Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Social Media, Twitter

Wasn't sure whether to share my 'Why I do LexBlog' I wrote for an inquiring person for whom I have a lot of respect. Seemed too self serving, or at least a little mushy, to post here. But with it being New Year's Eve and you guys reading my blog knowing as much about me as anyone (almost), what the heck.

I enjoy serving other people and trying to make the world a better place. That's why I can became a lawyer. Throughout my professional career, I have always looked for that next opportunity to serve more people and to make a difference.

Whether as a young associate working my tail off, leading local political causes, starting my own law firm, starting Prairielaw.com, a virtual community of people helping people, or working on a non-profit Internet legal services project before I started LexBlog, the common thread was service to others.

Over the last 12 years I have been blessed with the opportunity to help more folks via the Internet than I ever before helped before. It's like the Internet was made for me and now it's time to take what I know, the growing powers of the Internet, and the base I've built at LexBlog to the next level - all to serve people. All to make a difference.

My goals are fourfold:

• To get people the legal help they need. There are far too many people, whether they be a consumer, a corporate executive, or a practicing lawyer, in need of sound legal information who are not getting it. The best place to get information is from practicing lawyers with niche expertise. Tens of thousands of law blogs providing down to earth practical legal information would start to fill this void.


• To connect people in need of a lawyer with the most appropriate lawyer. Too many people end up with a lawyer who is ill equipped to truly help them. At the same time, given the right information, people are smart enough to evaluate who would be a good lawyer for them. Blogs put a lawyer's skill, passion, philosophy, and expertise on display for the world not only to see, but to discuss. In addition, geography is no longer a limit in finding the best lawyer - whether the driving force be expertise or a lower hourly rate.


• To help lawyers. A significant percentage of lawyers became a lawyer because of some principle they held - some burning light inside of them, some cause. Law school, student loans, and the practicalities of working long hours to make money and achieve what others have defined as success have just about drowned out that burning light. Blogging about something that you are passionate about, getting positive feedback from others about your blogging, and getting legal work in the area of law you are passionate about sparks that flame inside. Lawyers start to feel good about themselves.


• To improve the image of the legal profession, not to just benefit lawyers, but to benefit society as a whole. Law effects everyday life and society more than we can imagine. Law defines our rights and obligations. Lawyers obviously play an integral part in making the law work for people. We can not have a society distrusting the very professionals who are best equipped to help them. We cannot loose bright and passionate young people to other professions not held in such disrepute. An Internet filled with law blogs making lawyers and legal information freely accessible as well as breaking down the social barriers between lawyers and average folks will improve the image of our profession.

My goals are not totally altruistic. These goals and ideals are strong enough that those working to achieve them deserve a financial return. That's American entrepreneurialism at work.

If a guy from public housing in Brooklyn whose goal was delivering an affordable luxury to average Americans through a better cup of coffee and comfortable place to drink it can create a multi billion dollar corporation, those who improve the delivery of law and justice to Americans deserve their small slice of the American dream.

As we close the book on '07 and begin a new year, thanks to all who I've had the opportunity to serve in some capacity. It's been a hoot. And thanks to my team members at LexBlog. It's truly an honor to work with a such a dedicated and talented group. And most of all, thanks to my wife, Jill, and my family for putting up with me working all the time.

Onward and Upward for the New Year.

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When you live on an Island, the trip to the Apple Store is more of an adventure (well at least a family outing). Here's the view from the ferry deck traveling into Seattle from Bainbridge Island yesterday afternoon after the Packers game.

Two repaired machines, a new iMac, and a dinner out, and we were back on the 9 o'clock boat.

We live in a beautiful place here in Seattle, whose waters, mountains, and cityscapes I have come to take for granted after 8 years. I'll try to share more shots from my iPhone in the coming year.

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• Overview of key 2007 corporate and commercial decisions - Wilmington attorney Francis G.X. Pileggi of Fox Rothschild in his Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog
• Acknowledging the end of 2007: why or why not? - Lancaster lawyer Michael Moore of Russell Krafft & Gruber in the firm's Pennsylvania Employment Law Blog
• Happy 2008 from New York disability attorneys - Turley, Redmond & Rosasco - New York attorney in his firm's New York Disability Law Blog
• Personal notes: happy new year from the Texas State & Local Tax Law Blog - Dallas lawyer Alan E. Sherman in his Texas State & Local Tax Law Blog
• Looking ahead to 2008 - PKF Texas director Greg price in his blog, From Greg's Head

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• Excluded provider may license technology to third party entity, OIG concludes - Ohio attorney Jayne Juvan in her blog, Juvan's Health Law Update
• Customs restrained from releasing Chanel fakes - Melbourne lawyer Nicholas Weston in his firm's Australian Trade Marks Law Blog
• Contracts with minors are voidable - Illinois attorney Alan Pearlman in his Chicago Family Law Blog
• Preventative handwashing limits pissed off passengers - Kansas State University professor Doug Powell in the International Food Safety Network's Barf Blog
• The forthright negotiator: Cerberus and United Rental - New York lawyer Geoffrey Parnass in his blog, the Private Equity Law Review
  

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Scoble's spot on this morning that building a big blog audience is not what matters in blogging.

Robert was referencing what advertisers care about, but the same applies equally to you lawyers trying to achieve blog success.

So, what should you care about per Robert? (with my added commentary)

• Are you getting content that no one else is? Some lawyers are all over niche subjects that no one is covering. Cover a niche and you will not be able to keep your target audience away with a stick.
• Does that content cause conversations to happen? If you use Google Blog Search, do you find anyone linking to it? Conversations take place by others referencing points you raise, not necessarily via comments on your blog.
• Does that content get noticed in the niche you're covering? Do you get noticed by conference coordinators and trade magazines?
• Even more importantly, does it get the most credible and authoritative to link to you? Who are the bloggers most respected in your area of law or in industries who want to represent? Who are the reporters covering your niche? Get referenced by them and it's ten times as valuable as any ad or any PR person plugging for you.
• Don't ask how big your blog audience can be. That's not the end game. Ask how far can I take myself as a lawyer. Ask can I take myself to the top in my niche area of the law.

Again, blogging isn't about search engine dominance (though you'll do very well) and getting a huge audience, it's about establishing yourself as an authority in a niche through entering online conversations with the key influencers in your field.

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With all the talk of social networking and social or business community websites like FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and now, Spock, you'd think the concept of communities was just discovered in the last couple years. Not true.

As Shel Israel recently posted, in response to Jeremiah Owyang's Twitter comments about social media, the 'definition of community really hasn't been much changed since the Internet came in.'

...Since the advent of social media, there are a lot more communities and a great many people belong to more communities than they used to.

But by definition, they remain the same. Communities are bodies of people loosely joined together by a common interest.  Historically, that common interest could be geography, a profession, a religion, a political affiliation or even a hobby like stamp collecting.

The Internet has reduced the physical boundaries of community. You can now have a strong bind with community members you have never met. It is based on shared passion and interest.

And communities aren't something that someone or a company owns. A community is not defined by a web portal with walls and gates, it's defined by a common interest.

As a blogging lawyer you can participate in social networking sites like LinkedIn, Plaxo, FaceBook and the like. But it's not necessary to do so to be part of a community of people with interests similar to your own. Such people being prospective clients, peers, and amplifiers of your message (other bloggers and the media). You'll have been drawn together as a community, not by registration at a website but by a common passion.

Don't think of your blog as a publishing tool or a search engine magnet. Think of your blog as a medium by which you'll participate in a community. And instead of having to follow the revenue driven protocols and road maps developed by a social networking company, your community will be comprised of people anywhere with a common interest who have an effective Internet presence.

And like lawyers in your hometown who have benefited from decades of networking offline, you should get out there and network in your online community. To grow personally, and to grow professionally.

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• Law firm sustainability - Legal advisor Arnie Herz in his blog, Legal Sanity
• Appealing a Utah DUI from the Justice Court - Ogden lawyer Glen Neeley in his Utah DUI Trial Lawyer Blog
• Iowa caucus not for the night shift? - Des Moines attorney Rush Nigut of Sullivan & Ward in his blog, Rush on Business
• Lonely CROs - why pensions should care - Financial risk manager Susan Mangiero of Pension Governance in her blog, Pension Risk Matters
• Scruggs Nation, Day 31 [part 1] [part 2] - Portland lawyer David Rossmiller of Dunn Carney in his Insurance Coverage Law Blog

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[Dan] was keen enough to pass along a caution that the FMLA expansion that has been mentioned in several blogs recently (including this one), seems to have hit a Presidential snag.

[...]

What's more impressive is that Dan is apparently the first to make the connection between the well publicized veto and the hit to the FMLA expansion, as my google news search a moment ago for "fmla and veto" came up with no hits. A huge tip of the hat for a scoop not only in the (relatively) small world of employment law blogging, but of the big time media as well.

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41 years ago Paul Steiger began his career in journalism with the WSJ and LA Times in 'an industry of family-owned newspapers... setting off on a momentous period of growing power and profit.' Next Thursday he leaves the WSJ, including 16 years at its managing editor, and an 'industry in upheaval, with slumping revenues and stocks, layoffs, and takeovers of publishers that a decade ago seemed impregnable.'

The Journal's editors asked him to retrace his experiences of the past four decades in search of insights into how all this happened, what may happen next and the implications of all this change for readers, the nation and society at large.

'Read All About It' is Steiger's story chronicling the days of Camelot, where investigative reporting had no bounds, including first class air travel, to today, where newspapers have been 'shredded by the Internet.' It's a lengthy and great read on how newspapers may have returned to their past where 'less than 50 years ago, American newspapers were in the main relatively small, narrowly profitable, family-owned, locally focused and hotly competitive.'

Take aways for me are the contrasts of feast and famine Steiger draws:

The cornucopia of national, international and business news, sports, and especially opinion available free on the Web is rich beyond historical parallel. Anyone with a fact, a comment, a snapshot or a video clip can self-publish and instantly compete with the professionals.

At the same time, the vast array of investigative reporting and foreign correspondence assembled at American newspapers over the past several decades is being cut back at all but a few publications, as papers succumb to the pressure to cut costs.

Many journalists and academics see in these cutbacks a threat to the democratic ideal of a well-informed public. Some urge turning to philanthropy or an expansion of public television as a way to fill the gap. Others have begun to argue for a government subsidy for newspapers -- an unlikely prospect for now.

And the struggles faced in the industry's transformation:

Many papers are seeking to leap ahead in adapting to the movement of readers and advertisers to the Internet. This means tightly holding down costs of print publications while leveraging metro papers' principal unique assets: local reporting staffs and local ad-sales teams.

Cash from newspapers' own Web offerings has grown fast but needs to grow faster, because at current rates it will be years before it makes up for the slumping inflow from the still-much-larger print side. As Google, Yahoo and similar Internet enterprises suck away ad dollars, many newspaper companies hope to gain new revenue by forming once-unthinkable partnerships with each other and some of these same rivals, particularly Yahoo.

Positive for us is where Steiger is headed. To a nonprofit called Pro Publica as president and editor-in-chief.

When fully staffed, we will be a team of 24 journalists dedicated to reporting on abuses of power by anyone with power: government, business, unions, universities, school systems, doctors, hospitals, lawyers, courts, nonprofits, media. We'll publish through our Web site and also possibly through newspapers, magazines or TV programs, offering our material free if they provide wide distribution.

Pro Publica is funded by philanthropists providing $10 million a year in funding. As Steiger eludes to, it may be that philanthropy will be one business model protecting investigative reporting so important in a democratic society.

Empowering hundreds of bloggers with LexBlog, I can't help believing that lawyers blogging on niches using their examination skills will also play a role in investigative reporting. Such blog content may not only be read on the blogs themselves but be syndicated to the likes of the Wall Street Journal.

Tapping into such free editorially controlled syndicated content gives newspapers local and niche legal content, perhaps better than they ever had. Opportunities lie ahead.

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• Social Security disability abuse - Maryland attorney Dory Sutker of Greenberg & Bederman in the firm's Maryland Injury & Disability Law Blog
• Bio-excretion of smaller quantum dots - Washington, D.C. lawyer John C. Monica of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur in the firm's Nanotechnology Law Report
• New rule 5.2 formalizes privacy protections for e-filed documents - Milwaukee attorney Joe Wilson of Quarles & Brady in the firm's blog, E-Discovery Bytes
• ERISA preempts another one: striking down the San Francisco ordinance - Massachusetts lawyer Stephen D. Rosenberg if The McCormack Firm in his Boston ERISA & Insurance Litigation Blog
• Make the DMZ an international peace park? More hope for the new year - Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon in her Settle It Now Negotiation Blog
• Medicare provides new definition of physical therapist assistant - Pennsylvania lawyer Michael Cassidy of Tucker Arensberg in the firm's Med Law Blog
• Medicaid reimbursement rule is now final - Pennsylvania attorney Karl A. Romberger, Jr. of Fox Rothschild in the firm's Education Law Blog
• Acts constituting a refusal - Red Bank lawyer Travis A. Tormey from the law office of John Marshall in their New Jersey Criminal Defense & DWI Blog
• PKF Texas: The Entrepreneur's Playbook: flex initiatives - PKF Texas director Greg Price in his blog, From Greg's Head
• ERC launches plan to make gas markets transparent, monitor price information - New Orleans attorney Lawrence J. Hand, Jr. of Kean Miller in the firm's Louisiana Law Blog
• A look at the Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006 - Illinois lawyer R. David Donoghue of DLA Piper in his Chicago IP Litigation Blog

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Marci Alboher followed her Times article today on the marketing value of blogs to consulting professionals with a blog post on her own Times' Shifting Careers blog.

Despite learning in writing the article that blogging works to reinforce your brand, communicate with clients or customers, identify yourself with a certain community, show your expertise, and get clients, Alboher felt she needed to warn professionals who may blog to achieve success that they may not want to.

...[A]s I know from first-hand experience, blogging is hard, and not every entrepreneur or small business is suited to it. For blogs to attract a regular readership and to be picked up by search engines, they need to be updated often and promoted. That means that the person doing the blogging for the company has to have a certain amount of time as well as commitment to the project and, of course, writing ability......I also discovered a few small businesses that successfully used blogging as part of a focused marketing strategy, in some cases dedicating an employee (or team of employees) or outside contractors to create blogs that would generate significant traffic.

I let Marci know I liked her article, but that she is making too much out of the work required to maintain a good blog. An effective blog published by a professional services person so as to further enhance their reputation and grow their business can be done in much less than the time required for other marketing/networking efforts.

A Harvard Business School newsletter talked of one post a week for a business blog. I preach that with LexBlog's hundreds of lawyer clients who are blogging. I also tell them to try get their blog posts down to half hour or so. Many spend more time, but that's because they are enjoying the process and growing their network and business as a result of their blogging.

In addition, blogging is not supposed to be a 'Woe is me, what am I supposed to write to my blog.' The best professional services bloggers listen to targeted RSS feeds from particular blogs and news websites as well as keyword/key phrase searches from Google Blog Search. A good blog post comes from, 'Boy this is great stuff I just found in my feeds, I need to share it with my readers' - adding one's commentary of course.

Blogs are a conversation, not a publishing expedition. It's easier to talk socially than it is to publish.

And blogging knowing it's all about a conversation solves the problem of growing your blog's readership. By referencing what others are writing in their blogs and reporters are writing in online news stories, such bloggers and reporters take notice of your blog. They'll often subscribe to your niche focused blog and share with their readers something you blog about.

Not everyone is trying to be an A-list blogger like Guy Kawasaki, who Alboher quotes as saying ""If you're blogging and no one is reading you, are you really even blogging?" Guy may see 500 unique visitors a month as total failure. Not the case for a 30 year old lawyer whose 500 unique visitors after a month of blogging are members of the California biotech community she is looking to reach.

I've got skin in this blog game, but working with hundreds of wonderful law bloggers around the world I have rarely heard that this blogging is too hard or takes too much time.

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• Recent tiger mauling brings back memories - Juliet Salette at LaBovick & LaBovick in the firm's LaBovick Injury Law Blog
• Gambling with the video game industry - The blogging lawyers & attorneys at Sheppard Mullin in the firm's Intellectual Property Law Blog
• Second safety warning on Fentanyl skin patch - Dallas lawyer Angel Reyes of Heygood, Orr, Reyes & Bartolomei in the firm's Angel Reyes Blog
• Two dead from listeria from Whittier Farms milk contamination in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts - Seattle attorney Bill Marler of Marler Clark in his Marler Blog
• Section 75 case dismissed - misconduct due to mental disability section 72 applies - Mineola lawyer Kevin P. Sheerin in his New York Civil Service Attorney Blog
• New North Carolina trust laws - Chapel Hill attorney Greg Herman-Giddens of TrustCounsel PA in the firm's North Carolina Estate Planning Blog
• Following the money trail in Zurich - New York lawyer Fred Abrams in his Asset Search Blog
• Court dismisses complaint v, Salvation Army as beneficiary of POD account - Miami attorney Juan Antunez of Stokes McMillan Maracini & Antunez in the firm's Florida Probate & Trust Litigation Blog
• Reefer madness: the truth about cannabis - Management consultant Cliff Mintz of BioInsights Inc. in his Bio Job Blog
• Internet radio reminder - no more aggregate tuning hour royalty after January 1 - Washington, D.C. attorney David Oxenford of Davis Wright Tremaine in the firm's Broadcast Law Blog

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Why does just the mention of Avvo get lawyers all worked up? (latest posts and comments here and here)

Based on the lawyer outrage about Avvo allowing consumers to comment on a lawyer's services, you'd think Avvo actually harmed someone looking for a meaningful way to pick a lawyer.

What's the danger in giving people more information in their attempt to choose a lawyer in a world that's been dominated by lawyer yellow page ads, sleazy TV advertising, and self-aggrandizing lawyer websites? If people want to use Avvo's lawyer directory which includes third party commentary on a lawyers services and ratings, they'll use it. If people do not believe Avvo is worthwhile, they'll choose not to use it.

I choose not to drive a Yugo. I wouldn't feel safe in such a small car next to a semi on the freeway. But I don't go around dissing Yugo telling the manufacturer their car is worthless and telling anyone who will listen to me that Yugo is just out to make money by selling worthless cars to the unknowing populous.

There are too many people in this country who believe people are too stupid to protect themselves. God forbid these poor souls who did not have the opportunity to go to law school decide to pick a lawyer in a method of their own choosing. We lawyers know better and we need to protect you from yourself.

