phrase in book and takes to other books with that term. Tags users have associated with book.

Front page of newspaper is paging

• Twitter. Go look at this. We keep up with people who are doing some very neat things. Also intimacy is built by detail.
• Emails. Go look at this.
• Digg. People vote on what others should look at.

Few more points

• Conversation about what someone said is smarter than the person who originally said something. Look at mail list conversation. Communities are smarter than individual, even if individual is very smart.
• Wikipedia scales. 2 million articles in 5 years. Britannica cannot do that. And it's willingness allows you to post notices of neutrality, advertising etc makes it work. Admitting fallibility makes it your friend and makes it get better.
• Facebook, by messing up information and content, works. We overflow all the boundaries in Facebook and communities. And because we took away the boundaries, we allowed things to scale.

Conversation to Connection. Connection to Community.

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Mark Tran at the Guardian Unlimited's newsblog notes a drastic change between the Chinese government's official reaction to today's 7.9 magnitude earthquake and similar events in the past, seeming to suggest that their response is related to the uncontrollable scope of the Internet. After all, how could officials keep a lid on an incident that within seconds of happening was already covered on Twitter and in blogs like Shanghaiist?

Amazingly, we even found our own post on the earthquake mentioned in Mark's piece: the brief observations Kevin blogged about last night (and shortly thereafter put up on Twitter) had by this morning been picked up by an internationally renowned news source and cited as yet another angle of the story.

But did word of the quake actually break on Twitter, before the major news media were able to pick up on it? Malcolm Moore at The Telegraph seems to think so (despite being from a professional news source, he doesn't hesitate to give Twitter credit for its role in the disaster response). Malcolm's story also echoes the sentiments of many in the blogosphere this morning, and notes the unexpected significance of this seemingly simple tool in a time of widespread confusion and panic:

The news of the Sichuan earthquake apparently broke first on Twitter.com, a website whose users constantly update the world on what is happening around them.

Links to maps showing the epicentre of the quake were posted alongside accounts of shaking buildings and evacuated offices from Chengdu, Shanghai and Beijing.

"Breathing normal again, feeling an earthquake on the 31st floor was not fun," wrote Ana from Shanghai.

Ana's Twitter page, like so many others, continues to provide her take on the earthquake and micro-conversations with other users. It seems likely that in any Chinese city where there's an Internet connection this evening, someone's tapped in and sharing their perspectives with listeners around the world.

To some, it may seem downright absurd: web users armed with nothing more than their eyes, ears and 140 characters of empty space. But that's exactly what happened this morning...and it seems likely that next time a newsworthy world event strikes, all eyes will be on Twitter.

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We start this week as we have so many others in the past: with a batch of legal news to satisfy your certain cravings. There's some great discussion taking place this morning, and some of it is highlighted in the ten posts below.

• New enforcement data added to HHS' web site on HIPAA privacy compliance & enforcement - New Jersey attorney Helen Oscislawski of Fox Rothschild in the firm's HIPAA Health Law Blog
• Divorce and the housing market in New Hampshire - Manchester lawyer Kysa Crusco in her New Hampshire Family Law Blog
• Iowa enacts 43rd state breach notification law - Los Angeles attorney Tanya Forsheit of Proskauer Rose in the firm's Privacy Law Blog
• Writing the better contract from Anita Campbell - part II - Iowa lawyer Rush Nigut of Brick Gentry in his blog, Rush on Business
• Curtailing abuses to the "reasonable belief" exclusion in the Texas Auto Policy - Texas attorney Chris Martin of Martin, Disiere, Jefferson, & Wisdom at the National Insurance Law Forum
• State officials contemplate big changes in California livin' - San Francisco journalist Dennis Pfaff, writing in Thelen's Climate Law Update
• Appellate Court holds network director for start-up company was properly classified as exempt employee - Los Angeles lawyer Anthony Zaller of Van Vleck Turner & Zaller in the firm's California Labor & Employment Defense Blog
• Recent decision emphasizes need to include reasons for settlement in workers' compensation settlement agreements - Ohio attorney Rob Statler of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur in the firm's Employer Law Report
• Feds reportedly looking to RICO for additional Scruggs charges - Georgia lawyer Tom Withers of Gillen Withers & Lake in his Federal Criminal Defense Blog
• Harris v. Fish & Richardson update: Patent Troll Tracker returning - Illinois attorney R. David Donoghue of DLA Piper in his Chicago IP Litigation Blog

