I have expended much of my creative effort these last few weeks finishing off a couple of new e-books with 5 CPD points a pop on the subject of the legal web, produced by me and Delia Venables and just published on infolaw. You’ll find full details there, but here’s a quick summary.

Changing Practice for Barristers has five chapters on Changing Technologies, Changing Practice Management, Marketing Online, Providing Legal Resources Online and Changing Libraries. Each chapter includes two articles by experts in their fields.

Web Tools for Lawyers is authored by me and provides guidance on web services that will help lawyers promote their practices and get the most from the web. Although these services are of general application, specific examples and guidance are given for the legal sector wherever appropriate.

Blogs are an increasingly important web publishing medium. Chapter 1 explains what they are and how they are used and gives examples of the many law blogs that are now emerging. Chapter 2 explains why you should seriously consider blogging for business purposes and gives guidance both on the mechanics of publishing and developing a blog and how to blog more effectively.

Chapter 3 explains the concept of website syndication, the essentials of the RSS syndication format and why it is set to become ubiquitous and it also points you to the many RSS feeds now available for lawyers.

Most people now use search engines to find what they want on the web. Chapter 4 guides you through the basics of search engine optimisation – achieving a high rank in the search engines. Chapter 5 gives guidance on the complementary topic of search engine advertising.

Thanks to Justin Patten of Human Law for his guidance on blogging with TypePad and to John Bolch of Family Lore for his guidance on the features of the new release of Blogger.

Justin comments: “I find the attitude of the legal profession to blogging quite depressing. I think we may be waiting at least 12 months for some law firm blogs to emerge.” I wouldn’t hold my breath. I’m not as depressed, having experience over more than 20 years of how slow lawyers have been to take up electronic products and services. But I am, nevertheless, perplexed. Why is it that, with the incontrovertible evidence that blogging is good for business and easy to boot, there are only a handful of UK law bloggers? I can see that for the larger firm there are “issues” to be considered, but for the majority of smaller firms, a blog will be far more effective than their current, static, brochureware website.