Blogging separates wheat from chaff when it comes to attorneys
In 1995 when I discovered the Internet as a practicing lawyer, I thought here we go.
Now we can separate the good lawyers from the poor ones. Now those lawyers who get their work via boastful ads will be shown for what many of them are – good advertisers and poor lawyers.
Lawyers willing to give of themselves by sharing information and sharing of themselves by engaging the public online would get the work. Those lawyers who would not give of themselves would not as much work.
When blogging began early this decade, I had since left the practice and sold a consumer and small business law community business to LexisNexis (makes up large part of lawyers.com today). Again, I thought here we go.
No where to hide for the unknowing and non-caring lawyers. Over time, I believed (and still do) lawyers would need to blog to demonstrate their care, passion, and experience.
Those attorneys lacking those traits and good judgment would put it on display on the blogosphere. The good lawyers would be exposed for who they are and the bad lawyers for who they are. Good work and good clients would go to the lawyers demonstrating they were good lawyers.
Having done enough jury trials, I came to trust that lay people, when given enough information, could see when someone was pulling the wool over their eyes.
This morning, my friend, New York Attorney Scott Greenfield, in a post on Sense and Sensibility on the legal blogosphere, implied I may not want lawyers to be found clueless by blogging.
My pal, Kevin O’Keefe, who is in the business of selling blogs, pitches his wares as a means for lawyers to demonstrate their expertise. What he doesn’t say is that it’s also a way to demonstrate their cluelessness or venality. Write something great and others may think well of you. Write something awful and they won’t, and chances are pretty good that a lawyer can ruin a reputation by publicly revealing their intellectual or moral bankruptcy. Of course, if Kevin were to talk about the downside, it wouldn’t help to sell blogs.
Truth is we warn attorneys and law firms all the time at LexBlog, that you can demonstrate your cluelessness in a New York minute via blogging. Worse yet, do some stupid things and you’ll be exposed as lame.
I’ll never forget after telling a group of lawyers that if they did what they wanted to do they’d be seen as lame. After a long silence the managing partner said, “We don’t want to be blame.”
At the risk of turning my response to Greenfield into an ad for LexBlog’s product and services, attorneys at law firms seek us out because they don’t want to ruin their reputation. Unlike 99% of legal marketers, McKeown and I have each been lawyers for about 30 years.
If lawyers don’t want to get into discussions and possibly have their positions questioned and, in some cases, attacked they ought to stay off the blogosphere. If you want to play it 100% safe and not share what you know or don’t know in public, don’t blog.
Not all lawyers are willing to write articles for publications. Not all lawyers are willing to present or sit on panels at legal or industry conferences. They’re insecure or afraid they’ll be critiqued. Heck some law firms won’t let some of their attorneys partake in such activities.
It was Mark Twain who said “”It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
The problem for lawyers is that the cost of remaining silent by not blogging is lost business. You’ll lose the opportunity to your competitors of accelerating relationships and your word of mouth reputation.
After all, ‘Real Lawyers Have Blogs.’