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

Sitting with Craig Ball yesterday at the Washington Solo and Small Law Conference, he asked a wonderful question. "Do you think younger people are learning what they really need to know when they are getting their information from bits here and there, mostly shared from 'friends,' some in a form as short as 140 characters." Craig was deeply concerned that our next generation is not going to be prepared for life ahead.

I responded the last few weeks I came to fear the same thing for myself. 90% of the news and information I pick up comes from a combination of feeds in my NewsRack App and my 'influencers' and 'mainstream media' lists on Twitter. In 45 minute commutes to work and back I browse my feeds, read what I perceive as the good stuff, and share with my Twitter followers the items I most liked that I thought they would have an interest in as well.

I've come to realize this condensed way of learning and sharing is re-wiring me. I don't have the same patience to enjoy a good book -- and God knows I've downloaded a bunch to my Kindle App on my iPad. After reading a chapter or two I'm apt to say this author is tailing off and I can learn more elsewhere. It's a struggle to sit down and enjoy the New York Times now that I go to the Times App, skim for the good stuff and share it on Twitter.

I explained to Craig that I do feel that I am learning a lot. It's allowing me to get more of a grasp on the future so as to guide LexBlog and to help empower our clients to network through the Internet.

By studying who's sharing the good stuff, browsing the headlines, reading items, keying them into Tweets, and seeing the Tweet on a screen I'm getting multiple points of exposure, and in turn, grasping a great deal of important information.

Craig followed with a good question. "Do you think the fact you learned the old way -- in books, classes, being mentored, and oral discussion -- better prepared me for digesting information the way I am doing it today? Maybe young people are not going to be as equipped?"

Seth Godin may have the best in his post today, 'The Management of Signals.'

Dealing successfully with times of change (like now) requires that you simultaneously broaden your reach, focus on what's important and aggressively ignore things that are both loud and false.

Seth explains there as are are two things we're going to need to get better at to achieve this.

1. Getting accurate signals from the world. Right now, we take in information from many places, but we're not particularly focused on filtering the information that might be false, and more important, what might be missing.
2. Sorting and ranking information based on importance. We often make the mistake of ranking things as urgent, which aren't, or true, which are false, or knowable, when they're not.

No question there is a lot of junk out their on the Internet and in social media. Skimming all the stuff from the self proclaimed social media experts recently I couldn't help but think of Paul Simon's Kodachrome lyric, "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school it's a wonder I can think at all."

My gut tells me I'm equipped to separate the wheat from the chaff in this new way of learning. Not from school, but from years of experience practicing law, trying cases, working on business deals, and starting businesses of my own.

I learned to learn what I needed to know -- from books and from people. I was driven by fear of failure. Failure that would result in me being unable to support my family.

I'm optimistic kids will do the same. They'll figure out what they need to know and who to learn it from for the same reason as I. Darwinism will weed out those who cannot adapt.

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When recognized marketing leader and author, Seth Godin, and New York City Attorney and nationally known law blogger, Scott Greenfield, come together to make a point on reputation management (some call it marketing) the stars are really aligned. It happened today -- and we're the better for it.

Seth led off with his post, 'The non-optimized life' counseling us that there are better ways to measure one's activity blogging than around search optimization.

Surely, you can optimize a website or a blog for traffic. You can optimize ads to make them yield more results. You can optimize your presentation style to close more sales or change more minds. You can optimize your workout to get faster and stronger. You can optimize your diet to lose weight and gain muscle. You can optimize your sleeping patterns to get more rest in less time. Cosmo even says you can optimize your sex life...

And then, at some point, you realize you're spending your best energy on optimization, not on creation.

This is a fine line to walk, because of course you can optimize your creation time as well! You can develop habits to amplify your best thoughts and make it likely you'll ship work that matters. I get that. But I also worry that a never-ending cycle of optimization can become a crutch, a place to hide when you really should be confronting the endless unknown, not the banal stair step of incremental optimization. While Yahoo was optimizing their home page in 2001, the guys at Google were inventing something totally new.

Seth, a household name for his blogging success, concludes:

That's one reason I resist the temptation to optimize this blog for traffic and yield. I'd rather force myself to improve it by having the guts to write better posts instead.

