Law blogs : You get what you pay for
John Kormanik, a founding partner of Boise's Kormanik Hallam & Sneed and former Idaho Deputy Attorney General posed the following question in LinkedIn Legal Blogging Group's discussion forum: 'I am considering starting a blog concerning my law firm, practice and assorted topics. Which platform is best suited for this type of blog, Google Blogger or Wordpress?'
A lengthy discussion ensued among members of the group. I thought I'd share my response to John's question.
I have a dog in this hunt so take this as you may. But I am a firm believer that you get what you pay for. The goal here is not to save money by blogging, but to enhance one's reputation as an authority and to grow business by networking through the net.
Your blog is your home base in that networking. The result is a heck of a word of mouth reputation that keeps on giving throughout your professional life.
Blogger is a non-starter as far as a professional and safe environment for lawyers. That's true for a number of reasons discussed on my blog and elsewhere.
Wordpress and Typepad, though better, are lacking unless a lawyer really knows what they are doing with blogging, social media, and networking through the net. You also have design issues.
I practiced law for 17 years. I helped build a firm with 2 partners and a couple staff to 15 lawyers and 30 or 40 employees. I then started my own firm doing plaintiff's trial law work.
As far as how my competition, my clients, prospective clients, referral sources, media, judges, and jury members perceived me and my firm, I did not want to take a back seat to anyone. That meant both doing a good job and making certain everyone in my firm carried themselves in a professional fashion. There were necessary costs to that - but that was okay as we were doing good work for good clients as a result.
It all depends where your goals lie, how much time you want to dedicate to learning how to network through the net via effective blogging (not just getting a blog up), and the risk you want to take with your image as to how you wish to start blogging.
Lower long term goals, lots of time, and a willingness to risk your reputation? Go it alone on one of the free/low cost platforms. Otherwise you may want to get a professional team to help you.
As you tell your clients, there is a benefit to hiring a lawyer in getting legal matters handled correctly. You can do your own legal work. However, there's a benefit to having a lawyer so you accomplish what you want and avoid long term problems. It's the same for blogs and networking through the net.
The true advantage you have today is that the cost to do great things in marketing, networking, and client development through the Internet is so low. Blogs have become a great equalizer for smaller firms with lower marketing budgets. In addition the cost of professional help in blogging is peanuts compared to ad and marketing buys we used to make in the yellow pages, print, and the like.
Sure, there are exceptions to the above. There always are. I know some excellent law bloggers using Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad (many whose arrows I'll feel in my back after they read this post). I'm just talking about the safe and prudent route for most lawyers and law firms new to blogging.
I am a big fan of Lexblog, and will be joining Kevin's network soon.
On the technical side, I can implement any number of blogs, and have done so. The cost is minimal, around a couple of hundred dollars.
Lexblog's cost is more significant, 2k a year after implementation.
But, it is worth it, and this coming from someone with superior technical skill.
Why is it worth it?
Despite my technical skill, I do not have a network of legal publishers who may want to interact with me. I don't have a group of professionals in my area who are a part of my blogging network.
Yet, this is what Kevin and his team, have created with Lexblog.
Even though the network is relatively new, and needs constant improvement, I believe that Lexblog will be the new Martindale Hubbell.
Those lawyers who routinely give out good quality information will achieve a great online reputation.
Seth Godin would approve.
Give good quality and free legal information to individuals one person at a time.
One of my colleagues has a Lexblog non-firm branded blog. I use self-hosted Wordpress on an Avvo top 25 law blog (for whatever that metric is worth).
About once a month, I probably have some technical issue where I wish that I could yell at someone else to fix things (i.e repair MySQL databases or hosting provider issues). However, I am technically-oriented enough to deal with these hassles.
I probably would have used the Lexblog solution (as the cost is low compared to the potential hassles, especially if one is not backed up by an IT staff), but I am probably one of the rare exceptions that Kevin mentions. I represent technology companies, so there is some "street cred" value in completely dealing with my own blog issues. I can easily ask some of my clients HTML, PHP and CSS questions -- when I have issues while tweaking various things. In addition, I suspect that one of my clients will eventually agree to redesign my blog for me in return for a favor.