Has any one asked the lawyers criticizing Avvo how much time they even spent on Avvo's website? Very little of the info provided in the completed lawyer profiles on Avvo has to do with the ratings causing all the lawyer outrage.

Much of the info provided on the Avvo lawyer profiles has to do with clients' and other lawyers' comments about their experience with the subject lawyer. That's good stuff. In a totally opaque industry, where else on the net do I get those types of third party comments about lawyers?

I didn't like Avvo at first. I found including all lawyers from 11 states in the directory, even many lawyers who would never take a consumer or small business client, a PR stunt. But the more I look at the profiles filling in on the site and the more I hear the shallow opinions as to why we must sink Avvo to the bottom of the sea, the more I like Avvo.

I should have expected Martindale-Hubbell to table forever my proposal to have consumers and small business people comment on lawyers and rate them on certain services related factors, but I never expected people who should have consumers' interests at heart to fight such a system.

Avvo execs are doing the right thing commenting on the Avvo dissing blog posts. But at the end of the day, Avvo is going to move on knowing if they create a service of value to consumers, their company will thrive. And it's not going to be lawyers who decide whether Avvo is of value, it will be consumers and small business people.

And a note to the Avvo nay-sayers. It's a well accepted start up philosophy that you should polarize people. When you create a service some people love, you can expect others to hate you. 'The goal is to catalyze passion -- pro or anti,' says Guy Kawasaki, Apple's first evangelist.

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Blogs offer consulting professionals like law firms '...[A] low-cost, high-return tool that can handle marketing and public relations, raise the company profile and build the brand.' That per an article by Marci Alboher in Wednesday's New York Times.

Blogs may not be for everyone but some businesses such as consultants are obvious candidates, says Aliza Sherman Risdahl, author of The Everything Blogging Book.

They are experts in their fields and are in the business of telling people what to do.

As a consultant, blogging clearly helps you get hired. If you are selling a product, you have to be much more creative because people don't want to read a commercial.

David Harlow, a lawyer and health care consultant in Boston, was quoted for his success with his HealthBlawg. He used it when he started his own practice after leaving a large firm.

He gets about 200 to 300 visits a day, he said. He has also become a source for publications looking for commentary on regulatory issues in the health care field and has even gained a few clients because of the blog. In addition, he has formed relationships with other legal bloggers (who call themselves blawgers) and consultants around the country.

The word of mouth component marketing component of blogs was covered as well. Tony Stubblebine, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley software company told Albahor he gets new customers largely by word of mouth, and he uses his blog as a way to share news with friends and people who wield influence in his industry.

I'm trying to create a community of help for small Internet businesses like mine. My blogging philosophy is like the open source model in software. It's sort of a hippie concept. If I can help other people, it's personally rewarding. And those people will likely pay it back in some ways.

Plus for companies in the technology sector, Stubblebine believes having a blog is pretty much expected.

When I started blogging in 2003, I was hoping to find one news story on blogs a week. Can't go a day anymore.

Heck, when I got home tonight my wife, Jill, asked if I saw the articles on blogs in today's Seattle Times. More consumer oriented than business, one covering Starbucks Gossip, and the other on niche bloggers earning money through advertising. Nonetheless, blogs are all around us and definitely here to stay.

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•  Move medical malpractice out of the courts? - New Hampshire lawyer David Austin of Burke & Eisner in the firm's Cerebral Palsy Law Blog
• Practice & procedure: the comptroller intends to add more administrative hearing decisions to the STAR database - Dallas attorney Alan E. Sherman in his Texas State & Local Tax Law Blog
• Wolf Greenfield deals humor to market IP law - Legal marketing specialist Larry Bodine in his Law Marketing Blog
• Are numbers protected expression? - Texas lawyer Ray Nimmer of the University of Houston Law Center in his Contemporary Intellectual Property, Licensing & Information Law Blog
• Plan sponsors win - beneficiaries over 65 lose - Financial risk manager Susan Mangiero of Pension Governance in her blog, Pension Risk Matters
• DEFRA publishes research report on manufactured nanomaterials - Washington, D.C. attorney Lynn Bergeson of Bergeson & Campbell in the firm's Nanotechnology Law Blog
  
• NLRB broadens employers' ability to ban union communications using corporate e-mail - Denver lawyer Philip Gordon of Littler Mendelson in the firm's Workplace Privacy Counsel Blog
• Is the party over? - Senior consultant Ronda Muir at Robin Rolfe Resources in her blog, Law People
• Judge Ervin co-authors amicus brief in support of petitioner in Murray - Orange Park attorney David A. McCranie in his Florida Workers' Compensation Law Blog
• Ends runs around the statute of limitations - Maryland lawyer Ron Miller of Miller & Zois at the Trial Law Resource Center
•  

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Law firm PR has traditionally been about getting the firm and its lawyers in main stream media, whether as the source of a quote or the subject of a story. Often done through press releases and press kit folders with accompanying brochure, lawyer bio's and suggested story ideas. Unfortunately for many law firms, that's where the heads of their PR people are still at.

Small problem. Micromedia, whether it be news websites or blogs are more likely to publish your stories. Plus those websites and blogs reach just as many people as do the traditional media.

Search Engine Watch's Greg Jarboe researched media coverage of two very large high profile search technology conferences. He conducted several searches on Google News and Yahoo News and found more than 150 stories from the past month.

Only 1 percent of the more than 150 stories were written by the traditional trade press. 88% of the coverage came from online publications and group blogs. The other 11% came from press releases themselves which were put out by PR professionals.

Jarboe also found out that the number of visitors to those online publications and blogs was the equivalent of the circulation of print publications that could be expected to cover the story.

His advice? At least one of your PR and communications people should be focused on blogs and online media.

Bet you my house, there aren't five law firms with a PR person dedicated to blogs and online media. The part that's really a shame is that they could get a talented person to do the job for less than $50,000 per year.

That's right - $50,000 for a young person who gets social media and online publishing to monitor blogs and online media for stories relevant to the law firm, its lawyers, and its clients; to id blogs and online media to network with; and with the guidance of senior folks, to create and execute an effective blog marketing program for a few of the firm's practice groups.

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• WV Health Care Authority dissolves stay of Carlyle-Manor Care buyout, but may still deny approval - Charleston attorney Jeffrey Mehalic in his West Virginia Business Litigation
• Lawyers suing lawyers - New York lawyer Peter A. Mahler of Farrell Fritz in his New York Business Divorce Blog
• Court will not dismiss PTO's deputy director - Illinois attorney R. David Donoghue of DLA Piper in his Chicago IP Litigation Blog
• Do you have ideas about changes to the civil rules? - Tennessee lawyer John Day of Day & Blair in his blog, Day on Torts
• Specific performance claim rejected - Wilmington attorney Francis G.X. Pileggi of Fox Rothschild in his Delaware Corporate & Commercial Litigation Blog 

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And it's not Martindale-Hubbell.

Commenting on last week's court ruling that there was no basis for cracking down on Avvo's lawyer-rating Web site because some lawyers didn't like how they were rating, the Wall Street Journal endorsed the concept of lawyer ratings.

At a time when the judicial system is under increasing scrutiny, the courtroom performances and verdicts of its practitioners would seem a reasonable object of public interest. For those shopping for legal counsel, an online rating service might at least provide some measure of transparency in an otherwise opaque profession.

The site, called Avvo, does for lawyers what any number of magazines and Web sites have been doing for other professions for years. Magazines regularly publish stories that rank an area's doctors and dentists. There are rating sites and blogs for the 'best' hairstylists, manicurists, restaurants and movie theaters. Almost any consumer product or service these days is sorted and ranked.

Professional ego aside, it's hard to see why lawyers or judges should be any different.

Though not mentioning Super Lawyers by name, the WSJ certainly seems to endorse Super Lawyers practice of selecting the best lawyers and publishing the lawyers profiles in magazines and now the Internet.

Like it or not, the Internet may bring transparency to our profession yet.

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The whole family is home on Bainbridge Island/Seattle (3 kids still living here & 2 back from college).

I'll start and finish my Christmas shopping tomorrow morning in downtown Winslow. There are less than 10 or 12 shops along our main street, but that's more than enough for me. I don't buy a lot of gifts and don't expect much either. Christmas means more than that.

Tomorrow evening we'll take the ferry over to downtown and walk up the hill to St. James Cathedral for 5:30 mass. We'll then walk down to McCormick & Schmicks for our annual X-Mas eve seafood feast. After dinner and a few drinks we'll probably walk through one of the upscale hotel lobbies. They have great looking Christmas trees for taking a family picture.

On Christmas we'll open a few gifts, I'll go for a run with the boys, and we'll just hang out. Jill bought a small turkey for what looks to be the second feast in two days.

It would be nice to be back home in the Midwest with the extended family. But with the kids getting older, they appreciate Seattle and what are becoming our annual traditions. So do I.

Wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday.

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• Maine court holds that emotional distress claims trigger additional BI limits - Mike Aylward of Morrison & Mahoney at the National Insurance Law Forum
• Can sub-prime be funny? Listen for the pension punchline - Financial risk manager Susan Mangiero of Pension Governance in her blog, Pension Risk Matters
• Middle East and North African insolvency - Recovery & insolvency partner Chris Laughton of Mercer & Hole in the English accounting firm's Insolvency Blog
• Skull session - Las Vegas attorney Tim Titolo in his Brain & Spine Injury Law Blog
• Still time for self-employed to establish retirement plan for 2007 - Retirement specialist Jerry Kalish of National Benefit Services Inc. in his Retirement Plan Blog

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• 3d DCA: Trust agreements trump power-of-attorney in probate litigation - Miami attorney Juan Antunez of Stokes McMillan Maracini & Antunez in the firm's Florida Probate & Trust Litigation Blog
• ASU to offer nanotechnology law class - Cleveland lawyer Patrick T. Lewis of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur in the firm's Nanotechnology Law Report
• The money pit - Tony Chan of Quarles & Brady in the firm's recently debuted blog, E-Discovery Bytes
• Lowest Unit Rates start today (December 22) for Super Tuesday primaries - Washington, D.C. attorney David Oxenford of Davis Wright Tremaine in the firm's Broadcast Law Blog
• Risk of cardiovascular events greater in winter: tips to be prepared - The blogging lawyers and attorneys at Regan Zambri & Long in the firm's D.C. Metro Area Medical Malpractice Law Blog

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•  The Diabetes Pharmacist Blog, published by Focus Express Mail Pharmacy and providing resources on diabetes and other health issues.
• The New York Business Divorce Blog, offering information on resolving business disputes involving companies and partnerships based out of the Empire State. This blog is published by Peter A. Mahler, a Manhattan-based attorney with Farrell Fritz.
• E-Discovery Bytes, a resource guide for matters regarding electronic discovery, published by nine lawyers from Quarles & Brady (a firm with more than 400 attorneys, who came #123 on this year's AmLaw 200 list).
• Our first winter resort blog: Blog Crystal, published by the folks at Crystal Mountain (the largest ski area in Washington State) and offering news, weather updates and more.

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I hope you've been noticing the interviews LexBlog's Rob La Gatta has been doing with leading bloggers. Leading lawyers like Denise Howell & Ernie Svenson and even non lawyers such as Walter Olson (here and here).

Best dam part of these interviews is that I am learning a ton. Where have we been with blogs? Where are we headed? What's to be gained? What's to be risked - by blogging or not blogging, for that matter? Why are lawyers blogging so much? Why aren't lawyers blogging more? Why is the media gravitating to bloggers and blogging? It's all over the board and dam, these guys are smart.

Just emailed Denise to thank her for taking the time for the interview. And to let her know it means a lot to me personally. When it comes to all the good bloggers out there, I'm just a snot nosed kid from the Midwest learning the ropes.

Who would you like to hear from? Have something to offer on the subject of blogging or know of someone who would? Let me know and we'll set up an interview. Not just lawyers.

Only a few folks like Seth and Guy who've declined so far. We'll shame 'em over time. ;)

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• Genentech resolves its Avastin-Lucentis-macular degeneration case - Management consultant Cliff Mintz of BioInsights Inc. in his Bio Job Blog
• Premature citation: don't open '08 Complete 'til after Christmas - Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon in her Settle It Now Negotiation Blog
• Whistleblower takes his case to the web - Juliet Sallette at LaBovick & LaBovick in the firm's Whistleblower Law Blog
• China-Brazil trade hits US $12b in 6 months - Albert Xiques of Diaz Reus Rolff & Targ in the firm's ChinaLat Law Blog
• PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook: Business Resolutions - Insurance - PKF Texas director Greg Price in his blog, From Greg's Head
• Trading Technologies v. eSpeed: post-trial update - Illinois attorney R. David Donoghue of DLA Piper in his Chicago IP Litigation Blog
• Calloway and Nelson podcasts offer marketing advice - Legal marketing specialist Larry Bodine in his Law Marketing Blog
• Winter safety tips for portable generators - The blogging lawyers and attorneys at Regan Zambri & Long in the firm's D.C. Metro Area Personal Injury Law Blog
• Scruggs Nation, day 23: the wire part II - Portland attorney David Rossmiller of Dunn Carney in the firm's Insurance Coverage Law Blog
• Chapter 12 tutorial part II: how Chapter 12 works - Bakersfield lawyer Terrence T. England of Klein Denatale Goldner in the firm's California Business Bankruptcy Blog

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• Central Iowa Blogga Nostra grows in popularity - Des Moines attorney Rush Nigut of Sullivan & Ward in his blog, Rush on Business
• English-only amendment blocked by U.S. House - Los Angeles lawyer Anthony Zaller of Van Vleck Turner & Zaller in the firm's California Labor & Employment Defense Blog
• Congress passes FOIA reform - The blogging constitutionalists at the American Constitution Society in their ACS Blog
• Dr. Charles Ray Jones reprimanded by state examiners - Milford attorney Michelle C. Laubin of Berchem Moses & Devlin in the firm's Connecticut Education Law Blog
• Mediators can attend Christmas parties - New Jersey lawyer Richard J. Webb of Healthcare Neutral in his Healthcare Neutral ADR Blog

• Declutter your business writing with Occam's razor - Communication consultant Lori Herz in her blog, Write for Clients
• Fake vomit is serious business - Kansas State University professor Doug Powell in the International Food Safety Network's Barf Blog
• FTC staff issues proposed self regulatory principles for behavioral advertising and seeks comment - Washington, D.C. attorney Timothy P. Tobin of Proskauer Rose in the firm's Privacy Law Blog
• Congressman Wynn introduces new whistleblower bill - Marshall Chriswell of the National Whistleblower Legal Defense & Education Fund in their Whistleblower Protection Blog
• City of Middletown wins summary judgment on First Amendment retaliation claim - Stamford attorney Daniel Schwartz of Epstein Becker & Green in his Connecticut Employment Law Blog

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1. Rob La Gatta: An old post Kevin wrote says that you've been blogging since 2001. Is this accurate? If so, what first piqued your interest and made you get involved with blogs so early in the game?

Denise Howell: It's accurate, and it actually was a game that got me blogging. I had read The Cluetrain Manifesto in 1999, and it resonated with me about individuals and business more than anything I'd studied in college or law school. After that I kept up with the writing, thinking, and online doings of three of its co-authors who were early bloggers.

One of them, Christopher Locke, was writing an article for the Guardian about weblogs. He exhorted the readers of his e-zine (about 5,000 folks) to start blogs and link to him, so (1) he could have something to write about, and (2) his standings in "Daypop" (a Technorati precursor) would theoretically go through the roof. I took the bait over the Thanksgiving weekend and became a blogger in the process.

The point was to play around with the technology (which was free and easy), and the network effects of using it (which were fun and ultimately quite powerful on a number of levels). Many of the folks who participated in Locke's "article research" are still blogging away, and are some of the most thoughtful and insightful folks I've come to know.

2. Rob La Gatta: What are some of the most noticeable changes you've seen legal blogs undergo in the six years you've been watching them?

Denise Howell: I suppose the most noticeable change is volume. In '01-'02 there were so few bloggers that were connected in some way to the legal world, [that] we all pretty much knew each other, and it was possible to keep up with every blawg out there.

By '03 the new blawgs were coming fast and furious, and it was great to be able to discover a steady stream of new voices through the blogrolls and recommendations of the folks you were already reading. There was great potential for legal institutions - firms, academia, and government - to leverage the technology, and I had great hope for law firm blogs.

That potential has not yet been realized. With few exceptions firms seem to dabble in blogging reluctantly without "getting" it. Law schools do a far better job. It's a process, though. In the mid-90's email was novel; now it's ubiquitous. Blogging and/or its related/successor tools are here to stay. They'll become such a part of our culture, interviews like this one are bound to seem pretty silly before long. E.g.:

Q: What are some of the most noticeable changes you've seen legal telephone conversations undergo in the six years you've been participating in them?
A: Uh...

3. Rob La Gatta: You argued back in 2005 that law firms should look to PR folks, who have made serious headway in spreading their message through blogging. But it's almost 2008, and we still see many large law firms showing resistance to blogs, and even fewer encouraging their lawyers to blog freely. Why do you think this is? What will it take to convince big law firms that there is value in blogging?

Denise Howell: I did? I don't remember. :) I was probably struck by the contrast.

I saw Steve Jobs speak at the first "D" Conference (and blogged it). When asked about the challenges they faced at the beginning of the personal computer era, Jobs quipped: "People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this."

Legal institutions, firms among them, will adapt to (and adopt) the communications tools that work for their evolving work force. If/while they don't, key parts of their work force will inevitably use those tools to do away with the need for things like institutions at all. (Have you been following the Web fallout of the WGA strike?)

4. Rob La Gatta: You have given yourself an advantage in the legal profession by utilizing technology and new media skills. How important do you see the use of technology as being to the legal profession today, and why should lawyers take the time to learn these skills?

Denise Howell: I don't think you can force technology on anyone, but the beauty of blogs and related tools is their ease of use and the unlooked-for (and sometimes near-magical) effects that flow from their use. I should say rather that our generation might consider those effects magical; future generations will simply expect them, then demand (and create) situations and relationships we can't even imagine.

5. Rob La Gatta: And the question I like to ask everybody I interview for this feature: if you were to encounter a lawyer just starting his or her first blog, what is the one most important bit of advice you'd offer them?

Denise Howell: If you haven't already, immerse yourself in the new media ecosystem. Explore, learn and enjoy.

• Find what resonates with you: text, images, audio, video - or some combination thereof.
  
• Pick your medium and give it a whirl. Don't worry about having to feel your way. Don't worry about being polished. Learn as you go.
  
