Blogging

The Group Blog v. The Personal Blog

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The firm that blogs together, stays together.

Are you a superstar or a team player? When it comes to law blogs, the question is: do you have your own blog, or are you part of a team that writes a group blog? With over 45% of the Am Law 200 now using blogs, amid mounting evidence that blogs bring both publicity and business, many firms are trying to figure out the best way to build a successful blog.

For those of you who have been living underground for the last year, here is how the two different types of blogs work.

The Personal Law Blog

Lawyer X starts blogging. He is an expert in Computer Fraud Law, and as he blogs and shares his knowledge, he gains credibility and brings publicity to the firm, in the form of website traffic and media mentions. He starts to be seen as a subject matter expert, which helps him build relationships and expand his book of business. The firm makes more money and everybody is happy.

This is one strategy. The second strategy is to have multiple authors in a group law blog.

The Group Law Blog

Lawyers A, B, C, D and E come together as a group to write a blog about Video Game Law. Each week, one or two authors write a blog post that leads to greater exposure for the firm. The practice group is seen as more cutting edge, RFPs can mention the blog, and the increased web traffic results in phone calls that lead to more business. Everyone is happy.

So which type of law blog is right for your firm? I took this question to several active members of the online legal community to get their perspectives….

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ILTA 2010: What Happens There, Ends Up Everywhere, Online

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Last week, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) held its annual meeting at the ARIA resort in Las Vegas. I attended ILTA’s annual conference in 2009, but unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict that I call “work,” I was unable to make it this year.

Ironically, in looking at all the write-ups in various blog posts and news articles, I was surprised at how much information there was on this year’s conference. Although it’s generally better to report on things that you actually see in person, it’s also easy sometimes to get caught up in the minutiae and miss the big picture when you attend an event.

With that said, here are some items I found rather noteworthy….

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Give Your Legal Writing Nine Lives

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“If you build it, he will come.”

– Voice heard by Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams

Writing a book, blog, article or white paper are all great ways to get noticed and build relationships in the legal industry. Unfortunately, practicing lawyers confront great demands on their time, and even though they have good intentions, the work of creating this type of content is often delegated to associates or put off altogether. Part of the problem is that writing blog posts and articles is a loss leader. You spend too much time writing without business coming in, and soon enough you’ll be out of business.

Here is where social media and email marketing comes in. Every article and piece of content you create no longer has just one life. Now it can easily have nine. Hopefully one of these nine lives will give you the extra motivation to start writing more.

Life 1: Blog.

The law blog is your home base for all your new content. Creating blog posts on a regular basis is the single most powerful tool for business development in the online world. The search engines love fresh content, and once you have enough content on your blog, you will create a steady flow of traffic to your site….

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A Sit-Down with the Law School Transparency Hunger Striker, Zenovia Evans

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Ed. note: When Zenovia Evans (a.k.a. Ethan Haines) outed herself as the law school graduate going on a hunger strike for the cause of law school transparency, she revealed that she lives in Denver. Also living in Denver: Caleb Newquist, lead editor of Going Concern, Above the Law’s sister site for the accounting profession. Zenovia ended her hunger strike today, but Caleb was able to sit down with her for a revealing interview over the weekend. His thoughts — and pictures — appear below.

I met with Zenovia Evans last Friday at a Starbucks in Denver on Colfax Boulevard. The 28-year old, barely-employed law school graduate has been making a stir in the mainstream press and the legal blogosphere ever since she started a hunger strike on August 5th. Admittedly, I was (and remain) skeptical as to her approach as a way of promoting law school transparency and career counseling reform.

When I met Evans, she had a glass of water and a nearly empty 32-ounce Gatorade sitting in front of her.

The purpose of Evans’s hunger strike is well-documented in the coverage here at ATL and in several other news outlets. The bottom line for her is that law school transparency and career counseling at law schools are overdue for change. Major change.

