Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Social Media, Twitter

The 2012 In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey conducted by Greentarget, a strategic communications firm, InsideCounsel, a magazine serving general counsel, and the Zeughauser Group, legal industry consultants, includes powerful evidence on the impact of law blogs.

Blogs, Executed Well, Influence Hiring of Outside Counsel: Seventy-six percent of respondents say they attribute some level of importance to a lawyer’s blog when deciding which firms to retain. Additionally, the percentage of respondents who say a law firm’s blog can influence hiring decisions went up slightly, from 50 percent in 2010 to 55 percent in 2012.

Client-Side Counsel Prefer Firm-Branded Blogs: Survey respondents indicated they read blogs written by firms slightly more often than they read blogs penned by journalists. In-house counsel also perceive blogs as credible (84%).

This from the executive summary of the report released today.

In addition, the generational divide evident in the 2010 In-House Counsel New Media Engagement Survey is disappearing. In-house lawyers in their 40s, 50s, and 60s are now consuming information via blogs and other social media.

More on the report in upcoming blog posts. For now, know that a law firm's investment in blogs - done well - is well spent.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

"...[Y]ou know, it reminds you that you gotta pick important stuff, because you only have a limited time."

This from Bill Gates in an ABC interview when asked about the impact Steve Jobs' death had on Gates.

Well, it's very strange to have somebody who's so vibrant and made such a huge difference and been ... kind of a constant presence, to have him die. It makes you feel like, 'Wow, we're getting old.' I hope I still have quite a bit of time for the focus I have now, which is the philanthropic work. And there's drugs we're investing in now that won't be out for 15 years -- malaria eradication, I need a couple of decades here to fulfill that opportunity. But, you know, it reminds you that you gotta pick important stuff, because you only have a limited time.

Reading what Gates said reminded me that I need to make a difference while I am here, because I only have a limited amount of time. For me that's using the Internet, this blog and social media today, to teach legal professionals how to leverage the net to make a positive difference in their lives and the lives of others.

Maybe even see it through to the point where lawyers use the net in a way that improves legal services and the image of our profession as a whole.

Gate's statement also reminded me about something which New York Attorney Scott Greenfield penned last December about the reason he blogs.

...I don't write for the appreciation of lecturers or judges. I don't write to impress potential clients with my expertise. If anything, this blawg chases clients away, fearful that I won't love them as they want to be loved, that my lack of emotional devotion to lost causes, my refusal to engage in lies or deception will limit their likelihood of winning, my slavish adherence to integrity will thwart their dreams of pulling a win out of their butts.

Why does Greenfield blog?

I'm going to die one of these days. Maybe sooner rather than later, and likely sooner than most of my readers. I'll be damned if I die without having anything to show I was here. I lack the skills to build the Taj Mahal, or write a symphony, or create a tourbillon. But I can type words onto a computer screen fast enough to put some ideas on virtual paper that serve to demonstrate, at least for a day, that I was here.

A Seattle lawyer, who recently met with LexBlog President, Kevin McKeown, let Kevin know at the end of their meeting that he was inclined to join the LexBlog Network and become a client. Not because the lawyer needed more work, but because the lawyer wanted to maintain his thought leadership status so as to advance certain issues in the law.

Most folks presume law blogs are about marketing one's legal services. To get one up on the next guy. To get high search engine rankings. To increase visibility. You know what I mean.

That's not always true. Some lawyers blog to leave a legacy. To make a positive dent in the world before they're gone.

Stephen Covey, the author of the best-selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says people are internally motivated by their own four needs: to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.

Harmed with a law degree and being part of a what many still consider a noble profession, it seems to me that blogging to leave a legacy is a good enough reason to blog in and of itself.

Agree?

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

With all the recent discussion of law schools leaving students unprepared for the real world and the thousands of law grads without jobs, maybe we ought to be teaching blogging at law schools.

Jacques Von Lunen in Vancouver, Washington's Columbian reports on blogging pioneer, Lorelle VanFossen (@lorelleonwp), teaching WordPress at Clark College. The class, not just for developers, is attracting students in business and other majors.

I'm right with Von Lunen that WordPress has become ubiquitous and knowing it can be a great benefit for many careers. Including the law.