• Ask questions in public.
  
• Use easy tools.
  
• Don't get fleeced by consultants or marketing folks who insist you'll flounder without their help. You can accomplish a great deal for little or no money and primarily on your own.
  
• Educate yourself about the ethical obligations specific to online communications.
  
• Educate yourself about Creative Commons, take advantage of the wealth of licensed material there, and license your own work in the way that makes the most sense.
  
• Share the information you're most passionate about.
  
• Heed a Dave Winer-ism and narrate your work.
  
• Be a guide.
  
• Give your take on events and proceedings that are interesting but not necessarily accessible through mass or even niche media.
  
• Remember you're person and speak in your own voice.
  
• Most of all: have fun.

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Ten years ago, a rite of passage. Five years ago, a tradition. Past two or so years, of questionable value. That's how law firms view Martindale-Hubbell per Gina Passarella of ALM's Legal Intelligencer.

Highlights from the Passarella article include:

• An informal survey of Philadelphia firms by Delaware Valley Law Firm Marketing Group founder Stacy West Clark found more firms than not saying they were either eliminating or scaling back their use of Martindale-Hubbell's listing services.
• Although firms realize general counsel may be using Martindale-Hubbell to find outside counsel, cost-benefit analyses just aren't convincing marketers at some of the area's largest firms.
• Firms view the cost of Martindale-Hubbell listings as very high compared to the value received.
• Firms are re-investing marketing dollars previously pegged for Martindale for other interactive marketing efforts.
• In-house counsel turn to Martindale-Hubbell generally after they have the name of a lawyer or firm from elsewhere.

Per Barry Solomon, LexisNexis vice president of client development, LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell has been rolling out new products so as to become "indispensable" to corporate counsel who are looking to choose outside counsel. 'That, in turn, could cause law firms to realize the necessity of providing information to the service.'

The problem for Martindale-Hubbell is that they move slow - on new services of value and in adopting pricing models that make sense to law firms. Solomon even concedes Martindale's transition period is a long-term process that is a work in progress.

On the other hand, innovative marketing solution providers can be swift and nimble. They don't have an age old publishing model, and its revenue models to protect. New marketing solutions developed by innovative entrepreneurs can offer immediate value to law firms at a fraction of the price. By the time Martindale-Hubbell catches up, leading law firms may have moved on.

Take Fox Rothschild, a 400 lawyer law firm with 14 offices coast to coast, for example. Their Chief Marketing Officer Jim Staples told Passarella that Fox Rothschild is "firmly undecided" when it comes to how it will use Martindale-Hubbell. Though Marindale-Hubbell has been very cooperative in listening to the firm's needs and offered different options, Staples knows Fox Rothschild won't continue with Martindale-Hubbell as it has in the past by paying six figures annually.

Staples went to explain that on the table with other options is doing away with the Martindale-Hubbell service or to minimizing its current use. "The cost coupled with Google and firm Web sites has caused firms to rethink their commitment to the [Martindale-Hubbell] service."

The article does cite some in-house counsel who value Martindale-Hubbell. And frankly, there's no question Martindale offers value.

The question law firms appear to be asking is what is the ROI for such a large investment each year. Other interactive marketing vehicles costing a fraction of Martindale and of long lasting value are looked at by many firms as possibly offering a far higher ROI than Martindale.

As way of full disclosure, Fox Rothschild is a LexBlog client. It's nine blogs include:

• Education Law Blog
• Employee Free Choice Act Blog
• HIPAA Health Law Blog
• PA Brownfields Environmental Law Blog
• Pennsylvania Family Law Blog
• Pennsylvania Physician Law Blog
• Tax Litigation Blog
• Wage & Hour: Development & Highlights Blog
• Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog

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• Martindale-Hubbell: Law firms continue to drop out of directory
• Martindale-Hubbell continues slide: Starts charging lawyers for 'Coveted Rating' service
• Martindale-Hubbell still not indexing for Google : Disservice to its lawyer customers
• Martindale-Hubbell ads claim its lawyers.com directory has the 'Best Lawyers?'
• Martindale-Hubbell to be replaced by Google as leading lawyer locator?
• Lawyers.com not worth the money : leading writer on solo and small firm practice

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Today's LexBlog Q & A is short but sweet, and features legal expert Walter Olson in the hot seat. Walter, who serves as a senior fellow at the New York City-based Manhattan Institute, also writes for the popular blogs Overlawyered and Point of Law.

In a brief e-mail interview conducted earlier this week, Walter discussed his past relationship with the legal blogosphere, the role blogging has played in his professional life and more.

1. Rob La Gatta: You’re credited as starting one of the oldest – if not the oldest – law blog on the web. What made you think starting a legal blog was a good move at a time when nobody else was doing so?

Walter Olson: I'm a writer, and the desire to write came first, before much thought as to who the audience would be. It started more or less as notes to myself, on topics I figured I might write about later. Also, while Overlawyered is a blog about law, its early readers were more policy types and journalists than lawyers.

2. Rob La Gatta: In many ways, blogs have indirectly created a new system of checks and balances, where people and businesses are held much more accountable simply because their moves are constantly being documented on the web. Do you believe blogs have the power to contribute to the “reform of the American civil justice system” that you say we need?

Walter Olson: The fact is, despite the obvious dangers in it, that blogs are great at shaming. No one wants to have the top page of Google hits on one's name be from having committed some ethical howler or taken some ridiculous position in a case.

If you haven't given up on the idea of self-policing by professionals (and I haven't) there is real hope that legal blogging will focus peer pressure and scrutiny on the underside of law practice in a way that the prospect of bar discipline often fails to do. This isn't just law, by the way – read the medical blogs and you'll see plenty of frank talk about the ethical dilemmas and temptations that doctors face. It's quite an education, actually.

3. Rob La Gatta: I notice that you’ve popped up in a wide range of print and television media outlets. Do you believe your blogging work has helped enhance your overall professional reputation?

Walter Olson: Sure. Reporters and their editors inevitably spend time on blogs, as do talk-show bookers. How could they not? They use Google constantly, and Google leads them to sites like mine. Most working reporters are also starved to see intelligent reactions to stories they've done. As a book author, I was already a media source, but it's not uncommon for reporters making their first call to say they feel they "know me already". It's blogging that does that.

4. Rob La Gatta: What is your take on the future of the legal blogosphere…will it continue to gather steam? Do you think that eventually, lawyers will need blogs to stay competitive?

Walter Olson: It continues to change and expand at an incredible pace; new bloggers can still make a name for themselves in months, even weeks. I would say that certain types of lawyers – in particular those who want to become well known with the press or among other lawyers, but are not already handling front-page cases – really should consider blogging if the aptitude is there.

5. Rob La Gatta: Since you’ve been blogging for quite some time, you’re probably one of the most well-suited individuals to answer this question: if you were to meet a lawyer just starting his or her first blog, what is the one most important bit of advice you’d offer them, and why?

Walter Olson: Find a niche (or two or three) that you'll never tire of writing about – very few of the good niches are taken. Then write short, pace yourself, and leave them wanting more.

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In the closing days of ABA Journal's Blawg contest, we're seeing some dirty politicing.

Ted Frank at Overlawyered has called Quizlaw, down in the vote, on Quizlaw's low blow of today:

And here's the God's honest: Walter Olsen [sic] and Ted Frank, the purveyors of legal smut over on Overlawyered, are robots. Yes. You heard me right. Built by the IBM Corp. sometime in the late 90s and given fake, prestigious resumes (like a University of Chicago graduate would actually blog! ha!), Walter and Ted were programmed to spit out thoughtful, sometimes amusing legal analysis (and relevant links) about cases that actually matter in the world of law, which as we all know defies every tenet of the blogosphere.

Ted took the high road in his response:

We plead guilty to violating blogospheric tradition by knowing what we're talking about, but we do deny that we're robots, much less ones built by IBM. Of course, if we were robots, we'd probably be programmed to deny that we were, so such a denial only gets you so far.

Unlike the Iowa caucuses where negative campaigning doesn't work, QuizLaw's alleged 'scurrilous lobbying' has pulled it to within two votes of Overlawyered in the ABA poll.

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Further evidence that we're at the cusp of blended pro-am journalism is New York Times decision to start using videos produced by citizen journalists.

Per Beet.TV, the videos will run starting tomorrow on the Op-Ed pages of the NYTimes.com. They'll cover the political campaign and be uploaded through February 5, 'Super Tuesday.'

An example of a unedited video interview of Mike Huckabee can be accessed here. These down to earth interviews by average folks are pretty cool.

What's this have to do with lawyers? A lot. Lawyers are already amateur journalists through their well done law blogs. Taken a step further and such blog content is going to be syndicated as legal scholarship and commentary to third party publications or platforms, just as the video is syndicated to the NY Times here.

Beyond text, lawyers are going to move to video, both of themselves reporting on niche areas of the law and interviewing third parties, which these lawyers are uniquely qualified to produce because of their domain expertise.

Source on post: ReadWriteWeb

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Disgruntled objects of blog posts often hire lawyers to send cease and desist (C & D) letters ordering the blog publisher to take down the subject post. In the spirit of the blogosphere, bloggers immediately post such C & D letters to their blog holding the lawyer and client up to public ridicule.

Maybe no more. Turns out at least one lawyer obtained copyright registration for their takedown letters. They then got a naive judge to enforce the copyright even though as Eric Goldman says '...[T]his letter is so completely pro forma that it should barely clear the copyrightability hurdle (if it does at all). Further, republication of demand letters is so strongly infused with public interest that it should be clearly covered by fair use.'

Lawyers get paid to be creative, even if their cause is contrary to the public's good.

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Ottawa's Michel-Adrien Shepard shares a story from Lawyers Weekly on Canadian law scholars view of legal blogs being scholarly works.

• University of Calgary law school dean Alastair Lucas sees blogs as scholarship. The law school is creating a blog dealing with Alberta courts and tribunals and those contributions 'will require theory development, synthesis, analysis and clear argumentation (...) We also expect that some blog pieces will be expanded into law review articles and the like. Strictly, these are not peer reviewed, in the law journal sense, but they will be reviewed and edited in the faculty under the supervision of senior faculty members.'
• Philip Bryden, dean of law at the University of New Brunswick: Blogs offer 'timely publication and ease of accessibility', but adds, 'During my tenure as dean ... none of my colleagues has brought their blogging activity into the scholarly assessment process at UNB, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.'
• Bruce Archibald, a law professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax: Blogs 'are a source of ideas which would have to be acknowledged in a footnote if quoted. On the other hand, they are not peer reviewed and would not have the added cachet or weight of that status.'

Shepard goes on to reference a series of posts he's written on the subject.

Traditional legal scholars may resist the trend of legal blogs being viewed as legal scholarship, but the train has left the station on this one.

Just because a practicing lawyer or law professor writes to the net as opposed to a word document then published to law review does not by necessity make the piece one lacking value as legal scholarship. And the chilling effect of wide dissemination with immediate critique and comment from peer law professors and practicing lawyers is certainly the equal of a law review article reviewed by law students.

Sure, there are blogs published by lawyers that don't rise to the level of legal scholarship, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water on this one.

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Denver Criminal Defense Lawyer Jeralyn Merritt was live blogging from the courtroom at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday for oral arguments in the appeal of former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio, convicted earlier this year of insider trading.

Jeralyns Talk Left Blog, covering the politics of crime, is far beyond the typical law blog. Nonetheless live blog as a lawyer capable of a providing unique perspective beyond that of a typical blog is a nice way to draw attention to you and your blog. Especially if it's a profile case.

Take some of Jeraylyn's thoughts yesterday as an example.

...[T]wo of the judges seemed more favorable to the defense than the government on the materiality issue and all three had problems with the exclusion of the defense expert witness without a Daubert hearing. If I were Nacchio, I'd be cautiously optimistic. If I were the Government, I'd be concerned. But no one has a crystal ball and everyone will have to wait until the opinion is rendered.

It's even better if you can do your live blogging for a local newspaper, TV/Radio station, or magazine (Jeralyn's case).

No one's expecting you to cover a trial, but an oral appeal, motion hearing, or sentencing could be done and offer good value to your community.

Expect live blogging from lawyers to be a growing trend. As the quality of lawyer blogging improves and main stream media revenues decline, the main stream media will be looking to display syndicated blog content like this on their online news sites.

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• Sexual harassment of Santa Claus - what's an employer to do? - Stamford attorney Daniel Schwartz of Epstein Becker & Green in his Connecticut Employment Law Blog (this post was also picked up by Above The Law)
• Health insurance providers going after injury settlements - Juliet Sallette at LaBovick & LaBovick in the firm's Injury Law Blog
• Anonymous in Arizona? Maybe not - Los Angeles lawyer Jeremy Mittman of Proskauer Rose in the firm's Privacy Law Blog
• Florida will-drafting attorney at center of $1.5 million estate battle has law license suspended - Miami attorney Juan Antunez of Stokes McMillan Maracini & Antunez in his Florida Probate & Trust Litigation Blog
• Update on the 2007 term of the U.S. Supreme Court - Las Vegas lawyer Tami Cowden of Kummer Kaempfer in her blog, Appealing in Nevada
• Covered opinions under Circular 230 - Texas attorney Jack Howell of Sprouse Shrader Smith in the firm's Tax Law and Business Organization Strategy Domain Blog
• Bringing Medicare to the settlement table is not so easy - New Jersey lawyer Richard J. Webb of Healthcare Neutral in the firm's Healthcare Neutral ADR Blog
• Senate passes S.274, a whistleblower protection law for federal employees - Marshall Chriswell of the National Whistleblower Legal Defense & Education Fund in their Whistleblower Protection Blog
• Prepaid Legal Services: is it worth it? - Liz Overton at Sullivan & Ward in the firm's Iowa Law Blog
• Bill seeking broadcast performance royalty introduced in Congress - Washington, D.C. attorney David Oxenford of Davis Wright Tremaine in the firm's Broadcast Law Blog
  

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Avvo received a nice Christmas present in advance of their holiday open house party this evening.

I showed up to the party to find out that federal class action law suit versus Avvo brought by Seattle Attorney Steve Berman on behalf of Seattle Attorney John Henry Browne was dismissed with prejudice this afternoon. Best guess is Judge Lasnik didn't time his decision to coordinate with the party, but it made for a nice gift.

Talked with CEO Mark Britton and VP of Marketing Paul Bloom, co-founders of Avvo, who pleased with the decision, seemed to take it right in stride without a lot of fanfare.

Though I was critical of the way Avvo executed its launch by including all lawyers, as opposed to only small business and consumer lawyers, Avvo serves a great purpose in allowing the public to comment on the service they received from lawyers. My guess it's that sense of a righteous cause that had Mark and Paul feeling pretty confident about the result.

Though nothing is assured until the deadline for appeal passes, Attorney Bruce Johnson, who represented Avvo, let me know this evening that Judge Lasnik's ruling is a very solid and thorough one.

I have not read the decision yet, but understand its basis is the First Amendment - the public should be free to comment on service providers - even lawyers. Based on the liberal reputation of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, it seems highly unlikely that a decision based on free speech is going to be reversed, assuming it's even taken up on appeal. And I don't see this thing being petitioned to the Supreme Court - unless Berman is handling the PR work for Avvo.

Updates

• Press Release from Avvo
• Court Decision to dismiss (pdf)
• Avvo CEO Mark Britton's blog post on dismissal

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 1. Rob La Gatta: You’ve said that people outside of the legal profession want to see the human side of lawyers, which is easily displayed through blogs. Can you see any potential harm that could come from lawyers displaying their “human side” to the general public?

Ernie the Attorney: No, I really don’t. I think that is one of the things that I was most intrigued by, and I still am. [...] You go to law school, and your way of thinking gets molded and changed, and you start to question things more and look for the underpinnings and analyze things. And then you come out and you’ve kind of been imbued with this appreciation and inclination towards a lot of formalism that most people in everyday life don’t have. And it’s very difficult, I think, for many lawyers – maybe most – to keep that part going, while at the same time switching gears quickly into informality (or just combining informality with formality)

I picked the name “Ernie the Attorney” because there was a magistrate in federal court, and she used to call me that. [And] she was one of those people who could be extremely formal and yet be completely down to earth at the same time: she’d see me and say, “Hey, Ernie the Attorney, how ya doing?” If she was picking a jury and the juror told her, “Oh, I’m not married…” she’d say, “A good looking man like you, not married? I can’t believe that.”

That’s not the kind of thinking that most lawyers do or feel comfortable doing. We, for whatever reason, have this sense that we have to be very distant. Kind of like doctors probably feel like they need to be distant from their patients because they’re going to do these invasive procedures and so forth, and so they have to create this distance. And I think that’s a completely wrong perception. I don’t think you have to create distance or be overly formal just because part of your professional role involves that to some extent.

Can’t you just do that part and then be a human being? I think the answer for me is, "Yeah, you can." I watch people do it. It’s totally possible, and in fact, I think it’s actually better, because it puts people at ease. If a lawyer’s job is to get their client to share confidences so that they can figure out how to help them, which one is going to be more likely to make that person want to share confidences with you? Being extremely formal, which people might interpret in the sense of being judgmental? Or is it more likely that they will tell you things that you need to know if you’re casual with them and make them feel at ease?

2. Rob La Gatta: So then why do you think so many big firms oppose the idea of being personal, and seem kind of resistant to that (if it's done through blogging)?

Ernie the Attorney: I don’t think they oppose the sense of being personal. [...] All corporations, all big firms, all large gatherings of people – and large can be more than 2 or 3, in some cases – have expectations about how the group members are supposed to behave. And then they have concerns about certain kinds of behavior getting out of line. I think with firms that still adhere to dress codes, or who say, “Well, lets go with casual Friday, and we don’t do any other days,” their concern is that people will take advantage. And that’s a legitimate concern: I think people can take advantage of being given freedom. But at the same time, that freedom is necessary and it’s important.

I don’t think firms don’t want people to have [freedom]; I think they just don’t want to see mistakes. I think the reason why [organizations] are overly controlling of individuals is because, in their mind, they’d rather not have any mistakes and shut everybody down than allow everybody to kind of try and experiment with it (and then have a few mistakes). It’s just not natural for organizations to allow small bands of people to experiment, because experiment means “try/fail/try/fail.” They don’t like that idea, because it’s just not part of the way organizations think. And yet, there’s a value to it.

[...]

