Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Blawgs, Law Firm Marketing

Texas appeals lawyer, Todd Smith, offered a newsflash from his blog last night, Appellate Judges read blogs.

While attending a bar function today, a local appellate justice I have met a few times before recognized me, introduced me to his companions as the author of an appellate blog, and confessed (?) to being one of my regular readers.  I have had similar conversations with other members of the appellate bench in recent months.

Appellate judges are often perceived as ivory-tower idealists.  They don't really read blogs, do they?

Yes they do Todd. Many LexBlog lawyer clients tell me that high in their readership stats are visits from courthouses, especially the federal courts. Clerks at those federal courts, the ones in turn briefing the judges, tell me they are regular readers of law blogs.

Delaware litigation attorney, Francis Pileggi, told me recently about a state supreme court judge who came up to him at a conference to introduce himself and to compliment Francis on his blog. The judge explained he was a regular reader.

No question that the day is near when lawyers with well written blogs on niche litigation subjects are going to be called in as co-counsel on an appeal or brief. The value of having a lawyer on your side whose material is regularly read by the court you're before is priceless.

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Following a post by Dechert's James Beck and Jones Day's Mark Herrmann, co-authors of the Drug and Device Law blog, the Wall Street Journal's Dan Slater asked whether law firm blogs were a marketing device or a mere diversion.

I'm amused reading pundits pontificating whether blogs are appropriate or a cost effective marketing tool for large law firms.

Those casting doubt fall in two camps. One is the uninformed. The second are those who have an interest in seeing law firms continue to buy or use less effective and much more expensive marketing tools (vendors and law firm employees wrongly believing blogs will cost them their job).

The fact is law blogs are an effective marketing tool for large law (and despite the Chicken Little's raising ethics & liability issues, they're safe).

The proof is looking at what is going on.

• Over 25% of AmLaw 200 law firms have blogs.
• 10% of AmLaw 200 law firms have more than one blog.
• 36% growth in last 6 months in the number of AmLaw 200 law firms publishing blogs.
• 49% growth in last 6 months in total number of blogs being published by AmLaw 200 law firms.

LexBlog is doing more blog work for AmLaw 200 firms than all the other blog service providers combined. And I can tell you large law firms are not using blogs as a diversion. They are using blogs as a very effective marketing tool to retain existing clients, to pick up work in new areas of practice for existing clients, and to get new clients.

Not one AmLaw 200 law firm has ever said blogging takes too much time or complained that the blog was not a success. Not only has LexBlog never had an AmLaw 200 firm stop publishing a blog, the majority of our clients are adding multiple blogs.

These blog marketing projects are in most cases driven or approved by innovative leaders in large law firms. Those administrative partners and chief marketing officers are focused on the bottom line, the financial health of their law firms. Blogs are a marketing device, not a diversion for them.

So you'll know I am not making this stuff up, I want to share the success of one large law firm lawyer. Dan Schwartz, who just joined Pullman & Comley started his Connecticut Employment Law Blog last fall while a partner at AmLaw 200 firm, Epstein Becker & Green.

In the first 6 weeks of blogging while with the large law firm:

• 5000 unique visitors
• Few prospective client calls a week and one new client
• Nearly 100 incoming links from third party websites and blogs
• Regularly cited by leading law & employment bloggers (3 of the most widely read)
• Article on Dan and his blog in Connecticut legal periodical

I thought of Dan's story because of an email from him a couple evenings ago sharing recent successes.

The [new firm] is very receptive to the blog...

The blog has led to some very favorable press for me the last week... The Hartford Business Journalwrote an article about a food server case that I blogged about a few weeks ago. The reporter saw my blog on the case and called me for quotes.

Business New Haven, another good solid niche business publication, saw my blog on employment law and called me about law firm mandatory retirement. They even mentioned my blog with a link to it. Cool stuff.

And to top it off, a producer from 60 Minutes called me this afternoon after seeing my blog article on USERRA (military leave laws) and wondering if I knew of employers who could talk about it (and talking to me about it for a few minutes).

(And I've gotten a new client off of it recently too.)

When giving me approval to share his email, Dan said "Just don't make it sound like I'm Superman or a publicity hound. The blog has just led to it."

