Skip to content

Case closed : Law blogs effective marketing tool for large law firms

Following a post by Dechert’s James Beck and Jones Day’s Mark Herrmann, co-authors of the Drug and Device Law blog, the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Slater asked whether law firm blogs were a marketing device or a mere diversion.

I’m amused reading pundits pontificating whether blogs are appropriate or a cost effective marketing tool for large law firms.

Those casting doubt fall in two camps. One is the uninformed. The second are those who have an interest in seeing law firms continue to buy or use less effective and much more expensive marketing tools (vendors and law firm employees wrongly believing blogs will cost them their job).

The fact is law blogs are an effective marketing tool for large law (and despite the Chicken Little’s raising ethics & liability issues, they’re safe).

The proof is looking at what is going on.

  • Over 25% of AmLaw 200 law firms have blogs.
  • 10% of AmLaw 200 law firms have more than one blog.
  • 36% growth in last 6 months in the number of AmLaw 200 law firms publishing blogs.
  • 49% growth in last 6 months in total number of blogs being published by AmLaw 200 law firms.

LexBlog is doing more blog work for AmLaw 200 firms than all the other blog service providers combined. And I can tell you large law firms are not using blogs as a diversion. They are using blogs as a very effective marketing tool to retain existing clients, to pick up work in new areas of practice for existing clients, and to get new clients.

Not one AmLaw 200 law firm has ever said blogging takes too much time or complained that the blog was not a success. Not only has LexBlog never had an AmLaw 200 firm stop publishing a blog, the majority of our clients are adding multiple blogs.

These blog marketing projects are in most cases driven or approved by innovative leaders in large law firms. Those administrative partners and chief marketing officers are focused on the bottom line, the financial health of their law firms. Blogs are a marketing device, not a diversion for them.

So you’ll know I am not making this stuff up, I want to share the success of one large law firm lawyer. Dan Schwartz, who just joined Pullman & Comley started his Connecticut Employment Law Blog last fall while a partner at AmLaw 200 firm, Epstein Becker & Green.

In the first 6 weeks of blogging while with the large law firm:

  • 5000 unique visitors
  • Few prospective client calls a week and one new client
  • Nearly 100 incoming links from third party websites and blogs
  • Regularly cited by leading law & employment bloggers (3 of the most widely read)
  • Article on Dan and his blog in Connecticut legal periodical

I thought of Dan’s story because of an email from him a couple evenings ago sharing recent successes.

The [new firm] is very receptive to the blog…

The blog has led to some very favorable press for me the last week… The Hartford Business Journalwrote an article about a food server case that I blogged about a few weeks ago. The reporter saw my blog on the case and called me for quotes.

Business New Haven, another good solid niche business publication, saw my blog on employment law and called me about law firm mandatory retirement. They even mentioned my blog with a link to it. Cool stuff.

And to top it off, a producer from 60 Minutes called me this afternoon after seeing my blog article on USERRA (military leave laws) and wondering if I knew of employers who could talk about it (and talking to me about it for a few minutes).

(And I’ve gotten a new client off of it recently too.)

When giving me approval to share his email, Dan said “Just don’t make it sound like I’m Superman or a publicity hound. The blog has just led to it.”

As a former trial lawyer of 17 years, I know you need to keep proving what can seem like the same case again and again to a different jury who didn’t believe until they understood the facts. Won’t surprise me to be making the argument on the marketing effectiveness of blogs for large law firms 4 or 5 years from now.