Strategic Legal Technology 
Should law firms blog? That’s the question I addressed on May 2nd at the ALA’s 36th Annual Educational Conference and Exposition in Las Vegas.
In Blogging: Why the Fuss?, I explored whether blogging is a good marketing vehicle for law firms. (I also covered blogging basics, software options, and explained RSS.)
Being a blogger, I may be biased but my presentation is not conclusory. I offered a framework for marketers to compare options: a grid with “channels” as columns and “channel considerations” as rows. Channels include synchronous ones such as seminars and one-on-one meetings plus asynchronous ones such as updates, articles, books, and web sites. Considerations include cost, frequency, reach, and re-use value. I used stars (more=better) to rate options. Reasonable people can disagree about the ratings. The point is to assess systematically blogging in comparison to alternatives.
The BigLaw examples included were drawn from the Large US Law Firm Branded Blogs and RSS Feeds that Joy London and I maintain.
I touched on the issue of the potential tension between firms as institutions and individual lawyers. Firms should want their lawyers blogging on a firm-branded blog. Individual lawyers, however, realizing the possibility of future lateral moves, may prefer their own names as the brand. Since lateral moves became common only 15 years ago, this tension is relatively new. I suppose it applies to any publishing channel but my gut is that it’s worse for blogs. Anyone aware of any good material to help understand the dynamic of building firm brand equity verus individual lawyer name-recognition equity?
This is an interesting idea, Ron–thanks for posting it. I’ve yet to see any conclusive information written about the difference between participating in one’s company blog vs going out on their own. I’m curious also how this relates to the many people who choose to stick with their personal blog find their job in jeopardy due to its content.
When I started my blog I decided NOT to brand it to my company, whereas you didn’t. I know this is outside of the discussion of how this is applied to law firms…but I think this topic is an important one for all business: how much control should an organization that publishes content on a particular topic have over its employees publishing similar content outside of their employer’s brand? And, how much should a company permit of an employee to brand themselves in a way that only makes them a better fit for the competition? It seems that in today’s world we’re all free agents with a brand more than ever before…
I’m not advocating anything, but I think that this is a topic that’s going to come up more and more as we all become content creators through blogs or the web at large…
Jared
Comment by Jared Goralnick 5/14/2007 @ 9:58 pm