Greenfield was quick to comment on Seth's post with his post, 'The Un-Optimization' accurately defining the difference between those lawyers who blog to contribute and those lawyers driven to blog for search engine optimization.

As to those lawyers who blog to share their thoughts and insight:

Creating something worth reading is hard work. It requires thought. This makes people's head hurt. Nobody likes a hurting head.

Creating something involves risk. People may read your creation and tell you they hate it. They may say you're stupid and ignorant and despicably ugly. There is no shortage of critics.  

Creating something can be counterproductive. It usually involves making choices, and once a choice is made, there's an extremely good chance that it will alienate someone who would make a different choice.

And Greenfield's thoughts on those selling the SEO snake oil and social media magic dust as a way to riches for lawyers: 

On the other hand, there are a few enterprising folks out there who will be happy, for a small fee, to provide you with a shortcut to wealth and success.  There is search engine optimization (they even use the 'O' word in the title of their services). They can teach anyone, even you, how to strategically place words and links in posts to trick Google into thinking you're a major player. And players drive that gravy train. Players get to call themselves things like 'thought leader' and 'social media rock star.' 

And SEO is only one of the many tricks in the social media bag. There are many others, from backlinking to running around the interwebz pretending to care deeply about every insipid poster or twitterer in the neighborhood. A tried and true method of becoming a player is getting everybody to love you, and all you need to accomplish that is to pretend to love everyone else. Nowhere else but the blogosphere has rank insecurity and the need for validation been raised to such high art.

The week before last I heard that lawyers at a legal marketing conference were told that when you do those things necessary to achieve success on the Internet you will be chastised by some lawyers. 

The things needed to be a success? Scraping copy in newspaper accident reports for your law blog, using deceased and injured people's names in the blog posts, and linking from your blog post to your website with the linked text reading "accident attorneys" or "injury lawyers." 

You need to this, of course, for an optimized blog. Then you'll know your blog is a success. Not to worry that you've wasted your time getting a law degree so you can trash the reputation of our profession.

Search engine optimization is one way to measure blog success. "Or" as Greenfield says, "you can write good posts that other people, for whatever reason, want to read." 

But as Greenfield warns, "...[C]reating something that others might want to read is hard work and risky. Why chance it?"

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Lawyers are well aware we generally don't get paid after the first date.

Lawyers take phone calls from potential clients answering any number of questions. We'll have people into our offices to review their legal situations, we'll present likely outcomes, outline what we can do to help, and to estimate the cost of our legal services. All without any expectation that we'll get paid for such calls or meetings. We're just looking for the chance to go to work and get paid.

Much of what you're doing as a lawyer is earning the trust of the prospective client. Until people see you care, that you understand their legal issues, and that you can help, you can't expect people to hire you.

How do increase the chances you'll be trusted and be hired? Blog.

Seth Godin, in a recent blog post, says basically that. To establish yourself digitally.

Digital transactions are essentially free for you to provide. I can give you permission to teach me something. I can watch a video. I can engage in a conversation. We can connect, transfer knowledge, engage in a way that builds trust... all of these things make it more likely that I'll trust you enough to send you some money one day. I can contribute to a project you're building, ask you a difficult question, discover what others have already learned.

Seth points out that expecting someone to give you money the first time you transact may work if you're a pretzel vendor on the street. But as lawyer?

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Seth Godin writes this morning that 'Going with the flow is a euphemism for failing.' The point being that it takes pushing harder than most to accomplish the remarkable.

I wish getting law firms to use social media for client development didn't fall in the achieving the 'remarkable' category. But I'm a realist.

To those of you who have got your law firm started down the road of social media, including blogging, kudos to you. In most cases it's just a start, you have a long way to go. For those with dreams of achieving the remarkable, get ready to push - and push hard.

There's two ways you can push harder, per Seth. Stay between the lines or break out of the boundaries.

Some artists continually seek to tear down boundaries, to find new powder, new territory, new worlds to explore. They're the ones that hop the fence to get to places no one has ever been.

Other artists understand that they need to see the edges of the box if they're going to create work that lasts. No fence, no art.

Can't do both at the same time.

My guess is that you're already one kind of person or the other. When people present you with an opportunity/problem, what's your first reaction? Some people immediately start looking for loopholes or weak boundaries. 'You didn't say we couldn't do xxx'. For these people, the best and most obvious solution is to completely demolish the problem and play by different rules.

