Can we take law blogs to another level?

Law blogs are often looked at as merely a marketing vehicle for lawyers. But could they play a greater role in our society?

No question that law blogs in many cases allow lawyers to build relationships and enhance their word of mouth reputation. That’s at the heart of how good lawyers get their best work.

Law blogs are also, in the vast majority of cases, a heck of lot more tasteful and socially redeeming than the yellow page, television, and website advertising many lawyers do.

Sitting through the movie Page One, a documentary of one year inside the New York Times, this evening I couldn’t help but think that law blogs could play a far greater role than marketing alone.

From the Sundance Film Festival description of this documentary on the NY Times.

With the Internet surpassing print as our main news source, and newspapers going bankrupt, … Page One chronicles the media industry’s transformation and assesses the high stakes for democracy … The film deftly makes a beeline for the eye of the storm or, depending on how you look at it, the inner sanctum of the media, gaining unprecedented access to the New York Times newsroom for a year. At the media desk, a dialectical play-within-a-play transpires as writers like salty David Carr track print journalism’s metamorphosis even as their own paper struggles to stay vital and solvent, publishing material from WikiLeaks and encouraging writers to connect more directly with their audience. Meanwhile, rigorous journalism—including vibrant cross-cubicle debate and collaboration, tenacious jockeying for on-record quotes, and skillful page-one pitching—is alive and well. The resources, intellectual capital, stamina, and self-awareness mobilized when it counts attest there are no shortcuts when analyzing and reporting complex truths.

With newspapers taking it in the shorts (though the NY Times is turning it around), investigate journalism regarding issues of justice and courthouse coverage is one the sharp decline, if not flat out disappearing.

Who better to cover legal matters than lawyers? Lawyers have never been so empowered to provide coverage. The same WordPress publishing platform that was being used by NY Times’ reporters in the movie is the same platform powering many lawyer’s blogs today.

Lawyers may not be able to write as well as reporters. But lawyers do have knowledge of the law and its impact on people and businesses that reporters do not.

Maybe we also kill two birds with one stone. Lawyers willing to provide coverage on the law, or at minimum provide insight and commentary on legal developments, are likely to establish themselves as ‘go to’ lawyers on niche areas of the law and locales.

Establish yourself as a ‘go to’ lawyer and you’ve gone a long way to cracking the one nut many lawyers are having trouble with today and that’s bring in work.

Where could a lawyer’s coverage and commentary be aggregated, curated, and distributed to the the public?

• Google and Google News.
• Local and national newspapers. They may need some help filtering for good legal content.
• Legal networks such as LexBlog’s LXBN.
• Online niche legal or industry publications.
• ALM’s online publications.
• Law sections of Flipboard, Zite, and other iPad applications.

Far fetched? Maybe not. Attorney Bill Marler has been a force of nature when it comes to Food Safety in the US and around the world with Food Safety News, Food Poison Journal, and eight other blogs on food-borne illness.

Miami’s Jim Walker has taken the wraps off many injustices in the cruise line industry with his Cruise Law News.

I am missing countless other lawyers on and off the LexBlog Network who help fill the gaps we have in investigative journalism and coverage of legal matters.

The question is whether enough individual lawyers are up to the task and whether organizations such as LexBlog will empower lawyers to provide legal coverage and insight and commentary on the law.

Bar associations, beginning with the ABA, will not play a role. Bar Associations, by and large, have done little to advance the law in our society and have at best stood on the sidelines when it comes to citizen journalism/social media and at worst tried to stop it.

The duopoly of LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters West/FindLaw would rather sell lawyers outdated Internet marketing tools and sell legal information to lawyers, the public, and news organizations than empower lawyers to cover legal issues.

Eight years ago no one had heard of law blogs. Coincidentally, newspapers and publishers felt secure in their business. Times have changed.

Seems to me that with the change that law blogs published by our nation’s lawyers may be able to fill a void in legal reporting and publishing and take law blogs to another level.

What do you think?

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