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Noticed a few minutes ago news of a 7.8 earthquake in China. Didn't get the news from CNN or the Internet, but from Twitter.

Robert Scoble, who presumably picked up word of the Earthquake via Twitter, shared the news with those of us following him on Twitter.

When I couldn't find any news of the earthquake at CNN or Google News, I went to Tweetscan, which allows you to monitor Twitter discussion by keyword. Sure enough, plenty of news on the earthquake. Including from people in China.

And look who's 'Tweeting' news of the earthquake in addition to 'citizen tweeters,' the New York Times and Reuters. Amazing.

Discussion on Twitter now is that the mainstream media may have first picked up word of the earthquake from Twitter before their traditional sources.

What we're seeing in action is a breaking news world wide backbone that can disseminate news faster than anything main stream media can match. All with a crazy tool that asks 'What are you doing now?'

Update on how news breaks:

In order to follow more Twitter feeds, people are also monitoring the word 'earthquake' at summize and quotably.

People at Twitter are now telling people who felt the quake to report it here.

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I'm headed to Las Vegas tomorrow night for the annual Community 2.0 Conference.

The focus of the conference is how developing a community can significantly impact your business’ bottom line. Blogs, social networking, community strategies, reputation systems, and customer engagement are among the many topics to be covered.

Being a lawyer, overseeing a network of lawyer blogs, and soon to be publishing a legal new media site, I'm addressing some of the legal issues of communities and social networking.

It's frankly an honor to get to present at this conference. Past speakers include author and consultant, John Hagel, Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist, and author and consultant Patricia Seybold.

This year looks like a great group of presenters including Shel Israel, Co-author of Naked Conversations–How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, Charlene Li, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, and Dave Weinberger, a pioneer in blogging and author of Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder & Co-author of 'The Cluetrain Manifesto.'

Getting to non-legal technology conferences is critical for me. Nothing against legal conferences. But the future lies closer to what those outside the law are evangelizing. Plus I get to spend time with some of the thought leaders who I have followed and networked with through the blogosphere.

I'll blog direct from conference sessions to share what I'm learning. And if we're lucky, we'll pick up some nice interviews for more live blogging.

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Darren Rowse at Problogger asked that question of his readers last week.

Asked another way, should you just do what makes by far the most sense to me, should you you key in your name in the comment field labeled 'name?'

People leaving keywords such as the name of their blog, which is full of keywords itself, such as Russia Law Blog or Missouri Injury Lawyer, is a real turn off to me as a blog publisher. Shows me the commenter is more concerned about getting SEO for their blog than leaving a comment of value to the discussion.

Looks like I am not alone in my feelings. Here's a sample of comments to Darren's post.

• If you leave keywords instead of your name, it looks like all you’re interested in is improving your search rankings instead of contributing to a discussion.
• It immediately turns off the reader from reading your wonderful prose and insightful analysis. Although it might increase viewership, it’s unnecessary and in my opinion unwanted.
• I can’t see any difference from SPAM comments and leaving a keyword in the name field.
• To leave keywords is the closest way to say: 'Hello! don’t read my comment, I’m just another spammer!'
• As a webmaster that immediately comes off as spam to me, even if the comment is good or even insightful. I usually end up editing or deleting those types of comments.
• Comments are supposed to be for user contribution and opinion. There are plenty of places to build links, but spamming comments with keywords is not one of them. I hand edit the majority of my keyword-spammed comments, and believe everyone else should too.