Per Bob Hughes, the head of Clark College’s computer technology department, "WordPress is the ideal complement to existing Clark College classes. Students can add the software to their design, marketing, business or programming skill sets."

I'm not suggesting that law schools turn into trade schools. But writing, and in effect publishing, is at the heart of being an attorney. So is collaboration and networking to learn from other attorneys and thought leaders.

Online writing, networking and collaboration, of which blogging (and in turn WordPress), is at the center of, is becoming more important than writing and networking offline today.

As with Clark College, you need not make blogging a regular part of the law school curriculum. You can test it or offer it as adjunct class to law students.

Law schools concerned about getting their students jobs, and I hope that includes all of them, would be well served to introduce their students to blogging.

There's no better way for a law student to network with leading lawyers, alums and potential employers than blogging. There's no better way for a law student to demonstrate their passion for and desire to get into a niche area of the law than blogging.

Law students aren't likely to come into law school knowing how to blog. By and large, law students are not computer programers and developers. Nor are they journalism grads. Law students could use a little help and encouragement.

Want to get your law school on the map for recruiting students and law professors? Demonstrate your scholarship through law blogs. Your law school's law review is likely not a big draw.

Finally, there's potential employment for law grads outside the practice of law. Legal publishers, news companies, and law firms are going to be looking for students who know social media and blogging They're also going to want people who know the law for those growing areas of online media.

The average salary for developers knowing WordPress is $45,000. Add a law degree and you'll likely hit $75 to $80,000. Not $150,000 as in big law on Wall Street, but a good start to chasing something you may love.

Blogging, including WordPress, in deed has a place in forward thinking law schools.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (9)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

In 1995 when I discovered the Internet as a practicing lawyer, I thought here we go.

Now we can separate the good lawyers from the poor ones. Now those lawyers who get their work via boastful ads will be shown for what many of them are - good advertisers and poor lawyers.

Lawyers willing to give of themselves by sharing information and sharing of themselves by engaging the public online would get the work. Those lawyers who would not give of themselves would not as much work.

When blogging began early this decade, I had since left the practice and sold a consumer and small business law community business to LexisNexis (makes up large part of lawyers.com today). Again, I thought here we go.

No where to hide for the unknowing and non-caring lawyers. Over time, I believed (and still do) lawyers would need to blog to demonstrate their care, passion, and experience.

Those attorneys lacking those traits and good judgment would put it on display on the blogosphere. The good lawyers would be exposed for who they are and the bad lawyers for who they are. Good work and good clients would go to the lawyers demonstrating they were good lawyers.

Having done enough jury trials, I came to trust that lay people, when given enough information, could see when someone was pulling the wool over their eyes.

This morning, my friend, New York Attorney Scott Greenfield, in a post on Sense and Sensibility on the legal blogosphere, implied I may not want lawyers to be found clueless by blogging.

My pal, Kevin O'Keefe, who is in the business of selling blogs, pitches his wares as a means for lawyers to demonstrate their expertise. What he doesn't say is that it's also a way to demonstrate their cluelessness or venality. Write something great and others may think well of you. Write something awful and they won't, and chances are pretty good that a lawyer can ruin a reputation by publicly revealing their intellectual or moral bankruptcy. Of course, if Kevin were to talk about the downside, it wouldn't help to sell blogs.

Truth is we warn attorneys and law firms all the time at LexBlog, that you can demonstrate your cluelessness in a New York minute via blogging. Worse yet, do some stupid things and you'll be exposed as lame.

I'll never forget after telling a group of lawyers that if they did what they wanted to do they'd be seen as lame. After a long silence the managing partner said, "We don't want to be blame."

At the risk of turning my response to Greenfield into an ad for LexBlog's product and services, attorneys at law firms seek us out because they don't want to ruin their reputation. Unlike 99% of legal marketers, McKeown and I have each been lawyers for about 30 years.

If lawyers don't want to get into discussions and possibly have their positions questioned and, in some cases, attacked they ought to stay off the blogosphere. If you want to play it 100% safe and not share what you know or don't know in public, don't blog.

Not all lawyers are willing to write articles for publications. Not all lawyers are willing to present or sit on panels at legal or industry conferences. They're insecure or afraid they'll be critiqued. Heck some law firms won't let some of their attorneys partake in such activities.

