I assume you're referring to the Legal News from the LexBlogosphere where we post a list of 10 posts from law blogs on weekdays and 5 on weekends. We do that for a few reasons.

* Lawyers are publishing some excellent legal information, insight, and commentary. I want to highlight the legal news via the good sized audience I have on my blog.

* Many people in the legal profession believe legal blogs are some sort of lawyer diary full of random thoughts from lawyers. Highlighting legal blog posts shows the legal community that law blogs are much more than that.

* The posts we're highlighting mostly come from LexBlog clients, which lawyers are in effect a legal blog community of over 700 lawyers. Running an effective community means rewarding community members. Highlighting community member's posts is a means of rewarding them.

I would advise lawyers to be careful about who they swap links with. Outbound links have also become an important component to the search rankings. Your links should reflect your region, your reading & your relationships. If you do that, Google will place your site accurately.

I would also say there is support to your proposition Kevin, that linking to your competitors will help. Even though it may be counter intuitive to some, linking to your competitor actually puts your website closer to the hub of your topic or expertise.

And finally, I like the fact that you link to Lexblog clients. If blogging is about voices, faces & relationships, then it makes sense to be an evangelist for your clients. Not only to showcase their talent, but to converse with them. It's a much more palatable method of marketing, and if it helps in the search engines, then all the better, right?

In law school, for example, it's much better to focus on learning rather than getting good grades. Good grades are best when they come as a by-product of doing the right thing. With a blog, rather than cynically focusing on the search engines, it's better to focus on doing the right thing and in this context that is creating a discussion.

So if linking is a natural by-product of being a thought leader and having a discussion, it won't be forced. And, as Steve points out, you then get other benefits such as helping the search engines as a by-product of doing the right thing, not an end in itself.

On many of LexBlog client blogs, there is a list of links showcasing LexBlog lawyer blogs as well as a number of none LexBlog client blogs. The list is not on all LexBlog client blogs. It's collegial to help each other and not part of any agreement with LexBlog.

At the same time, Stacey Merrick, LexBlog's Client Services Director, and her team's work with clients is focused on getting lawyers to enter into an online conversation in their niche area of the law. Not only will the lawyers reputation grow by word of mouth as a result, but the lawyers will pick up links from relevant blogs and news websites.

To the extent Solo's want to exchange links, that's great. There's just too much discussion that linking randomly here and there is going to cause one's blog to generate more work. That's unlikely.

Lawyers need to be focus on how and why blogs work, as opposed to thinking blogs are the latest fad to game search engines.