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Category Archives: Blog Essentials

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Democratizing publishing never gets old : Why many lawyers blog

“Democratizing publishing never gets old.” This from Scott Berkun (@berkun), author and former project lead at Automattic, a WordPress development company, speaking at WordCamp Seattle 2012. What a thought for American lawyers? “Democratizing publishing.” Benjamin Franklin started out in publishing in Boston, working for his brother at age 12. Seeing greater opportunity, Franklin moved to Philadelphia… Continue Reading

Bill Marriott has time to blog and your lawyers do not?

AP reporter, Scott Mayerowitz (@globetrotscott), had a good interview with Bill Marriott in the business and technology section of this morning’s Seattle Times. Marriott revolutionized the hotel business over the last four decades as CEO of the Marriott International. Marriott’s also been personally blogging for over five years at his blog, Marriott on the Move. Why the blog per Marriott?… Continue Reading

What blogging means to me

Om Malik (@om) is an award-winning journalist who worked for Quick Nikkei News, Forbes.com, Red Herring and Business 2.0 before founding GigaOmniMedia. It was guys like Om who influenced me to start blogging, which in turn led to my founding LexBlog and LXBN. In an interview this week with Outlook India, Om explained what blogging meant… Continue Reading

How to promote your law blog?

Tim Baran, Community Manager of Rocket Matter, shared yesterday, ‘3 Ways to Promote Your Law Blog.’ Though I’m not sure ‘promoting’ your law blog is what you want to do when you’re looking to network to build relationships and enhance your reputation, Baran raises some good points. Use social media. Baran sees Twitter and Facebook… Continue Reading

Linking is a core value in journalism

Discussion ensued on a couple fronts this week regarding mainstream media’s failure to link to the source for their stories – blogs and curated streams of blogged stories. Matthew Ingram (@mathewi) of GigaOm summarized the higher profile of the two when he asked “Is linking just polite, or is it a core value of journalism?” Late last… Continue Reading

Law firms see ROI from blogs : ALM Legal Intelligence report

I received an advance copy of what may be the most definitive report demonstrating the return law firms are seeing from their investment in blogs and other social media. ALM Legal Intelligence’s report, “FANS, FOLLOWERS AND CONNECTIONS: Social Media ROI for Law Firms,” reads in part: After a slow start, the legal services industry is… Continue Reading

The advantage of blog networks versus stand alone blogs

New York venture capitalist and blogger, Fred Wilson has a good post this morning on ‘Utilities vs Networks.’ It’s interesting to see a network, Instagram, starting to replace the iPhone’s native camera application in many users’ daily usage of their phones. I see this in my kids’ behavior all the time. When they want to… Continue Reading

Law blogs influence in-house counsel decisions on which law firm to hire : Survey reports

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… Continue Reading

Why bother with a law blog?

“…[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… Continue Reading

Getting your content out there not good enough for law firms anymore

“Content is still king, but now it has to share its crown, “writes Jenn Webb @JennWebb this morning on why getting your content out there is not enough anymore. Webb cites Justo Hidalgo (@justohidalgo), co-founder of 24symbols, on why aggregation, curation, and discovery are more important than just distributing content. Companies that take content and… Continue Reading

Should we be teaching blogging and WordPress at law schools?

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… Continue Reading

Top 50 law blogs by common metrics

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… Continue Reading