Couldn't help but contribute to this discussion. This is the comment I just posted on "What about clients":

I have to say I tend to agree with Kevin.

Why do you blog then? What do your clients think of it? Presumably at least some of them are aware of it, even if you don't trumpet the fact. Should the fact you're opining on non-legal issues much of the time make any difference? You also seem to be assuming lawyers blog during working hours. Often not the case. It's a marketing-related value add that many pursue after cranking up sufficient billables.

I'm a busy in-house counsel who both blogs in his own time (because, among other reasons, it's a way of staying current) and would like to see more law firm bloggers talking about niche areas relevant to my areas of practice. I'd much prefer that, coupled with the ability to receive it by RSS, than the "taster" marketing blurbs that many firms release. I'm not suggesting that blogging can completely subordinate the value of referrals and views of trusted in-house colleagues as to who's good at what, but it can certainly help lawyers' reputations and create mindshare in those who instruct them.

To suggest that all or the "important" in-house counsel would dismiss lawyers who blog is not much different from saying they'd dismiss lawyers who write articles, briefings and speak at conferences. I doubt many would say that.

From the observations of my own meager efforts, I am pretty certain that most people do not know how to use blogs and/or what differentiates them from standard web pages. That needs to change but until it does I would not call blogs mainstream by any stretch of the imagination.

I also use my blogs as storage for my research. I do not know if others do not do this but I am finding it useful. Whether in-house counsel recognize this aspect of blogs is something that might be interesting to know. From what I have seen most people do not think of a blog as more than a single entry found by Google.

66% of people going to poorly designed blogs think they are on a website. With well designed blogs with sections apart from posts highlighting who the blogger is, what they do, and how to get contact them, the percentage is probably 95% plus.

And take into account most of the people using RSS to subscribe to blogs and news sites not knowing they are using RSS, they just think subscribe.

Who cares if sophisticated clients know you are 'blogging' as we may define it. All they care about is the sharing of the intellectual capital, insight, and the lawyer's philosophy.

If, however, people think that this post is all of the information on that subject at this site because they do not know how to use a blog, then I need to reconfigure how I write my posts. I used to just think that people would go over to the archives. After all, that is what I would do . People do not do this. I could easily put this down to design problems with Blogger. When I put links in articles to earlier articles, then people go to those articles.

Where I saw all this as being relevant to the discussion was in people being to exploit that intellectual capital. I also do not think that blogs and what they represent are quite as mainstream as we might like to think.

You hit the nail on the head - sophisticated clients. I expect most of those reaching my blogs to be fairly sophisticated. I certainly would expect in-house counsel to fall into the category of sophisticated. Well, sophisticated enough to be able to understand the benefits of lawyer blogging. (Which really was the topic before I started running off at the mouth. Sorry about that.)