On the day we met, Evans had allegedly abstained from solid food for the last 23 days, so I was expecting someone who was knocking on death’s door. Having experimented with fasting (for health reasons) in the past, and knowing the mental and physical preparedness that is involved, I was surprised to find her lucid — although extremely weak, fatigued and slow-moving…

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Social Media Lessons from a Russian Sniper

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Ed. note: Adrian Dayton is a lawyer and writer who advises law firms about business development through social media. He will be writing a series of guest posts for Above the Law about social media.

The opening sequence of Enemy at the Gates begins with a volunteer Russian soldier named Vassili being forced into the range of German machine guns in the Battle of Stalingrad. Unfortunately for Vassili (played by Jude Law), the Russian army has more soldiers to spare than guns. So although all the soldiers are given guns, only half the soldiers, including Vassili, are given a clip with five bullets.

As soldiers fall all around him, Vassili can’t seem to find a gun. After the battle is almost over, German machine guns are shooting any wounded men who try to escape. It is a hopeless situation, but Vassili finally gets his hands on a gun — and makes five perfect kill shots, taking down five German soldiers, including a German officer. A nearby witness writes up the account in the military newspaper, and Vassili becomes a famous sniper.

In response to last week’s post, “The All-or-Nothing Social Media Skeptics,” a few lawyers expressed frustration that I didn’t provide more concrete strategies, case studies, and tactics on utilizing social media. I won’t cover case studies on this post, although you can find some here, but I will give some specific tactics….

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Hunger Striker Revealed: Scambloggers Unimpressed

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Zenovia Evans

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on “Ethan Haines,” a law school grad who is allegedly on a hunger strike to support the cause of law school transparency. Today, Ethan has outed herself in USA Today, as Zenovia Evans (pictured).

Here’s the USA Today report about her hunger strike:

One recent grad even went on a hunger strike on Aug. 5. “We have a new crop starting, and no one’s telling them anything about this,” says Zenovia Evans, 28, of Denver, who uses the name “Ethan Haines” on her blog, UnemployedJD.com.

The first in her family to finish college, she says that “no one wants to say, ‘Hey, career office, you failed me,’ ” but “I couldn’t take this lying down.” She says she owes more than $150,000 in loans.

So she’s a girl! Well, that’s one twist.

At least one anti-law-school blogger (aka “law school scamblogger”) who initially supported Haines / Evans now feels like the whole thing is a publicity stunt, maybe even a hoax…

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The All-or-Nothing Social Media Skeptics

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Ed. note: Adrian Dayton is a lawyer and writer who advises law firms about business development through social media.. He will be writing a series of guest posts for Above the Law about social media.

Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

– Frank Herbert, Dune

“Don’t turn the TV off!”

My Dad insisted he was recording the football game.

“Well, can I at least change the channel?”

“No.”

What my father didn’t understand is that the VCR could record his game, even if the TV was displaying a different show. For those who don’t remember the old invention called the VCR, it could record one show while you watched another on the TV. It could even record the show while the TV was not on. That completely blew my father’s mind, so just to “be safe” he left the TV on and kept it on the channel he was recording.

Technology and social media can be scary to the ruling class, and we even see that among the legal blogosphere. Take one of my favorite law bloggers, Scott Greenfield….

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Departure Memo: Kashing Out

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As I mentioned on Friday, today is my last day as a daily contributor at Above the Law. I’m off to write about The Not-So Private Parts for Forbes.

It’s been two and a half years since my first post for ATL. What have I learned about lawyers since? After the jump is a list of the top five things I’ve come to understand about the Esquired class.

Since I can’t find an inflatable slide here in the Above the Law offices, I’ve found inspiration in another viral departure story…

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Scamblogs Get Some Mainstream Media Attention

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It’s been ten days since I last logged on to “the internet.” Ten days since I picked up a newspaper or let the dancing visions on MSNBC poison my mind. Ten days since I’ve tapped into the 140-character pulse of the world.