It was Mark Twain who said ""It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

The problem for lawyers is that the cost of remaining silent by not blogging is lost business. You'll lose the opportunity to your competitors of accelerating relationships and your word of mouth reputation.

After all, 'Real Lawyers Have Blogs.'

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Do you know how well one law blog compares to other blogs? Having a tough time looking for top blogs on a certain topic?

BlogRank collects data on thousands of blogs, evaluates them against common metrics and then ranks them. BlogRank has come out with dynamic rankings of blogs in about 50 areas, including the law, for which it provides a running top 50 law blog list.

Though what blog is best is always subject, based on your interests and who are looking to engage, BlogRank does their best to apply an objective analysis by looking at the following criteria.

• Feedburner RSS subscribers
• Unique monthly visitors
• Yahoo indexed pages
• Google indexed pages
• By number of incoming links
• Ratio of incoming links to numbers of pages
• Google PageRank
• Alexa rank (traffic analysis)
• Compete rank (traffic analysis)

Seattle based, Avvo, which helps people make better decisions when hiring a lawyer, has run its list of top legal blogs, based on Alexa rankings alone, for sometime.

We around LexBlog like the BlogRank top 50 better than Avvo's. My 'Real Lawyers Have Blogs' comes in at number 7 on BlogRank's list and is no where to be seen in the top 481 on the Avvo list. In fairness to Avvo, they're using only Alexa and my blog traffic, running on a subdomain of LexBlog.com, is not segregated from traffic to our corporate website.

Rankings are fun to look at, but don't get too crazy over them. You ought to be following those blogs you find interesting, that add value to your life, and in which you engage the authors.

For those bloggers looking to build relationships and enhance their reputations to develop new business, niche blogs covering your area of the law, the industry you serve, and your locale, can be much more worthwhile to follow, engage, and build relationships with. Those blogs are the influencers of your clients and prospective clients and the amplifiers of your blog to your target audience.

In addition, those niche blogs off the 'A list' that are up written by up and coming bloggers are more likely to engage you. They have more time.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (6)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Well not exactly authored by the U.S. Small Business Administration, but the SBA's website on running a small business includes an article from Anita Campbell, the Founder and Editor of Small Business Trends, on '10 Often Overlooked Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog.'

Here's the 10 tips with a few of my comments to complement Campbell's insight. Read the entire article to get Campbell's thoughts in detail. She's good.

1. Link out to other blogs – When you have a blog that never links to other bloggers, it’s like going to a networking event and refusing to talk with anyone. Don’t be surprised if no one talks to you, either. In other words, don’t be surprised if no one comes to your blog or links to your blog. I call it pulling up a chair to the conversation among other thought leaders. If you don't pull up a chair, you can't hear anyone, and no one can hear you when you offer your insight. It's this conversation among thought leaders that your clients are listening to and doing searches 'into.'
2. Use the names of other bloggers in your blog posts – Many bloggers set up Google Alerts or RSS feeds to monitor their name. They know whenever their name shows up on blogs and on the Web. What better way to bring to their attention your blog and an article you wrote mentioning them or an article they wrote? Consider mentioning up-and-comers in the blogging world. They often have the most interesting content on their blogs and they will appreciate the mention more than the most famous bloggers.
3. Comment on other people’s blogs – Some people believe blog commenting is “dead.” But often these are search engine experts using blog commenting as a means to gain links – and they give the wrong advice for small business owners. Don't leave keywords as your name. You wouldn’t go up to someone at a conference and say “hi, my name is Mississippi Bankruptcy Lawyer.” Most blog owners will delete such comments as spam. Think relationships.
4. Publish early in the day rather than later – Posts published earlier in the day (at a minimum before 3:00 pm Eastern time) tend to get the most traffic and attention, especially for business topics. If you can publish articles first thing in the morning, that’s even better. Blogging from the West Coast I post at night or as early as I can in the morning. People read their RSS feeds early in the morning and then again around lunch. Plus you get the benefit of your posts being shared on social media throughout the day.
5. Write guest posts on other blogs – Once you’ve developed a bit of a relationship with some bloggers, you could email them and ask if they’d be open to a guest blog post or posts from you. Guest posts are a fine way to get your name and your blog known in front of different audiences. I don't do this as much as I should and rather than being proactive as Campbell suggests so as to get one guest post out there a month, I wait for people to ask me. Mistake.
6. Accept guest posts – This is the opposite of writing guest posts for other sites. When you accept guest posts on your own site, the guest author will usually share their guest post with their network. Be strategic in who you ask. Once you've built a good following and a good reputation as a blogger, people will be honored to post on your blog. LexBlog Network members have had good success in asking in-house counsel for corporations the law firm didn't represent, but with whom they wanted to build a relationship.
7. Write occasional large meaty posts and/or “tips roundup” types of posts – If you want people to share your content with their social networks, create “shareable“ content. The content that others share widely tends to be in-depth such as a tutorial. Short posts are fine, but they tend not to get shared as much or get search traffic for years to come. A good idea for roundups is to capture what your readers are saying in comments, on Twitter, or LinkedIn comments. Turn them into a roundup of what lawyers or business people are saying on a topic. When others see you incorporate other's comments, they'll be attracted to comment on your blog.
8. Make it easy to share your content right from your blog – Include sharing buttons for Twitter and other key social sites. Get rid of the sharing buttons for the social network sites no longer popular.
9. Set up accounts with Twitter, Facebook and/or Linkedin and share your posts – Social media is a terrific way to share your blog posts with the wider world. Don't share only your content. People see through that. I share other people's blog posts and news stories by about a 10 to 1 clip over posts of my own on Twitter. By doing so, I build social media equity so my followers are more apt to share blog posts of mine. Don't auto share across all the social networks. That's noise.
10. Provide for email subscribers to your blog - Not everyone uses RSS to subscribe to a blog. Set up an email subscription system with a prominent subscription box for people to subscribe by email.

