Are you giving up by putting your blogs in your law firm website?

I fear law firms are taking a big step backward when they move their blogs into their law firm website.

Rather than being guided by common sense and strategic business development principals, law firms are being guided by analytics, “content strategy” and a website-first business development philosphy.

Good lawyers get their best work by word of mouth and relationships. Always have. Always will. The Internet did not change that.

The Internet as a communication medium has enabled lawyers to network online to build reputation, build trust, and build relationships.

Before websites, we had Internet bulletin boards, message boards on AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy, and Listservs. Each enabled lawyers to engage with real people, whether those people were consumers and small business people or coprorate executives.

Lawyers participating in these mediums enjoyed the opportunity they had to mingle in these town squares, to share insight, and to build a reputation as a trusted authority. They got work — or at least I did — the old-fashioned way.

I put up a website as a practicing lawyer in 1997, not as a vehicle to tout myself and the firm, but as a place to archive Q & A’s from my answers on AOL message boards. I wanted people to have a place to go if they wanted more help – and more of my insight.

Not for a second did I expect people to come to my website first. Common sense told me that people were out on the Interent — the World Wide Web, as most folks called it then. People would find me and my website from my networking online.

In 2003, four years after I stopped practicing and two years after selling a law community of message boards, content, listservs and chats to LexisNexis so that they could create lawyers.com, I was looking for a way to share my insight to lawyers and law firms who were trying to do business development through websites.

I saw websites as yellow pages and directory listings with lots of copy. In some cases, a brochure that, rather than sitting in the lobby and passed out to new clients, could be “sent up” to the World Wide Web.

And why not? Copy on the Web was free. No directories to pay. No full page ads in the Yellow Pages for $60,000 a year.

A website though fails to capitalize on the Internet’s primary purpose, what it is very best at. The Internet was built as a networking medium, they even call it a giant network. The Internet was a place to communicate.

Websites do not network. Websites do not communicate — at least any more than an advertisement, directory listing or brochure.

Nothing wrong with websites, people will go there after learning about a lawyer via word of mouth and relationships.

I wanted lawyers and law firms to understand that the Internet was a place that you went out to. You did so to network with people, just like lawyers did in the real world.

You didn’t build a website and try to get people to come to you. You didn’t put articles on your website hoping clients and prospective clients would stop to read your content. God forbid you would pay good money to try and alter people’s behavior to leave where they were on the net to come to your house or office (your wesbite) to read your “content.”

You went out and mingled. You left the marketing clothing behind. You entered into a conversation with the people you wanted to leave an impression with. You spoke at conferences. You networked at conferences and community chartiable events to build trust, build relationships and to build word of mouth.

Low and behold comes a blog in 2003 (at least for me). What an incredible medium. We leave the website. We leave the office. We leave the marketing wrappings behind. We get out and engage in an existing conversation by referencing what our audience is discussing. We influence social and policy change.

Wow. We build trust. We build relationships. We build word of mouth as subject matter authorities. We grow influence.

Lawyers, through blogs, were now getting work the old fashioned way. By word of mouth and relationships via real and authentic engagement with people. It had to be this way fifty and a hundred years ago when lawyer advertising was not permitted (websites would have been outlawed in those days).

Lawyers who could have only dreamed of becoming a “go to lawyer” in their town, state, or nationally were establishing themselves as a “lawyer’s lawyer.”

Never again would these lawyers worry about doing the type of work they wanted for the type of clients they wanted. They needn’t worry about keeping the wolves from the door.

They had a name and relationships that would last a lifetime. These lawyers had learned to network online with their blog being the hub, or least a big chunk of how they networked.

Now we have lawyers and law firms who never understood that blogging was networking through the net apparently giving up on the philosphy of that relationships and reputation build business.

We have website developers who cannot exist without the semblance of a social strategy or thought leadership who offer something called a blog inside a website. As a result, lawyers are prompted to pull their blogs into their website under the guise of traffic, SEO and marketing attention.

Other law firms are putting blogs into websites to start with.

Why do it guys? Why give up on business development the old fashioned way? Why give up on empowering your lawyers to become lawyer’s lawyers?

Sure there will always be lawyers who lead with advertising first. But is that your culture? Is that the foundation on which your firm was built?

Why not reach for something higher?

Image courtesy of Flickr by Seongbin Im.