In part six of a series of interviews with lawyers who are using blogs we talked to Clark Allison author of the California Estate and Business Law Blog.
Q: When and why did you start a blog?
A: About two months ago.
Q: Have you generated additional legal business directly or indirectly related to your blog?
A: Yes. It has greatly added to my credibility and bone fides with potential clients, existing clients and referral sources. As an example, several weeks ago an investment advisor who has referred many clients over the years emailed me about a recent court decision that appeared to have a chilling effect on planning strategies he often uses. Instead of calling or emailing him, I blogged on the issue and then sent him and other financial advisors I know a link to my post. The effect was great: I was able to answer my referral sources concern directly, leverage my research time to educate many and enhance my stature as an expert on the topic.
Q: Have any of your peers seen your blog? Do they comment on it? Does the fact that they read it cause you to write differently?
A: Peers have seen it and have given me positive reviews. However, I don’t blog for my peers. I’m in business to help my clients and make a living, not impress my peers. My objective is to educate clients, prospective clients and referral sources through a medium that also develops a personal relationship with the reader. Blogging allows me to present what I know and who I am to develop credibility and trust. Of course if I do a good job, the effort will reverberate back to peers as well.
In part four of a new series of interviews with lawyers who are using blogs we talked to Robert Williamson of the Construction Owners and Builders Law Blog.
Q: Why did you start a blog?
A: Staying on top of new developments in construction law is one of my strengths as an attorney. The blog gives me a way to pass those developments on to others who might be interested and to archive them for my own use later. In addition, I enjoy writing.
Q: Have you generated additional legal business directly or indirectly related to your blog?
A: The blog is only two months old; its generated some compliments but no business so far.
Q: Have any of your peers seen your blog? Do they comment on it? Does the fact that they read it cause you to write differently?
A: I’ve received some nice compliments from peers. For their sake as well as my own, I try hard not to "come in light" when I make an observation or comment or express an opinion.
In the second installment in our series of interviews with lawyers who blog, we talked to Denise Howell of Bag and Baggage fame.
Q: When and why did you start a blog?
A: November, 2001. Christopher Locke made me do it. With that send to his EGR list he set off a whole flurry of blogging. Like most things Locke is prone to suggesting one do, it raised a few eyebrows, and prompted the occasional second thought — but has been lots of fun and a good idea in the long run.
Q: Have you generated additional legal business directly or indirectly related to your blog?
A: Both. Directly, the blog has resulted in many contacts from those needing legal assistance in my own area of expertise or in an area where colleagues at my firm are well suited to help. Indirectly, reading weblogs and participating in the conversations they engender keep me very well informed about current developments pertinent to my practice and the needs of the firm’s clients and potential clients.
Q: Have any of your peers seen your blog? Do they comment on it? Does the fact that they read it cause you to write differently?
A: A great many of them have; some are regular readers. Yes, they comment on it from time to time. No, I don’t think it causes me to write differently.
In part one of a new series of interviews with lawyers who are using blogs we talked to John A. Day from Branham & Day Lawyers in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Q: When and why did you start blogging?
A: We started our first blog, www.dayontorts.com , in late February 2005. We started the blog with a couple thoughts in mind. First, we wanted to share information with fellow lawyers about the law of personal injury and wrongful death in Tennessee. The plaintiff’s bar has a rich tradition of sharing information and I have attempted to follow that tradition during my 24 years of law practice. In the past, that effort has consisted of CLE speeches (over 150 of them), articles in legal publications (15-20), book chapters (2-3), a monthly newsletter of 10+ years duration (Tennessee Tort Law Letter) and a book (Tennessee Law of Comparative Fault). A blog seemed like the next logical step. Second, our business primarily comes from other lawyers, in Tennessee and elsewhere. We do not advertise on TV: we do not even have a Yellow Pages ad. We believe that by helping other lawyers see and resolve issues they confront in their day-to-day practice they will call upon us for assistance when confronted with cases beyond their experience or expertise or cases that will overwhelm their office, either because of the time required to work on those cases or the cost of adequately preparing them. Finally, advances in technology gave us the chance to share information more easily. The "DayonTorts" website was around for years, but it was difficult to update given the limitations of technology at the time. (Or, more precisely, my limitations using available technology.) Updating blogs is easy; I can do it when I am on the road or enjoying a weekend at the lake. I can also leave several draft posts for someone else to publish if I will not have access to an Internet connection.
Q: How you generated additional business directly or indirectly related to your blog?
A: They say that 50% of all marketing dollars are wasted; figure out which 50% are wasted and you can become rich. After less than 5 months of blogging it is difficult to say if we have generated any legal business from the blog. I will add that I find it difficult to say whether my book, newsletter, articles or speeches have resulted in any business - referrals from lawyers don’t necessary work that way. I believe, but cannot prove, that the blog will help our practice by continuing to reinforce our reputation as a law firm that stays current with the law and technology, is willing to share what it knows with fellow lawyers, and has the experience and expertise to handle complicated personal injury and wrongful death cases. In fact, we are so confident with the potential of blogging that we have rolled out three additional blogs in the past couple months. The first, www.tnbusinesslitigation.com , is directed toward general counsel and business lawyers. We have found an increasing number of companies want to hire experienced trial lawyers to handle business litigation; the nature of business litigation is such that many lawyers who do it exclusively lack extensive experience in trial. While we usually will not defend personal injury and wrongful death cases, we do represent individuals and companies is business disputes. The second is www.medmalblog.com. We have done medical negligence work for 24 years and decided that a specialized blog in that field would be a benefit to the Bar. Finally, we are getting ready to launch www.erisaontheweb.com. One of our lawyers has an extensive practice representing professionals and business people who have disability insurance claims. This blog is directed toward claimants and other lawyers who are representing claimants. This is a substantial undertaking. We have divided the work between 5 lawyers and our nurse.
