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

Yesterday, I had the honor of being included in the 100 best law blogs as judged by the ABA Journal. The top 100 blogs and their authors were the subject of a feature story on the ABA Journal online. Each of the blogs were linked to in the story.

Also yesterday, Eric Turkewitz linked to a year old blog post of mine in a blog post on Turkewitz' blog. The text in the link to my post read 'ratings system is toast.' In his blog post, Turkewitz also referenced and linked to 16 other sources other than my blog post.

Glancing at my webstats from today I noticed that in the last 24 hours 58 unique visitors visited my blog from Turkewitz' link to my blog. During the same time, 3 unique visitors visited my blog as a result of the link to my blog in the ABA Journal Top 100 Law Blogs feature story. 20 times the traffic from Turk as the ABA Journal.

I'm always preaching engagement over vanity when it comes to law blog success. Engagement meaning listening to relevant conversation online and when appropriate offering value to the conversation through a blog post of your own. Vanity meaning press releases announcing your blog, top blog contests, blog directory listings, and the like.

Vanity marketing is old school. 'Marketing is a conversation' is new school. Today being part of a conversation in which your target audience and their influencers is taking part in or following is more important in drawing attention to yourself, establishing a word of mouth reputation, and getting peer reviews and references than the attention we have bought in the past.

Don't get me wrong, I love what Ed Adams, the Editor of the ABA Journal, and his reporters and editors are doing to shine a light on lawyers who are giving of themselves through blogging. I further appreciate that the ABA Journal is differentiating good law blogs from the law blogs being published by lawyers who think they are blogging while merely scrapping news stories for SEO. The latter is crap and demeaning to the profession.

I'm honored to be included among the better blogs by the ABA Journal. I hope it reflects my effort to help lawyers improve their practice and station in life.

At the same time, it's a privilege to have gotten to know Eric Turkewitz, as a person and as a blogger. I met him through blogging years ago. Either he or I must have referenced what the other had written in a blog post, we started to follow each others' blogs, and have referenced each other in blog posts on multiple occasions over the years.

I asked Eric to join a New York City panel on blogging I was moderating a couple years ago and we had dinner afterwards. Found out his roots in the Internet, like mine, go back to AOL days, that he's also a distance runner.

Eric's a good lawyer and a widely respected blogger (also in the ABA Journal top 100). When he references something I've written on my blog, it's akin to a tacit endorsement of me, or at least my opinion, from a well respected lawyer and blogger. That carries a fair amount of influence with not only New York lawyers, but lawyers around the country as well as reporters and bloggers covering our legal industry.

This 'endorsement,' if you will, further enhances my reputation and generates a word of mouth reputation. And if you're worried about traffic to your blog, it does that too. All the result of joining the conversation. By engaging others.

So when chasing blog accolades (some good, some worthless), give some thought to whether you'd be the greater winner by getting out and engaging folks through your blogging.

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Thanks to all of you who attended today's webinar, Why Twitter Matters to Lawyers, part of the ABA Journal's Legal Rebels' 24 Hours of Rebels. We had a great turnout of close to 500 attendees.

You can download the above mindmap that Kevin used in his presentation. You can also view a previously recorded webinar on Using Twitter for Client Development.

You might also enjoy reading about some Twitter client development success stories that legal professionals using Twitter have shared with us.

We hope this webinar was helpful. If you have any questions about Twitter or anything discussed in the webinar, feel free to contact Kevin (kevin@lexblog.com) or contact our Client Services team (support@lexblog.com).

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You'll have a couple opportunities to attend webinars on law blogging and social media this week.

The first is part of the ABA Journal's Legal Rebels' 24 Hours of Rebels, a two-day online meeting of creative minds in the legal profession discussing the question how the practice of law needs to change in the next five years.

I'll be leading a free webinar, Why Twitter Matters to Lawyers, on Wednesday, Oct. 14, at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT. You can register online. In this, I'll cover:

• How is Twitter being used by attorneys and other industry leaders today?
• Who are some of the "big guns" in the legal industry using Twitter? What are some examples of how they use it?
• Which Twitter applications are worthwhile and which are lame?
• What are some etiquette tips on using Twitter for professional social networking?

The second webinar this week is for LexBlog clients, titled Key Strategies for Achieving Higher ROI with Your Blog.

I'll share the big picture strategies and nuts and bolts tactics our most successful clients—from solos to large firms—are utilizing to increase their brand recognition, acquire new clients, and attract attention from the influencers and amplifiers.

I'll also cover how to:

• Identify the most influential bloggers and reporters and Internet discussions
• Monitor news, developments, and online conversations via RSS
• Engage with thought leaders, amplifiers, and influencers
• Empower your readers by acting as an intelligence agent and expert commentator

This webinar will be held on Thursday, Oct. 15, at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT. To register, please visit our Event Center. If you need the password, direct message Support on Twitter or contact our Director of Client Services, Pam Garfield.