Other people, some just as successful, take a hard look at the boundaries and create something that plays within, that follows the rules, but that is likely to win because of this.

In my experience, either can work, but only by someone willing to push harder than most in their push to be remarkable.

I've talked with enough legal professionals to know it can be done either way.

With a lot of hard pushing through the committees for really slow action at your law firm, some of you have got your law firm blogging and using other forms of social media. Others have said damn the torpedoes, 'I'm starting, I'll pay the costs myself, and I'll apologize later if I create any problems.'

Either way can work. But going with the flow is a recipe for failure.

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With thousands of lawyers becoming more active in social media, the bar is rising on what you need to do as a lawyer to get seen in a favorable light by your target audience.

Seth Godin makes the point in his blog post, 'Fabulous,' this morning.

...[W]e only look at things we want to look at, only talk about things worth talking about, the amount of fabulous in the world continues to rise exponentially.

Even though we're at the tail end of the great recession, think about all the cool stuff in your life. Not just stuff you can buy, but experiences, works of art, innovations of all kinds... the bar has been raised for what you need to do to be noticed, and the market is responding.

Not only do I notice more fabulous, but it sure seems as though the creators of it are more engaged, dedicated and yes, joyful, than I can remember.

If you're not actively blogging, using Twitter, and building out a strong web profile through social media and social networking, how do you look to those sizing up a lawyer to hire? Not near as strong as your competition who demonstrates their expertise, care, and passion by engaging their target audience through the Internet.

How do you start using social media. Seth gives you some sound advice.

If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do work that matters, this is it. You can't say, 'but I need to make a fortune instead,' because that's not happening right now. So you might as well join the people who can say, 'I love doing this.'

There's never been a better time for lawyers to follow their heart. Get out the magic wand and ask 'What type of work would I love to do? Who would I like to do it for?'

With the advent of social media, the world has been turned upside down on the 'establishment' in the legal profession. When else have lawyers who have not been practicing for decades or who are not practicing in a 'politically correct' law firm been given the opportunity to compete with the 'haves' in our profession?

The easy decision is to stick your head in the sand as to all this social media junk, hoping that it will all go away. But all the while you'll be looking less and less fabulous.

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Seth Godin blogs the mantra of the new Web is 'Notice me.'

No question that's the mission of many lawyers and law firms who are blogging for client development.

• When do we send out the press release release announcing our blog?
• When do I start getting lots of followers?
• When does our blog start appearing at the top of the search engines?
• When does our blog become a leading community forum for discussion in our niche?
• When do we start seeing lots unique visitors and page views in our Web stats?

As Seth points out, you then start doing things that don't benefit you, just because you're hooked on attention.

Far better than being noticed, Per Seth, with some added commentary for law firms.

• Trusted. Nothing is better for you as a lawyer than being viewed as a trusted and reliable authority in your area of practice or locale. This is especially true with the public's lack of trust on our profession.
• Engaged with. Maintaining, building, and nurturing relationships is the heart of client development. Lawyers get hired by people they have relationships with. Engaging your target audience by listening to them and adding value to the conversation is how you build relationships.
• Purchased from. Getting work is the bottom line.
• Discussed. Word of mouth is how the best lawyers get their work.
• Echoed. Having your blog content amplified by your readers in blogs, on Twitter, on social networking websites, by email, and by being shared offline is at the heart of establishing a reputation as a trusted authority.
• Teaching us. If you are providing value to your target audience, you'll get noticed, your reputation will grow, and you'll be hired.
• Leading. Leading discussion online and being recognized as a thought leader is not only a lot of fun, but brings with it all of the above.

Measure ROI for your law blog by looking at these seven factors. Ask yourself our we accomplishing these things via our blog?

Don't get sucked into measuring blog success by attention and Web stats. Don't call out for immediate attention through press releases and the like. You'll be taking your eye off of the ball.

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LexBlog has a ten step process we run through in taking a legal professional's blog live. The process revolves around strategy, design, education, editing, quality and assurance, and marketing.

If a blog isn't up to snuff, LexBlog has a team of young tigers in client service, project management, client development, and editorial who will fight a client tooth and nail who wants us to take a 'sub-standard' blog live.

