The Good News About Legal Blogging for Business Development is the Bar is Extremely Low
The good news about achieving success by blogging for business development as a lawyer is that the bar is extremely low.
This point really hit home in reading an article yesterday in the Wyoming Bar Magazine written by my friend and law practice management consultant, Jared Correia,
Correira’s point is that a lawyer or firm need not do anything spectacular to standout.
If a lawyer or law firm can just take advantage of some technology or be a little bit innovative, they can get a big leg up over other law firms. The reason being is law firms cling to the status quo.
Read Correira – and think of blogging.
Lawyers are trained to be risk-averse, and to cling to the status quo. Because lawyers manage law firms, change within those law firms happens at a glacial pace. Yet, while law firms cling to the status quo, upstarts in other industries redefine life and culture. Not that law firm managers need to be out to change the world, writ large. They just need to change their own worlds, just a little bit.
The fact of the matter is that any small innovation in a law firm has a greater impact than in another business, because most law firms are so far behind the curve. …
The point is that, if you can gain a single technology or marketing advantage over your competitors (or better yet: stack those up) it can potentially have massive effects on your bottom line. The good news is that the bar is extremely low for innovation in law firms. So, you don’t have to do something spectacular: you just have to do something.
Now Correira, as applied to blogging:
- Blog differently than the lawyers around you, maybe on an ultra-niche, not a broad topic because you are afraid, like all lawyers, to focus on a niche
- Blog on an independent blog publication, on its own domain with its own title, not on a law firm website which does little, if anything, to build a reputation
- Blog to get work the way the best lawyers get work – by relationships and reputation, don’t blog for SEO like every other lawyer
- Blog, yourself, don’t pay others to blog for you or buy posts from a marketing company
- Be real, show your care, expertise and passion
- Unlike most lawyers, accept that intimate relationships with clients, prospective clients and referrals sources can be made by blogging
- Unlike most lawyers, slow down and realize that blogging is about listening and engagement, akin to networking through the Internet
You may not have been addressing blogging, in particular, Jared, but I could hear you and your tone of voice all the way to Seattle.
You inspired me to share what “just do something” means when it comes to legal blogging success.