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

An email from New York this morning to Kevin McKeown, also a lawyer and LexBlog's VP of Client Development, reminded me what lawyers are looking for in a legal marketing strategic partner. And Kevin is the first to remind each prospective client not to look at LexBlog as a vendor, but as a strategic partner.

The email thanked Kevin for the time he took talking with them, and read in part, '...[Y]ou truly are an upstanding professional in a field where such traits are essential.' Full disclosure, the professional services firm decided to go in another direction than LexBlog in their communications strategy, but we made a friend and a business relationship, things that last a lifetime.

Yesterday Mark Meranda, President of Smart Marketing which provides marketing for law firms and financial professionals, explained his company's dilemna when finding itself in competitive selling situations with FindLaw, a company owned by the huge Thompson Reuters conglomerate (2007 revenues: 12.4 billion).

After hearing us tell [potential clients] how you build search engine ranking with a quality website and by adding significant content over time, potential clients will come back at us with: "FindLaw says they can get me to number one on Google in two weeks!"

Mark then goes to explain one of the reasons FindLaw was able to make such a claim, FindLaw was selling links from FindLaw's website to law firm websites.

Each link is a "vote" that your site is interesting and valuable. Buying or selling links, like buying or selling votes, is a big no-no. FindLaw is apparently offering to do exactly that, selling links to other law sites for $1,000 a month.

Mark wouldn't get involved in such a scheme of buying links or advise his clients to do so. It's wrong, gets you penalized by Google, and is considered unethical in the SEO industry. The reputation of Mark and his company, is their life blood. How could Mark expect someone in the legal profession to trust him if Mark was doing something that was wrong?

I can remember starting LexBlog out of my garage (literally) 5 years ago. I had faith law blogs would work for lawyers looking to enhance that reputation. But when you're getting one lead every 2 weeks and doing 7 blogs in the first year, you can feel like the farmer with a horse and plow doing one furrow at a time. Your faith in yourself and your service gets shaken every now and again.

Tim Stanley, the co-founder of FindLaw and who sold FindLaw to Thomson 7 years ago and who's now the CEO of Justia, told me to hang in there. Tim said we're different than the big boys like Thomson FindLaw and LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell. 'We care,' Tim said, 'That makes a big difference in the long run. Lawyers want to work with people who really care about the service being provided to them, and the lawyers themselves.'

Tim's the same as Mark. Same as a lot of companies whose leaders I have come to know. They do the best they can in helping lawyers and law firms, but are not going to step across the line and do something that's questionable.

In deciding what's stepping over the line, my guess is employees at good companies are guided by these types of questions:

• Have I considered and identified other options or alternatives?
• Is the action ethical?
• How will my decision affect others, including our customers, shareholders, employees and the community?
• How will my decision look to others?
• How would I feel if my decision were made public?
• Could the decision be honestly explained and defended?
• Would I be happy if my conduct were described on the front page of my hometown newspaper or online news source?

Want to know the irony here? Those questions were pulled from 'Thomson Reuter's Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.' (pdf) Yes, Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Findlaw, who pulled a rock by gaming Google and failing to disclose same to their lawyer customers.

'When you're faced with a decision or situation and you're not clear as to what action you should take, ask yourself the following questions,' the Thomson Reuters code says.

You can almost hear CEO of Thomson Reuters, Tom Glocer, saying that after reading his intro to the Code in which he says, 'As our reputation is critical to our success, Thomson Reuters will maintain the highest ethical standards in our relationships with customers, suppliers, each other and the communities in which we do business.'

I speak at a lot of conferences and am invited to do a lot of presentations on Internet legal marketing. As much as I have been impressed with Tom Glocer through his blog and his ideas on new media, it will be a long time before I could pull myself to use reputable business practices and Findlaw in the same sentence.

That's especially true with FindLaw ducking their selling links fiacso for over a week in the face of growing criticism from bloggers and lawyers across the net. Maybe that's because Findlaw knows their conduct cannot be 'honestly explained and defended.'

That's a shame when lawyers and law firms selecting a legal marketing strategic partner are looking for people who care and whom will act with integrity at moments of choice.

Related posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw selling links update : Dow Jones reporting FindLaw misconduct and lawyers questioning what FindLaw sold them
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

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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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Tim Stanley, founder of Justia, the leader in search engine optimized Web sites for law firms, has started a blog dedicated to SEO (search engine optimization) and related marketing issues. If you are not a subscriber to this blog, you're missing the boat.

Tim, the co-founder and former CTO of FindLaw, sits in the heart of Silicon Valley. In addition to being a lawyer, he's got at least one computer science degree. Not only is the guy brilliant, you will not find a person more dedicated to helping others.

Look at Justia's free search engine optimized law firm Web sites, the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center, the Recall Warnings site containing over 50,000 recalls, the SEO center. Those are all Justia public service and pro bono projects.

The dualopoly of LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell and Thomson/West/FindLaw have taken hundreds of millions of dollars of law firms marketing dollars each year. However, they deliver nothing close to the free resources being offered by innovative upstarts, like this from Stanley and Justia.

Scary part is that even if the legal marketing dualopoly cared enough to offer helpful resources for law firms, I don't believe they have anyone who knows enough to offer a resource like this.

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