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Fenwick & West, a non-blog law firm, puts blog law upfront with its Web 2.0 sponsorship?

November 8, 2006

I wasn’t going to mention it until Denise Howell wrote about Fenwick & Wests’ sponsorship of the Web 2.0 conference.

Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West paid a lot of money to be a Gold sponsor of this year’s Web 2.0 conference, which among other things bought it the chance to put a flyer in the official conference bag. Interestingly, that flyer doesn’t focus as one might expect on the firm’s …more traditional practice areas. Instead, it mines for business by steering the attendees’ attention to a year old article on the legal risks and rewards of blogs and blogging:

With the proliferation of weblogs or ‘blogs,’ companies find themselves faced with a new forum for employee conduct that poses both risks and rewards…

Fenwick does not publish any blogs that I know of. Tell me if I am wrong guys but a Google and Technorati search did not pull up anything. How can a law firm targeting innovative companies who are publishing blogs seek work relating to the issue of blogs when the firm does not publish blogs?

Furthermore, sharing a year old 7 or 8 page law review type article discussing blogs in such a way that would likely turn off any non law review type blogger (assuming I found the right one buried in a pdf on the firm’s site), is no way to connect with the target audience at Web 2.0.

I know a law firm does not need to make widgets to give legal advice to a widget company. But blogs, podcasts, vlogs and other new media tools require some level of understanding to walk the talk.

What say you guys listed at the Press Pass Page on the Fenwick website – Rob Kahn, Business Development Manager, and Outside Media Contact, Elizabeth Lampert of Elizabeth Lampert PR? How do you market regarding blog related work without using blogs? When will Fenwick move to blogs as a way to market itself to innovative tech companies?

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