Law Office Management
May 2, 2008
The Search for Intelligent Life in the Blogosphere
Are legal blogs marketing aids or a nuisance? A time saver or a distraction? Our guide explains everything you need to know about law blogs but were afraid to ask.
Last year on his very first trip to Australia, California litigator J. Craig Williams walked into a Sydney restaurant for dinner and heard a voice calling out to him.
"I know you," a complete stranger shouted from across the room. "You write that blog!"
Williams, who has blogged at May It Please the Court (www.mayitpleasethecourt.com) since 2003, was stunned. "I thought to myself, 'I'm this little guy from Newport Beach traveling halfway around the world, and somebody knows me!' " Such is the power of blogging.
The first legal blogs (sometimes called a blawg) appeared in the late 1990s, and they didn't catch on right away. But today blogs play a leading role in the legal profession, acting alternately as marketing tools, secondary battlegrounds for courtroom fights, research aids, recruiting devices, community hubs, and more.
Still, in the ever-expanding blogosphere, blogging lawyers such as Williams remain the exception rather than the rule. After almost a half decade at it, he knows his way around: what to write about, how often to write, how to deal with blog trolls (more on this later), and how to keep up with other legal blogs. Meanwhile, other California lawyers are still scratching their heads about blogs: Are they tools or trouble? Litigation liabilities, or marketing billboards? Virtual town halls, or just exercises in public navel gazing?
"There's a lot to weed through," says Denise M. Howell, a Newport Beach sole practitioner who, as one of the first legal bloggers, is credited with coining the term "blawg." "People haven't figured out how to reduce the noise-to-signal ratio. It has become somewhat overwhelming."
THE BLOG BOOM
But it hasn't always been this way. As best as most people can tell, the history of legal blogs began in July 1999 when two lawyers-a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and another attorney from New Jersey-launched Overlawyered (www.overlawyered.com). A Tennessee law professor picked up the trend two years later, launching Instapundit (www.instapundit.com) in August 2001. That fall Howell, who was then with Crosby Heafey Roach & May, launched Bag and Baggage (bgbg.blogspot.com).
By 2003 Blawg.com founder Bill Gratsch was able to create a directory of 57 legal blogs. Today, he estimates there are more than 2,000.
Others peg the numbers even higher. Tim Stanley, a FindLaw cofounder, is the CEO of Justia, a Mountain View firm that offers free case law, blog databases, and other legal resources online. He estimates there were about 200 legal blogs by mid-2003; 1,700 in 2006; 4,000 by last August; and upwards of 5,000 to date.
At the same time, legal blogs have grown in scope, versatility, and influence. By mid-2006, for example, courts had cited legal blogs in only a couple dozen cases (including a Supreme Court decision, United States v. Booker (543 U.S. 220, 278 n.4 (2005)). But today it's not at all unusual for courts to cite blogs, says Kevin O'Keefe, president of the Seattle consulting company LexBlog, which advises lawyers and law firms on designing, launching, and marketing blogs.
WHY LAWYERS BLOG
From sole practitioners to corporate counsel to law professors, attorneys have many possible reasons for blogging:
"Blogs are probably the most scalable, cost-effective, and efficient way for distributing a message on the Internet," says Rick Klau, an early adopter who now manages strategic partner development at Google.
It worked for Kristie D. Prinz. When her former firm, Pennie & Edmonds, closed its doors in 2003, the young intellectual property attorney decided it was time to launch her own firm (The Prinz Law Office in Los Gatos). That meant establishing a name and getting known quickly among potential clients as an expert.
Prinz, then 31, set up a blog straight away. And soon, prospective clients began mentioning that they had seen her California Biotech Law Blog. Two years later, she had a steady stream of media attention. "Having a blog on relevant issues helps establish you as an expert to potential clients," Prinz says. "And if you're building your practice, that's exactly what you're looking to do."
In creating her blog, Prinz says, she was careful to come up with an original topic and get a good domain name that would attract attention (www. californiabiotechlaw.com). Then she hired someone to design an attractive blog that "caught the attention of prospective readers" as well as to "search-engine optimize" the site (a procedure that can help push a blog up in search-result listings).
Of course, the quality of the content is at least as important as the look of it. "You need to develop your own perspective and voice on the issues," she says.
In addition to its promotional advantages, blogging helps the bloggers themselves keep up-to-date. "To blog makes you a better lawyer," maintains O'Keefe who was a trial lawyer for 17 years before he founded LexBlog in 2004. "You're keeping aware of the discussion among thought leaders in your niche."