Q: Have any of your peers seen your blog? Do they comment on it? Does the fact that they read it cause you to write differently?
A: Yes, many of our peers have seen our blog and in fact that is our target audience. We have received many positive comments from lawyers (and judges) and in fact a good number of lawyers have told me that they check the blog every day. We do write the blog differently because they read it - they are our target audience. We do get a significant number of comments from consumers so we know that they are reading, but we focus on lawyers. We believe (hope?) that any consumer who reads our site will understand that while our target is other lawyers we represent people and will accept representation directly from a consumer if they choose to call us.
We conducted a series of interviews with lawyers who blog last month. Over the next week we will be posting those interviews in a series format. Here is a preview of the interviews:
Weblogs seem to work well for lawyers. We tried to find out why.
Arianna Huffington sounds like she does. The HuffingtonPost has backlog of 15,000 comments waiting to be moderated. This may not be such a crisis for Arianna, but what do businesses do? [via Business Week]
Mike Rundle, over at Business Logs, calls us on the carpet for using a standard template as a placeholder while we ready our main site. He’s right in that and his other comments. We jumped immediately into the conversation as we put together our Weblogs Work service offering, and you’ll see an entirely new look, new lingo and the real approach we’re using for our clients next week.
We’re stoked. Dan Cederholm, of SimpleBits, did the site design, and we think it’s pretty snazzy. Maybe Mike will come on back and have a looksee.What we are in total agreement about is that blogs aren’t some kind of magic bullet that will cure any company ailment. Sure, blogs are getting hyped, and we’ve certainly been harping on Vonage, FedEx, Dell and other biggies who are getting beaten up in blogging conversation. We think they should join in, balance out the viewpoints. Engage. The conversation continues apace, anyhow.
What is great about launching a company blog is that the tactic forces a certain openness in your communication style. You’ll hear more directly from the folks who matter to your business. Yes, you’ll get more site traffic. You’ll index higher in the search engines. But, most importantly, you’ll be engaging in more honest, open dialogue. That’s why weblogs work.
What could be easier that turning on a blog for your company? Download some open source code like Word Press, install it on a server in your corporate data center, create a nice template, and start blogging. Turns out it can be hard.
First, the most popular blog software solution is open source. You have to know a little bit about linux and programming to get it setup. Second, since the software is open source when there is an issue you are often on your own. For example, yesterday Secunia issued a security advisory for Word Press indicating that they found a ‘highly critical’ security flaw in the software. The flaw is as of yet ‘unpatched’ - i.e. no one has issued a patch to resolve the issue. How can you protect your investment? You better have someone on staff who can help or hire someone to ‘manage your blog’.
Companies often spend thousands of dollars per month paying for Yellow Page ads. These ads are unmanaged and stay the same throughout the year. Managed weblogs typically cost less than $1,000 per month and by their very nature are dynamic and ever changing. Why pay more for a static ad? Did you know more people visit Google than the Yellow Pages when hiring a lawyer? Managed weblogs work.
Update: New version of WordPress out now, addressing the security issue mentioned.
RED Magazine and the Dallas Opera held their 6-Month Anniversary (I know anniversaries happen once per year) Party and concert at the Gypsy Tea Room this evening. They celebrated the release of RED’s “Music Movement” issue - featuring all the high notes around the Dallas music and entertainment scene. I heard a rumor that weblogs are going to start working for RED.
Om Malik agrees with us — Vonage should be blogging. Om ran a piece yesterday on the ‘massive outage’ they suffered, and they had no direct way to broadcast updates. Sure, they emailed, but, meanwhile, the ‘Vonage has a outage’ meme is running around the Web, overshadowing their own news about bulking up their enterprise offering. This is another key thing we do for our clients — monitor the conversations that are going on and helping them respond in a timely manner. The conversations don’t stop just because you’re not participating. If you’re not paying attention, you might be getting Dell’d.
Are you using pay-per-click advertising? You may be wasting up to 30% of your investment due to click fraud according to one study. We were spending around $2500 per month doing pay-per-click advertising for an IT services company. This figure, while significant, was small compared with the average contract value of $45,000. Two deals would easily cover the cost of the advertisments. We had several bites, but to date none of the PPC deals have closed.
We discontinued the advertisments and plowed half of that budget in the development and management of a blog for the company and saw a 50% increase in leads and at least two new clients. Lower cost with better results and no chance of fraud. Weblogs work for IT service companies.
Mary Wagner wrote a great article about retailers taking their "first step into the brave new world of blogging."
"Blogs, personal online diaries or journals and short for “web logs,” have become highly influential in American society and can affect a retailer’s brand faster than the retailer can react. “The power of web logs is that they allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas, and millions more to comment on them,”
"Marketers are just starting to probe the marketing applications of web logs. For those who are watching them to see what others are saying about their products and brands, blogs have been called the world’s largest free online focus group. For those who take the next step and enter the dialogue by putting blogs on their sites, they’re an easy way to post fresh and fast-changing content that offers the prospect of conveying corporate attitude and opinion beyond traditional marketing messages—if the blogs are handled transparently, if they’re compelling enough to garner readership, and if the marketer is willing to risk taking some lumps from others who respond with posts of their own." [via Internet Retailer]
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