Who’s Responsible for the Junk Labeled a Legal Blog?

LexBlog is enabling legal bloggers to have their blogs included in a burgeoning Open Legal Blog Archive.

Doesn’t matter if the blogger is a customer of LexBlog’s or not. Any credible legal blog may be included – at no cost. Their blogs, with accompanying profiles, are included in LexBlog.com and syndicated to other publishers.

You wouldn’t believe the junk we get. This morning I saw a trucking company wanting to get their posts in the archive.

Last week a law firm which scrapped obituaries and accident reports to create blog posts including the deceased’s name wanted their blog in a legal blog archive.

Blogs written by marketing professionals are regularly submitted. They’re authored “on behalf” of Sally Smith (the lawyer publishing the blog). The content is shallow, at best. Often junior high level.

Mind you, the Archive is creating a body of law of value to the legal profession and the public – that is being syndicated to bar associations, law schools, publishers, continuing education associations and research and AI platforms.

These folks have no interest in the junk that lawyers, law firms and other organizations are hawking as a legal blog.

Published standards for a blog’s inclusion in the Archive and good taste don’t matter when you just don’t care whether you offend others or give our legal profession a bad name.

Who’s responsible for all of this?

Ultimately it’s the lawyers. Their money fuels the marketing companies and the lawyers’ unknowing law firm personnel who think this is marketing.

It’s also the legal marketing people. Like many lawyers, it’s how do we make more and more money. No matter whether what we sell is unethical for lawyers to use, no matter how disgusting it may be and no matter they hurt the legal profession from which they make their money.

”Content marketing,” unfortunately, for many, means putting up whatever it takes to achieve search engine rankings. Search engine rankings are all you have when you have neither relationships nor a reputation, the leading way lawyers get their work.

Scarier yet, it’s some of the same legal marketing people who teach lawyers what to do to market themselves on the net. They’re even invited to legal and bar association conferences.

Not knowing better, and thinking everyone else does it, lawyers follow along and shell out the money for this marketing.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some excellent legal marketing professionals and companies. I am not referencing them.

There are also thousands of lawyers who are doing themselves and our profession proud in the way they are marketing themselves by helping people via the Internet in a real and authentic way.

Seems lawyers have drifted so far from how lawyers put together a book of business years ago – and how the Internet was first used by lawyers to get work, less than twenty five years ago.

It’s a shame.