Law firms adoption of blogs on pace with other businesses : First technology to happen?

The legal industry notoriously lags other industries when it comes to innovative use of technology. Not with blogs. Blogs may just be the first innovative technology that law firms have adopted at the same pace as other American businesses.

5% of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have blogs (American Express survey). With about 40,000 small law firms and 2,000 lawyer blogs, our profession is right on pace.

Don’t look at the 5% figure as evidence of slow uptake for blogs as some in the media have done. Blogs have only been used by businesses since 2004. One in twenty businesses already blogging is tremendous growth.

Websites were first used in 1991. When I launched a law firm website in 1996, I don’t think there were 500 law firm websites. Other law firms thought I was nuts and couldn’t imagine their firm ever having use for a website. By 2000, 98% of firms had websites.

Blogs are here to stay. Lawyers who fail to join the conversation among thought leaders in their niche will be conspicuous by their absence.

Expect steady growth in law firm blogging in the coming years. Not meteoric rise in the short term but it give it a decade like websites.

As Bill Gates says ‘People always overestimate how much will change in the next three years, and underestimate how much will change over the next 10 years.’