Law blog networks coming to a community or niche near you

Brooklyn is getting its own blog network thanks to Corner Media and its founder and publisher, Liena Zagare (@lienazagare).

With recent acquisitions, Peter Sterne (@petersterne) of Capital New York reports Corner Media’s network now covers seven different neighborhoods of Brooklyn: Park Slope, South Slope, Ditmas Park, Fort Greene, Kensington, Sheepshead Bay, and Bensonhurst.

Very neat. Citizen journalists with a passion for the goings on, the businesses, and the people in their neighborhood blogging it as no one else could.

Take that to a law firm.

Most firms generate the lion’s share of their work from one town or metro. Why not take the disparate niche blogs you have (hopefully published by lawyers with a passion) and create a network dedicated to your community? I suspect there is no legal publication or network covering the law for your community.

Some law firms cover niches nationally or statewide and break their blogs out to cover further niches. Take employment or personal injury law firms as examples. Why not cull the best of the blogs into your own network dedicated to the people you serve?

After all, as Ned Berke (@nberke) who merged his own Sheepshead blog into the network, told The New York Times’ Vivian Yee (@vivianhyee)There is a business in doing good for the community.”

Networks also enable a firm to have content contributed by non bloggers in the firm and feature stories and interviews covering strategic partners and referral sources.

Law firms are now smart enough not to have their blogs included within their websites. The next step is to curate and highlight those blogs strategically on a site separate and apart from the firm’s website.

The goal of business development is relationships and reputation after all, not to draw traffic to your website.

I’ve been blogging about law blog networks for a long time. LexBlog has worked with innovative partners such as International Lawyers Network (ILN Today), the Texas Bar Association (Texas Bar Today), and the Seattle law firm, Marler Clark (Food Safety News, Marler Blog) to develop networks.

As we move from traditional websites and more law firms seize the opportunity of true blogging, networks await us.

Maybe even a Brooklyn Law Network.

Image courtesy of Flickr by See-ming Lee