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Time is not an excuse for lawyers not to blog

I hear it all the time. “I’m a busy lawyer, I don’t have time to blog.” “You have no idea how busy our lawyers are, it’s my job as a marketing professional in our law firm to get our blog done for the lawyers so they don’t have to spend time blogging.”

It’s all bunk. And it’s no excuse.

As Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson write in their just released business bestseller, Rework, ‘No time is not an excuse.’

When you want something bad enough, you make the time — regardless of your obligations. The truth is most people don’t want it bad bad enough. Then they protect their ego with the excuse of time. Don’t let yourself off the hook with the excuse of time. Don’t let yourself off the hook with excuses. It’s entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come true.

Besides, the perfect time never arrives. You’re always too young or old or busy or broke or something else. If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they’ll never happen.

I work with busy lawyers every day at LexBlog. They’re leading lawyers in their niche or locale. They’re not recent grads. They’re involved on civic boards and other associations. They’ve got kids. They’ve got other obligations.

But these lawyers have decided that for professional and business development reasons, they’re going to blog. They want to continue to grow their network and influence. More than one lawyer has told me they’re going to blog because they are a national leader in their niche and they’re not going to forfeit their position.

So I’m not buying the no time excuse. I’ve seen busier lawyers than you who have drawn a line in the sand and decided to blog. If you don’t want to blog because you’re afraid to try something new, are afraid to engage others to build business relationships, or believe blogging is beneath a person of your stature, admit it. But don’t use the no time excuse.

If you’re working in legal marketing and think you are doing your lawyers a favor by blogging for them or cutting and pasting their ‘newsletter like’ content into a blog to save the lawyer’s time, you’re not. The lawyers are losing the opportunity to engage their target audience. Their blog will not work well for business development. Heck, you’ve created a bigger time suck for you and the lawyers because you’re both going to be working on other forms of business development because the blog won’t be working like you hoped it would.

There’s many a lawyer in this country, who after mastering the art of blogging (including the use of a RSS reader), spending 4 to 6 hours a month blogging. And they’re experiencing professional and business development doing so.

You have the time.

  • http://www.legalwatercoolerblog.com Heather Morse-Milligan

    The attorneys who say they are too busy to blog are the same attorneys who are too busy to write client alerts, attend industry conferences, travel cross-country to have face-time with clients, attend networking events, etc.
    New technology, same excuse.
    And you’re right, Kevin. Just as I would not sit at a table of ten in lieu of the attorney, and how I won’t pay for an industry sponsorship if the attorneys are not willing to show up and represent … I won’t write their blog posts or hire ghost bloggers.

  • http://www.iowa-lawblog.com Liz

    I agree. I used to use the “no-time” excuse, but my failure to blog was really just lack of commitment to it. I now have a regularly scheduled blog “appointment” each week. This has helped me stay committed to posting at least once a week.

  • http://www.benglasslaw.com Ben Glass

    Kevin:
    It would be much better if you kept the “you gotta actually do something to get a result” secret to ourselves… Most lawyers think that “do a good job and they will come” still works… not sure that it ever did but its certainly not enough in today’s world…so for all those folks out there who don’t have enough time to blog… have at it…keep finding something else to do… the rest of us will thank you for the decreased competition.

  • http://www.californiaeminentdomainreport.com/ Rick Rayl

    I think this is exactly right. Nobody “has” time for anything; it’s a matter of making time. And for me, I’ve found that the process of trying to find things to blog about has made me a lot more up to date on my niche area (eminent domain) to the point that I now have trouble determining how much time I’m actually spending “blogging.” If I spend an hour learning about a new project, but ultimately decide not to blog about it, have I spent time blogging, doing industry research, or just learning more about my area?
    Regardless of how one views the time, it’s making me a better lawyer — and making me more visible in my practice area. How can I afford not to make time for it? — Rick

  • http://www.gjel.com/blog Ben Buchwalter

    I agree with everyone above, but I think that Heather said it best. “New technology, same excuse.” There are always a million reasons not to try something new. And when it comes to blogging, I think that many people view it as beneath them, and just not worth the time. But (maybe understandably) people don’t want to say this, in fear of sounding like a jerk.
    It’s clear that blogging is now a force to be reckoned with in all industries. But think about when it first become prominent in journalism. It took almost a decade for journalists to accept it as a legitimate part of the industry’s future. But now just about every newspaper and magazine has a blog (or many) and a giant group of serious journalists now blog.
    I think that this gradual transformation will happen to lawyers as well when they realize that blogging is a way to weigh in on important issues, and can even bring in business. Thanks for being in the first wave of this movement, Kevin!
    –GJELblogger

  • http://www.myshingle.com Carolyn Elefant

    Everyone has time to blog. But it’s not just time. It is finding inspiration. Sometimes it fails, especially after blogging for seven years.

  • Francis Barragan

    I agree with the post above mine, except that sometimes it fails much, much earlier than that.
    I find in general that inspiration is hard to come by and especially on a subject that has not been beaten to death. But more importantly, drafting something interesting and intelligent in a short time span is not easy by any means. To me, that goes beyond inspiration. It’s not easy to me anyway…

  • http://www.oklahomalawyer.com Clayton Hasbrook

    Rework was a fun read. I like the part about not waiting for the perfect time. Just get moving and take action. I hadn’t heard the part about working long hours – if you’re doing that, you’re not getting enough done during normal hours.
    Kevin: I’m surprised you didn’t mention the section about out-teaching your competition. THAT is the beauty of good law blogs.