The team's logic is if we give in to a client's demands once, we'll start giving in all the time, and the quality of the LexBlog Blog Network, now numbering over 2,500 blog lawyer authors, will suffer. "We won't stand for anything. Our blogs will look as bad as the other blogs out there."

This team backs up their argument with stories of lawyers and law firms coming back later and thanking the team for demanding quality. The clients found they were prouder of their blog and achieved greater client development success. Client development tells me they hear from new clients that they want to be on the LexBlog Network because of the quality of our legal blogs.

On the other hand, I'm from the old school. "Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read rule #1." I'm not looking to get my clients angry, lose them, and lose the referrals they make. Plus LexBlog has a 100% client satisfaction guarantee we put in writing.

At yesterday afternoon's LexBlog team get together we got into a heated argument (I mean knock down vicious) over this conflict of 'LexBlog Standards' versus the customer is always right. The more I argued we have to do what the customer wanted, the more I got kicked in the teeth.

Reading Seth Godin's recent blog post, Win the fight, lose the customer, I thought I had pretty good answer for those tigers come Monday morning.

Does it really matter if you're right?

Given the choice between acknowledging that your customer is upset or proving to her that she is wrong, which will you choose?

You can be right or you can have empathy.

You can't do both.

It's not the nature of capitalism to need to teach people a lesson, it's the nature of being a human, we just blame it on capitalism. In fact, smart marketers understand that the word 'right' in "The customer is always right" doesn't mean that they'd win in court or a debate. It means, "If you want the customer to remain a customer, you need to permit him to believe he's right."

If someone thinks they're unhappy, then you know what? They are.

I'd suggest that they try, as Seth advises, saying this to yourself the next time they're telling an upset client they can't take the their blog live:

I have no problem acknowledging that you're unhappy, upset or even angry. Next time, I'd prefer to organize our interaction so you don't end up feeling that way, and I probably could have done it this time, too. You have my attention and my empathy and I value you. Thanks for being here.

Because as Seth explains if you can't be happy with that, "Go ahead and fire the customer, cause they're going to leave anyway."

But as sure as I was in the middle of Friday afternoon's fight that I would prevail, and then again reading Seth's post, I'm not so sure I'll win the argument anymore. And I'm not sure I want to.

Look at who's fighting me. Young professionals I hired because they were smarter than me, had strong principals and morals, were passionate about life, believed in my cause, and demonstrated a high degree of care in everything they did.

I wanted a team who could really teach legal professionals how to network through the Internet, who would make a difference in the professional and personal lives of the lawyers we serve, and who were capable of being part of a cause which could improve the image of our legal profession.

Looks like I got such a team. Do I want to fight them? Do I want to win?

Understand, we don't fight with our clients often. It's dam rare. And I'm sure we'll work something out so we can give our clients what they need while maintaining LexBlog's standards.

But when you're building a quality blog network of legal professionals, maybe there are times when the customer isn't right.

What do you guys think? Feel free Team LexBlog to continue your input here.

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Reading Seth Godin's post 'Willfully ignorant vs. aggressively skeptical,' about challenging the status quo got me thinking about my preparation for an upcoming speaking engagement.

I'm on a couple panels at the ILTA (International Legal Technology Association) Conference at the end of the month, one being on blogs. Asked by co-panelists employed by law firms what I wanted to address, I told them I wanted to challenge attendees to think bigger, to not be afraid to rock the boat at their law firms, and to share with attendees what they really needed to know about blogging to achieve success. I'm a believer that a little inspiration and education can go a long way.

I was told that sounded more like a keynote speech and that the blog session needed to be focused on 'the realities' of law firms. That law firms may not be ready to blog so perhaps internal blogs could be used as a test. That lawyers in law firms were not ready to network with their target audience through the Internet for client development - law firm blogs may be best tailored to better distributing email newsletter-like content.

I was told I wasn't inside a law firm so I didn't understand the reality of things. That to tell attendees how blogs work in the truest sense would not give them the information they truly need. Inspiring them to bring about change in their law firms would only lead to frustration on the attendees' part and lead to them hitting their heads against a wall.

To me that seemed like the goal was to keep attendees in the dark so that they would not hurt themselves or ruffle feathers at their law firms. And God forbid we challenge people in law firms to change the status quo.

