Doug Cornelius .com

The national Law Journal has an article on how law students landed jobs by blogging: Blogging may be ticket to a job (subscription may be required).

For students, it allows potential employers to see their writing ability and knowledge about a subject. It also shows that the student is “motivated, innovative and takes initiative.”

Ron Friedmann of Prism Consulting put together an excellent presentation on why law firms should use blogs: Blogging: Why the Fuss?

I have been trying to convince my marketing group to convert some of publications into blogs. The hang up seems to be trying to put together a blogging policy and branding (beyond the typical concerns about learning a new technology and attorney concerns).

I set up an example blog using Blogger in a few minutes and transfered over a substantial amount of content in a few minutes. Since it was Blogger it was free.

Cheap and easy is my kind of project.

The New Jersey Law Journal is reporting that An Insurance company refused to cover a law firm’s blog.

As Ron Friedmann reported, there is a distinct lack of blogs produced by large US Law firms. Anecdotally, most law blogs (blawgs?) I find are produced by smaller firms.

There are the advertising limitations on law firms that impacts blogs. Bar overseers are struggling with how to deal with the web presence of law firms and how they should be treated.

I understand the liability concerns that come with attaching the firm’s brand to a blog: the possibility of the blog being considered legal advice or the inadvertent creation of a lawyer-client relationship.

There is also a question of removing posts that are no longer valid due to changes in law or are found to be inaccurate.

Ultimately, the biggest problem with blogs is getting lawyers to contribute to them. As with all knowledge management tools, content is king. Convincing a lawyer to make contributions on regular basis will be a difficult task.

Nonetheless, my firm is working on a blogging policy and has identified one of its regular publications for a blog pilot. This publication should be an excellent fit since it is published weekly and is full of substantive content. The process is already in place for a weekly mass email of the publication as a PDF file. Conversion to a blog will give it a much broader audience.

Ron Friedman of Prism Legal Consulting, Inc. and Joy London of Excited Utterances compiled a directory of Large US law firms with firm-branded blogs or RSS – feeds.

Not very many.