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Too many #LawBlogs ?

17 May 2011 in Blogging | 3 comments

Image: Jeff Schwartzbauer

In the run up to the next #LawBlogs meet there have been a few pertinent posts about the state of the blawgosphere.

John Bolch asks Has blawging become “establishment”? Well, yes, John, everyone’s at it now – blogging is normal.

Lucy Reed of Pink Tape comments on the recent explosion of blawgs in Legal Blogging Goes Boom!:

Blogging is in all honesty a little bit of a vanity project for all of us (deny it if you like but it’s true), but it is dull, pointless and blah if that’s all it’s about. There are some “blogs” which are transparently no more than adverts (blahdverts?), and which offer little of interest. But there are still lots of really excellent writers out there, and more each day. It’s just a question of sifting through the dross.

I have confidence that the good blawgs will keep rising to the top (being talked about) and the average but worthy ones will also get some recognition; as to the bland me-too and marketing blawgs, I accept their right to exist, and even that they might have a role to play, but they’re not going to appear on my radar and I’m not going to lose sleep worrying that they are polluting the blawgosphere.

Not quite on topic but kinda related is Brian Inkster’s post Do Clients search for a Lawyer?.

The future of legal blogging

18 February 2011 in Blogging | 3 comments

Image: Charon QC (In Blawg Review #292)

Unfortunately I missed The future of legal blogging last night – a discussion hosted by a panel of legal bloggers David Allen Green (Jack of Kent / New Statesman), Carl Gardner (Head of Legal) and Adam Wagner (UK Human Rights Blog) and chaired by Catrin Griffiths, editor of The Lawyer.

I did follow it on Twitter and some interesting points came up. Check out the stream at #LawBlogs and follow UK Human Rights Blog for follow up.

Maybe some incisive analysis on Binary Law later.

Social meeja blues

2 November 2010 in Blogging, Social networking | 4 comments

Image: OLPC

Time was when I was a guru of social meeja for lawyers. I was an early adopter with a keen eye for the potential of blogs, feeds and all that followed – and I sang its praises. I had a vibrant blawg with a large(ish) (in the scheme of things) band of followers and a small coterie of keen fellow blawgers. I quickly figured out the joys of Twitter and encouraged others to tweet. I had set up a profile on LinkedIn, made connections there and begun following a few emergent groups. I had also set up on Facebook – not sure why, but all those kids couldn’t be wrong, could they? And then the bell curve went mental!

Now everyone’s into social media. Every Joe Blawgs, every Sue Grabbit and Run and every legal service company has a “Twitter feed” and a “Facebook page”; there are hundreds more “blawgs” (I use those quote marks deliberately and forcefully); and on all platforms there are people desperate to make as many friends/followers/connections as possible. It’s all got out of hand, hasn’t it? Turned into some sort of spamfest. Couldn’t we go back to 2005 please?

Am I just being a Grumpy Old Man? Let’s look at what really sucks with some of the social meeja (and some of the good points too).

The good thing about Twitter is you don’t have to follow anyone if you don’t want to. That’s cool! In fact you don’t have to use Twitter at all; it’s not obligatory. On the other hand it is kinda neat to exchange banter with your contacts, show off what you know, learn something from them, make some new contacts. That’s all good if you have the time to follow the fast-flowing river. Thumbs up. What gets me is the dumb people who use Twitter. There’s way too may “marketing” peeps and egotists who broadcast low value pulp and pump up their follower numbers by mentioning and following everyone in sight. I couldn’t give a FF how many followers you have. That’s no measure of your worth to me or anyone else. In fact if it’s too big a number I’ll likely steer clear of you. (And yes, Stephen Fry, that’s you too!)

What about Facebook? Well, forgive me, but though 600 million plus people (and counting) use Facebook I’ve yet to find one who extols its virtues as a professional networking tool. You have to be there just because 600 million others are there (and, let’s not kid ourselves, most of them are way younger than you). But things could change; it could get better. Anything’s possible, but somehow (don’t quote me on this) I think Facebook’s pudding is over-egged. Sooner or later users will wise up to the fact that they’re just advertising fodder.

And LinkedIn? It’s a must-have, at least for now: a bit boring perhaps, but adding functions here and there and growing nicely as a serious business networking tool. What gets me again (and this is no fault of LinkedIn but the dumb people who use it) is the complete strangers who profess to know me and want to connect. Well sorry mate but unless you can establish at least a tenuous connection to me you go in the trash can. A tenuous connection will leave you to suffer in my Inbox for a while. Real connections are welcome. Believe me, working up 500+ connections (and thence, let’s say 50K+ second degree connections) is not the way to play this game.