Thanks Anita -- and the SBA.

If you haven'd checked out Anita's Small Business Trends, you ought to do so. What started out as a blog has turned into an online news magazine with marketing and management ideas for business owners.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Dave Fleet, Vice President, Digital at Edelman, the world's largest independent PR Firm shared his take on ghost blogging a couple years in his post, 'Why ghost blogging is wrong.'

With the discussion following my post yesterday on the legal ethics of ghostwritten blogs for lawyers, I thought it worthwhile to get a discussion going about ghostwritten blogs in general.

I'm with Fleet that a ghostwritten blog is not the way to go for your law firm. Going with ghostwriting shows a lack of understanding of what blogging is all about and is not going to bring you the business development success you're after.

In response to a business professional who hates writing, doesn't believe blogging is part of the relationship building process, and is too busy to start blogging, Fleet called 'Bunk.'

Fleet correctly believes that relationship building is a key part of blogging. When did it become a good idea to outsource your networking and relationship building?

Here's why Fleet believes undisclosed ghost blogging is wrong and a very bad idea.

• People reading a blog expect the person listed as the author to be the one writing the post. This expectation is critical, and is a key difference between new and old media (where, for many people, this kind of practice long ago eroded the credibility of many tactics);
• The danger of damage to your credibility and reputation if you get found out easily outweighs the benefits you get from hiding the true author;
• The CEO doesn’t need to be the face of a company online. If your company has grown and the CEO needs to focus elsewhere, someone else could write, or you could set up a group blog;
• There are plenty of other social media (and other online) tools out there. If authentic, transparent blogging doesn’t work for you, use a different tool; and
• Social media is built on trust. By misleading people as to the author, you lose the trust when that deception is revealed, especially if you’re an “expert” in this area. It's a long standing business adage that people do business with those they like and trust.

If you're too busy or blogging is not for you, here's a few options from Fleet to which I have added some comments.

• Multi-author: Have multiple people in your organization write – under their own names. This way you can reduce the workload. We regularly see this on the LexBlog Network. Most of our network blogs have 3 or more lawyers authoring them, often of the same practice group.
• Different blogger: Do you have to be the face of your company online, or is this an ego issue? If you don’t have to be that face, perhaps someone else could write it under their own name. Give credit where credit is due. If it's an associate writing, pit their name up as an author. The same for legal assistants, marketing professionals, and business development folks. Show the strength of your team and the quality of people you employ at your firm. It also does wonders for morale.
• Disclosure: Include a note on each blog page that someone else writes the post, e.g. ”I don’t write these posts, but I do read them and I stand behind them.” I think it’s sub-optimal as some authenticity is lost, but it’s feasible. Our network bloggers regularly have bylines disclosing multiple authors or guest authors.
• Use different media: Do you really have to have a blog? How about using video, or micro-blogging, or any other social or “traditional” digital tactics? Blogs are just one tool.If you’re thinking of having your blog ghost-written, reconsider. The risks outweigh the benefits. A blog is the hub of social media for most lawyers as its the only social media by which a lawyer can demonstrate their expertise, passion, and care. But if you can't blog get some help to learn how to make social networks such as LinkedIn sing for you.

