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Lawyers Are Blogging So They Don’t Have to Meet Clients and Potential clients.

My guess is that most blogging lawyers are blogging so they don’t have to meet clients and potential clients.

Business development in the law is all about relationships. Unfortunately, a lot of lawyers are afraid to reach out and meet folks, whether it be via social media or face to face.

So there’s the blogging fallback.

The assumption being that if I write content I’ll raise my stature and help drive traffic to the firm’s website. Ah, the traffic thing again.

Business development without having to build relationships.

Some lawyers blog so as to meet potential clients, taking them to lunch, to get to conferences and network so as to build a book of business.

Sadly, this is the minority of lawyers – especially in large firms, where the rainmakers are the minority. A form of social media.

Strategic Marketing Consultant, Deborah Brightman Farone, who led business development at two major law firms, shared in a post on LinkedIn today five lessons for developing business, two of which resonated with me as to lawyers blogging so as to avoid business development.

“3. Teach your professionals all you can about using social media. It’s one of the best tools in today’s marketing arsenal and gives us the ability to stay in touch with clients, reach new ones and turn online relationships into real-world ones. Best of all, most of the things your professionals will do on social media are free.”

And:

“5. Spend more time with your clients. If a partner were to tell me she had just one hour a week to spend on marketing, I would advise her to spend it with a client. I have a checklist of client questions that every lawyer should be able to answer about their client. Message me if you would like a copy.”

Blogging, best defined, is networking through the Internet.

Reference and engage the people in your blog posts whom you want to meet.

Use other social media to take things a step higher. Share, reference and engage.

Get out and meet people, they know you through your blogging and social media.

As Deborah said in our exchange here on LinkedIn, shortly after I commented on her post,, “It’s [social media] an opportunity that is rather historic.”

Historic indeed, imagine all analogue business development in today’s world.

Yep, it’s easy to put words to WordPress. But It’s not business development.

Use your blog and social media to get in touch with folks, virtually and face to face.