As a former trial lawyer of 17 years, I know you need to keep proving what can seem like the same case again and again to a different jury who didn't believe until they understood the facts. Won't surprise me to be making the argument on the marketing effectiveness of blogs for large law firms 4 or 5 years from now.

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J. Craig Williams, our guest for today's LexBlog Q & A, is the founder of the Williams Lindberg Law Firm and author of the law blog May It Please The Court.

Based out of Newport Beach, California, Craig's blog - started in 2004 - received recognition two years later when it was selected by the Los Angeles Press Club as the Best Individual Weblog (beating out material authored by professional journalists, and becoming one of the first blogs to win a mainstream journalism award).

Not surprisingly, Craig has some insights into the role blogs are playing in journalism...and much more. See the full text of our interview after the jump.

Continue Reading...

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Today we continue what we started yesterday: our LexBlog Q & A with Tom Goldstein, the attorney from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld who runs the successful law blog SCOTUSblog.

In part 1, Tom discussed how they developed their wiki companion to SCOTUSblog and why he doesn't think wikis will become the norm in the legal blogosphere. Today the focus shifts more to the day-to-day operation of SCOTUSblog itself.

3. Rob La Gatta: In our recent interview with Bob Ambrogi, he said that he believes other law bloggers will look to SCOTUSblog as a model in coming years. Do you believe this to be the case? Have you noticed it happening already?

Tom Goldstein: Well, that’s a terrific compliment from Bob. We’ve definitely noticed several other people trying to do what we do with a different focus: they blog about just one circuit court, say, or the courts of a particular state.

But generally, I don’t think most people blog to accomplish the same goals as we do. Most people in the legal blogosphere (blawgosphere?) offer up their opinions on the law, which can be endlessly fascinating and produce some great discussions. That’s not really the game we are in, though, so I don’t know how much they are using us as a model for their sites.

4. Rob La Gatta: Since so many people see your blog on a daily basis (I’ve even heard a rumor that one of your posts caught an overlooked error in a published SCOTUS opinion), what types of editorial controls do you have in place to ensure accuracy? Do you believe you and your writers hold yourselves to the same standards as a traditional publication?

Tom Goldstein: We certainly try to hold ourselves to some high standards. Our reputation for accuracy and fairness really begins with Lyle Denniston, who has been covering the Court for 50 years. We’re lucky to have a blogger that refuses to dip below the very high standards he set for himself at The Wall Street Journal and Baltimore Sun, among others.

Editorially, we have weekly meetings among all of our contributors to ensure that we are being as comprehensive and as objective as we can be. When we discuss the merits of cases on the blog, we go out of our way to bring in voices from all sides of the discussion. We’ve posted exchanges with legal scholars from the right, left, and center. We know that we cover an institution that is often used by both sides as a rallying cry for their bases, so we need to try that much harder to stay above the fray.

I think we’ve done that so far: for example, for the upcoming case about the Second Amendment and handgun rights, which has become really highly-charged on both sides, we’ve become a go-to resource for people with all different perspectives. I have to say that one of the things I’m most proud of in the years since we started SCOTUSblog is that we’re respected by people with a huge variety of legal and political views.

5. Rob La Gatta: SCOTUSblog has been around for nearly 4 years. Is there anything you know now about the art of blogging that you wish you knew when you first got started?

Tom Goldstein: That’s an interesting question. I will say that if I had known how hard it was to generate fresh content and stay current 365 days a year, I may never have started it in the first place!

I’m kidding, of course. But I’ve learned that publishing a useful blog has proved to be a round-the-clock, day-in, day-out endeavor, and I’m not sure anyone quite grasps that going in. Still, despite the extra work, it’s been extremely rewarding in so many ways. I wouldn’t change anything about what we’ve done, really.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Rick Klau, former VP of publisher services at FeedBurner and current member of Google's content acquisition team [1.29.08]
• Dan Harris, Seattle international law lawyer & publisher of the China Law Blog [1.28.08]
• Daniel Schuman of the American Constitution Society's ACS Blog [1.25.08]
• Tim Titolo, Las Vegas personal injury lawyer & publisher of the Brain & Spine Injury Law Blog [1.24.08]
• Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law professor & founder of The Volokh Conspiracy [1.23.08]

Or, see our full list of legal blog interviews.

