Saturday in the LexBlog neighborhood
Saturdays usually mean a combination of light work and blogging from a coffee shop near home on Bainbridge Island. But a surge of January client development work (responding to inquiries), new LexBlog blogs, and some interesting projects we’re working on put me in the ferry over to our offices in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood.
I was kidding a business development director with a multinational law firm that it felt like there was a rumor going around that LexBlog was offering a free professional blog solution. We’re not. Though from the prices I hear the large law firm website developers are charging for blog work, LexBlog may feel like a steal. ;)
Anyhow, there’s little question law firms are turning the corner on blogs. Large law is accepting that blogs are here to stay. They understand that unless their firm moves now, they’re going to fall behind other law firms and their own clients who are using blogs.
Lawyers in small and medium sized firms (and some large law) are discovering networking and reputation enhancement through blogs is better than speaking and writing in traditional ways. In small law firms, lawyers are discovering that a website is not even necessary with a professionally designed blog including all the promotional copy a website typically includes.
2008 ought to bring a good ride for blogs. What to look for?
- For the 1600 blogs the ABA is indexing at the ABA online journal to double. That’s about 4 new law blogs a day.
- For more lawyers to come to understand blogs are closer to a Rotary meeting than a website. Blogging means to join a conversation by referencing others so as to establish yourself as a thought leader.
- More lawyers using a blog as their sole means of marketing advertising. No yellow pages. No website.
- More good law blogs getting picked up by syndication to leading magazine and news sites. Forbes. Wall Street Journal. State Bar Journals. Local newspapers. All possibilities.
- More lawyers using RSS newsreaders as their primary means of receiving news and legal updates.
- Growth in the online collaboration between legal academia and practicing lawyers via law blogs and aggregated content.
For LexBlog this means gearing up to handle the law firm blog demand. We’ve got to improve the efficiency in which we continually train lawyers, design and develop their blogs, supply large law with the materials they need to sell blogs internally, showcase law blog content to the public, and the way we present (new website soon) the value LexBlog offers.
Good fun.