ABA and OKeefe in agreement : Not enough law blogs to meet public demand

Will Hornsby, Staff Counsel for the American Bar Association (ABA) Division for Legal Services, and I have been discussing the findings of the ABA’s survey on how people find a lawyer .

Our discussion has been out on the open in the comments on my blog post about the ABA survey.

Hornsby is on the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services, the committee that conducted the survey and that is studying the survey’s ramifications on lawyers and the public we serve. He’s also a good guy, someone I have a lot of respect for and, to his credit, he’s willing to come online and discuss the survey.

Hornsby and I have been sharing our respective interpretations of the survey as it relates to blogs and social media. We both agree with what they survey found, the leading way people find a lawyer is to turn to a trusted source – trusted sources being friends, relatives, co-employees, business associates, and the like.

I believe blogs and social media accelerate relationships and word of mouth, meaning a lawyer will receive work by referrals from trusted sources. Hornsby has been looking at blogs and social media as places where people would go directly to find a lawyer.

I was struck by one of Hornsby’s points regarding blogs.

The report clearly indicates that one possible explanation for [people not turning to blogs to find a lawyer] is that few lawyers who are in small practice settings and are likely to provide personal legal services are blogging or using social networking options as part of their practices. In fact, what we found is that a higher percentage of people are interested in turning to blogs to help find a lawyer than the percentage of solo and small firm lawyers who have blogs.

So the ABA believes people are interested in getting legal information from solo and small law firm lawyer blogs, but there are not enough solo and small firm law blogs. Interesting.

I responded to Hornsby that we at LexBlog also know how much work blogging solo and small firm lawyers are getting and how many people they are truly helping. We don’t need a survey to find that out.

So O’Keefe and the ABA may be in agreement: “If more solo and small firm lawyers were blogging in a way that engages consumers and small business people in their towns, there would be greater access to the law.”