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SCOTUSblog, which focuses on issues surrounding the United States Supreme Court, is one the most well-known law blogs around.  It's no surprise, then, that we feel privileged today to feature publisher Tom Goldstein in the hot seat for our LexBlog Q & A.

Tom, a Washington D.C.-based partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, has been running SCOTUSblog since 2003. In part 1 of the interview, below, he offers details on their innovative SCOTUSwiki. In part 2, to be published tomorrow, Tom gets more specific about the blog's reputation in the legal community and the personal challenges of blogging.

1. Rob La Gatta: Give me some background on SCOTUSwiki: what caused you to develop a wiki companion site to the blog? What are some of the goals you have for it?

Tom Goldstein: The idea for SCOTUSwiki was really a response to what I saw as a shortcoming in the nature of blogs. That is: they are fantastic for easily finding the newest, freshest information, but what happens when you want to see everything written on a particular case? Or find all of our statistics from past years? It’s kind of like the difference between a newspaper and an encyclopedia: a paper is great for up-to-the minute news, but isn’t as permanent or comprehensive as Brittanica.

After four years, we had thousands and thousands of posts with all this high-quality, unique content on our blog. For instance, we regularly write pieces about cases when they are granted, before and after oral arguments, and when the opinion comes out. We do regular statistical updates, and we feature noteworthy cert. petitions each week. We follow the Guantanamo Bay cases closer than anyone else, online or off. We have posted hundreds – or even thousands – of documents on our website that aren’t available anywhere else (save for very expensive legal databases). And so the thought was: how do we make this stuff easy to find, not just the day we write it, but whenever our readers need the information?

The answer was SCOTUSwiki. We chose a wiki because the software is infinitely expandable: we can instantly create pages for each new case, and we can create entire new areas of the site in a day, which we plan on doing in the future. It’s not a true wiki in the sense that anyone can edit it – we’re really concerned about objectivity and accuracy, so we don’t think it’s prudent to just let anyone out there change around the pages – but we definitely plan on expanding our coverage and trying some different things with it.

For now, though, it provides that permanence and comprehensiveness that a blog can’t really offer, and we’ve gotten good feedback for that.

2. Rob La Gatta: Currently, wikis seem fairly underrepresented in the blogosphere...yours is the first (and so far only) blog I've seen with one. Do you expect wiki sites to become more prominent on law blogs in the future? Why or why not?

Tom Goldstein: I don’t think so, for two reasons.

The first is that, unlike other blogs, we have a very defined subject area rather than any ideology: we just want to cover the Supreme Court. That’s the beginning and end of our mission: cover this one institution more thoroughly than anyone else, and do it objectively. That uniquely lends itself to building a wiki, because it’s such a direct mission and because we already have content that tries to be “encyclopedic” and objective.

For other law blogs that discuss the law in general, and from a more opinionated point-of-view, what would their wiki be about? How would it be focused and organized? Could people trust its objectivity? I’m not saying it’s not doable or that it wouldn’t be a valuable resource. But our site already has content that is basically encyclopedia-ready, and that’s a huge advantage.

Another reason it’s so hard is that a wiki takes a substantial amount of work to launch and maintain. Most law blogs have only professors or practicing lawyers as contributors. We have both of those that contribute, but we go beyond that and also have a full-time reporter as well as several staff members that spend much of their time and energy on the blog and the wiki. I can’t imagine how a site without such staff could build a useful, up-to-date wiki.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Rick Klau, former VP of publisher services at FeedBurner and current member of Google's content acquisition team [1.29.08]
• Dan Harris, Seattle international law lawyer & publisher of the China Law Blog [1.28.08]
• Daniel Schuman of the American Constitution Society's ACS Blog [1.25.08]
• Tim Titolo, Las Vegas personal injury lawyer & publisher of the Brain & Spine Injury Law Blog [1.24.08]
• Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law professor & founder of The Volokh Conspiracy [1.23.08]

Or, see our full list of legal blog interviews.

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A mid-week LexBlog Q&A today features a special guest of notable prominence in the legal blogging community: Eugene Volokh, the UCLA School of Law professor who founded the successful blog The Volokh Conspiracy. He currently also blogs at The Huffington Post.

Though briefer than our usual posts, the e-mail interview below offers a glimpse into the mind of a man who has helped bring legal blogs to the mainstream.

