General counsel love law blogs
Mark Beese (@mbeese), a leadership and business development consultant for lawyers, shares five takeaways for lawyers from last week’s Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference. Number one is general counsel love blogs.
Nearly half of all general counsel surveyed by Inside Counsel magazine reported they had visited a legal blog over the past week. In the corporate counsel session facilitated by Inside Counsel’s new publisher Lloyd Johnson Jr., panelists Kevin Schubert (Las Vegas Sands Corp.), Simon Manoucherian (Griols Inc.) and Megan Belcher (ConAgra Foods) confirmed that they frequently use lawyer blogs to learn quickly about a legal topic before calling outside counsel for help. General counsel look for timely information (hours, not days) on legal developments and changing regulations. Favorite blogs give only information clients and potential clients need, with links to dig deeper. And yes, they’ve hired lawyers after reading a blog post that led to a phone call. (emphasis added)
Not only do general counsel rely on law blogs they regularly follow or subscribe to, general counsel are finding blogs on search. Per Beese,
When it comes to search results, Google loves blogs because they are more likely to provide accurate and timely information. Fifty percent of all landing pages in Google searches are blog posts. I’ll let that sink in while you consider when to launch your legal blog. (emphasis added)
Working with our general counsel on the terms of an agreement recently, I did a Google search regarding a relevant clause. The first two results were from niche law blogs, both addressing the exact issue I had.
General counsel don’t love law blogs because they’ve come to low blogs per se. General counsel love blogs because law blogs authored by knowledgable lawyers give general counsel practical insight, commentary, and information they’ve not gotten before.