While I’ve had my head in the sand, it appears that the mainstream media is once again trying to get a handle on what’s happening in the legal profession. Sunday’s report in the Newark Star-Ledger isn’t breaking news to regular Above the Law readers, but it is an indication that media attention on how law schools conduct their business is intensifying, if ever so slightly:

As they enter the worst job market in decades, many young would-be lawyers are turning on their alma maters, blaming their quandary on high tuitions, lax accreditation standards and misleading job placement figures. Unless students graduate from schools like Harvard or Yale, they “might as well be busing tables,” Bullock said.

The quote is from Scott Bullock, the just-outed writer previously known as “Law is 4 Losers,” of Big Debt Small Law (currently down, as noted earlier).

It turns out that Bullock went to Seton Hall Law School. Now that mainstream media outlets are asking questions, Seton Hall felt obliged to respond…

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Sticky Drama’s Christopher Stone Is Stuck on Southwestern Law School

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Christopher Stone

On Southwestern Law School’s Web page for prospective students, the dean writes: “A remarkable number of major figures in the legal and business sides of the entertainment industry also come from Southwestern — as do many leaders of more traditional legal careers in both private and public sectors… We encourage you also to remember that the essence of an educational institution is the people associated with it.”

We previously associated Southwestern with then-washed-up actor Jerry O’Connell. The ex-Slider was a 1L there last year, and his experience demonstrates that you can still have good job prospects coming out of a third-tier law school. He didn’t even have to finish law school to nail down a job as a lawyer. SLS to CBS legal dramas!

Now, though, the school is about to be associated with a far less attractive student. We reported last week that rumors suggesting that Christopher Stone — purveyor of teen gossip and allegedly underage nude photos on his websites StickyDrama and Sticky-Noodz — would be attending USC Law School were false. A reliable source tells us that Stone and his Sonic the Hedgehog hair are actually enrolled to start classes at Southwestern this fall.

Due to his alleged posting of child pornography, Stone might have some problems with character and fitness down the road — but hey, that’s over three years away. Stone told us that he actually wrote about his site’s legal troubles in his application essays, and they let him in. We reached out to Southwestern to find out more about this incoming student of theirs…

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Mixed Martial Arts and the Law

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I know, I know — it sounds like the perfect third-year law school course. But I’m not talking about a way for 3Ls to get an easy A; I’m talking about the apparent proliferation of law blogs devoted to mixed martial arts (MMA). Writes Bruce Carton of Legal Blog Watch: “I’m not exactly sure what this development means for the current state of legal blogging, but just know this: There are now two blogs dedicated to mixed martial arts law!”

Carton highlights Mixed Martial Arts Law Blog and Fight Lawyer. There’s something perfectly satisfying about lawyers writing about the laws that pertain to beating the crap out of each other. You could imagine cooks writing about what meal you should have before you knock another cook over the head with a frying pan. It just fits very nicely with the profession.

But aside from lawyers writing about MMA, let’s not forget that we’ve seen a number of attorneys actually practice the fine art of choking another man into submission….

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Social Media for Legal Types, Part II

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Last week, Kash mentioned social media guru and attorney Adrian Dayton in a post entitled “Social Media for Legal Types.” As a follow up, I thought I would reach out to Carolyn Elefant and Nicole Black, authors of the recently published book, Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier. I first mentioned these two in March during the ABA Techshow.

The words “The Next Frontier” were added to signal that social media for attorneys is going into its next phase. To Elefant and Black, lawyers can no longer ignore the impact of social media on the law, but rather must embrace it fully. Lawyers will have to deal with this new form of communication in order to be collaborative with one another and responsive to their clients.

So what does this have to do with Biglaw? Social media is more for small firms and solos who need to use these tools to market themselves over the internet, right?

Actually, Elefant and Black believe social media can have a huge impact on Biglaw, especially in regard to its women lawyers. And law professors should read on too — it’s possible that advances in social media will render law review articles irrelevant…

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