1. Rob La Gatta: The Volokh Conspiracy now has almost 20 authors, making it one of the most heavily staffed legal blogs. Do you maintain some sort of editorial control over the other authors, or do you give them free reign to publish as they see fit?

Eugene Volokh: I give them free rein - it's easier for everyone.

2. Rob La Gatta: For a while now, you've been blogging over at the Huffington Post, which Kevin has described as a prime example of new media legal publishing. Do you believe that legal publishing will continue to evolve following a Huffington-like model, or will it take some other path?

Eugene Volokh: I'm not sure what "a Huffington-like model" is, and what exactly "legal publishing" is supposed to cover. But group blogs are a good model for readers who like a steady stream of interesting comments on a wide range of issues.

3. Rob La Gatta: The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has called you "one of the undisputed kings of the blawgosphere." At what point in your blogging career did you realize you had achieved such a prestigious title, and what do you think was the most important factor in getting you there?

Eugene Volokh: I can't say we merit the title, but I am happy that we've got a lot of readers, and tend to get a good many links. Why? My guess: We've been around for a long time; we have people who are expert on interesting topics; we post a good deal of stuff on those topics; and most of our posts are accessible and interesting to laypeople as well as lawyers.

4. Rob La Gatta: On top of all the other stuff you've got going on in your life, how do you find time to blog? Do you set aside a certain amount of time per week, or is it just whenever you've got a free minute?

Eugene Volokh: I blog whenever I have time plus the inclination. If I have enough of an inclination, I make time. I see blogging as part of my mission as a professor, much like other professors might see writing op-eds or newspaper columns as part of their mission. It's just that blogging is more flexible, more fun, and less scutwork than op-eds or columns.

5. Rob La Gatta: If you were to offer one important bit of blogging advice to a lawyer just starting his or her first blog, what would you tell them and why?

Eugene Volokh: Find something on which you are really expert, and which no-one else is covering. Then post frequently about it - enlist cobloggers if you need to - and when you write a post that you think some of the high-traffic bloggers (e.g., InstaPundit) might find interesting, e-mail them messages containing both the permalink to the post and the full text of the post, so they can quickly skim it and see whether it's worth linking to.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Dan Clement [1.22.08]
• Eric Goldman [1.17.08]
• Tom Kane [1.16.08]
• Shel Israel [1.15.08]
• Cliff Mintz [1.14.08]
  

Or, see our full list of legal blog interviews.

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Another triumph for Dan Schwartz of the Connecticut Employment Law Blog: his quick response yesterday to the New York Times' report on President Bush's expected veto of the National Defense Authorization Act (and it's impact on the expansion of FMLA benefits to military families). Dan's post ended up scooping both the majority of the national press and the entire legal blogging community.

Mike Fox at Jottings By An Employer's Lawyer has the details.

[Dan] was keen enough to pass along a caution that the FMLA expansion that has been mentioned in several blogs recently (including this one), seems to have hit a Presidential snag.

[...]

What's more impressive is that Dan is apparently the first to make the connection between the well publicized veto and the hit to the FMLA expansion, as my google news search a moment ago for "fmla and veto" came up with no hits. A huge tip of the hat for a scoop not only in the (relatively) small world of employment law blogging, but of the big time media as well.

While Dan is using the holiday season as an opportunity to stay on top of the law (and to report in it in an even more timely fashion than much of the mainstream media), his blog is serving as a portal between the nation's capitol and the legal blogging community. And as Mike Fox's post indicates, tech savvy lawyers across the country are taking note.

Note: This isn't the first time Dan has crossed our radar. His posts are frequently included in daily LexBlogosphere updates (which are worth looking at if you haven't yet checked them out), and we even featured Dan in a recent LexBlog Q & A.

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Blogs offer consulting professionals like law firms '...[A] low-cost, high-return tool that can handle marketing and public relations, raise the company profile and build the brand.' That per an article by Marci Alboher in Wednesday's New York Times.

Blogs may not be for everyone but some businesses such as consultants are obvious candidates, says Aliza Sherman Risdahl, author of The Everything Blogging Book.

They are experts in their fields and are in the business of telling people what to do.

As a consultant, blogging clearly helps you get hired. If you are selling a product, you have to be much more creative because people don't want to read a commercial.