Don't be lame. Leave your name.

And from now on, no more comment spam by keywords in the name field around here. I'll edit to insert your name, if I know it, or delete the comment if I don't.

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Darren Rowse of Problogger asked his readers publishing blogs where they got their biggest levels of traffic. The results are displayed below.

I find it pretty interesting, like Darren, that social media sites are the number 1 source of traffic for 15% of bloggers. I also agree with Darren that if he asked the same question 18 months ago social media sites would have barely registered on the results.

We're always a little lagging in the legal industry. I am finding some blog traffic coming from social media sites such as Twitter and Stumbleupon, but I'd guess it's only 5 or 10% of my traffic. Most of my traffic comes from people coming directly and by others mentioning a post of mine in their blog or online publication.

Where does most of your blog traffic come from?

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Why are blogs becoming so popular for businesses, including law firms?

Per business coach Deborah Micek in an article in this morning's Honolulu Star Bulletin:

The answer is simple when you consider the history of marketing and communication: A blog exponentially multiplies the world's oldest, favorite and most-trusted form of information sharing -- word of mouth.

People love sharing what they know with like-minded friends.

Think about it. Whom do you trust the most to give you advice, recommendations and information about opportunities, purchases or choices?

If you're like most people, the person you trust the most is someone you know -- someone whom you feel is just like you.

That type of trust comes from personal communication, conversations and relationships built with people who share common interests. When your blog is integrated into a complete new-media marketing strategy, it delivers all that and more.

And why do blogs work so well per Micek?

• Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you to easily update your content, create relationships and build trust with your target audience.
• The power of blogs is not in the technology, but in the two-way conversations that create personal connections.
• A blog becomes a personal extension of the author, who builds relationships by responding to the feedback from clients and readers.
• Blogs are not just for press releases, product updates, or company news. Blogs are an open door to communication where customers and prospects can voice their opinions, contribute to product development and become part of your company family.
• Blogs provide the public with a more reliable way of getting news and information, free from mass-media manipulation and interruption marketing.

Slow down and think about the history of lawyer marketing for a minute.

Until the 1977 Supreme Court decision in the case of Bates v. Arizona State Bar we didn't have any lawyer marketing or advertising. Notta. No yellow pages. No law firm newsletters. No ads on busses. No TV ads with 1-800-lawyers. No websites touting the wonderful exploits of lawyers.

How the heck did we lawyers survive? By reputation spread by word of mouth. And we earned this reputation by establishing ourselves as reliable and trusted authorities. It didn't necessarily come easy. We worked at. And that was okay.

Now we expect instant client development by throwing dollars at advertising, search engine optimization, and what ever the next snake oil salesperson will serve up for thousands of dollars.

Doesn't word of mouth make more sense in the long run? For a lot of lawyers and other business people who are blogging it does.

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Among our usual batch of Sunday news today, we've got a special feature: Blawg Review #159, hosted this week by our good friend Juliet Sallette. Make a point of checking out her post, and while you're at it, see some of our others...we've got news from Fred Abrams on hidden assets, David Oxenford commenting on a $9,000 FCC fine and more.

• Hidden assets & a Wisconsin divorce - New York attorney Fred Abrams at his Asset Search Blog
• Good news for family LLCs - Chapel Hill lawyer Greg Herman-Giddens of TrustCounsel PA at his North Carolina Estate Planning Blog
• Anticorruption developments and D&O insurance implications - Ohio attorney Kevin LaCroix of OakBridge Insurance Services in his blog, The D&O Diary
• FCC fines noncommercial station for enhanced underwriting announcements that were too commercial - Washington, D.C. lawyer David Oxenford of Davis Wright Tremaine in the firm's Broadcast Law Blog
• Blawg Review #159 - Juliet Sallette at LaBovick & LaBovick in the firm's Whistleblower Law Blog

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