I understand that there are talented academics, consultants, writers and reporters out there who can make valuable contributions to a law firm's blog and social media. I understand excellent public relation's firms have connections with those folks and can develop sound strategy for leveraging them. That's great. Just disclose.

Look at the outstanding efforts of a few publications on our LexBlog Network. One is CHINA Debate, providing insight and commentary on policy and business in China. The editor is Malcolm Riddell, president of RiddellTseng, a boutique investment bank and advisory firm, advising leading international companies on investment and joint ventures in China.

Riddell, a former state department and CIA official who runs the site on his own, has pulled in multiple bloggers. They include Harvard professors, partners at leading law firms, ambassadors, and former U.S. senators. Not only are those authors of course disclosed, doing so nurtures relationships for Riddell and raises the profile of the blog.

The second is the DuetsBlog, covering collaborations in creativity in the law. The regular authors include 10 lawyers and a marketing professional from the Minneapolis based law firm, Winthrop & Weinstine.

Duets is in every sense of the word a group effort. Their bloggers cover different topics based on their interests. The blog regularly includes guest authors, strategically selected by the lawyers based on who they'd like to build a relationship with. Laura Gutierrez, Winthrop's Communications Coordinator, rather than pitching stories, brings the perspective of a non lawyer to business stories, a welcome addition from a business client's point of view.

The third, and most prolific, is Food Safety News, presented by the Seattle based law firm, Marler Clark, the nation's leading law firm with a practice dedicated to representing victims of foodborne illness.

Food Safety News is a daily Web-based newspaper dedicated to reporting on issues surrounding food safety and is the most widely read publication, on or offline, by the food industry, government officials, and reporters covering the industry.

Food Safety News uses full time reporters and editors, including Pulitzer Prize winners, to bring the latest in food safety news and commentary. Obviously each of those reporters, editors, and guest columnists is disclosed.

Lest you think Marler Clark has lost their mind, Food Safety News and the related blogging efforts of Attorney Bill Marler, are doing more for the firm's business development than if the firm were spending millions of dollars in web and television advertising as other law firms do. And Marler Clark's Internet presence is not only a heck of lot more tasteful, but Marler is bringing about positive change in food safety.

If you're thinking ghostwriting for your blog, think again.

If some agency or web development company is pitching ghost blogging to your law firm, ask them what they know about blogging. Did they build their company and its reputation through blogging and social media? Do they have bloggers working for the company who are growing their network, building relationships, becoming known as a subject matter expert, and not only bringing in clients and customers, but high quality clients and customers through blogging? If not you may want to talk to someone who has done these things.

There are of course opportunities to use talented academics, writers, consultants, and reporters in your law firm's blogging. Make hay out of it. That doesn't happen by having them be ghosts.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

The ghostwriting of blogs is apparently becoming the rage for attorneys and law firms.

A law firm who our client development team spoke with yesterday afternoon knowing that LexBlog doesn't author lawyer's blogs asked if we had a recommendation for someone who could do so.

A lawyer with the firm said a marketing person told them the firm needed a Facebook page, a Google+ page, a Twitter account, and a blog. The marketing person said they could hire a 'bunch of college students' who would write the blog posts and post to the other social media media on a regular basis - in some cases, multiple times a day.

Put aside the ghostwriting of law blogs being shortsighted (you don't farm out networking, relationship building, and the demonstration of your expertise), there's a question whether it is ethical for an attorney to have someone else blog for the lawyer or their law firm.

Lawyer advertising is governed by each state, whether by the state's supreme court or bar association. Rule 7.1 of the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct is typical of state's restrictions on lawyer advertising.

A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer's or the lawyer's services. A communication is false or misleading if it contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law, or omits a fact necessary to make the statement considered as a whole not materially misleading.

