Law firms are in the media biz now

Whether you like or not, journalist and founder Federated Media Publishing, John Battelle, referencing his presentation to American Express, says all businesses are in the media biz now.

…[N]o matter what business you think you’re in – be it making widgets or providing a service, you’re now in the media business, plain and simple. Those that recognize this shift will succeed, those that ignore it will atrophy and eventually become irrelevant.

Now, what do I mean by the media business? Well, let’s start where all good businesses start: with the customer. Your customer’s media habits have changed dramatically in the past ten years. More likely than not, your customers spend nearly 15 hours a week online – it’s where they play, communicate, interact with services, and shop and research major purchases. In short, your customer has developed a major new media habit. The question is: Has your business?

Dam few law firms have recognized the shift. Millions of dollars each are spent in offline marketing and networking by hundreds of large law firms in this country. What money is being spent online is spent on websites, which are as much about online media as a hard copy brochure.

To remain relevant, law firms will need to have their lawyers blog so as to syndicate their content not only to the RSS readers of clients, prospective clients, and amplifiers of their intellectual capital, but also to the likes of Forbes, Bloomberg, and other major media players who are running syndicated blog content. The number of places to syndicate law content to is only going to explode in the coming years. And we’re not even discussing audio and video yet.

To remain relevant lawyers will need to network with other media players, whether they be bloggers, reporters, editors, publishers, or producers. And that networking is going to need to be done via blogging and social networking sites ala LinkedIn and mediums ala Twitter.

Scary to those law firm heads and quality and assurance committees who don’t understand this innovation? Yes. But letting the unknowing guide your future is going to lead to irrelevance.