Heck Michael, when do we sign you up and put you on the road for LexBlog? On serious note, thanks for the words of encouragement and the faith you're showing in LexBlog to deliver for you.
The LexBlog network you're referring to is something we take very seriously and a goal very much in our eyes. The LexBlog network currently has about 600 law blogs and over 2,000 lawyer authors. And they're good lawyers producing high quality content and legal discussion. LexBlog is working our tail off on ways to syndicate that content not only among our network but beyond it, including to trade and mass media.
I will be the first to tell you that for all of the blogging out there, I am firm believer of associating myself with someone in the technical field to help me pick the right one. I used Word Pad but only because I have a web developer who works with the format and he tells me "Just post. That's your job". AT one time, I had 4 or 5 different blogs and i had seen so many sites that supposedly were best but in the end, I rely on the person who lives in the net!.
Thanks for the comment Yokum. I've enjoyed our conversations and think you're doing a nice job with the site you have.
I do think you're getting caught up on the tech side of a blog. Effective blogging to enhance one's reputation and grow business so you're running laps around lawyers 15 and 20 years your senior is about knowing what to do with a blog. It's about engagement with your target audience, not about building something and getting people to come to it. It's not about the technological aspects of setting up a blog.
My guess is you're getting traction in Silicon Valley as far as people noticing you. But you're sitting on a gold mine of potential contacts in the valley with the technologists, reporters, VCs, entrepreneurs, and new media people who are blogging. Plus you've got major major players in technology companies and the main stream media all around you. It's arguably the center of the world for technology and innovation.
You're doing some of this, but I'd be making an A-list of influencers I'd want to get to know and know well this next year plus. Influencers being reporters, bloggers, conference coordinators, and other movers and shakers in the Valley. I'd to that people elsewhere in the country who are influencing people in the Valley - bloggers as well as reporters at the WSJ, NYT, Washington Post and the like. I'd also do the same for companies I'd want to get to know.
I'd be listening to what they're saying via a reader. I'd be engaging them via my blog and twitter. I'd be connecting with and engaging them again via LinkedIn. Effective blogging combined with the proper use of Twitter, and Linkedin could put you on the top of the world and a rock star as far as a lawyer representing startups, early stage, and growing companies in the valley. Heck you'd be sought out by companies overseas and around the country as well.
These things will take a little time, but why not you? And none of these things start with the technological street creds on how to set up a blog.
As much as I'd like to, I don't know anything about technology. But blogging, social media, and networking through the net has little to do with technology.
Using my Blogger savings for a big vacation this summer and a class on how to upgrade to WordPress.
Sounds nice Eric and appreciate the presence you have created with your blog on Blogger. But you overlooked things as basic as making certain your blog and content were indexed properly on Google. So no matter what you blog, you cannot be found.
You'd also want to ask if it's good or bad if people do find your blog. Your blog lacks direction and focus, something perspective clients would look for in a lawyer. And when I clicked on the next blog in your Blogger blog network link at the top of the page I reached a Brazilian teenager's site who was having fun with teen idol videos. Not a network I'd chose to be in nor one that would impress someone who would ask to pay hundreds of dollars of hour for legal services.
If the blog is for fun Eric, great. If it's being done for client development, it's not going to work and you may be hurting yourself.
I'm growing. What happened to the espoused individualistic, free form use of the internet that empowers all, e.g., twitter, blogging. I think your talking out of both sides of your mouth when it comes to subject of how lawyers can use information and the internet. If you want to become another Martindale-Hubbell that is fine, I suppose. More power to you. Also, I could hire an IT person at your prices. If you lower your price for the small firm or solo, then maybe. Or I can test drive your product to try and prove your theories. In the meantime, I think trying to improve Blogger and WordPress (rather than attacking them with negativity) makes more sense to me.