Is an attorney's failure to disclose that their blog posts are written by someone other than the attorney or law firm misleading? Is doing so omitting a fact (that you did not author the blog posts) so as to make what you are doing as a whole materially misleading?

I think a real case can be made that it is misleading and unethical.

When the question of whether ghost written blogs are unethical was raised by the ABA Journal a couple years ago, Attorney Josh King, VP, Business Development & General Counsel for Avvo, Inc. said "Ghost blogs are unethical if there’s no disclosure."

Some lawyers argued that much of the work product law firms do is written by one lawyer, while attribution is given to a more senior lawyer. To which King responded:

Unlike a ghostwritten blog, a lawyer or law firm’s work product isn’t advertising.

Attorney advertising is subject to Rules of Professional Conduct, the most critical of which is that marketing communications can’t be deceptive.

Passing off someone else’s writing and ideas as one’s own, in a marketing vehicle designed to showcase an attorney’s engagement with and competence in a given area, is deceptive.

King was not along in his belief that ghost written blogs are unethical.

• From well respected Houston Criminal Defense Attorney and blogger, Mark Bennett:

Claiming someone else’s words as your own (which is, by definition, what using a ghost is) in order to increase your own credibility (which is how the ghostblogger in question markets it) is deceptive.

Some deception is countenanced in most areas of commerce (advertising often involves deception), but lawyers have ethical duties that nobody else has.

Using a ghostblogger may not be illegal (that is, violative of rules carrying official sanctions) but it’s unethical.

• From well respected Miami Criminal and Bar Grievance/Admission Attorney, Brian Tannebaum:

  Ghostblogging is nothing more than lying. I wrote about it on my blog. Lawyers today want a blog because it helps their Google placement. Lawyers like me and others who started blogging 5 years ago, blog to express our thoughts, not to get clients. As to courtroom lawyers not having time to blog - that’s an excuse that allows lawyers to have ghostbloggers and feel ethical about it. Lawyers who believe that ethics are satisfied by paying a ghostblogger to write for them, while the public thinks it’s the writing of the lawyer, should be disbarred and go sell used cars. I’m a trial lawyer, I find time to blog by waking up 15 minutes earlier. Not every blogger sits in Starbucks with free wifi all day.

No question the public can feel mislead by a ghostwritten blog. This from a consumer of legal services who responded to the ABA Journal's question:

I’m not an attorney but I read blogs and I can assure you, if I read something, signed by someone, it better be from the mind of that person or you are seriously misleading me and perverting my journey. Undisclosed ghostwriting is nothing but consensual plagiarism and I have a right not to expose my self to that in personal favor of following someone who takes the time to actually think about what they write. ;)

Plagiarism, as defined in the 1995 Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, is the “use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work. ..

Thomson Reuter's FindLaw apparently knows ghostwritten lawyer blogs are unethical. As I shared yesterday FindLaw is selling ghostwritten blogs, paraphrasing news reports and legal updates, to law firms.

Rather than listing a lawyer or law firm's name as the author of a blog post, FindLaw says the post is 'On behalf of' the name of the lawyer or firm.

Some law firms will list the author of their blog posts as the law firm. I don't see anything misleading there, no matter who at the firm writes the blog posts. The blog posts may not be as effective for business development as blogs citing the individual attorney author, but it doesn't look like an ethics issue.

In the long run, attorneys and law firms are going to benefit little, if any, from ghostwritten blogs. The vast majority of ghostwritten blogs paraphrase news and legal developments reported elsewhere.

Many of these ghostwritten blogs are going to damage the reputation of the attorney and firm. The exact audience you're looking to reach - reporters, clients, prospective clients, and other bloggers who cite and share your offerings - will be turned off by such blogs that offer no value.

Bottom line, you're skating on thin ice from an ethical standpoint when it comes to ghostwritten law blogs. I've seen attorneys run before their state supreme court or bar association on ethics complaints with less basis.

And in addition to other types of ethics complaints, this would be one that would draw a ton of publicity on and offline. Nothing gets more sensationalized when it comes to legal news today than lawyers and social media.

You may also discuss on the discussion forum at the LinkedIn Legal Blogging Group and on Google+.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (11)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

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.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (4)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link