I look forward to seeing you at one or both of these webinars this week.

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What's a high ranking in a law blog directory or blog search worth? 'That plus $1.50 may get you a small soda somewhere,' says Francis Pileggi, publisher of the well read Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog.

...[R]ankings of blogs are not very meaningful on an individual level, because the value of blogs is directly related to the niche that they serve. If one is looking for a blog that focuses on the law of food poisoning and it does a good job of covering that topic, does it matter whether that blog is ranked highly in any particular survey?

A couple months ago the ABA Journal did its much ballyhooed 100 best law blogs. Other than drawing attention to the ABA Journal online for a short period of time, I'm not sure what it accomplished. It's surely not representative of the best law blogs (though there are some good ones there). It wouldn't be in the top 10 places a new niche law blogger would go to find blog discussion among the thought leaders in their field.

Justia, quickly becoming the new FindLaw (except much more powerful and tech savvy), has its Blawg Search, a law blog directory and legal blog search as well as its most popular law blog listings. If pushed on it, Tim Stanley, Justia's founder, would probably concede that the most popular blog list is a gimmick to draw attention to some of the great offerings of Justia.

Lawyers love rankings. Hell, we've been ranked our whole lives. In high school to get into the best colleges, in college to get into the best law schools, and in law school to get clerkships and into the top law firms.

Maybe now that we're a little older, and presumably more mature, we can get over it. Like Francis says, blogs are meaningful on an individual level, because the value of blogs is directly related to the niche that they serve.

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Mark Friday at 5:30 for a bloggers meetup at the ABA TechShow in Chicago. Not far to go - Kitty O'Sheas, right in the Hilton.

The ABA Journal and LexBlog are cosponsoring the event and picking up the tab. Ed Adams, Editor and Publisher of the Journal, named the event Beer for Blawggers. But Ed's on the dark side. Over on the light side, we know blawgs are for kids. Real lawyers have blogs.

And who knows, since bloggers drink beer and blawggers drink cocktails, maybe Ed's half of the bar tab will be higher than mine. ;)

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The way advertising is presented in online newspaper sites is killing them.

Per Robert Niles at USC's Online Journalism Review:

News publishers like to point to television, free news online, English literacy rates and slew of other reasons to explain their readership losses. But the contempt that newspapers show for their readers by burying their editorial content beneath their remaining advertising surely is not helping keep readers around.

Everyday I check the website of the Pasadena Star-News. And every day, the front section of the website's homepage is obscured by a pop-up widget urging me to take a survey about the site's new design. Click the red 'X' in the corner to close the widget window, and the op-up appears every time you return to the page. (If you click the button declining to take the survey, the window disappears for the remainder of your session.)

If I register with the LA Times website, the Times insists on spamming me with commercial e-mails for products about which I do not care. If I opt-out of the e-mails, the Times cancels my website registration. (Which is why I don't have a Times website registration anymore…

And let's not forget the slew of pop-up, pop-under and screen take-over ads that accompany any visit to more newspaper websites than I am any longer able to count.

Doc Searls, my source on this post, highlights Niles' solution - getting content to the front.

...if news organizations are proud of their news content, why do so many insist on hiding it?

Readers owe you nothing. They have no responsibility as citizens to read your reporting, and no responsibility as consumers to look at your ads. The have the right, and ability, to go about their lives without ever once glancing at your publication.

If you want people to read your publication, you then need to do whatever is necessary to make them want to read it.

That means leading with your best shot.

By and large, legal publications whether they be from ALM, the ABA Journal, or others have not been too bad about throwing advertising in our faces when we click to their online sites. I hope as ALM's off line revenues start to slide that they can resist the temptation to launch sites with click through ads and registration.

The ABA Journal may not be as tempted as their online site is a start from scratch approach. It's not a regurgitation of the ABA Journal hard copy, where ALM's Law.com appears to be online publication of their print properties.

But I have had legal publications and legal bloggers call inquiring about building a website or blog with click through registration, pay to access, or click through pop up ads. No matter how shortsighted I tell them that is, they usually turn to another party who will do what they say, as opposed to offer wise counsel.

It's all about making your content relevant. That means making it easy to access without distraction.

Sure have ads, but don't be stupid about the way you present them. Look at what Google, Yahoo, and Newsvine have done. Ads and content can coexist.

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Kudos to the ABA Journal for naming blogging lawyers as one their newsmakers of the year for 2007 and 2008. It's the cover story for the Journal's January 2008 edition

Sure, law blog superstars like David Lat and Tom Goldstein have been churning out content for a while now, but the last year saw a plethora of law blogs begin to insert themselves into the most significant daily news and legal issues debates alongside their counterparts in journalism and academe.

