Mobile law publishing made easy

I’m all for ease and simplicity when reading content in digital form. 90% plus of the digital content I read is on an iPad or iPhone. Fortunately, mobile user interfaces are becoming all about ease and simplicity. Here, for example. is the mobile edition of my Bainbridge Island Review I pull up on my Safari browser on my iPhone. The publishers software recognizes I am on a mobile device, and renders the content accordingly.     I can scroll down to see sections on Business, Entertainment, Community, Lifestyles, Opinion, and Letters to the Editor in addition to the News and Sports sections you see above. For each section, I get a list of story headlines. Click on one of the story headlines and I receive an easy and simple interface to read from.     I am not sure what Sound Publishing, the publisher of my Bainbridge Review, is using to deliver this mobile interface. I would not be surprised if it’s WordPress. WordPress, which we use for LXBN member blogs, provides developers an open source toolkit to help mobilize WordPress sites. As WordPress is updated to meet the requirements of multiple mobile devices (iPhone, Samsung et al)  and operating systems (IOS, Android, Windows 8 et al), your developers push the upgrades live. Note the above mobilized delivery and user interface is not an app. Nothing needs to be downloaded, the mobilized interface was automatically displayed on my browser on a Google search for the Bainbridge Review. What’s this mean for legal publishers and law firms?

• Don’t buy expensive publishing platforms for web publishing. They are going to be outdated quickly and make it difficult and expensive to migrate your content onto platforms you are going to eventually use.
• Consider WordPress strongly. It’s what the New York Times uses for good portions of their content. In my opinion WordPress is where the world is headed for publishing, every bit the same that law firms made the move from WordPerfect to Word. You get all the benefits of upgrades your developers can test and install.
• Consider outsourcing the development of your publishing platform, teaching of web publishing, hosting, support, and content syndication. Getting your IT, marketing, and business development teams involved in this is a time sink and expensive. Plus it’s not where their expertise lies. The LexBlog publishing platform and solutions is one choice and there are many others. We’ve been approach by major publishers inquiring as to the use of our platform, so it’s not a size of organization thing.
• Don’t build apps unless you are going to make a strong play in publishing on your brand, curating others content, and hiring an editorial team. Your target audience is not going to download an app for each law firm etc.
• Start budgeting for the move off of your existing publishing platforms. A failure to do so is killing companies as large as the Seattle Times.
• Don’t design for law firm brand and colors. Design for ease of use, the other ‘brand things’ can be tailored in slightly.

Look around at your own small town news and other favorites of yours. Your going to see more mobile made simple – for you and the publisher.