Findlaw selling ghost written blogs : Law firms foolishly buy in
I shared a couple years ago that FindLaw blogs were an embarrassment to the legal profession.
The reason being that Findlaw was publishing blogs authored by Findlaw employees that, in my opinion, were nothing more than a regurgitation of news content. The goal being to fill a blog post with keywords that could link to FindLaw websites or websites FindLaw sold to law firms. In other words, spam blogs to game Google’s search engine rankings.
I mentioned that a ‘Emily Grube,’ a writing specialist, not a lawyer, was one of the folks writing the FindLaw blog posts.
Last week I received an anonymous comment from someone who says they used to work at FindLaw.
I used to work as a writer at FindLaw – not blogs, more just churning out the firmsite stuff. As such I just want to say, don’t be too hard on Emily Grube.
FindLaw hires people who have only vague notions about the law, then tells them “write like this, it might make you feel like a shithead but trust us, it’s okay.”
Grube was just following orders. Don’t blame her, don’t shit on her life just because FindLaw put her in the position of offending the wrong people.
Nice.
FindLaw is continuing with spam law blogs. This time rather than with its own FindLaw blogs such as the New York Personal Injury Legal Blog, which gave rise to my earlier post, FindLaw is apparently selling ghostwritten blogs to lawyers.
Take a look at the ‘Recently Added Blogs’ on FindLaw’s Legal Blog Network.
The blogs are not written by lawyers, they are written ‘On Behalf of” a law firm. I guess that way it’s not false or misleading advertising contra to bar rules for implying that a firm’s lawyer authored the blog.
I thought I had seen some ‘real posts’ written on behalf of a law firm on some of the ‘Recently Added Blogs,’ but the following are the only blog posts I see today on these blogs.
- From the Boston MA Personal Injury Law Blog, published by Kenney & Conley, PC one blog post of January 4:
We established this blog to share stories and information about topics relevant to our practice. Our intent is to highlight local stories, as well as national subject matter, that we think you will find interesting. We will regularly update this blog and encourage you to share your thoughts on these posts.
- From the Fredericksburg VA Family Law Blog, published by Jarrell, Hicks & Waldman, PC, one blog post of January 9:
We established this blog to share stories and information about topics relevant to our practice. Our intent is to highlight local stories, as well as national subject matter, that we think you will find interesting. We will regularly update this blog and encourage you to share your thoughts on these posts.
- From the Pearl River NY Tax Law Blog, published by The Law Offices of Hugh Janow, LLC, one blog post of January 9:
We established this blog to share stories and information about topics relevant to our practice. Our intent is to highlight local stories, as well as national subject matter, that we think you will find interesting. We will regularly update this blog and encourage you to share your thoughts on these posts.
See any similarity in those blog posts?
I know the blogs are going to go on to have additional blog posts. FindLaw has likely sold the law firms ‘X’ number of blog posts per week or month.
Rather than insight and commentary on the law from a practicing lawyer though, the posts will be a shallow regurgitation of news stories like this post titled entitled ‘Georgia girl suffers lost arm from pit bull attack, testifies,’ paraphrasing a Atlanta Journal-Constitution story.
Maybe by blogging about this I am being too hard on the law firms who are buying these blogs from FindLaw. They likely don’t know anything about how to use the Internet for business development. They probably don’t know how poorly what FindLaw is selling them reflects on their law firm and its attorneys.
But Findlaw ought to know better and ought to be playing straight up with members of the legal profession it serves.
Sell expensive stuff to unknowing lawyers who don’t how the Internet works and who don’t know their reputation is being tarnished by what you’re selling them. What a business model.