Blawgs? I still love ‘em. Most of the early wave of blawgers are gamely still at it, though Twitter in particular has taken a lot of the the wind out of our sails. We’ve been joined by plenty more: some great new sources of analysis and comment, many boring law firm news/update blawgs and many misguided marketing initiatives.

And then there are all these new “businesses” set up by/for lawyers on a blog and a prayer. Those college kids in pyjamas and flip flops surely have made it easy for us all to become squillionaires!

Stop by later for another instalment.

BabyBarista lucks out

2 July 2010 in Blogging, Law blogs, Law sites | 2 comments

Tim Kevan is on a roll. BabyBarista now has a tenancy at the Guardian in their new Law section. Congrats Tim!

He’s suitably nice about the Grauniad:

I’m really delighted to be joining the Guardian at such an exciting time in the development of their online strategy. With over thirty million users a month they have what I consider to be the most vibrant and innovative online presence of any of the national newspapers.

I’m particularly impressed by their Open Platform and the way they have introduced the idea of partnering with bloggers such as myself whereby I can retain my own website and identity as well as working directly with them (they even wrote me a WordPress plug-in especially!) It’s a paradigm-shift away from the old-school need for ownership and exclusivity and is definitely the way forward for traditional media to harness the power and energy of the web’s creative forces.

BabyBarista balks at the paywall

29 May 2010 in Blogging

Tim Kevan has raised two fingers to the Digger and withdrawn the BabyBarista blog from The soon-to-be-paywalled Times, saying:

I didn’t start this blog for it to be the exclusive preserve of a limited few subscribers. I wrote it to entertain whosoever wishes to read it.

BabyBarista is now at www.babybarista.com and includes cartoons by Times cartoonist Alex Williams.

From its independent blog beginnings, BabyBarista appeared on The Times for over three years which led to a book deal with Bloomsbury: BabyBarista and the Art of War was published as a trade paperback last year. A mass market edition with the new title Law and Disorder is due out in August. Book Two of the BabyBarista Files will also be published by Bloomsbury in 2011.

Tired of blogging? – tired of life

10 March 2010 in Blogging | 10 comments

I’m more than happy that, as the Pew Foundation reports, the chatter has moved elsewhere:

Since 2006, blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults. As the tools and technology embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, youth may be exchanging ‘macro-blogging’ for microblogging with status updates.

Blogging lives amongst the elderly, but it is disappointing that the comment spammers – or rather, those who command them – haven’t learned anything. With an effective captcha installed on a blog, only credible comments get through. That means that now three-quarters of comments to this blog are “I agree with your post” or some such inane response. What do these guys, flogging the slaves in Kolkota or wherever, think they’re achieving? It’s money down the pan – gets you no Google juice and p****s me off.

Are blawgs an effective marketing tool?

13 January 2010 in Blogging, Marketing | 7 comments

I won’t get into marketing theory here (being unqualified to pontificate on the topic), but will restate my firm belief – supported by most genuine blawgers – that a blog “works”, ie it engages effectively, raises profile and is good for business, if it expresses a genuine personal voice. (I say “personal” rather than “individual” because there are many effective group blawgs which express the personal voices of a group.)

The effectiveness of blogs declines – and descends into the negative – as you move from personal and business blogging, through corporate and marketing blogging, to the downright evil of splogging.

Cogitate on this if you’re thinking “we should start a blog – it’s great marketing” and consider the case of Findlaw (part of the respected Thompson Reuters empire) whose splawg marketing tactics are deemed (by respected blawgers):

Are we (still) in thrall to BigLaw?

13 October 2009 in Blogging, Law publishing, Social networking

Jordan Furlong bemoans (on Slaw and Law21) the fact that the legal media focus on BigLaw, because BigLaw makes a lot of money, so they’re attractive both as subscribers and as advertising targets.

It’s not good for smaller practices, which count the majority of all lawyers among their ranks, that they don’t get to hear their stories told, their concerns addressed, their best practices circulated, and their career choices validated in proportion to their presence in the profession.

If there’s a solution here, it’s going to have to emerge from the ranks of these smaller-firm lawyers themselves – waiting for institutional publishers to change their editorial focus is not a good plan. Smaller practices need to find a way to amplify their voice and multiply their narratives within the profession as a whole. Maybe they need to help create their own media channel, pooling resources and enabling advertisers to find and support them. Maybe they need to harness the power of social media in ways that big firms haven’t figured out yet, to create the first truly online legal periodical through some innovative combination of blogs, RSS, Twitter and LinkedIn, and focus it on their issues. Maybe they need to figure out what the small-firm equivalent of Legal OnRamp would look like, and start recruiting their clients to join.