Lawyers are very conservative. Nobody who is a lawyer fails to see that; it’s a conservative profession. It’s a profession dictated by tradition, by precedent, by analysis of what’s happened in the past to determine how to act in the future. It’s not the kind of profession that takes its hand off the handlebars and just says, “Well, lets see what happens.” So I think it was pretty natural that they were going to be circumspect about blogging, especially within the realm of large law firms and organizations.

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• Does divorce impact the environment? - Birmingham attorney Steven D. Eversole in his Alabama Divorce & Family Law Attorney Blog
• The road not studied - Sacramento lawyer Joel Ellinwood of Abbott & Kidermann in the firm's Land Use Law Blog
• Glaxo falters again - Management consultant Cliff Mintz of BioInsights Inc. in his Bio Job Blog
• Appeals court unsettles $18 million agreement between freelancers and publishers - Seattle attorney Hozaifa Cassubhai of Davis Wright Tremaine in the firm's Privacy and Security Law Blog
• Does Seagate signal the end of bifurcated patent trials, and caution against procuring opinions of counsel? - Washington, D.C. lawyer Brian Wm. Higgins of Blank Rome in his Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog
• AARP Homeowner Survey - reverse mortgage - Massachusetts attorney John Gosselin of Gosselin & Associates in the firm's Law For Life Blog
• Eighth Circuit refuses to enforce Arkansas noncompete agreement - Little Rock lawyer Kevin Lemley of the Allen Law Firm in their Arkansas Business Litigation Blog
• Joke of the day: UGA professor David Hazinski proposes "certification" of "citizen journalists" - Atlanta attorney Scott Riddle in his Georgia Bankruptcy Law Blog
• Again, cancel your Yellow Pages ad - Legal marketing specialist Larry Bodine in his Law Marketing Blog
• 2007 letter to pension Santa - Financial risk manager Susan Mangiero of Pension Governance in her blog, Pension Risk Matters 

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• Sam Hasler at the Indiana Divorce & Family Law Blog: "Blogs provide lawyers the best means ever to demystify the legal system for the general public. Looking at where my traffic comes from, I think the potential for blogging has not even begun to be realized by the general public and by only a few of our fellow attorneys. From what I see of how people use this blog, they do not understand how to use its internal resources. I doubt most understand that a blog is not static but dynamic and so they do not use the subscription service or the RSS feeds."
• Charon QC at The Blawg... : "Kevin O’Keefe writes: 'Why not have a contest as to which blogging lawyer looks best in a swim suit?' Now… that is something I feel I can relate to! Do you think I have a chance? I’ve gone for pink this year."
• Mark Bennett in his blog, Defending People: The Art & Science of Criminal Defense Trial Lawyering: "If other things were judged by such polls, Toyota would be recognized as the best carmaker, ground beef as the best cut, Gallo as the best wine, and Thomas Kinkade as the best painter. China would be accepted as the best country, Christianity as the best religion, Windows as the best operating system, and ignorance as the best mental state (coincidentally, George W. Bush would be president)."
• Nathan Dosch at The Dreams of a Solo: "It is always an honor to be included on lists or recognized for the things that you do. It is kind of like being picked first for the game of kickball on the playground. I just hope we can all reach a point where we realize that these sorts of rankings will come and go. It would be pretty foolish to hang your hat on a Blawg 100 ranking if you fail to deliver solid content or if your readers go elsewhere."
• David Giacalone at f/k/a: "There are many, many blawgs that did not make the ABA Journal Blawg 100 that are well-worth the attention of the general public, the legal profession, and especially the narrowly-focused seeker of legal information (which might be why the ABA Journal’s Blawg Directory includes thousands of weblogs in about 80 categories). No Best of List is immaculately conceived and none will ever be miraculously perceived as perfectly executed nor universally acclaimed."
• Nick Holmes at Binary Law: "Blogging, and Web 2.0 in general, is not about publisher A or B selecting and promoting what is best; it is about all the Xs and Ys contributing to the conversation in their field of interest and the Zs voting with their mice. The best will rise to the top and we don’t need anyone to select the short-list."
• Eric Turkewitz at the New York Personal Injury Law Blog: "It's not a question of one blog being picked over another since this is, after all, just another vanity contest that small niche blogs don't have a shot of winning. No, the significant thing is that the vaunted American Bar Association simply doesn't think that this field of law is relevant. The decision to ignore a vast segment of the law speaks volumes about the organization."
• Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice: "As for me, there is no award that the blawgosphere has to offer that is more important than the community of the blawgosphere. The friction that has developed around these awards, and surfaced with this ABA Blawg 100, isn't worth it. More importantly, the awards aren't real. They don't mean anything." 

• "I don't read a law blog to hear whether the blogger went to Starbucks or Jamba Juice this morning on the way to court. I want to hear how they analyze substantive topics -- as someone said, "to hear a lawyer think out loud." To me, those are the "best" law blogs. [...] And having browsed the ABA's "100" list, there are only a few entries fitting that criteria, sadly." - Robert Thomas of Inverse Condemnation
• "[T]hough many solo bloggers with "how to" sites like mine made the list, one true oversight are the "niche based" solo and small firm blogs that cover topics like Maryland Personal Injury Law or California Trusts and Estates or New York Business Law. These are real lawyers sharing real information and making it both accessible to lay people but sophisticated enough for lawyers. None of these blogs made the cut." - Carolyn Elefant of My Shingle
• "Sure, if you or I had picked a Top 100 or a Top Ten, we might have selected different blogs. But I do not really get why it is "wrong" for anyone or any group to pick their favorites. People love lists, whether it is Ten Favorite products or the BCS bowl ranking. They love to agree and disagree and argue and debate the selections."  - Jim Calloway of the Law Practice Tips Blog

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• Happy 5th birthday, Creative Commons! - California attorney Cathy Kirkman of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in her Silicon Valley Media Law Blog
• Disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine offenders: the U.S. Supreme Court speaks - Florida lawyer Ron Chapman in his Palm Beach Criminal Defense Blog
• Avoid probate of equity refunds from continuing care communities - Chapel Hill attorney Greg Herman-Giddens of TrustCounsel PA in his North Carolina Estate Planning Blog
• Critical issues for retailers in vertical mixed-use projects - California attorney Alan Aronson of Aronson Light in the firm's Commercial Real Estate Update
• Strange brew: rock stars, experts, and class actions - Texas lawyer Cliff Hutchinson of Hughes & Luce in his blog, Science Evidence
  

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'...and this is how it looks....' says my friend Carolyn Elefant tonight.

Solo By Choice, available at Amazon in a few weeks, is dedicated to every lawyer who ever wanted to run the show but worried that going solo was career suicide ... every lawyer who wanted to solo but didn't know how to set up the office and make it work ... every lawyer who never set foot in a courtroom but dreamed of one day practicing law their way. In short, this book is dedicated to becoming the lawyer you always wanted to be.

Those of us in the legal blogosphere know Carolyn to be one of the most caring and giving lawyers out there. I expect her book to be excellent.

Congrats on its publication Carolyn.

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That's the title of a post from Robert Scoble last week. He was responding to Susan Mernit's report that Lane Hartwell was so pissed with people stealing her photographs that she decided to take her photos out of the public eye.

After offering up a way to watermark the photos and keep them online, Scoble says he's just the opposite.

I WANT YOU to steal my content. In fact, next year I'm going to do stuff to make all my content available via Creative Commons license so you can use it whereever and whenever, including my video shows. I'd like a credit, yes, but don't demand it. I'd rather just add to the human experience and if that means that other people make money off of my work, so be it.

I've found that the more I give away my content, the more magical stuff happens to me anyway and if that means my photos or writings or videos get used in some way that I don't really like, well, that's a risk I'm willing to take. Lane obviously is not.

Plus, today I have a little less competition from Lane, who was a great photographer but who's work will be hard to discover now.

I'm right there with Scoble. And you lawyers should be wanting people stealing your blog content. The more it's stolen by blockquote, reference and link, the easier for the world to discover you. And isn't that what's it all about, getting known for our expertise?

Want further evidence that you want people stealing your content? Scoble cites the New York Times whose traffic has taken off since removing its subscription pay wall in September.

As Scoble says, '...[W]hen you try to hold onto your content too tightly fewer people are able to find it.'

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BBC blogs will be given prominence on the new BCC front page, in beta right now. Per Lucy Hooberman, Innovation Executive, BBC Future Media & Technology, you'll be able to customize which feeds you want to see right up on the front page.

Didn't happen overnight per Hooberman.

...I instigated the project in 2004, then a research project, to get the BBC into the blogosphere.  We got our framework together in 2005, started the trial in 2006 and have just come to the end of an 18 month trial... 

Looks like only blogs written by BBC staffers are included in the available customized feeds. In time, expect the BBC to include blog feeds from non BBC employees.

There's just too much good blog content written by citizen journalists for the BBC to ignore the value delivered to their readers. The BBC would act as an editor by selecting which blogs and which posts to offer just as the New York Times does with 'Technology Headlines From Around the Web' on its Technology Section.

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Joshua Porter, editor of Bokardo, a site about social web design, shares '9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers.'

I found these 7 particularly helpful and thought you, as a blogging lawyer, would too.

• Write follow-up posts. When you post something that resonates with folks, follow it up with another post citing their comments. Maybe do a series of posts on the topic.
• When you screw up, say so immediately. Admitting idiocy is one of the most important things a blogger can do. It completely diffuses a situation that could quickly turn ugly.
• Link back to your good stuff. Refer back to your good stuff via links in a new post or with a bulleted list of 'Related Posts' at the bottom of a new post.
• Reread to yourself. Blogs aren't books, poems, or even journalism. They're conversations, so they need to be conversational. Make them read like how you talk.
• Keep updating your best posts. If you take your posts seriously, and you treat them as an reference archive, then people will link to them and send traffic to them over time. So, if the post could use pruning, or additions, be sure to go back and add them. It's OK…this isn't paper we're publishing on. Just go back and change it, and maybe add a note that you've done so.
• Name things (e.g. The Del.icio.us Lesson, The Chanel No. 5 Lesson). Does not apply to every post but works well for popular posts people may keep repeating over and over. People like things that are easy to remember.
• Link to the quiet, unknown ones. Link to people who nobody has heard of, just to give them some exposure. They're just as smart as anybody else, they've got just as much to say. They just don't have the attention yet.

Good stuff Joshua. Thanks.

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Lawyers blogging to spread word of their expertise often presume the goal is to reach key influencers. The idea being to have A-list bloggers and the traditional media cite you or your blog, the implication being that such key influencers are tacitly endorsing you as an authority to their many followers.

But Guy Kawasaki discovered an article in the December issue of the Journal of Advertising Research (online summary) finding 'common word-of-mouth advertising by regular folks is more powerful than 'key influencers.'

The study was co-authored by James Coyle, assistant professor of marketing at Miami University's Farmer School of Business, Elizabeth Lightfoot of CNET Networks, and Ted Smith and Amy Scott of MedTrackAler. They surveyed website visitors, conducted in-depth reviews, and analyzed website usage patterns. Coyle's conclusion:

'We find that trying to track down key influencers, people who have extremely large social networks, is typically unnecessary and, more importantly, can actually limit a campaign or advertisement's viral potential. Instead, marketers need to realize that the majority of their audience, not just the well-connected few, is eager and willing to pass along well-designed and relevant messages.'

Guy was a little more blunt:

I think that most key influencers are pompous, insecure jerks who take themselves way too seriously. And I say this knowing that you can rightfully accuse me of being one of them. The marketing lesson is this: Create something great, sow fields (not window boxes), 'let a hundred flowers blossom,' and pray that 'regular folks' will spread the word.

I agree. Sowing my message that effective law blogging enhances your image and grows your business has blossomed more as a result of average folks like me spreading the word than via reaching the key influencers. We've all grown up with the desire to make the cover of the 'Rolling Stone,' but it may not be necessary.

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Guess that's the reason why Austin Attorney Jamie Spencer is knocking them dead with his two law blogs.

A lot of people reading blogs means word of a lawyer sharing legal info and networking with real folks via a blog is going to spread quickly. Plus you have a healthy network of bloggers to meet via commenting on their blogs, blogging about a post of theirs, inviting them to your professional network at LinkedIn or just dropping them a simple email.

The top 10 list from the San Francisco Chronicle:

1. Austin, Texas (15% of adults going on the Web to read or contribute to a blog in the past 30 days)
2. Portland, Oregon (14%)
3. San Francisco Bay Area (13%)
4. Seattle (13%)
5. Honolulu
6. San Diego
7. Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas
8. Columbus, Ohio
9. Nashville, Tenn.
10. Colorado Springs, Colo.

The areas of practice and locales for niche focused lawyer blogs are wide open. The ABA Journal and Justia's BlawgSearch are currently indexing about 1,500 law blogs. Bet if I went there right now, I couldn't find law blogs for 10% of the major areas of practice for these top cities. Family law, estate planning, real estate, criminal defense, bankruptcy, workers compensation, and employment law are areas of practice that are starved for good blogs published by a lawyer with expertise and passion.

Hard to believe lawyers are clownig around with static websites, yellow pages, and other outmoded means of marketing when the opportunity for tasteful, effective, and fun marketing is at their disposal.

Source of post: JD Lasica's Social Media

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Kudos to the ABA Journal for naming blogging lawyers as one their newsmakers of the year for 2007 and 2008. It's the cover story for the Journal's January 2008 edition

Sure, law blog superstars like David Lat and Tom Goldstein have been churning out content for a while now, but the last year saw a plethora of law blogs begin to insert themselves into the most significant daily news and legal issues debates alongside their counterparts in journalism and academe.

From the Duke lacrosse team fiasco in North Carolina to the high-profile 'Family Secrets' Mob trial in Chicago, bloggers made their presence known with a flourish, sometimes to the chagrin of the judges and lawyers involved. But the influence of the lawyer-blogger goes beyond that.

Whether by a single practitioner who wants to share his or her problems and experiences opening an office, or a BigLaw associate who wants to dish the dirt about the practice, the lawyer-bloggers are finding an audience for their work, and we salute them.

Key takeaways from this traditional legal publisher:

• Blogs are part of significant daily news and legal issues debates alongside their counterparts in journalism and academe.
• Lawyer-bloggers are finding an audience for their work.

I'm not aware that any editors at Thomson West/FindLaw, LexisNexis, or Incisive Media's ALM (though they have a small blog network at law.com) have acknowledged law blogs as framing legal news alongside tradition journalists and publishers. May be that the ABA, not a major force in legal publishing, has little to lose and a lot to gain with the rise of law blogs.

And thanks for not labeling law blogs as 'blawgs' as part of this recognition. ;)

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• Scruggs Nation, day 17: Jones v. Scruggs revisited - Portland attorney David Rossmiller of Dunn Carney in the firm's Insurance Coverage Law Blog
• Understanding political broadcasting - questions and answers about the law, rules and policy governing broadcasters in an election year - Washington, D.C. lawyer David Oxenford of Davis Wright Tremaine in the firm's Broadcast Law Blog
• Questions for the IP blawgosphere at the Sheppard Mullin IP Blog - Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon at the IP ADR Blog
• Poor workmanship by contractors - Virginia Beach lawyer Greg Montero of Inman & Strickler in the firm's Virginia Condominium & Homeowner's Association Law Blog
• Upcoming trade marks conferences - Melbourne attorney Nicholas Weston in his firm's Australian Trade Marks Law Blog

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Josh Catone at Read/WriteWeb points out the problem with the majority of the blogosphere being in the long tail. Many good blogs go unread.

Automatic aggregators, like Techmeme, end up acting somewhat like gated communities that are dominated by the biggest blogs -- who link to one another and prop each other up. Paid syndication like Blogburst is hit or miss and also favors the more prominent bloggers who have name recognition.

A solution may be Brooklyn based The Issue which Catone describes as aiming 'to bring the best of the wider blogosphere into focus via a daily, human edited online newspaper that aggregates quality blog content in a single place.'

The Issue is presented with a very clean, newspaper-esque design that organizes content into six main categories: US, world, business, science & health, art & culture, and musings (think: editorials). The paper also highlights a handful of 'featured stories' (major headlines) across multiple topic areas, and each day The Issue presents one 'Issue of the Day,' which it explores in depth with a handful of insightful posts.

We have a nice aggregation of law blog content at Justia's BlawgSearch and the ABA Journal online. But we're lacking a human edited vehicle that each day highlights featured stories and hot law blog discussion across various topics and locales.

Such a vehicle would allow us to consume law content at the increasing rate that it's being produced. Something impossible today. It would also bring exposure to the excellent law blogs far down the longtail.

May take a joint effort of folks to get the job done but it's necessary and is going to happen.

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I touched a nerve when I called out PI lawyers as shameless in naming selected injury victims in their blogs, which in the case of at least one lawyer is done in hope that the victims would contact the lawyer.

Peter Lattman at the WSJ Law Blog asks whether a lawyer's reporting the name of person in a coma then passing away a few weeks shy of his 25th birthday in hope that the victims family calls the lawyer is fair game or gives the plaintiffs bar a bad name?

I've already said such conduct is sleazy and perpetuates the poor image we have as a profession. And for those of us who care about the rights of injury victims just risks more pro insurer legislation veiled as 'tort reform.'

Surprisingly there were commenters to the WSJ post finding the lawyers conduct as okay - on such grounds as free speech, that the law is a business and 'this guy is just trying to get some,' and that it's no worse than other stuff lawyers do.

Fortunately there were an equal number who are offended by such conduct. Some find it unethical while others said just because it may be legally permissible does not make it right. One commenter nailed it for me:

Blogging is not a license to ignore common sense. This blogger is a classic ambulance chaser -- nothing more. Advertising is fine. Targeting specific people based on their bad luck and misfortune is wrong. How obnoxious does advertising need to get before we just say -- enough.

And lawyer bloggers didn't take kindly to the unseemly conduct.

New York criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield calls hit the blawgosphere hitting a new low:

While we may quibble over whether promotional blawging impairs the purpose and credibility of the blawgosphere, at least we share the belief that it should never deliberately violate ethical precepts and prove to the world that attorneys are, indeed, the lowest form of scum......One step removed [from ambulance chasing] might be generous in the digital age when physical presence behind the ambulance isn't necessary. This feeds into every negative stereotype of lawyers, with the only difference being the adaptation of the internet as the delivery mechanism.