From the Duke lacrosse team fiasco in North Carolina to the high-profile 'Family Secrets' Mob trial in Chicago, bloggers made their presence known with a flourish, sometimes to the chagrin of the judges and lawyers involved. But the influence of the lawyer-blogger goes beyond that.

Whether by a single practitioner who wants to share his or her problems and experiences opening an office, or a BigLaw associate who wants to dish the dirt about the practice, the lawyer-bloggers are finding an audience for their work, and we salute them.

Key takeaways from this traditional legal publisher:

• Blogs are part of significant daily news and legal issues debates alongside their counterparts in journalism and academe.
• Lawyer-bloggers are finding an audience for their work.

I'm not aware that any editors at Thomson West/FindLaw, LexisNexis, or Incisive Media's ALM (though they have a small blog network at law.com) have acknowledged law blogs as framing legal news alongside tradition journalists and publishers. May be that the ABA, not a major force in legal publishing, has little to lose and a lot to gain with the rise of law blogs.

And thanks for not labeling law blogs as 'blawgs' as part of this recognition. ;)

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1. Rob La Gatta: When you took over as editor and publisher of the ABA Journal in 2006, what vision did you have for pushing the Journal forward? Now that it's almost 2008, do you think you've made significant progress?

Ed Adams: I and my new colleagues wanted to redesign the magazine – a process that was almost complete before I arrived. We now have covers that would look at home on any newsstand, more space for art and information graphics, and a cleaner, contemporary feel.

More than half the nation’s 1.1 million lawyers read ABA Journal every month. So we wanted to write more stories that appeal to every member of our audience, regardless of what niche of the profession they work in. Some of our recent cover stories are good examples of that: what happened behind the scenes at Saddam Hussein’s trial; Scott Turow’s essay about why the billable hour may be unethical; 101 tips, tricks and tools to make lawyers more productive and less stressed-out; and our special single-topic issue about the attorneys who have been on the legal frontlines of the War on Terror since 9/11.

Online, we wanted to create a site that was the place to come for breaking legal news. ABAJournal.com is updated with 25-50 new stories every business day, and has an archive of the full text of the magazine going back to 2004.

2. Rob La Gatta: When looking at the ABA Journal's website now compared to what it was a few years ago, one of the most noticeable difference is that today blogs represent a good chunk of the featured content. At what point did the Journal decide that legal blogs were a medium worth featuring, and what prompted this?

Ed Adams: When we were revamping the website this summer, we knew we wanted to incorporate blawgs because they’re an incredible resource for our readers. Often just minutes after ABAJournal.com posts a news story, lawyer/bloggers are providing their expert analysis of the latest legal developments.

We know from reader studies that most lawyers still wouldn’t know a blog if it tapped them on the shoulder. So we thought our blawg directory could introduce them to the phenomenon by helping them find the blawgs that interest them. It now has more than 1,500 listings in dozens of practice areas, every state in the nation, and almost every law school.

3. Rob La Gatta: It's no secret that most big newspapers are losing print revenues and being forced to become more competitive online. Has the ABA Journal been faced with similar problems? Do you think that focusing on the Journal's online presence is the most important way to keep readers coming in?

Ed Adams: Our advertisers are smart; they realize that online and print are not an either/or proposition. There’s still no better way to communicate a brand than through an ad in a glossy magazine. But when an advertiser wants to focus on a call to action, online makes perfect sense. That’s why we’ve seen double-digit ad revenue growth in both print and online simultaneously.

Readers are telling us that online doesn’t replace print. They look for different kinds of information from the two mediums. Long trend stories and profiles work better in print, where the reader can hold the story in their hands. But nothing delivers breaking legal news better than the Web.

4. Rob La Gatta: How would you respond to the criticism that the ABA Journal's Blawg 100 doesn't do justice to the many niche focused blogs operating within the legal blogosphere? Do you personally believe that there are 100 law blogs that are definitively the best?

Ed Adams: Obviously, I think one can assemble a list of the 100 best blawgs – that’s what we did. Just as obviously, everyone’s list of the 100 best would be different from everyone else’s. And we had plenty of “niche” blawgs on our list, particularly in the Black Letter Law category.

The more interesting criticism, I think, is the notion that lists of great blawgs somehow will reduce traffic to niche blawgs, or make it harder to find them. Quite the contrary, I think. Lawyers will check out the top blogs, and in the process, stumble across blawgs that may not be as objectively great, but are great for them.

5. Rob La Gatta: 2008 is just around the corner. Do you have any big plans for the ABA Journal in the coming year, and if so, what can you tell us about them?

Ed Adams: We’ve got huge plans. And you’ll just have to wait and see.

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