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Law firm with blog : 'We're not your father's Oldsmobile'

Last Sunday's Times (UK) brings a story on law firm blogs entitled 'A blog shows we are not a stuffy, old-style firm.'

Here's a few quotes from the story.

From Andy Haven, a US legal marketing consultanat:

Blogging is to public relations what e-mails are to letters and is one of the most important technological innovations for law firms. If your firm doesn’t have at least one lawyer who is blogging, you look like a firm who, in 1996, didn’t have a website yet.

Nan Joesten, a San Francisco intellectual property expert, and a author on IP Blawg, a well-established blawg on intellectual property issues:

Any potential new client always checks out our website first and will see our blog. Having a blog conveys an impression that we are not a stuffy, old-style firm but are aware of and comfortable with new ways to communicate with a broad audience.

Peter Wainman, of Mills & Reeve, a national UK firm and publisher of the NakedLaw blawg about technical law issues:

You might be lucky and get a new client overnight because you write something that is relevant to that client’s business, but it is more likely that the blog will have a medium to long-term prospect of bringing in new business by raising the profile of a firm and demonstrating its experience, particularly in niche areas. Blog readers tend to hate blogs that are thinly disguised attempts to drum up new work.

There are still guys driving your father's Oldsmobile (model of car no longer made for you young guys). Charles Christian, publisher of Legal Technology Insider:

Any firm that builds a marketing strategy on blogs is deluding itself.’ He adds that if law firms really want to attract clients, they would be better off approaching potential clients direct to find out what they really want in terms of legal services.

Can only guess that Mr. Christian does not publish a blog nor seen the results of law blogs first hand. What he misses is that blogs are all about networking. Lawyers are approaching current and prospective clients 24/7 via a blog. Lawyers are reaching prospects they would never know exist. And the prospects are likewise finding the lawyers.

  • Seth R.

    That's only going to be true for a little while. Blogs are still enough of a novelty that, simply by having one, a firm can convey the impression of “being hip.”
    The same is true of the networking aspect. Right now, you can open a blog on a specialty practice area and be one of the few games in town. Networking ought to flow naturally.
    As this gets more prevalent however, people are going to start demanding actual quality from bloggers as well. People will also start developing their smell-tests for when a firm is simply using ghost-writers to portray an image of the firm that simply isn't real.
    We aren't there yet. But at a certain point, the honeymoon's over.

  • http://kevin@lexblog.com Kevin O'Keefe

    Kind of like saying that after awhile networking with prospective clients in a way that showcases one's experience, skill, and expertise will get old and ineffective.
    To think blogs are a fad is dreaming. Putting good lawyers and other professionals back in the can so they can beg a program coordinator to speak or an editor to write an article ain't going to happen. Too many good lawyers are picking up good work as a result of their blogs.
    Blogs will not be for everyone but neither has been speaking at seminars, talking to the media, going to social functions, and the like. But those professionals who did and still do, get more work. Blogs will be the same.
    Sure, good content wins. No one wants some corporate speak that is not the professionals.

  • Seth R.

    Note, I didn't say blogs themselves are a fad. I said that the stage where simply having one gives you a free passport to hipdom is a fad.
    My other point was that if you put a fancy dress on a pig, it's still a pig. If you've got a stagnant law firm culture, simply getting a blog isn't going to change all that any more than tacking up insipid motivational posters is going to magically create a better work culture.
    Blogs are a useful tool and I'm a big fan of them. But they aren't a panacea and they don't automatically make you a better lawyer.