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Marcomm Professionals, Alone, May Not Be Sufficient to Run Legal Blogs

November 21, 2021

A legal authority who previously worked as an executive at a worldwide publisher shared in a conversation last week that his former company removed a blog he was writing on, if not all of the company’s blogs.

He shared that the company’s blogs were run by a communication’s professional who did not appreciate the significance of preserving legal journalism and commentary.

One of the blog posts written by the executive was cited by a law professor at Tulane University as precedent – or a building block – on the point on which the professor was writing.

Go to the Tulane law professor’s law review article now and the precedent is gone. Click on the reference and you receive a broken link.

The communication’s person at the publishing company is not alone in deleted legal blogs and legal blogs. Happens all of the time in law firms.

No one is acting in a ill willed fashion,

Legal blogs in law firms and other organizations are often run by communication and marketing professionals, versus librarians and knowledge management professionals.

The later’s work is, in part, focusing on the archival of information based on the realization that knowledge builds on top of the writing of others.

By eliminating learned journals and legal blog posts, the building blocks of information, if not legal precedent, are eliminated.

I understand that legal blogs published by law firms are written to build reputations and relationships.

My company, LexBlog, was founded on this concept. We still work as hard as ever to help lawyers and law firms accomplish same.

I wonder though if legal librarians and knowledge management professionals should be brought into legal blogging to make sure we preserve the body of legal knowledge – often secondary law – that legal blogs are creating.