Data perhaps the most valuable asset of legal blog networks

During a luncheon meeting with a LexisNexis executive last week in New York, I shared general word of LexBlog’s initiative relating to our network, LXBN. His counsel was above all else incorportate solutions to mine data and analytics.

What data was he referring? Data relating to the behavior of users, the viewing of content, and the sharing of content, in aggregate and as to individual users. The demographics of the individuals – age, sex, location, their social/content preferences, and more.

Heck the large data companies such as Acxiom can maintain a database that includes upwards of 1,500 points of data on just one person.

Why the data?

• To serve up a better user experience – the more you know about individuals, the more you can customize the user experience with the content served up.
• To begin the process of moving from search to discovery. Today lawyers do research by doing searches by keywords and through taxonomies. Imagine discovering, without search, the cases, codes, regulations, secondary resources, and forms you will find useful based on your work activity and social circles.
• To advance the law. Mining which influential lawyer is writing what and who they are engaging via citing, liking, or sharing can advance legal discussion and collaboration far beyond the pace of law journals, law reviews, and even today’s law blogs.
• For sponsors and advertisers who clamor for detailed data and demographics.

In LexBlog’s early days we were followed by a company called Attenex. Attenex, now owned by FTI, was one of the first and leading e-discovery solution companies.

I am told Attenex was curious what legal blog content would like if it were “mined” into patterns so to localize spines and patterns of the content. The data mined would be of value to the legal industy in the aforementioned ways and more.

I’ll tell you, the whole thing gives me a headache — in more ways than one.

I felt a little better when today I ran across what Turner Broadcasting Analytics Executive and former NASA engineer, Colin Cameron, had to say about mining data from digital media.

Reporting from Gigaom’s Structure Data event in New York, Jeff John Reports (@jeffjohnroberts) reports Coleman viewed the task as more complex than those he faced while working for NASA.

It’s as if the physics of engagement are shifting and we’re trying to solve it at the same time.

The first step in all of this, of course, is mining the data from the minds of lawyers. Getting lawyers to blog, in an engaging fashion, their insight, opinions, and commentary.

Reports or summaries of the law itself, which lawyers are prone to publish, is not enough. It will not result in a vibrant user experience nor will their be sufficient secondary law to mine for discovery purposes.

Speaking from 10 years experience I can tell you that getting volumes of lawyers to “loosen up” up and write in a conversational and collaborative fashion is not trivial. It requires a lot of education, coaching, encouragement, and ongoing support.

Data and analytics will of course be a most important byproduct of legal blog networks. But it’s going to take time.

We need more niche blogs by industry, area of the law, and locale. We also need lawyers willing to truly blog in an engaging fashion.

Like with most things, progress will come in incrementally before we mine that data.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Sean MacEntee