New York personal injury lawyer Eric Turkewitz calls it blatant solicitation:

Thus, he goes beyond the mere advertising, and into outright solicitation of an individual. Even if he is ethically secure on First Amendment grounds, what the has done certainly appears scummy and is a close cousin to sending a solicitation in the mail to the house. Or picking up the phone and calling. Or sending a person to the house. Or the hospital. You know where I'm gong with this. Solicitation is but one step removed from actual ambulance chasing.

Wisconsin personal injury lawyer Frank Pasternak in comments here:

If this were a one time thing, I may not be too critical but much of the blog is like that and I too find it to be very bad form. I am not shocked though given what I have seen in other forms of personal injury lawyer advertising and direct solicitations here in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

I'd like to see more law bloggers calling out the naming of accident victims in blogs as shameless. It's a practice that should not swept under the rug with a view that it's legal and no worse than the other sleazy things lawyers may do. Not to call for it's stop is to risk the good name lawyers stand to gain by helping the public via blogs.

Related Posts

• Personal injury lawyer blogs going too far? What do you think? - 12/11/07
  
• Personal injury lawyer blogs victims' names in hopes they call his office - 12/14/07

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Big addition of recent at LexBlog - and it's not the Leonbergers on Kevin McKeown's shoulders.

It's an honor to announce McKeown's joining LexBlog as its EVP of Client Development. Like me, he's also an attorney-though today, he's more businessman than lawyer.

After graduating law school, clerking for a judge, and working for a large law firm his curiosity with the world got the best of him. He ended up joining Mitsubishi International Corporation doing overseas business development. That led to lots of travel and other positions developing markets for emergent technologies. He's now going to use that 22-year career to help LexBlog grow. He says 'it's nice not having an office in the sky.'

Just missed getting Kevin to join me at Prairielaw.com when I first moved to Seattle. Was impressed with his combination of Pittsburgh blue collar work ethic and a drive to do the right thing by people. If he doesn't honestly believe he can help a business partner, in this case a client of LexBlog's, he's not going to do the deal.

Drop him an email, give him a call (206 388 3625), or connect with him at LinkedIn. He's looking forward to meeting all of you.

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1. Rob La Gatta: Kevin has called you the “grandfather of lawyer blogs,” due to the amount of time you've been operating in the blogosphere. What first got you blogging at a time when not many other folks were doing so?

Ernie the Attorney: Sweet serendipity. A friend of mine had a software company; I had downloaded a trial version of [a blogging] program and liked it. Then he came to New Orleans, and he had a blog and showed me what it was – because he’s the sort of person who tools around and meets other people in the tech world – and I said, “Oh, this is really interesting.”

I realized I could try that for 30 days for free, and I played with it. I guess it resonated for me because I liked to write, and I in the past had been interested in the idea of publishing to the web, but I could never figure out how to set up the website...there were a lot of dots to connect. But with blogging, there weren’t any dots to connect anymore. It was just write and hit "post." So I just kept experimenting and playing with it, and it seemed like it was going to be something that was going to be incredibly useful, because – just like I felt that way about wanting to write but not being able to figure out how to do it – I knew that there were other people even less technologically inclined than I who probably were experiencing the same thing.

The legal profession, in my experience, had always been a place where people had ideas, and knew how to express themselves, knew how to parse information and how to digest it and absorb the key points. And so I was kind of surprised that there weren’t more lawyers doing it.

So, Denise Howell [and I] were the ones who saw each other doing it, and we traded e-mails, and then we started keeping track of lawyers who were blogging, even if they weren’t blogging about law (and if any lawyers were blogging back then, I’d say most of them weren’t blogging about the law).

2. Rob La Gatta: With your blog, it seems you can write about a range of topics and still maintain readers who come back and comment. Is this the way you’ve always blogged, or did you start with a specific focus and expand to rely more on your personality after you had an initial readership base?

Ernie the Attorney: I think I’ve always kind of written for myself. I wasn’t interested as much in writing about the law, except that when I started – as I mentioned – there weren’t that many people doing it. Then I gave myself the name Ernie the Attorney, so people figured out I was an attorney, [and] they would e-mail me or say, “Hey, what do you think about this?” [So] I kind of felt obliged to fill that role. It wasn’t a role that I really wanted to fill that much. So when Howard Bashman started his blog, and both Denise and I extolled it to a great extent, I was really happy, because I thought, “that’s exactly what somebody should be doing to cover the general bases.”

Then, more and more, people started jumping in to fill in niche areas, and Denise and I kept track of who was blogging in various areas. That was great, because I didn’t really want to write about the law, per se. I mean, I like doing it sometimes, but for the most part I’d rather just write about everything. I was a philosophy major, and my interest is…in everything.

3. Rob La Gatta: If a lawyer just starting his first blog were to approach you, what is the most important bit of advice you’d offer them, and why?

Ernie the Attorney: [T]he main thing that I would tell people (and I do tell them this) is [to] try to find your voice. And don’t be afraid to make “mistakes,” because part of the joy of blogging – and I find it to be something that’s joyful – is getting feedback from people, feeling like you’ve actually connected with people. This is not unique to blogging...any form of writing or expression can bring you that. But I think you get that sort of feeling and that feedback and that passion, you see it happen with a greater intensity when you allow yourself the freedom to explore and experiment.

When people ask me, “Well, why do you write your blog?”, the real answer is, I write it because it helps me figure out things. And that’s writing in general; I write so that I can figure things out. In the past I had tried to keep a journal, and I just didn’t care. It didn’t have the same intensity: only I was reading it, and I wasn’t editing it to say something in a particular way. Yet I was exploring thoughts that I had.

With blogging, it’s the same thing, except in exploring those thoughts, you have to think about them. You have to compress the ideas. You have to write it, you have to rewrite it, and so forth. A lot of times, I’ll look at something and have a much better sense of what I was thinking about - [after] I’ve edited it and written it and put it out there - than I would have if I had just mulled it over in my head, or written it quickly, or tried to write it to conform to what was safe.

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•  A DWI trial "win" is all relative - Texas lawyer Hunter Biederman in his Frisco DWI Lawyer & Attorney Blog
• 10 brain fitness myths - Las Vegas attorney Tim Titolo in his Brain & Spine Injury Law Blog
• Fans: friend or foe? - The blogging lawyers & attorneys at Sheppard Mullin in the firm's Intellectual Property Law Blog
• Responding to the EEOC and state agency discrimination charges: five things every HR generalist should know - Lancaster attorney Michael Moore of Russell Krafft & Gruber in his Pennsylvania Employment Law Blog
• What to do when you receive a bankruptcy preference demand letter - Lawrenceville lawyer Robyn Nolan Howlett of Stark & Stark in the firm's New Jersey Law Blog
• Privilege claims must be supported by specific facts - Illinois attorney R. David Donoghue of DLA Piper in his Chicago IP Litigation Blog
• Rebutting the presumption of competence - Philadelphia lawyer Mark Jakubik of The Jakubik Law Firm in his Pennsylvania Estate Planning Blog
• After Kakani v. Oracle are "claims made" class settlements obsolete? - Los Angeles attorney Brian Van Vleck of Van Vleck Turner & Zaller in the firm's California Labor & Employment Defense Blog
• Restrictions on defenses - Shrewsbury lawyer Travis Tormey of The Law Office of John Marshall in their New Jersey Criminal Defense & DWI Blog
• When you really want to have a child - Philadelphia attorney Jane E. Lessner of Fox Rothschild in the firm's Pennsylvania Family Law Blog
  

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Seattle plaintiff's lawyer Mike Meyers writes about accidents naming seriously injured people he does not represent 'with the intent of reaching accident victims or the people who care about them.'

...I want them--or someone who cares about them--to call our office and get the help they deserve rather than being manipulated by a well trained adjuster to settle their claim short of full value. It's as simple as that.

In Meyers post responding to my post criticizing similar behavior, he rationalizes such behavior by taking a low blow at me:

It's easy to ride the wave created by the insurance lobby or reiterate the old party line used by attorneys who view the practice as a sanctified calling rather than a business and call the blogger an "ambulance chaser".

I practiced as a plaintiff's trial lawyer for 17 years representing injury victims and their family members. During that time I served as a sustaining member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and a board member of my state's trial lawyers association, both leading associations of lawyers representing injured people. During that time I had the occasion to work with wonderful plaintiff's trial lawyers from around the country and serve with them on various boards and committees.

The last few years of my practice, I established the leading online community in the country for injury victims and distressed employees. Four listservs, hundreds of message boards and online chats so that these folks could get information from leading caring lawyers from throughout the country. Prior to doing this on my own, I did it as a community leader at AOL, where I answered thousands of questions from injury victims.

I understand that Insurance companies can do some despicable things. I know that they'll tell seriously injured folks they do not need a lawyer, we'll take care of you - with the goal being to get a release without having to pay fair compensation. Presumably Meyer's justification for naming injury victims on a blog.

But I would never have named innocent victims on the net in hope that they would call me. And I can't think of any lawyers who I served with over my years of practice who would so. Such conduct is unseemly and is only going to backfire, giving insurance companies and their lobbyists more ammunition in their efforts to take away injury victims' rights to fair redress.

My Dad always said 'there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything.' Harmed with that knowledge I'm guided with a sense that when ready to do something that makes me squirm, I look for a better way. Naming seriously injured people in a blog in hope that someone will Google the person's name and want to help them by telling them to call Mike Meyers is the wrong way to help get people fair compensation.

Just because insurance companies act despicably is not cause to act in way that would cause most of us to squirm.

Related Posts

• Personal injury lawyer blogs going too far? What do you think? - 12/11/07
  
• Personal injury law blog ethics picked up by WSJ and bloggers- 12/15/07

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• Retirement plans & age discrimination - Somerville attorney Frank Steinberg of the Steinberg Law Offices in his New Jersey Employment Law Blog
• Immigration issues - Salt Lake City lawyer Matt Fankhauser of Strong & Hanni in the firm's Utah Business, Real Estate & Estate Planning Blog
• One more thing hurting your credit score - The editor at Total Bankruptcy in their Bankruptcy Blog
• 401(k) plan sponsors asking "what's next?" - Retirement planning specialist Jerry Kalish of National Benefit Services Inc. in his Retirement Plan Blog
• Memorial and burial arrangements - The blogging lawyers & attorneys at Hull & Hull in the firm's Toronto Estate Law Blog
• Texas tax reform: when digital files will be treated as "goods" under the "cost of goods sold" deduction - Dallas lawyer Alan E. Sherman in his Texas State & Local Tax Law Blog
• Review: Lloyd's new nano insurance report - Washington, D.C. attorney John C. Monica of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur in the firm's Nanotechnology Law Report
• Authorized House Counsel rules - Connecticut companies should ensure in-house counsel comply with new rules starting January 1, 2008 - Stamford lawyer Daniel Schwartz of Epstein Becker & Green in his Connecticut Employment Law Blog
• Salmonella cases in Arizona, California, Idaho and Nevada - The blogging lawyers and attorneys at Pritzker Ruohonen in the firm's Food Poisoning Law Blog
  
• Making sense of the Manhattan real estate market: not an easy task - New York real estate broker Douglas Heddings in his blog, True Gotham

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Not sure that it amounts to more than an old fashioned p...ing contest between lawyers, but it sure makes for sensational headlines.

The Florida Bar is alleging Attorney Sean Conway violated 5 ethics rules, including impugning the judge's qualifications or integrity. From The South Florida Sun Sentinel:

In the Halloween 2006 posting on a blog, Conway denounced Alemán for what he said was an 'ugly, condescending attitude' and questioned her mental stability after, he says, she unlawfully forced attorneys to choose between unreasonable trial dates or waiving their clients' rights to a speedy trial.

Conway, 36, also filed a complaint against [Broward Circuit Judge Cheryl] Alemán with the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the state agency that polices judicial conduct, citing her 'deliberate refusal' to follow the law and insolent behavior. Conway says he hasn't heard from the commission since a May 29 letter acknowledging his complaint.

And who's to say the Judge didn't deserve it. She's facing reprimand and removal from the bench for 'allegedly threatening to hold defense attorneys in contempt and refusing to remove herself from cases in which she had an acrimonious relationship with the defense attorney.'

Conway must not have realized there's a save as draft button on the blog publishing software. It's to be used like the right corner of your desk for heated letters you let sit over night and take a second look at the next morning.

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• Settle It Now joins the Forbes.com Business and Finance Network - Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon in her Settle It Now Negotiation Blog
• Texas Breach of Fiduciary Duty law: mere silence can constitute breach - Dallas lawyer Robert Wood of Hughes & Luce in the firm's Texas Non-Compete Law Blog
• Cost to restore inaccessible backup tapes exceeds possible yield of relevant information - The blogging lawyers & attorneys at K & L Gates in the firm's Electronic Discovery Law Blog
• Ninth Circuit finds insured's claim for diminution in the sale value of contaminated properties not covered under CGL policy - Portland attorney Diane Polscer at the National Insurance Law Forum
• Medicare liens: can personal injury lawyers do anything about them? - Maryland lawyer Ron Miller at the Trial Law Resource Center
• Hillary Clinton weighs in on Social Security backlog - Greensboro attorney Joel Davis of The Deuterman Law Group in the firm's North Carolina Workers' Compensation Law Blog
• Focus on the EU and France - can U.S. employers collect sensitive data about their employees residing in the EU? - Paris lawyer Cecile Martin of Proskauer Rose in the firm's Privacy Law Blog
• Talkin' with Tom Gies, counsel for the respondents in LaRue - Massachusetts attorney Stephen D. Rosenberg of The McCormack Firm in his Boston ERISA & Insurance Litigation Blog
• Liability for failure to trim bushes and trees - Tennessee lawyer John Day of Day & Blair in his blog, Day on Torts
• Additional quality of care concerns - Lara Pettiss Harrill at Poliakoff & Associates in the firm's South Carolina Nursing Home Blog

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Yes, it seems there were wiretaps. Defendants will be seeing evidence from the prosecution momentarily which might (or might not) be the trigger for further flipping and early plea deals, if such there will be.

There is enormous curiosity (e.g.) about P.L. Blake, to whom Scruggs says he paid $10 million (and tens of millions more in future payments) for vaguely described intelligence services aimed at swaying political influentials during the tobacco caper. Per a 1997 account posted at Y'All Politics, 'Blake pleaded 'no contest' in 1988 to a federal charge that he conspired to bribe officials of the now- defunct Mississippi Bank to secure favorable loan terms.' The same article, citing reporting in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, reports that Blake was in close phone contact between 1994 and 1996 with eventually-disgraced state Auditor Steve Patterson, who after leaving office went into partnership with Timothy Balducci and is one of the five indicted in the current Scruggs affair. Per AP, 'Patterson was a banker at Mississippi Bank before his 1984-1987 tenure as head of the Mississippi Democratic Party.'

David Rossmiller, as so often, is out front with a report filling in background on two other controversies involving Blake. One arose from a venture into the grain storage business which landed him in a Texas dispute in which his attorney was none other than Fred Thompson, later a Tennessee senator and presidential candidate. The other arose from his cordial dealings with a former chief of staff to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Mississippi).

I’d love to. These people in Mississippi have been really good to me, and I feel like a lot of them are family to me; that Mississippi is like a second home. But I have three kids and a day job! I can’t just up and go down there, even though I’d absolutely love to. Now, if someone offered me a book deal . . .

• Greta Van Susteren of Fox News On the Record and whose own blog, GretaWire is hitting the stratosphere. At least have David join the legal panel one night.
• CNN's Anderson Cooper (get Jeffrey Toobin off the case, Anderson...David's got it covered)
• Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic Monthly
• MSNBC's Dan Abrams, host of "Live with Dan Abrams"

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1. Rob La Gatta: When you took over as editor and publisher of the ABA Journal in 2006, what vision did you have for pushing the Journal forward? Now that it's almost 2008, do you think you've made significant progress?

Ed Adams: I and my new colleagues wanted to redesign the magazine – a process that was almost complete before I arrived. We now have covers that would look at home on any newsstand, more space for art and information graphics, and a cleaner, contemporary feel.

More than half the nation’s 1.1 million lawyers read ABA Journal every month. So we wanted to write more stories that appeal to every member of our audience, regardless of what niche of the profession they work in. Some of our recent cover stories are good examples of that: what happened behind the scenes at Saddam Hussein’s trial; Scott Turow’s essay about why the billable hour may be unethical; 101 tips, tricks and tools to make lawyers more productive and less stressed-out; and our special single-topic issue about the attorneys who have been on the legal frontlines of the War on Terror since 9/11.

Online, we wanted to create a site that was the place to come for breaking legal news. ABAJournal.com is updated with 25-50 new stories every business day, and has an archive of the full text of the magazine going back to 2004.

2. Rob La Gatta: When looking at the ABA Journal's website now compared to what it was a few years ago, one of the most noticeable difference is that today blogs represent a good chunk of the featured content. At what point did the Journal decide that legal blogs were a medium worth featuring, and what prompted this?

Ed Adams: When we were revamping the website this summer, we knew we wanted to incorporate blawgs because they’re an incredible resource for our readers. Often just minutes after ABAJournal.com posts a news story, lawyer/bloggers are providing their expert analysis of the latest legal developments.

We know from reader studies that most lawyers still wouldn’t know a blog if it tapped them on the shoulder. So we thought our blawg directory could introduce them to the phenomenon by helping them find the blawgs that interest them. It now has more than 1,500 listings in dozens of practice areas, every state in the nation, and almost every law school.

3. Rob La Gatta: It's no secret that most big newspapers are losing print revenues and being forced to become more competitive online. Has the ABA Journal been faced with similar problems? Do you think that focusing on the Journal's online presence is the most important way to keep readers coming in?

Ed Adams: Our advertisers are smart; they realize that online and print are not an either/or proposition. There’s still no better way to communicate a brand than through an ad in a glossy magazine. But when an advertiser wants to focus on a call to action, online makes perfect sense. That’s why we’ve seen double-digit ad revenue growth in both print and online simultaneously.

Readers are telling us that online doesn’t replace print. They look for different kinds of information from the two mediums. Long trend stories and profiles work better in print, where the reader can hold the story in their hands. But nothing delivers breaking legal news better than the Web.

4. Rob La Gatta: How would you respond to the criticism that the ABA Journal's Blawg 100 doesn't do justice to the many niche focused blogs operating within the legal blogosphere? Do you personally believe that there are 100 law blogs that are definitively the best?

Ed Adams: Obviously, I think one can assemble a list of the 100 best blawgs – that’s what we did. Just as obviously, everyone’s list of the 100 best would be different from everyone else’s. And we had plenty of “niche” blawgs on our list, particularly in the Black Letter Law category.