Working in a law firm for almost 20 years and working with law firms on networking through the Internet the last 10, I've found breaking through the ignorance to be the greatest challenge to changing the status quo. I've also found a combination of education on the subject combined with a challenge to do better - for you personally and your law firm to be the best method to break through this ignorance.

Seth's post nailed what I believe.

If you want to change what your boss believes, or the strategy your company is following, the first step is to figure out how to be the best informed person in the room.

How do you become informed? Like anything else, through reading, meeting people (online or offline) who are willing to share their expertise, practicing what you are learning, and ultimately teaching others.

Fortunately for you as a lawyer or other legal professional, the Internet community is made up of people who give. You can have fun while becoming informed.

• Read blogs written by thought leaders, in the law and outside the law.
• Engage thought leaders and other people with like interests who are similarly situated through your own blog. A blog on either what you enjoy professionally or personally will get you the needed experience.
• Go to conferences, legal and non-legal, where speakers challenge you to think differently. The legal industry has too much of lemmings following each other, even if it means off a cliff.
• Start to make your case within your law firm. Ask co-workers, including the firm's management, if they'd like to know why all the fuss in Corporate America about social media. Ask them if they'd like to see how competitor lawyers and law firms like are using social media to grow their practices. You're now becoming a real asset to the firm.

Life's too short to accept the status quo. Succumbing to law firm politics leads to stress that makes a job no fun. You were made to achieve greater heights.

Become informed and break through the ignorance.

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Seth Godin's post this morning, 'When tactics drown out strategy' may as well have been directed to law firms' flawed use of social media, including blogging.

New media creates a blizzard of tactical opportunities for marketers, and many of them cost nothing but time, which means you don't need as much approval and support to launch them.

As a result, marketers are like kids at Rita's candy shoppe, gazing at all the pretty opportunities.

The problem is that all of these opportunities are just tactics, not a strategy. Per Seth:

'Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best customers over time' is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience, people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy... and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that they never really embraced in the first place.

Seth also nails why law firms are all over tactics, not strategy.

Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don't feel confident outlining one unless we're sure it's going to work. And the 'work' part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, 'I'm going to post this.' If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)

I presented at a webinar hosted by a law firm marketing company earlier this week. I emphasized how important it was to develop a strategy before beginning to blog. Identify your goals. Identify your target audience of clients, prospective clients, referral sources and their influencers. Identify how you are going to listen to this target audience. Identify how you will engage them in a meaningful way.

A number of lawyers in the audience wanted nothing to do with strategy. 'Show us how to blog effectively by telling me how to post content on a blog.' 'Blogs are just for frequent content updates causing the blog and law firm website the blog links to to get high search engine rankings.' 'Using RSS feeds to monitor sources and subjects so as to listen to relevant discussion by area of law and industry has nothing to do with writing a blog, you're aren't telling us what we need to know.' There was no talking sense into these clowns.

Even large law firms with sophisticated marketing, communications, and client development professionals focus on tactics before strategy when it comes to social media. Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Martindale-Hubbell Connected, Legal OnRamp, YouTube, and God knows what else. 'We have to find out how to use this stuff and we need to start to using this stuff now.' And when we do start using this stuff we need to see immediate returns in the form of web stats and clients.

Geez. Did you ever slow down and ask why you would would want to use these tactics? If it's to engage your target audience, by first listening to them, to cultivate meaningful relationships so as to further enhance your stature as a reliable and trusted authority in a niche area of the law, you're warming up to strategy over tactics.

If you're mapping out a plan as to which of these tactics make the most sense and in what order to deploy the chosen ones, you're headed in the right direction.

If you're willing to allow such relationships to flourish, knowing that lawyers get their best work by word of mouth and to acknowledge that word of mouth marketing can take a little time before it generates new clients, you're now focused on acknowledged scary, but meaningful, benchmarks to measure the success of your strategy.

You are taking the road less traveled by lawyers and law firms when it comes to social media. You are willing to do the right stuff and take responsibility for it.

But if you're looking at all these new social media tools like a kid in the candy shop looking to do 'anything social media' while measuring success by mere deployment of this 'anything social media,' you're focused on tactics over strategy. Wrong road.

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