What I like best about substantive law blogging is it provides an avenue to to connect to the network of practitioners, professors, and pundits in my area of law. Before, this would have required attending conferences, cocktail party schmoozing, and time-intensive participation in Bar Association sections. Not that there's anything wrong with those venues, mind you, but blogging seems like a much more direct way to connect on the issues of common interest.

May just quote your second paragraph in an upcoming post on the cost effectiveness of blogging. Lawyers regularly ask about the ROI from blogging. I respond with exactly the factors you mention - the alternative methods of networking and how much more time they take.

Happy New Year Robert, continued success for the New Year.

Feel free to quote away -- as for ROI, I think all it really takes to "break even" (at least in my area of law) is a single decent new client or new matter per year. Much of the effort that goes into blogging about my practice areas I would have to do anyway: keep up on new cases, scan the papers for market directions, maintain contacts with my peers. Now, instead of "continuing legal education," I can now consider these tasks marketing efforts.

Also, these tasks used to be too easy to shuffle aside in the rush of day to day practice, but now, when a new case comes out, I'm reading it as soon as I am able because I have a compelling reason to. So I believe that blogging has actually made me a better lawyer.