To which I replied:

I do think you’re not seeing the wood for the trees here. Social media do already provide the means for solos and smaller firms to leave a bigger footprint and “amplify their voice and multiply their narratives within the profession as a whole”. As you well know, they are doing it through public blogging and the public SNEs; and the pooling and focussing is done via public group activity on group blogs and special interest groups on the SNEs.

That does not provide a complete solution and third party collaboration and aggregation channels are evolving, but I don’t really see that they need “their own media channel” – will it not be an agglomeration of media channels?

The first step for solos and small firms is to engage with social media and they have only themselves to blame if they don’t.

You suggest that their footprints need to be left “in the places where journalists search for ideas and leads”. Turn that around: how about journalists need to engage better with social media and source their stories from a wider range of media channels? Surely it’s a very lazy hack who relies on the mainstream legal media for their ideas; surely they need to be reading blogs, following Twitter et al? Now I know you do this, so the next question to ask (of an employed journalist) is – It’s all very well for me to source some of my ideas and stories from solos and small firms, but will that sell the rag/will it attract the advertising bucks, will it please my paymaster? I suspect the answer to those questions is No – and that’s probably part of the reason you left your past post to strike out on your own. Good move!

It’s inevitable that the mainstream and derivative (legal) media will focus on BigLaw, just as they focus on power, influence and celebrity in other fields, but smaller voices can now speak louder and engage with a wider audience; it’s already proven that this works for those perceptive enough to do more than sit on the sidelines and observe.

Dead blogs

20 June 2009 in Blogging | 1 comment

Scott Greenfield has advice for bloggers who have decided to call it a day:

I ask you one thing. Take it down. Pull it. Remove it, once and for all. Do this for me. More importantly, do this for you.

For my purpose, you’re leaving your litter and cluttering up my blogosphere. Clean up after yourself so the blogosphere doesn’t become a dump, a wasteland of old/bad news.

For your purpose, your dead blog is a tombstone. When someone googles your name, they may find your old, ugly, dead blog, a monument to failure. Is that the image you’re seeking to promote? Trust me, when your last post dealt with a novel bit of news from October, 2008, you’ve brought yourself no glory. It makes you look bad, particularly when your sidebar proclaims that you’re on the cutting edge of legal news and thought, and that your blog reflects how great you are as a lawyer.

I don’t agree entirely. What looks bad is not a dead blog per se, but a blog abandoned without explanation. There are many reasons why you might quit your blog or not post for several months or move your blog or start an alternative. Tell us why in a last post; point us to the new you. That’s good manners, not to say common sense. If the reason you quit is you couldn’t hack blogging, then its best for all, as Scott suggests, to take down your monument to failure. But old posts have value: we all keep them in our archives. Dead blogs have value too if the exit is graceful.

Your blog is your brand

18 February 2009 in Blogging | 3 comments

In two recent posts Kevin O’Keefe follow-ups on why a law blog does not belong inside your law firm website, on which I’ve already commented.

He confirms his view, concerns about maintaining the law firm’s brand notwithstanding:

A brand for a good lawyer is not about design, collars, logo’s and the like. If lawyers known as authorities in a niche leave a firm, where do you think the clients needing work on that niche area are going? Do you think the clients are staying because of a branded color, design, and logo? Hardly. Blogs outside of websites get cited more often. Why? Because they are viewed more credibly.

and pointing out that word of mouth generated reputation generated by a blog is far greater when the blog is away from the website

It shows your audience you are nor afraid to enter into a conversation and to share of yourself without saying see how great I am, see my 1-800 phone number, etc. Law blogs inside a website get cited a lot less than blogs outside a website free of all the marketing spin. Law blogs outside a website are far more likely to be referenced in social media (twitter etc) and have their contact syndicated to major news sources … I suppose law blogs inside a website could do the same, they just don’t.

I agree on both counts. However, it’s not really about whether a blog is “inside” or “outside” a firm website, but about the blog having a distinctive focus and along with that a distinctive identity. The blog is the brand; let it shine through.

Having said that, I’d like Kevin to look at his own blog which has two strands of posts: a) his Real Lawyers Have Blogs comment and analysis; and b) the promotion of the LexBlog network of law blogs via News from the LexBlogosphere. I’m loyal to brand A; brand B dilutes it.

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