Winston & Strawn Maritime Environmental Crimes blog?

A large law firm marketing technology director asked me to comment on Winston & Strawn Maritime Environmental Crimes blog. Working with lawyers in his own firm, he thought Wisnton & Strawn’s efforts came up well short of a blog.

Though labeled as a blog, what Winston & Strawn has is not a blog.

• It’s just just content periodically being added to the firm’s website.
• It’s lacking an RSS feed. RSS is the oxygen that allows blogs to thrive and survive.
• Users need RSS to subscribe so they can receive updates without coming back to the site, something they are not going to do.
• An RSS fee is needed so that the content gets indexed at Google Blog Search and Technorati. Internet users with a keen interest in Maritime issues (media, prospective clients, other bloggers) monitor writing on the net by subscribing to keyword searches at Google Blog Search and Technorati. Getting content by RSS to such amplifiers of your content is the secret sauce of blogging.
• Lacks blog architecture allowing individual pages to be properly indexed at Google’s standard search.
• Lacks user interface and navigation components that are industry standard when it comes to blog design and development.
• No comments are allowed (emails to lawyers don’t count guys). Law firm blogs do not generate a lot of comments and all comments should be moderated before going live, but not allowing comments is a slap in the face of the Internet audience, or maybe says ‘We’re lawyers, we’re above you blog simpletons.’
• Lack of categories for ease of navigation.
• Lack of email updates for people not yet using RSS.

What’s the harm?

• Embarrassment to the law firm and its lawyers.
• Innovative clients & prospective clients, the media, and other bloggers know what you are doing is not a blog. At best they they think what you are doing is silly, at worst they believe the firm is incompetent in handling its own affairs, something that may spill over to other legal work.
• Not getting your content seen by those not familiar with your firm and its website.
• Not getting your lawyers cited by other thought leaders and the media so as to further enhance the lawyers’ reputations as thought leaders in the Maritime arena.
• Undermining lawyers marketing efforts. Creating content takes time and effort. Not doing your best to leverage that content is demoralizing to the firm’s lawyers, either when they find out the marketing efforts were flawed or they stop producing content because they are not getting the returns of other lawyers who are publishing a true blog.
• Telling lawyers they have a blog when in fact they do not. Lawyer tells Fortune 200 exec to check out the firm’s blog. (30% have thorough understanding of blogs, 96% have general understanding) Exec laughs that not not a blog behind lawyer’s back.
• Lateral hires and recruits who see the firm’s lack of understanding when it comes to innovative technology.

My goal is not be critical of Winston & Strawn. My goal is to caution other law firms moving ahead with blogs to do so the right way. Just because you have an inhouse IT department does not mean they can throw up a proper blog. Just because you have an existing website developer you work with does not mean they know what they are doing as to blogs.

And unlike websites, blogs are talked about. Here, a marketing technology director working with lawyers at one of the largest firms in the country on a blog project, held Winston & Strawn up to possible ridicule. How many other times could that happen? That’s not something large law firms with talented legal and marketing professionals, like Winston & Strawn, should have to wonder about.

Winston & Strawn is an international law firm with 950 attorneys among 11 offices around the world and has a history 150 years strong. That’s great stuff.

When telling your audience on the firm’s website you place significant emphasis on technology and innovation to serve your clients, don’t blow it by doing things you do not understand. Your lawyers wouldn’t act carelessly in representing clients. The firm should not act carelessly in presenting its lawyers to the world.