How to get firm’s attorneys to blog? Make it a competition

For two years, Regan Zambri & Long attorney Catherine Bertram and office administrator Juanita Lawson tried everything they could to encourage the Washington, DC personal injury firm’s attorneys to blog. They tried assigning topics and having the firm’s law clerks write, but nothing seemed to work.

Almost out of ideas, they decided to try capitalizing on what they saw every day in the courtroom.

"Trial attorneys are really competitive," Lawson says.

The resulting plan: a 60-day, four-team contest to see which pair of attorneys could blog the most. At the end, the losing team takes everyone out for beer.

The rules are simple. Each pair of attorneys has to post at least once a week on each of the firm’s two blogs, the DC Personal Injury Blog and the DC Metro Area Medical Malpractice Blog. Bonus points are rewarded for blog posts that have substantive analysis and linking, receive comments or get referenced in other blogs, including in LexBlog’s Daily Blogosphere.

Lawson sends out leaderboard updates (as in the image above) every Monday tracking the standings, and emails dispatches showing the blogs’ statistics and hits.

The contest has been going on since April 20, and so far the reaction has been incredibly positive.

"The response has been overwhelming," Bertram says. "We made it fun and made it a competition. Just having that be part of it has really motivated people to take the time it takes, not that it takes a lot of time."

Now the blogs have an average of three posts per day. Already, the attorneys are seeing the benefits of blogging frequently, as their page views have increased and younger associates are seeing how blogging can give them exposure despite fewer years in practice.

The real test will be after the contest is over, to see if the attorneys will keep blogging without the incentive of competition. Lawson and Bertram are optimistic they will.

"It’s just silly, but it’s the motivating thing," Lawson says. "If it results in the attorneys seeing how powerful blogging is and makes it routine in their day to day," it will be successful, she added.