Blogging can also improve a corporate law department's internal communications, says Mike Dillon, general counsel at Sun Microsystems. With the company's legal staff scattered across 25 countries, Dillon finds blogging to be "a great communications tool." And among other departments, a blog can help "change how employees view lawyers," says Dillon, who writes The Legal Thing blog (blogs. sun.com/dillon). "They get to know you personally, and they engage with you more."
But writing isn't the only way to participate in the blogosphere. Attorneys usually can add comments to others' blog postings. And simply monitoring legal blogs can yield good information for research or recruiting purposes.
For instance, if Williams needs an update on developments in California's Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17200-17209), he goes straight to The UCL Practitioner (www.ucl practitioner.com). "I look there if I need to know the latest in the law," Williams says of the blog written by Kimberly A. Kralowec, a partner at Schubert & Reed in San Francisco. "I can count on Kimberly for that."
A blog can serve as an extra data point to evaluate the expertise an attorney is seeking from outside counsel. "You can read their blogs to get a view of how they work and how they view the world," says Sun's Dillon. He also reads law student blogs, he says, "so I can have an understanding of the next generation of attorneys."
ON THE DOWNSIDE
Of course, the blogosphere-like all new technology trends-also has an underbelly. For one thing, it's a vast territory that can overwhelm newcomers, discouraging some from ever exploring it. "When lawyers call us" for help launching a blog, "95 percent are not sure what blogging is all about," says consultant O'Keefe. "It can be daunting at first. Some just don't know where to start."
Even once an attorney gets the hang of blogging, the experience may not be uniformly pleasant. Say, for example, an attorney has to tangle with a troll, a bully blogger who lurks online in search of public, verbal fights.
"There are folks who are in it to be outrageous and get attention or to pick a fight," says JoAnne Speers of The Institute for Local Government, a Sacramento-based nonprofit that provides independent research and information for California's communities and their leaders.
Some bloggers or commenters are anonymous, and that can cause another headache. "The anonymity of certain blogs creates an anything-goes attitude," Speers says. So far, First Amendment protections for bloggers have been strong, she notes, and the legal standard for defamation is "very stringent."
Additionally, because these interactions take place in public, they can be a public-relations nightmare. Last year, Pomona City Attorney Arnold M. Alvarez-Glasman found himself at the center of an online squabble with anonymous bloggers from The Foothill Cities Blog (thefcblog.com). (The bloggers had posted comments suggesting that the former Pomona city manager had been pressured to resign, which the city denied.) Things got heated when the site posted the cease-and-desist letter that Alvarez-Glasman sent, along with their attorney's response. In pre-Internet days, the spat would have had a far lower profile.
"When, oh when, will people learn that these 'cease and desist' letters will always get posted, and will always bring bad publicity to those who wrote them, unless there is a damned good reason for sending them?" mused one blogger known as Little Miss Attila.
Other times, however, online sparring is anything but anonymous. Last summer David B. Lat, a former federal prosecutor who writes Above the Law (www.abovethelaw.com), openly made fun of the lyrics to a song that law firm Nixon Peabody commissioned to celebrate its inclusion in Fortune magazine's list of the best companies to work for. Nixon Peabody asked Lat to take the posted song down from his blog, claiming copyright violation. The dispute landed in the New York Times and provided fodder for countless other blogs. "... boy am I glad I don't work at Nixon Peabody," commented someone called Cornellian at the popular Volokh Conspiracy blog (www.volokh.com). "That song makes it seem like a place run by Dilbert's pointy-haired boss."
THE FUTURE OF BLOGGING
As the blogging phenomenon grows, how will it evolve? O'Keefe, for one, predicts that lawyers will someday be able to blog for CLE credits. Others expect blogs to replace or at least diminish the need for law reviews. And still others foresee the day when judges will include notes on blogging in their instructions to juries, and lawyers will buy liability insurance for their blogs.
At Sun, Dillon expects that his company will eventually make blogging a job requirement for its chief counsel. "It's almost perplexing to me that more attorneys don't blog," he says.
Of course, many more of them will. "We're going to see blogs looked at like email or websites," so that attorneys who don't have one will be conspicuous by their absence, predicts O'Keefe.
Meanwhile, Williams, now back from Down Under, continues to be amazed by the reach of his May It Please the Court blog. In fact, in 2007 he received an email from an editor with Kaplan Publishing who, after reading Williams's blog, wondered if he would be interested in writing a book. Next month, Kaplan plans to release that book, How to Get Sued: An Instructional Guide.
Jeanette Borzo is a senior editor at California Lawyer.
Alexandra Brown
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