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Ernie the Attorney: Blogs may work better than Web site

February 5, 2004

Ernest Svenson, a New Orleans lawyer, and publisher of the Ernie the Attorney blog answers the question of what’s better for an attorney – a blog or a Web site. He cites leading appellate lawyer Howard Bashman’s blog as authority that a blog may just be better.

Obviously, this question has no one answer, but Howard Bashman’s recent decision to start his own law practice (and leave the big firm in the big city) is illustrative of the power of weblogs. Here is an excerpt from Howard’s post about this:

“This Web log, which has already brought me to the attention of so many potential referral sources and potential new clients, will be unaffected by my move. Indeed, at my new office, I’ll be sharing a T-1 line with far fewer people…Ironically, the only thing that I won’t be offering my appellate clients from the very first day is a law firm Web site, although that will follow quickly, and I’ll be sure to announce it here once it goes live.”

No, it’s not really ironic at all. Howard’s weblog helped propagate news of his great talent and strong reputation, and made it easier, at a minimum, for him to set out on his own.

Congratulations to Howard! I expect that soon enough he’ll be adding bright young lawyers to help him use up that 1.44 Mgs of bandwidth. In fact, I bet resumes will quickly pour in from the best and brightest young judicial clerks around the country and that Howard will have no trouble at all growing his law firm (if he wants to, of course).

I’ve been telling lawyers, if you have a good Web site, great, complement it with a blog that’s updated on a regular basis. The blog will bring more traffic and exposure than the Web site. You then link from the blog to the site to tell folks about yourself and your law firm.

However if you do not have a Web site or your Web site is so bad you are considering overhauling it, go with a blog first. The blog will build your reputation, you will get plenty of traffic and you can put all the stuff about yourself and your firm in the blog in addition to blogging news, legal updates and commentary for your area of practice.

If you decide you need a Web site later, do it with the money you made from the work generated by your blog.

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