There’s a lengthy discussion on Real Lawyers Have Blogs on Why a law blog does not belong inside your law firm website.
For me it boils down to this. Effective blogging is you – or a group including you – (as Kevin says) “providing valuable information, insight, and commentary to your target audience”, so don’t hide that within “the trappings of a law firm website”. That does not mean you have to publish it at its own domain, but it does mean that it should have its own identity separate from the law firm brochureware, news items and worthy articles.
That’s an easy – even automatic – choice for the sole practitioner or the small firm specialist; it’s not so easy for those in large firms who are conditioned or feel they are required to speak for the firm.
So it’s tempting for the larger firm to go for the comfort of extending the existing website CMS to produce blogs integrated into the firm’s website, but all that produces is more featureless, unengaging web pages with little or no Google juice added.
What’s needed is to do something different – to push the boat out, to engage and connect – and the best way to do that is to create a platform that the bloggers own in spirit if not in law
It is important for bloggers to ‘own’ the spirit – and if law firms were sensible enough to trust and permit (assuming members of the firm can be persuaded or are inspired enough to blog) – the value of the firm’s website would increase.
I am impressed by both the range and quality of US and Canadian blogs. It seems that we are still behind the curve when it comes to blogging.
There are signs, however, that a few more bloggers are appearing from the UK legal world.