The more interesting criticism, I think, is the notion that lists of great blawgs somehow will reduce traffic to niche blawgs, or make it harder to find them. Quite the contrary, I think. Lawyers will check out the top blogs, and in the process, stumble across blawgs that may not be as objectively great, but are great for them.

5. Rob La Gatta: 2008 is just around the corner. Do you have any big plans for the ABA Journal in the coming year, and if so, what can you tell us about them?

Ed Adams: We’ve got huge plans. And you’ll just have to wait and see.

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A lawyer back East emailed last evening inquiring whether any of LexBlog's lawyer clients had set up an LLC just for the corporate protection for their blog - or even considered doing so.

Reason for asking was that with the firm's permission she was going it alone on the blog. Though her relationship with the firm would be disclosed on the blog, the blog would not be branded in the firm's name and the individual lawyer would own the blog.

The situation of 'going it alone' is not an uncommon one for lawyers. Even in large law firms. But we've not had any clients, that I know of, set up a separate corporate entity for their blog.

Though I'm a lawyer I can't give legal advice. But I am not sure that setting up an LLC would be necessary on the liability side. In the unlikely event, someone came after the lawyer, plaintiff's counsel could make a compelling case that the lawyer was doing the blog to generate work for the lawyer (going through the firm) and the corporate veil may be able to be pierced.

One area where a corp may, I guess, be nice (hedging like lawyer) is to make clear the ownership issue. When the blog becomes a strong asset as far as a reputation enhancer and business generator, you do not want to have any grey area as to who owns it. The blog would be branded as the individual lawyers and copyrighted as theirs, but this could provide additional protection.

But even then, it's best to get ownership cleared up right from the start. A quick email exchange with a copy signed by each party (to override corporate bylaws or partnership agreements on firm owning everything) may do the trick. With many administrative partners holding blogs in such low esteem, getting such a sign off ought to be as hard as agreeing to your ownership of a rally monkey you picked while using the firm's tickets for an Angel's game.

What do you think of setting up a separate corporation for your lawyer blogging? Know of any lawyer who's done so?

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Ran across this personal injury blog post in my RSS feeds tonight. Posted by Attorney Ryan Bradley of St. Louis.

The title of the post was:

[Name of injury victim] Sustains Personal Injury In Car Wreck on I-70 Near Earth City Expressway in St. Louis County; St. Louis Missouri Personal Injury Law Firm Gives Free Legal Advice to Car Accident Victims :: Missouri Accident Lawyer Blog

The post goes on to read (I have omitted names which were included in original post):

[Injury victim], 31 of St. Charles, Missouri was injured in a car accident on I-70 when a pickup driven by [Name of other driver], of Wentzville, Missouri hit [injury victim's] vehicle from behind on December 4, 2007. [victim's] car was slammed into the rear of a tractor trailer driven by [name of third party] of House Springs, Missouri.

[Injury victim] was transported to St. Joseph Hospital east by the Pattonville, Missouri Ambulance district, where he was treated for moderate personal injuries. [Third party] was able to stop his tractor trailer without incident and was not injured.

And the wrap up of the post:

The Bradley Law Firm, a St. Louis Missouri personal injury law firm, helps those injured in Missouri car accidents by meeting with them for free, regardless of whether that person employs their services. If you have been involved in a car accident in Missouri and need to ask an experienced personal injury lawyer a question, feel free to contact us.

If Bradley does not represent the unfortunate man injured in this accident and his family members, in my opinion this is a cheap stunt to add text to a blog with a call to call him if you're injured in an accident. Presumably to get search engine rankings. God help us if it's an attempt to get the injury victim to call him.

If Bradley does represent the injury victim, and I'd be shocked if a client would authorize such a post, I can't imagine why in the world you would post this to a blog. There's no claim that he's looking for witnesses or the sort.

I'm not calling Bradley out on this because of any defense bias I have. I was a plaintiff's trial lawyer for 17 years, served as a board member of my state's trial lawyers association, and was a sustaining member of ATLA. Plaintiff's trial lawyers do some wonderful things seeking justice for the underdogs of the world.

But man, if lawyers are just going to key in accident text, including victim's names, into a blogsite with the hope that seriously injured people or their family members will find their 800 phone number, it's just too far. It's the stuff that gives plaintiff's lawyers a bad name.

What do you think?

Related Posts

• Personal injury lawyer blogs victims' names in hopes they call his office - 12/14/07
  
• Personal injury law blog ethics picked up by WSJ and bloggers- 12/15/07

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Was on a conference call this afternoon with the other speakers for next March's ABA TechShow. Found out I'm presenting with the man who brought us law firm Internet marketing.

Greg Siskind, who I call the Godfather of lawyer Internet marketing, and I are doing a presentation entitled 'Matchmaker, Matchmaker: Connecting with New Clients Using Technology.' Hey, I didn't have anything to do with the title.

Greg literally wrote the book on Internet marketing for lawyers. Back when I was practicing, I picked up the first volume he wrote with Tim Moses in 1996. Law firm websites were few and far between and folks around me in rural Wisconsin thought I had a few too many cold ones when I started following Greg's advice by marketing my law firm solely on the net.

Any way, Greg went on to take a small immigration law firm he started in Nashville to one with an international presence in only a few years. All with his hard work of marketing the firm on the Internet.

I've had the opportunity to listen to Greg's presentations in the past. They've been great. Even the one he and Will Hornsby did in Minneapolis back in '97. About 7 people showed up. And that included two of us from my office and Will & Greg. Appears Internet marketing for lawyers is a little more popular these days.

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Just got off the phone with a law firm administrator in a less than 5 person who volunteered they're paying $2,000 a month for a FindLaw website. Because it wasn't generating the work expected, she said the're calling to cancel. It's not the first firm with a pretty nice looking FindLaw site who's contacted me in search of a more effective Internet presence.

There's got to be firms which have had results from these websites, but that's an awful steep monthly charge. Especially, when there is a significant up front charge.

I practiced law for 17 years and spent a ton of money on yellow page ads. I recall a full page ad cost $60,000/year or $5,000/month. Maybe that's the basis for charging thousands of dollars a month for a law firm website. Law firms moving from yellow pages are an easy target because 2k a month looks like a steal.

What do you guys think? Are other firms getting results from these websites? They look pretty good, but is the return on investment there?

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1. Rob La Gatta: To start, lets talk about your blogging routine: you post a lot, and your updates are often lengthy. Do you schedule time each day to blog, and do you map out in advance what issues you will cover? Or is it something you don’t decide until you sit down in front of the computer.

Daniel Schwartz: I try to do it either in the evenings and schedule the post for the following morning, or I try to do it first thing in the morning, before the phones start ringing and clients start e-mailing. Typically what I’ll do is, during the day, I may star some stories from Google Reader to follow up on, or check the court dockets to see if any new decision has come down. Sometimes there’s a pressing matter where you want to update it immediately. But I try to reserve the time for both the beginning and end of the workday.

I end up updating really every business day. I’ve decided not to post on weekends, because no one really reads it [then].

2.Rob La Gatta: All lawyers are experts in their respective fields, but only so many of them can be recognized as such. Do you believe blogging is an effective method for establishing yourself as a recognized expert in employment law?

Daniel Schwartz: I do. I think it is an effective way to essentially demonstrate your expertise to people, instead of telling them that you’re an expert. I think that when you’re able to write about a particular subject matter in particular detail, people tend to respect that much more than [if you are] just pounding on your chest and proclaiming to the world, ‘I am the greatest!’

I’ve tried to make it a point of picking out topics that I find of interest and that I think others might, and getting into a bit of detail that can explain a subject a little more – and may ultimately provide the answers to sort of general questions that people out there might have.

3.Rob La Gatta: I noticed on the about page of your blog, you specifically mention that reader participation – through comments, e-mails, etc – was crucial to the blog's long-term success. Have you gotten this type of response from readers so far?

Daniel Schwartz: I have. It really is a conversation...[you are] entering into a dialogue. I’ve made an effort to reach out to other blogs and comment on them, which in turn has those people look[ing] at my blog and comment as well. From that sense, it’s really been a terrific help in spreading the word and discussing subjects in more detail.

Ultimately, other blogs – such as Above the Law or Point of Law – have picked up on my employment law topics, which may reach a larger audience [because of] it. And I’ve also gotten calls from prospective clients and newspaper reporters that would not have otherwise found me.

4.Rob La Gatta: Yes, about that: I noticed that you’ve recently generated some respectable media exposure. Has this had any impact on how you are received by other lawyers within the firm? Are you given any voice in discussions on marketing issues?

Daniel Schwartz: In fact, I’ve been tasked within my firm – based on the success that we’ve had with the blog – [to look] at other blogs that the firm or other attorneys within my firm can do, and at specific targeted areas where we can provide some additional insight and background, given our involvement in the field.

I think, as with any larger firm, there is always reluctance to try something new. But they have been supportive throughout, and every time the blog gets mentioned in the media, much like it would for other attorneys, the firm has posted it – both internally and externally. It shows the success that the blog can have, of getting referenced in the media and building your word of mouth.

5. Rob La Gatta: f you were to meet a lawyer just starting his or her first blog, what is the single most important bit of advice you’d offer them? Why?

Daniel Schwartz: I think you need to want to do a blog, and I think you need to enjoy doing a blog.

I have found that blogging fits within the marketing and overall approach that I want to take to my practice. It gives me an outlet to do some writing, and it gives me an excuse to keep up on recent developments in the law. I think we all have limits on our time, and I end up sometimes blogging from home with my kids sitting next to me, on my laptop. But I view it as something I enjoy doing rather than as work, and I think if you want to do a blog, you need to do it for the right reasons. It’s not a one shot endeavor; it’s a work in progress that you build on.

Ultimately, I can look back on this, and I’ve got dozens and dozens of articles on various subjects that are a reference, not only to people out there, but to myself as well.

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• Ho-ho-ho...contractor hired to audit the naughty - New Jersey attorney Helen Oscislawski of Fox Rothschild in the firm's HIPAA Health Law Blog
• Social security changes - Silver Spring lawyer Dory Sutker of Greenberg & Bederman in the firm's Maryland Injury & Disability Law Blog
• SEC targets securities fraud with help from FBI - Minneapolis attorney Chris Grgurich of Lindquist & Vennum in the firm's Over Reg'd: Corporate Securities Regulation & Litigation Resource Blog
• Bribing the judge to be considered as a factor in awarding equitable distribution - New York attorney Daniel E. Clement in his blog, the New York Divorce Report
• Year end collections - does it help or hurt your marketing efforts? - Legal marketing specialist Tom Kane of Kane Consulting Inc. in his Legal Marketing Blog
• Res judicata bars relitigation of 1938 Buras Levee District lease's validity - New Orleans attorney Cheryl Kornick of Liskow & Lewis in the firm's Energy Law Blog
• Sexual harassment: settlement in the Knicks case - Somerville lawyer Frank Steinberg in his New Jersey Employment Law Blog
• Judge Dow joins the Northern District Bench - Illinois attorney R. David Donoghue of DLA Piper in his Chicago IP Litigation Blog
• Water bottle blues - Food safety blogger Gerald Pugliese in Dr. Joel Fuhrman's blog, Disease Proof
• Forensic evidence: blood splatter analysis admitted - Texas lawyer Cliff Hutchinson of Hughes & Luce in his blog, Science Evidence

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Denise Wakeman picked up from Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing Intelligence ezine that the best way to market to other businesses is online.

The Internet is the best way for advertisers to market to business decision-makers, according to a poll. A survey of nearly 1,000 people by Minnesota Opinion Research found 60% agreeing the Web was persuasive. Fifty percent said it influenced them to make a purchase.

'Business decision-makers have told us that the Web is the best place to reach them,' said Chris Schroeder, CEO of Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive. 'Most importantly, they've made it clear that what they're seeing on the Web is leading directly to purchases.'

Fifty percent said the Internet influenced them to make a purchase. 'Business decision-makers have told us that the Web is the best place to reach them,' said Schroeder.

Makes it all the more important that your Internet presence as a lawyer is an effective one.

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The International Legal Technology Association is hosting a webinar (at your desk) this Thursday on 'How Wikis, Blogs and Discussion Forums Relate to Knowledge Management in the Legal Field.'

I'll be presenting with Gloria Fox, Knowledge Manager at Blank Rome, practice consultant Lisa Kellar Gianakos, and legal technology expert and practicing lawyer Dennis Kennedy.

Details

• Thursday December 13, 11 ET/8 PT, 90 minutes
• Registration

The webinar is an encore performance of a presentation the four of us did at ILTA's National Conference in Orlando last August. It was fairly well received and word has it there's already 41 signed up for this webinar.

Hope to 'see' you there.

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• Supreme Court rules in sentencing guidelines cases - The blogging constitutionalists at the American Constitution Society in their ACS Blog
• Expert rules tighten in medical malpractice cases - Lisa Siegel of Katz Stepp & Miller in the firm's Georgia Injury Law Blog
• Have you made resolutions for your business in 2008? - PKF Texas director Greg Price in his blog, From Greg's Head
• Uh oh, here we go again - U.S. falls further behind in science education - Management consultant Cliff Mintz of Bio Insights Inc. in his Bio Job Blog
• We decided to divorce; do I want the house? - Philadelphia attorney Jacqueline G. Segal of Fox Rothschild in the firm's Pennsylvania Family Law Blog
• How the condo board stole Christmas: restricting the display of holiday decorations - Lawrenceville lawyer Jonathan H. Katz of Stark & Stark in the firm's New Jersey Law Blog
• The end of an era? - Business specialist Gary Farnes of Mercer & Hole in the English accounting firm's SME Plus Blog
• Traditional Knowledge Digital Library - The Blog Editor at IP.com's recently launched blog, Securing Innovation
• FBI raids Joey Langston's office - Portland lawyer David Rossmiller of Dunn Carney in the firm's Insurance Coverage Law Blog
• DOJ dropping criminal charges against whistleblower - Marshall Chriswell of the National Whistleblower Legal Defense & Action Fund in their Whistleblower Protection Blog

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• Manor Care/Carlyle seek to close deal, but regulatory scrutiny has resulted in delays - Cleveland attorney Jayne Juvan of Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aranoff in her blog, Juvan's Health Law Update
• Fannie Mae reduces pension benefits - Financial risk manager Susan Mangiero of Pension Governance in her blog, Pension Risk Matters [technically published yesterday, but a good post]
• How often should you review your estate plan? - Philadelphia lawyer Mark Jakubik of The Jakubik Firm in his Pennsylvania Estate Planning Blog
• WV health care authority will reconsider proposed purchase of nursing homes - Charleston attorney Jeffrey Mehalic in his West Virginia Business Litigation Blog
• 401(k) automatic enrollment or how to overcome employee inertia - Retirement specialist Jerry Kalish of National Benefit Services Inc. in his Retirement Plan Blog

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Jeff Jarvis says the corporate Blog Council misses the whole point, it's not the blog, it's the conversation that's key.

When I was in London, I sat with folks from the BBC in an afternoon devoted to blogging, and the woman next to me was troubled, bearing weight on her shoulders from having to fill her blog and manage her blog. To her, the blog was a thing, a beast that needed to be fed, a never-ending sheet of blank paper. I turned to her and said she should see past the blog. It's not a show with a rundown that, without feeding, turns into dead air. Indeed, if you look at it that way, you'll probably write crappy blog posts. I've said before that if I think I need to write a post just because I haven't written one, I inevitably come out with something forced and bad. Instead, I blog when I find something interesting that I've seen and I think, 'I have to tell my friends about that.' You're the friends. So yes, I said, it's just a conversation. And reading — hearing what others are saying — is every bit as important as writing. It was as if scales were lifted from her eyes and weight from her back: She's just talking with people.

Mom always said 'God gave you two ears and one mouth and he did it for a reason. We are supposed to listen twice as much as we speak.'

With Jeff, 'It's not about them writing blog posts. It as much about them reading everybody else's blog posts.'

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"It seems to be a great time to be starting out in journalism. Just don't ask advice from anyone who has been in the business for more than five years." That's the advice of Saul Hansell, publisher of the New York Times Bits Blog.

Saul nails the historical party line for Journalism grads:

Find a gig where you can write — a small town paper, freelancing for an alternative weekly, a business trade publication (my route). If you're good, the story went, you would find you way to bigger publications and forge a career.

Seems foolhardy these days with newspaper revenues on the decline and newsroom layoffs. But from Jeff Jarvis's Entrepreneurial Journalism class at the City University of New York's new Journalism School, there's hope for the journalist entrepreneur.

Jarvis got the McCormick Tribune Foundation to put up $50,000 as seed capital for contestants in his class. Saul was a juror for the contest. Hearing a lot of interesting proposals, he concluded grads can 'now count on technology services to accelerate many parts of starting a business.'

Items of note from the contest:

• Hyper-local site for Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.
• Global magazine for Muslim women.
• Google's Ad Sense was on nearly everyone's plan as a source of advertising revenue.
• Specialized ad networks were relevant to some ideas.
• Starting an entire online service entirely within Facebook, ie, personal finance service for young people or a service meant to match high school athletes with college recruiters.

Everyone recognizes that another job is going to be needed to pay the rent for those going the entrepreneurial journalism route. Perhaps that's why we're not seeing as many ideas emanate from law grads. Two degrees cost a lot of jack, requiring a good salary to repay student loans, let along pay the rent.

But niche legal sites developing into quasi reviews, law journals, and treatises driven by technology services to accelerate things are coming.

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Social media, with blogs topping the list, is gaining significant traction among PR and communications professionals per a study presented at the Society for New Communications Research Symposium in Boston, MA this week. The study was funded by the Institute for Public Relations and Wieck Media.

Among their findings:

• Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that social media tools are becoming more valuable to their activities as more customers and influencers use them.
• Twenty-seven percent reported that social media is a core element of their communications strategy.
• Only three percent stated that social media has little or no value to their communications initiatives.

And the most effective tools for their social media initiatives:

• Blogs
• Online video
• Social networks

The top three criteria for determining the relevance and potential influence of a blogger or podcaster:

• Quality of content on the blog or podcast
• Relevance of content to the company or brand
• Search engine rankings

Online engagement was not viewed as important. However, it's possible that we're dealing with PR/Communications folks, who in the absence of blogging themselves, cannot appreciate the value of networking via blogging.

For online communities and social networks, the top three criteria for evaluating influence do reflect the importance of online engagement:

• Participation level
• Frequency of posting by the community member
• Name recognition of the individual

Detailed results of the study will be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of New Communications Research and a full report will be made available via the Society and the Institute for Public Relations in early 2008.

