Blogs > lawyer blogs could be big

Lawyering is an information intensive business. Lawyers need to market themsleves with the information and knowledge they have. Problem is that lawyers are not getting that information and knowledge in front of prospective clients. Blogs may be the way to do it.

I have been hearing about blogs and following a few law blogs off & on. Heck, I even experimented with running a couple blogs earlier this year. I thought they were overrated. There were the additional problems of setting one up with my limited knowledge of programming/html coding and my very limited patience. But after seeing and hearing more about blogs and using a wonderful new product called TypePad by Six Apart for this blog I am convinced blogs are here to stay.

There are some very good legal blogs focused on a particular legal or geographic region. They do a great job of getting educational content in front of prospective clients (best way to market yourself). Plus their power for search engine optimization is incredible. Jerry Lawson cited Ernie the Attorney, a blog by Ernest E. Svenson, though not focused by area of the law, as having over 1,500 links to his blog. That’s a 100 times as many links as to sophisticated law firm Web sites run by firms with 500 lawyers. Links to your site, as you probably know, pushes you to the top of search engine results.

Could blogs be the next killer app like email, then Web sites, then newsletters, then back to email (before spam)? I don’t know, but if anyone told me a couple years ago all the Democratic Party candidates for President in 2004 were going to promote something called their blog, I’d have to have wondered – at least.

I’ll write more about blogs and Type Pad in the coming days. For now I need to go in and watch Greta Van Susteren’s ‘On the Record’ on Fox where she will mention her blog a couple times on national television.