How does a law firm value a blogger?

In light of the Robert Scoble and Om Malik moves, Stephan Baker at BusinessWeek asks ‘How does a company value a blogger?‘

…[W]hen it comes to measuring the power or effectiveness of an in-house blogger, companies don’t know where to start. How much was Robert Scoble worth to Microsoft? On a bang-per-buck basis, how did he match up to the millions that Microsoft pays for advertising and marketing, both in-house and out? I’d say extremely high. But I don’t think there was any way to measure it.

Om Malik is the biggest brand associated with Business 2.0, the magazine’s superstar in the blogs….

…Very few journalists, for example, are evaluated for customer relations. That’s almost sacrilege, the province of the advertising or marketing side of the business. But blogging is blurring the line between these domains. Perhaps the best way to measure the value of bloggers inside the company is to see how they fare when they leave.

These recent moves should be wake up calls to law firms with high profile lawyer bloggers. Many of your high paid marketing and PR people have not a clue about the power of blogging and the marketing value of these blogging lawyers.

Not only are such lawyers a source for new work, but they can also bring the firm into this century when it comes to effective Internet marketing by being a mentor to other lawyers learning to blog. Don’t appreciate what these bloggers are bringing to the firm and you are going to loose them, their rainmaking and much more.