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Social networking, whether it through be FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, StumbleUpon, or whatever Web 2.Joe community you might have, has always seemed fleeting to me as compared to the networking I do through blogging.

Darren Rowse hits on the same thing in his post on 'Blogging vs Social Networking.'

I chatted with an ex-blogger recently who lamented that he ended his blog 12 months ago to spend more time exploring social networking. His words still ring in my ears (paraphrased):

'I was offered a job through my blog....
I have 9000 'friends' at facebook and myspace....
I used to know most of my readers by name and knew that they all knew mine - even though there were only 200 a day....
I know a lot more people see my profile on facebook - but most of them just are hunting for friend bait....
I used to spend hours writing things that meant something on my blog....
I now spend hours updating people on the lattes I drink and people I meet on Twitter....
I had a brand of my own on and on my own property on my blog....
I now have a brand on someone else's property....'

His ultimate reflection was to wonder what he could have achieved if he'd invested the amount of time and energy into this blog as the time and energy he invested into his social networking.

.....Social networks (as well as other social media and web 2.0 sites) have the ability to reinforce your brand, drive traffic, introduce you to new audiences and open up new networks - but in my own business the primary vehicle that I use at present to drive forward what I do remains my blog.

My blog is my place, my voice, and where folks I meet on the net can track me down.

If I do a nice job looking around for good discussion on blogs & news sites, enter into the discussion by referencing what someone's said (like what Darren's said here), and comment on other blogs, I seem to meet the people I want to meet. And people seem to get to know me for my passion and expertise.

I can spend all day trying to figure out how to use social networking sites, let alone actually using them, and not accomplish as much as I can through blogging.

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A solo lawyer asked that question on a listserv. The discussion was going the typical direction of keywords, meta tags, exchanging links, and all the other SEO gymnastics.

I'll give a you little secret about why good bloggers are ranking high in the search engines. It's not keyword magic in meta tags and that garbage.

It's about entering into a conversation that's already going on in your niche. By referencing other blogs and news sites in your posts and commenting on other blogs, publishers of blogs and news sites get to know you. They'll subscribe to your blog. They'll see you in their keyword RSS feeds.

You'll gain their trust. They'll start to reference your content. Not only will you have an effective Internet presence with people seeing your name as they do research on your niche area of the law, your search engine rankings will improve through the links you will naturally, as opposed to cross linking, pick up.

There's nothing magic about. It should be as natural as attending a Rotary meeting (painful as that may be) where all the Rotarians have an interest in your area of law. They'll be both prospective clients and those who influence them. Who you are and the expertise you have will be amplified by those you network with at this Rotary meeting.

Sure it takes a little time to get known through online networking. But it's like dog years compared to the offline world of networking. You can do in a year online what would take you 7 years through online networking.

Blogs are not about beating out web sites in the search engine rankings. They are a new way of networking and marketing.

Blogs get back to the way lawyers got work prior to the 1977 Supreme Court decision in the case of Bates v. Arizona State Bar. Until Bates, lawyers weren't permitted to advertise. Not even a tombstone ad in a newspaper or yellow pages saying 'Wills - Call This Number.'

Back then lawyers got their work by being viewed as a trusted and reliable authority within the network of people the lawyer got to know. This network of people retained the lawyer when they had a need for legal services and referred friends, co-employees, business associates, and relatives to the lawyer.

Blogs are the same thing - getting known by people as an authority and having those people talk about you, or at least referencing your writings.

Until you exit the womb and get out there and network by joining the online conversation, you'll never achieve your potential through blogging. You may even be conspicuous by your absence from the conservation among authorities in your niche.

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• Colorado group fails on appeal - full court messes with the Fink - Melbourne attorney Nicholas Weston in his firm's Australian Trade Marks Law Blog
• Pediatric group issues winter safety tips for kids and parents - The blogging lawyers & attorneys at Regan Zambri & Long in the firm's D.C. Metro Area Medical Malpractice Law Blog
• Should governor seek opinion of Delaware Supreme Court? - Wilmington attorney Francis Pileggi of Fox Rothschild in his Delaware Corporate & Commercial Litigation Blog
• Senators ask Bush for greater food safety funding - Seattle lawyer Bill Marler of Marler Clark in his Marler Blog
• Read the fine print: what does your managed care agreement say about ADR? - New Jersey attorney Richard J. Webb of Healthcare Neutral in his Healthcare Neutral ADR Blog
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• California sues U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seeks permission to enforce own standards regulating greenhouse gas emissions - Los Angeles attorneys Olivier F. Theard and Maria J. Gangemi of Sheppard Mullin in the firm's Real Estate & Construction Law Blog
• Year end bonuses & gifts: watch out for wage & hour mistakes - Lancaster lawyer Michael Moore of Russell Krafft & Gruber in the firm's Pennsylvania Employment Law Blog
• Bullying resources at state Department of Education - Milford attorney Michelle C. Laubin of Berchem Moses & Devlin in the firm's Connecticut Education Law Blog
• Sean Taylor case and the felony murder doctrine - Shrewsbury lawyer Travis Tormey from The Law Office of John F. Marshall in their New Jersey Criminal Defense & DWI Blog
• Slips on ice - Silver Spring attorney Jason Fernandez of Greenberg & Bederman in the firm's Maryland Injury & Disability Law Blog
• Inheritances: can I keep my money? - Philadelphia lawyer Judy McIntire Springer of Fox Rothschild in the firm's Pennsylvania Family Law Blog
• Is the Scruggs scandal a legacy of the policies of Mike Moore, Jim Hood? - Portland lawyer David Rossmiller of Dunn Carney in the firm's Insurance Coverage Law Blog
• First Circuit hears oral argument on allocation issues - Boston attorney Michael Aylward of Morrison & Mahoney at the National Insurance Law Forum
• How associates become rainmakers - Legal marketing expert Larry Bodine in his Law Marketing Blog
• What can I do to advance creative freedom AND artistic control? - Attorney-mediator Victoria Pynchon in the IP ADR Blog

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Legal SEO guru Steve Matthews announced this afternoon that the Canadian Law Blogs List now has a home of its own at LawBlogs.ca.

It's part of Steve's involvement in Canadian legal web publishing. He's already launched LegalPubs.ca, a one stop showcase of the products offered by Canadian legal publishers. Using RSS technology, LegalPubs serves up the latest from Canada Law Book, Irwin Law, CCH Canadian, Lexis Nexis Canada, and Thomson Carswell.

The guys on a role.

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Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, and a number of other large corporations have launched a so-called Blog Council. Best I can tell from their press release they're going to create rules and standards for ethics-based corporate blogs so we'll know how to use blogs and engage the blogosphere the right way. "We can work together to develop model policies that set the standard for corporate blogging excellence," says Sean O'Driscoll, General Manager, Community Support Services for Microsoft.

Better hide this news from the state bar regulators and the large law firm legal marketing professionals. They love creating rules and standards for things they don't understand. Can you imagine the likes of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, Reed Smith and Baker & McKenzie getting together with state bar ethics regulators to develop standards for lawyer blogging excellence? That way firms who had never blogged would know to use blogs and engage in the blogsophere in a responsible way.

Better than invent a new standard, let's just us the Airbag Department of Security Blog Advisory System. It was carefully developed last year in response to Tim O'Reilly's Blogger Code of Conduct. Though designed so that blog publishers could alert their users to the threat condition of words being used on a blog, with a few tweaks and a call to Greg Storey it may do the job.

Rather than trample free speech, we post warnings to protect the innocent. Take a look.

I've been approached by more than one lawyer to sit on a council or advisory board to develop standards for ethical law blogging. I'm serious. I declined as I did when they called to develop standards for the ethical use of a fax machine. We survived.

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Looks like it's not only law firms pulling out of the yellow pages. The Raleigh News & Observer's David Ranni reports R.H. Donnelley shares fell 12 percent Tuesday upon the announcement of disappointing third-quarter advertising sales for its yellow pages business.

Interesting that no one is quoted in the article about growth or even stability in yellow page book ad sales. It's online where any ad growth is going to take place.

Signal Hill analyst Maurice McKenzie remained optimistic about the yellow pages business and Donnelley in particular because of steps "...[T]he company has taken, over the past year or so, in terms of strengthening its position online, which we see as a critical growth engine going forward."

Don't get me started about having your law firm rely on the yellow page sales people for having an effective online presence. I just can't see the sales people who tried to earn a commission by getting my old law firm to put green or purple in our yellow page ad as Internet marketing gurus.

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• Court dismisses indictment against Stolt-Nielsen - Los Angeles attorney Carlton A. Varner of Sheppard Mullin in the firm's Antitrust Law Blog
• The role of the Cleanup Standards Scientific Advisory Board - Pennsylvania lawyer Joel Bolstein of Fox Rothschild in the firm's Pennsylvania Brownfields & Environmental Law Blog
• Foreclosure crisis affecting assessment increases - Molly Foley-Healy of HindmanSanchez in their blog HOA Legi-Slate
• Australia and New Zealand food standards agency begins review of nanotechnology - Washington, D.C. attorney Lynn Bergeson of Bergeson & Campbell in the firm's Nanotechnology Law Blog
• Here's why you pursue a cerebral palsy case - New Hampshire lawyer David Austin of Burke & Eisner in the firm's Cerebral Palsy Law Blog
• USDA offers food safety tips for mailing food gifts this holiday season - The blogging lawyers & attorneys at Pritzer Ruohonen in the firm's Food Poisoning Law Blog
• Weekly newswire December 6, 2007 - The blogging lawyers & attorneys at McKenna Long & Aldridge in the firm's RFID Law Blog
• Toxic tort: creatine and dehydration - general causation rejected - Dallas attorney Cliff Hutchinson of Hughes & Luce in his blog, Science Evidence
• Who's the daddy? Answers now in a box! - Texas lawyer Shannon Cavers in her Houston Divorce & Family Law Blog
• Avoid home equity scams - Pennsylvania lawyer Scott Landis of Barley Snyder in the firm's Pennsylvania Litigation Blog

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God forbid that you as a lawyer call yourself an expert, and you sure as heck better make sure that no directory or ratings service would classify you as that. That was beat into our heads in law school more than rule of perpetuity.

It's just too darn dangerous Joe to have some poor soul reach the conclusion that one lawyer has more expertise in a niche than another lawyer. We're not talking surgeons here. We're talking lawyers. It's just too risky.

You could play this out on Saturday Night Live and not change a thing. Viewers would think it was funny as hell. If they found out the truth - that we kowtowed to state bar associations saying we cannot advertise about our expertise, experience or the regard in which others hold us, they would think we were idiots.

Good to hear via a post from Connecticut civil rights and criminal defense lawyer Norm Pattis that lawyers may not have to 'roll over and play road kill' when, as Norm calls them, the 'geriatric souls' at the bar associations come rattling their swords about you referencing your expertise and experience.

I am heartened by an 11th Circuit decision I learned of only yesterday while attending a presentation on regulation of lawyers. The lawyer who litigated the case was told that he could not list the following in his ads: ''AV' Rated, the Highest Rating Martindale-Hubbell National Law Directory.'  Why not? It could mislead the public.

The lawyer fought the case. He went to the District Court, which pusillanimously refused to strike the regulatory requirement on First Amendment grounds. Undeterred, he went to the 11th Circuit, where he found judges who acted like judges. In the absence of evidence of harm, the bar could not forbid the lawyer to list his rating. Mason v. Fla. Bar., 208 F.3d 952 (11th Cir. 2000).

The speaker Norm references also said that despite host of states scrutinizing Martindale-Hubbard, Super Lawyers and Chambers ads, no one is aware of one complaint in the state's 350 year history that a consumer ever felt misled by a lawyer's ads.

Regulation of ads, we were told, is referred to by one high placed regulator as 'the perfect solution to a problem that does not exist.'

Lawyers, not wanting to take a chance, seek informal ethics opinions approving the lawyers plans to tell the world about themselves. I am already seeing it with blogs. Lawyers are asking me, 'should we submit our blog to the bar for ethics approval?'

As Norm says, few (I'm not aware of any) decisions seem to be directed toward the blogosphere. But unless lawyers, presumably the defenders of the First Amendment, take a stand we're going to find lawyer blogs regulated on the basis that someone may reach the conclusion the lawyer publishing the blog has some expertise and experience. God forbid. Protect the children.

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• Your divorce - you do have alternatives - New Jersey lawyer Bob Durst of Stark & Stark in the firm's New Jersey Law Blog
• Nacre v. Silynx (or QuietPro v. QuietOps): garnering lots of attention - Washington, D.C. attorney Brian Wm. Higgins of Blank Rome in his Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog
• Video visitation and other electronica - Dallas lawyer Jimmy Verner of Verner & Brumley in the firm's North Texas Divorce & Family Law Blog
• FTC announces "crackdown" on Do-Not-Call violators - Washington, D.C. attorney Ronald G. London of Davis Wright Tremaine in the firm's Privacy & Security Law Blog
• Medicaid recoupment based on lack of medical necessity not permitted if based on review of billing records alone - Baton Rouge lawyer Linda Rodrigue of Kean Miller in the firm's Louisiana Law Blog
• The agony of a co-op board rejection - New York real estate broker Douglas Heddings in his blog, True Gotham
• Rice Alliance announces 2008 Business Plan Competition dates - PKF Texas director Greg Price in his blog, From Greg's Head
• Non-doms - book now to avoid disappointment - Mercer & Hole partner Lisa Spearman in the English accounting firm's Tax Plus Blog
• When should a doctor speak out? - Tennessee attorney John Day of Day & Blair Attorneys in his blog, Day on Torts
• Delaware Bankruptcy Court opts out of newly amended rule 3007's procedures for omnibus claim objections - San Francisco lawyer Bob Eisenbach of Cooley Godward Kronish in his In The (Red) Business Bankruptcy Blog 

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That's the view from Pioneer Square's Zeitgeist Coffee Shop window counter in Seattle this morning. You'll see blue sky above.

Thanks for asking about the storms and rain we've been having out here. No snow here in town like back home in Wisconsin, but hurricane force winds and 6 or 7 inches of rain are nothing to sneeze at. Dry here now, but people west of here on the Olympic Penninsula and south of here along the rivers running into Grays Harbor got slammed and putting up with real hardship.

Plus there are some missing snowboarders around the Crystal Mountain Ski Resort/Mount Rainier. This followed some hikers being killed in an avalanche in the Cascades just east of Seattle.

Seattle ain't as bad as painted. As we approach Christmas we'll have a few days where it gets down to the upper 20's and our share of drizzle. But the ocean keeps it fairly temperate - and brings us ample snow for skiing.

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1. Rob La Gatta: First off, what do you enjoy most about blogging?

Scott Greenfield: The best part of blogging is being a small part of an enormous conversation on things that interest and matter to me. Whether it’s local or worldwide, and amazingly it sometimes goes worldwide, and whether it’s with laypeople or renown[ed] scholars, everybody gets a seat at the table for the chat. It’s incredible what you can learn.

2. Rob La Gatta: What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced – either personal or professional – since you became a blogger?

Scott Greenfield: It was surprising to learn how many people read, or at least learn about, the things you post. For me, this has included judges before whom I’m trying cases, who make sure that I know that they know that I was critical of them in the past. That little comment slipped in with a wink will remind you that you had better be prepared to live with your opinions expressed online because they will eventually come back to bite you in the butt.

3. Rob La Gatta: I got the impression through your post on the ABA 100 list and the subsequent discussion in its comments page that you don’t blog just to market yourself. Is this an appropriate assumption to make? If so, why do you blog?

Scott Greenfield: Not only do I not blog to market myself, but I find the idea of self-aggrandizing blogging to be offensive. It defeats the purpose of blogging, to have the freedom to express your views on subjects that matter, as well as assuring that you offer nothing that anybody else will want to read. Nobody wants to read posts about what a wonderful lawyer you are or how brilliant you are. If you’re brilliant, show it by posting substantive pieces.

My blogging is solely for fun. I would (and did) write regardless of whether blogs existed because I feel a desire (compulsion?) to express myself that way. I’m a news junky and seem to have an opinion on a lot of subjects. Writing allows me to get it out, and blogging allows me to have others let me know what they think of my views.

4. Rob La Gatta: Where do you see all this going? Do you believe that legal blogs are a fad that will come and go, or do you think they're reshaping the way lawyers do their job (and if so, how)?

Scott Greenfield: Legal blogs are in their infancy at the moment, but I don’t think they are just a fad. On the other hand, I would anticipate that 90% of the blogs that lawyers start will be abandoned within a year. It takes a lot of work to maintain a blog that people want to read, with a steady, reliable stream of substantive work. The notion that you can start a blog that says nothing, or post every 6 weeks, or write only about what a terrific lawyer you are, and anybody is going to want to read it is simply wrong. The only thing that brings people back is substance, and substance takes effort.

I doubt that blogs will “reshape” the way lawyers do their job. They will provide a new, hopefully more interesting, way to keep abreast of new developments, but they are unlikely to have any great impact on the practice of law.

I do think, however, that blogs are gaining in credibility and influence, and may ultimately have a significant impact on both public and judicial thinking. Blogs are suddenly being cited in opinions, and are influencing mainline media stories. This is huge. There is still a long way to go to establish real credibility, but I think this may be the lasting influence of blogging.

5. Rob La Gatta: If you could provide one bit of advice for a lawyer new to the blogosphere, just starting his or her first blog, what guidance would you give them?

Scott Greenfield: It’s all about substance. If you want anyone to care about what you have to say, then have something to say. But keeping up a blog with substantive posts takes a lot of effort. So if you aren’t having fun, or think you’re going to see some direct financial correlation with your blogging, you’re going to burn out quickly and be very disappointed. So either have fun with it or find a hobby more suited to your interests. Blogging isn’t for everyone.

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LexBlog client and insurance lawyer, David Rossmiller, has been getting plenty of attention in the media covering insurance stories. Comes as a result of David's Insurance Law Blog. The last couple days its come from the Wall Street Journal.

Yesterday the WSJ Baw blog named him law blogger of the day. Today David's picked up in the WSJ hard copy in Nathan Koppel's story, 'How Scruggs Case Engulfs Life of an Insurance Blogger.'

One of the more unlikely figures to have emerged as a prominent voice on the saga in Mississippi involving famed plaintiffs lawyer Richard 'Dickie' Scruggs is an insurance lawyer in Portland, Ore., who's never set foot in the state.