David Harlow, a lawyer and health care consultant in Boston, was quoted for his success with his HealthBlawg. He used it when he started his own practice after leaving a large firm.

He gets about 200 to 300 visits a day, he said. He has also become a source for publications looking for commentary on regulatory issues in the health care field and has even gained a few clients because of the blog. In addition, he has formed relationships with other legal bloggers (who call themselves blawgers) and consultants around the country.

The word of mouth component marketing component of blogs was covered as well. Tony Stubblebine, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley software company told Albahor he gets new customers largely by word of mouth, and he uses his blog as a way to share news with friends and people who wield influence in his industry.

I'm trying to create a community of help for small Internet businesses like mine. My blogging philosophy is like the open source model in software. It's sort of a hippie concept. If I can help other people, it's personally rewarding. And those people will likely pay it back in some ways.

Plus for companies in the technology sector, Stubblebine believes having a blog is pretty much expected.

When I started blogging in 2003, I was hoping to find one news story on blogs a week. Can't go a day anymore.

Heck, when I got home tonight my wife, Jill, asked if I saw the articles on blogs in today's Seattle Times. More consumer oriented than business, one covering Starbucks Gossip, and the other on niche bloggers earning money through advertising. Nonetheless, blogs are all around us and definitely here to stay.

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Don't know that David Rosmiller asked for it, but just as Geraldo Rivera used to say his MSNBC program was the show of record on the OJ trial, David's Insurance Coverage Law Blog has become the blog of record when it comes to State Farm's handling of the Katrina claims and now, possibly, the high profile Dickie Skruggs trial.

Just today at Overlawyered David was described as being out in front of, as he so often is, new developments in the Skrugg case:

Yes, it seems there were wiretaps. Defendants will be seeing evidence from the prosecution momentarily which might (or might not) be the trigger for further flipping and early plea deals, if such there will be.

There is enormous curiosity (e.g.) about P.L. Blake, to whom Scruggs says he paid $10 million (and tens of millions more in future payments) for vaguely described intelligence services aimed at swaying political influentials during the tobacco caper. Per a 1997 account posted at Y'All Politics, 'Blake pleaded 'no contest' in 1988 to a federal charge that he conspired to bribe officials of the now- defunct Mississippi Bank to secure favorable loan terms.' The same article, citing reporting in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, reports that Blake was in close phone contact between 1994 and 1996 with eventually-disgraced state Auditor Steve Patterson, who after leaving office went into partnership with Timothy Balducci and is one of the five indicted in the current Scruggs affair. Per AP, 'Patterson was a banker at Mississippi Bank before his 1984-1987 tenure as head of the Mississippi Democratic Party.'

David Rossmiller, as so often, is out front with a report filling in background on two other controversies involving Blake. One arose from a venture into the grain storage business which landed him in a Texas dispute in which his attorney was none other than Fred Thompson, later a Tennessee senator and presidential candidate. The other arose from his cordial dealings with a former chief of staff to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Mississippi).

In David's interview with the Wall Street Journal Law Blog last week regarding the Scruggs case, the Journal's Ashby Jones posed a good question: why doesn't David just pack his suitcase and leave Portland behind for a few days to see what's going in Mississippi for himself? David seemed receptive to the idea.

I’d love to. These people in Mississippi have been really good to me, and I feel like a lot of them are family to me; that Mississippi is like a second home. But I have three kids and a day job! I can’t just up and go down there, even though I’d absolutely love to. Now, if someone offered me a book deal . . .

The media should jump all over this opportunity; David has been consistently on his game and seems the natural choice as a knowledgeable go-to guy on the Scruggs case. The only question is, who's going to send him there? We've got some suggestions:

• Greta Van Susteren of Fox News On the Record and whose own blog, GretaWire is hitting the stratosphere. At least have David join the legal panel one night.
• CNN's Anderson Cooper (get Jeffrey Toobin off the case, Anderson...David's got it covered)
• Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic Monthly
• MSNBC's Dan Abrams, host of "Live with Dan Abrams"

Lawyers are becoming some our best reporters. Van Susteren, Toobin, Rivera, and Abrams are all lawyers. No different with blogging. Except the lawyers are reporting on niche subjects on which they're uniquely qualified.

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