Somehow, in between his day job as a law-firm partner and his night job as a husband and father to three young children, David Rossmiller blogs about insurance. These days, he's 95% focused on the Scruggs affair, in which he has no formal role. On the matter, he has been cited in publications including the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Los Angeles Times and the online magazine Slate.

The blog, insurancecoverageblog.com, began in early 2006 as a repository for Mr. Rossmiller's thoughts on the insurance industry. But earlier this year, he says, he delved into the coverage battles involving Hurricane Katrina victims and State Farm Insurance Co., which he found 'absolutely fascinating.' He weighed in on court decisions, focusing largely on clauses in many homeowner policies that, asserted lawyers for policyholders, State Farm was using to justify denials in coverage.

For lawyers sitting on the fence about doing a blog or who may be listening to the blog naysayers, give David a call. Talking to him, which I did yesterday, is inspiring to the last. It leaves you with little question that a well done law blog focused on a niche in which the blogger engages in the online conversation can change one's life dramatically, both professionally and personally.

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I'm not of the same blog ilk as Jeff Jarvis. So, no, Bill Keller did not respond to my post challenging his statements that bloggers could never produce reliable and trustworthy news. I had cited blogging lawyers reporting on niche areas of the law as an example of trustworthy news and commentary. But Keller did respond to Jeff Jarvis' similar retort.

Among other things in his email to Jarvis, Keller conceded:

My respect for blogs as a tool of journalism is not the least bit grudging, and my conviction that professional journalists should collaborate with their audience is heartfelt. That's especially true when you have an audience as educated and engaged as ours.

We may — I'm not really sure — disagree on the relative parts to be played by the amateur and the professional in our journalistic future, or on the pace of change. We don't disagree on the value of what you call 'networked journalism.'

Citizen journalism, per Jarvis, can be networked journalism, 'taking into account the collaborative nature of journalism now: professionals and amateurs working together to get the real story, linking to each other across brands and old boundaries to share facts, questions, answers, ideas...'

In a return email to Keller Jarvis summarized where there appears to be a real meeting of the minds.

So we agree that we need journalists trained and supported in reporting and neither I nor any blogger I read has ever suggested that they should be supplanted. They can, however, be complemented.

There is nothing to be served by continuing the us-v-them debate. It is unproductive and ultimately damaging and certainly has become boring. Can we mutually call it over? Yes, press that refresh button, please. Let's talk instead about the new opportunities we have to support journalism — both the activities and the business of journalism — by using new tools, including those of collaboration.

Jarvis then provided an 'example of the potential for mobilizing citizens in acts of journalistic collaboration' from The Washington Post's Dan Roomkin.

Bloggers and other citizen journalists have a new and exciting opportunity to find and shed light on stories the mainstream media are missing - by combing through transcripts of recent Congressional oversight hearings. Without any fanfare, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has started posting preliminary transcripts of many of its hearings on its Web site, giving everyone a chance to pore through testimony and find news the MSM may have overlooked.

Great example of an opportunity for a law firm. Imagine blogging reports of the activities of a government agency that governs the affairs effecting your clients and aspects of the work your firm does. Your firm sponsors the blog and does the reporting.

Too hard? Get law clerks who are clamoring to work at large law firms. Clerks provide the back bone of the ACS Blog. You'd have the Congressional Quarterly for that agency with your lawyers regularly interviewed on the subject. Nice PR.

Law firm PR/communications, marketing, and business development folks would be well served to follow trends in citizen journalism. There are plenty of opportunities.

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Anyone hear about the formation of a blog network by Forbes? Word has it that the magazine is pulling something together and is asking for bloggers to join the network.

I've been a follower of publisher Rich Karlgaard's Digital Rules blog for a couple years. I also see that David Ewalt, Deputy Editor, Special Projects at Forbes.com, publishes the Digital Download blog. Unless I'm missing something those are the only blogs I see running at Forbes.com now.

Maybe it's just me but the snowball of publishers turning to blogs, at least to the extent of having blogs complement their existing content, is turning into an avalanche.

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• Liberty Mutual seeks Supreme Court review in Steadman case - Orange Park attorney David A. McCranie in his Florida Workers' Compensation Law Blog
• Court directs unsatisfactory rating be removed from teacher's record - Mineola lawyer Kevin P. Sheerin in his New York Civil Service Attorney Law Blog
• Wall Street Journal Law Blog interview - Portland attorney David Rossmiller of Dunn Carney in his Insurance Coverage Law Blog (check this post out; David is today's featured blogger at the WSJ Law Blog. Congratulations, David)
• Non-Delaware lawyers can be sued in Delaware for giving advice on Delaware law - Wilmington lawyer Francis G.X. Pileggi of Fox Rothschild in his Delaware Corporate & Commercial Litigation Blog
• Spin life policies - a $30 billion market - Texas attorney Angel Reyes of Heygood, Orr, Reyes & Bartolomei in his Angel Reyes Blog
• Inclement weather policies: don't get lost in the storm - Lancaster lawyer Michael Moore of Russell Krafft & Gruber in the firm's Pennsylvania Employment Law Blog
• "Probationary" periods for new employees may put at-will employment at risk - Stamford attorney Daniel A. Schwartz of Epstein Becker & Green in his Connecticut Employment Law Blog
• Denney: "What's hot and what's not in the legal profession" - Legal marketing expert Tom Kane of Kane Consulting Inc. in his Legal Marketing Blog
• Women board members are where the money is - Consultant Ronda Muir of Robin Rolfe Resources in her blog, Law People
• A chink in Genentech's armor - Management consultant Cliff Mintz of BioInsights Inc. in his Bio Job Blog 

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Search engine optimization expert Aaron Wall has just released a free resource entitled The Blogger's Guide to SEO. Not only does it have information on ranking well in the search engines, but as Brian Clark says it "does a great job of driving home why writing for people (instead of search robots) is more important than ever."

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Per the Editors Weblog, Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, believes that new media such as blogs could never compete with the trustworthy news generated by actual newspaper reporting.

Keller says that things like blogs, search engines and Google News could never replace actual reporting. He says "What is absent from the vast array of new media outlets is, first and foremost, the great engine of newsgathering - the people who witness events, ferret out information, supply context and explanation.".....He explains that sources like Google and Wikipedia cannot replace traditional newspapers because they do not produce content. They aggregate material from many different sources, some of which are very unreliable.

Lawyer blogs, in many cases do produce content. Lawyers ferret out information, supply context and explanation. Even if there were legal news reporters on the niches covered by law blogs, and there are not, reporters would have no where near the domain expertise of a skilled lawyer.

Blogs are not going to replace newspapers by any stretch of the imagination. But newspapers would be well served to realize well done niche blogs in areas such as the law are a trustworthy, if not the only, source of information and commentary.

Smart newspapers, the New York Times included, are leveraging the news platform they have to curate blog content to complement content the paper generates. We're already seeing that in legal reporting. Incisive Media's ALM is developing a law blog network. The ABA Journal is culling blog content as part of its online edition.

Give us a five years and 75,000 more law blogs and we practicing lawyers, law professors, and law students will be doing a lot of reporting. And a force to reckoned with if we are not incorporated into legal newspapers and magazines.

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Doug Cornelius points out that ethics opinions in two states may limit what lawyers can do in social media and social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or LawLink.

A Nebraska opinion (pdf) says a lawyer may advertise in internet-based lawyer directory if, among other things, 'no recommendation is made as to a particular lawyer.' An Oregon opinion (pdf) goes so far as to say a 'Lawyer is responsible for content that Lawyer did not create to the extent that Lawyer knows about that content.'

Following this logic, Doug believes lawyers need to monitor what is being said about them in social networking/social media sites to make sure that there are no endorsements or recommendations of their legal services.

Sounds archaic not to allow consumers of legal services to comment on the service of a lawyer they may have used. But I'm not sure legal ethics rules on advertising ever had the public's interest in mind.

These opinions also fly in the face of services like AVVO, a lawyer ratings website, and Martindale-Hubbell, which is now offering client reviews of their attorneys.

A strict conservative interpretation of legal ethics rules so as to hide the ball from consumers of legal services is misguided. Why shouldn't the public have at least the same right to consumer feedback when selecting a lawyer as they would have when buying a new dishwasher? We're all going online looking for reviews when selecting a service or product. Let's move the process of selecting a lawyer into this century.

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• Bloodborne pathogen standard compliance resources - Pennsylvania attorney Michael Cassidy of Tucker Arensberg in the firm's Med Law Blog
• California Supreme Court agrees to hear "administrative exemption" case - The blogging lawyers and attorneys at Sheppard Mullin in the firm's Labor & Employment Law Blog
• Scientists: brain injuries from war worse than thought - Las Vegas attorney Tim Titolo in his Brain & Spine Injury Law Blog
• Location, location, location determines market performance - New York real estate broker Douglas Heddings in his blog, True Gotham
• Lack of inspections for unclean hospitals and nursing homes - Spartanburg lawyer Ray Mullman of Poliakoff & Associates in the firm's South Carolina Nursing Home Blog
• AFL-CIO gets it wrong on workers' rights - again -  New Jersey attorney Brian Caufield of Fox Rothschild in the firm's Employee Free Choice Act Blog
• Nevada Sup. Ct. conducts hearing on proposed rules for sealing cases - Las Vegas lawyer Tami Cowden of Kummer Kaempfer Bonner Renshaw & Ferrario in her blog, Appealing in Nevada
• Reverse mortgages - mortgages are mortgages, right? - Massachusetts attorney John Gosselin of Gosselin & Associates in the firm's Law For Life Blog
• Norwegian town feels housing pinch - The editor from Total Bankruptcy in their Bankruptcy Blog
• Review: "Size Matters: Regulating Nanotechnology," Harvard Environmental Law Review - Washington, D.C. lawyer John C. Monica of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur in the firm's Nanotechnology Law Review 

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Despite Jay Leno's success, A-list blogger and Edelman VP, Steve Rubel, says says he'd still buy Jay a beer if he saw him. The reason being that he appears to be a hard working down to earth guy.

Per Steve, here's a lot to learn about how to become a top blogger by emulating some of Leno's steps. Here's five lessons leading to Jay's success Steve picked up from a Fortune article he kept.

1. Be incredibly focused on delivering a quality product. Think of your blog as a product building a great brand. Make sure your you're consistently putting out a quality product. Jay whittles down a 200 to 300 joke list for each night. Take your time to get it right.
2. Talent is never enough. It takes a champion work ethic and passion to succeed. Jay Leno hasn't taken a vacation in 20 years and he rarely takes days off. He loves to perform and it shows. Like other bloggers, I'll confess to not taking a real vacation in years.
3. Be a man or woman of the people. Despite many long hours working and cris-crossing the country for gigs, Jay remains a man of the people. His Jaywalking segments reveal how comfortable he is with ordinary people folks. If you make it big as a blogger don't let it go to your head. Continue to reference other bloggers and people others have never heard of.
4. Have something to sell, but also let others sell on your stage. Jay's a good listener letting his guests get in all their plugs. Selling ideas, as you do as a blogger, drives a lot of the conversation. Let people get their points in. Do Remember the ideas you want to sell and own them.
5. Stay a little bit paranoid and push your comfort zone. Jay's always trying to stay one up on the competition and testing new material on stages other than the Tonight Show. Don't rest on your laurels and regularly test new ground.

Generating a conversation, or at least the talking aspect, is something I'm okay at. I need to work at giving the stage to others so that they can get in their plugs and views.

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Been meaning to blog about Steve Matthews' excellent piece on thought leadership for lawyers for a long time.

Agree wholeheartedly with Steve that the selling of expertise is a key element in legal marketing. "Expertise, even more than having years of experience, is an important measure of qualification, and a tool used to grade the modern professional."

Though being recognized as a thought leader has been around forever for lawyers, Steve highlights the advantages of building such a reputation online. And I think Steve would agree online reputation building is done via blogging.

First of all, the barrier to entry has definitely been lowered. While web technology has been limited to those with programming expertise in the past, newer software technologies - such as blogs and social networks - have leveled the playing field for exposing one's professional knowledge & expertise. Second, the number of participants in these online conversations is not limited. Those with a willingness to get in there and participate will benefit from the increased exposure. And lastly, the web is a mix of both those that innovate ideas, and those who diligently spread the word. Success can be found in either capacity, but a balance between 'subject expert' and 'online rainmaker' is probably the best approach for most Professionals.

Steve aptly explains the concept and value of online thought leadership.

Thought Leadership is a phrase that's evolved in online communities to describe those individuals who become a hub within online conversations. These individuals are very recognizable. Their opinions are watched by hundreds, and often thousands, who share a common interest. Their online publishing power is driven by their social network as much as their individual ideas. And when they do publish their opinion, people seem to jump! Jump you say? How so? It's difficult to explain. Thought Leaders are in a very interesting position. Not all readers are supporters. And in some cases, the naysayers can outnumber their supporters. It's not that their opinions are the most respected (although this is the case for some, and an ideal position, really), it's that their voice drives others to respond. The end result is that they set online conversational direction, and if they enter into a particular discussion, that issue will be heard. These individuals carry an immense amount of 'web profile' power. For a lawyer who wishes to drive their personal brand through the roof, becoming a Thought Leader can deliver one of the longest lasting effects possible. Done properly, the position of being a Thought Leader could create value for a lifetime, or at least as long as one's professional career. (emphasis added)

Blogging is not about instant search engine success. It's about joining an ongoing conversation with others discussing subjects relevant to your area of practice. Like networking offline, becoming a thought leader among others in the conversation is not achieved overnight.

But as Steve says, done right, 'Lawyers have the opportunity to increase both their 'image' of being an expert, and backing up their professional credibility with commentary that demonstrates, and qualifies, their knowledge with potential clients.'

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Some lawyers may find advertising in yellow pages effective, but it's hard to believe we went to law school to get edged out by pizza and auto parts on the list of the biggest yellow page advertisers.

That's the word from an article by Jodi Sokolowski in the Buffalo Law Journal about how law firms are dominating the yellow pages. I don't know but the article sounds like it's right out of Yellow Page companies' play book on how great yellow page ads are.

Heck, when I found the yellow page directory laying in my driveway, I wanted to find the SOB who left it there. I put them back in the street and wondered why a company like DEX, Verizon, or Qwest had the right to throw garbage in my yard. Wouldn't it be great to get a dump truck with all the unwanted yellow page directories and dump it in Verizon's parking lot?

This post will draw the usual flack from the yellow page folks. But look at some of the recent commentary on yellow pages and yellowpages.com I've seen from lawyers and legal marketing professionals.

• The yellow pages are last century's marketing. Today, clients find lawyers on the Web. Your clients should ignore the Yellowpages.com salesperson and put their marketing dollars into their website.
• ...[I]n the 21st century of websites and blogs, yellow pages are a waste of money. And they are an expensive scam. In my 2-inch thick AT&T Yellow Pages for suburban Illinois (DuPage County), the listings for lawyers run for 43 consecutive pages. I believe this makes it impossible for a law firm to stand out.
• We tried yellowpages.com for a year, and picked three specific listing areas and four markets in the state. We had modest clickthroughs (.15%) but virtually none of the business we were looking for. I had better results with Web site ads on content sites that the clients/prospects were reading at the same or less cost.
• For PI attorneys, the phone book is perfect. For us [general practice], I agree that we are lost in a big mess of incongruent ads and unless we take out a full page, our firm and its members will be hard to locate-by firm name or their own name.
• ...I rarely see them in the search engines when doing a search or hear about them unless it is a salesperson trying to sell a listing. ...[E]ven if the searcher finds yellowpages.com, the attorney's probability of being chosen is low unless the attorney buys a top spot.

Please comment with your thoughts. Yellow pages sales guys too.

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New York criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield, dismissing the merits of the the ABA's law blog contest, talked about the range of a law blog's audience. His comment about LexBlog being an insular group tending to exclude other blogging lawyers caused me to pause.

Many blawgs, such as this one, are best described as "niche" blawgs, of interest to a limited audience. Others capture huge audiences and have broader appeal. Still others are part of insular groups that tend to exclude others as they circle the wagons, such as LexBlog and the LawProfs Network.

I've viewed LexBlog's services and products as empowering lawyers and law firms who are looking to further enhance their reputation as an an authority in a niche area of the law so as to grow their business. As time's gone by, larger law firms have turned to LexBlog for an effective method to stream legal information to existing clients as well as lawyers within a practice group.

Rather than blogging within an insular group, LexBlog encourages its clients to 'join the conversation' among bloggers and news sites with relevant interests. Most of the blogs in that existing conversation are not LexBlog clients. That's the secret sauce of blogging - getting outside the wagons.

What do you think? Have I put up walls or created an insular group through my efforts? Believe me, I do want to know what you think.

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• The deannuitization of defined benefit pension plans - Retirement planing specialist Jerry Kalish of Retirement Benefit Services Inc. in his Retirement Plan Blog
• White-collar crime & a former top cop - New York attorney Fred Abrams in his Asset Search Blog
• New York Times suggests top law firms seem absolutely irrational - Edge International's Gerry Riskin in his blog Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices
• Compensation for the wrongly convicted - Texas lawyer Jamie Spencer in his Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
• Georgia Supreme Court strikes sex offender residency prohibition as illegal taking - The blogging constitutionalists at the American Constitution Society in their ACS Blog

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• Updated breach notification laws - Los Angeles attorney Clifford Davidson of Proskauer Rose in the firm's Privacy Law Blog
•  Astor lawyer Morrissey accused of numerous improprieties - Garden City lawyer Phil Bernstein in his New York Probate Litigation Blog
• Pigs get fat but hogs get slaughtered - Des Moines attorney Rush Nigut of Sullivan & Ward in his blog, Rush on Business
• It's not just about the money - Edge International's Rob Millard in his blog, Adventure of Strategy
• American Conference Institute - food-borne illness litigation - Seattle lawyer Bill Marler of Marler Clark in his Marler Blog

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Probably not a big deal in your neck of the woods, but Eamon just shouted over the phone, 'Hey, it's snowing - Hard!'

Eamon is one of our two 14 old boys. He was only 6 when we moved to Seattle from La Crosse 8 years ago today. Snow is not a big deal to our older kids, but to Conner and Eamon, it's pretty cool.

Here's a view from my perch at the counter of Adante Coffee. This is my office on the weekends and where I like to do some of my best blogging.

Happy Holidays.

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How often do you get asked this question? For me, it's 3 or 4 times a day.

You could do a lot worse than having those who ask watch this video from Common Craft.

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