This morning Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog and I were talking about legal blogs and the blog development world. (LexBlog is one of the leaders in legal blog development) During our conversation Kevin said something worth repeating:
In the past it used to be the large law firms with the biggest PR budgets that would get the work. Now with blogs, it's the smart folks who really know their stuff getting all the attention.One case in point is Dan Harris and his China Law Blog (Dan's a client). Dan doesn't spend much (if anything) on traditional PR or marketing, yet he is now known as one of the leading experts on China and is quoted frequently by the mainstream media.
Of course this doesn't just apply to legal blogs. Just about any knowledge-based industry is seeing the same power shifts. If you're an expert, where is your blog?
Visitor Comments
I agree that blogs get a lot of attention, but there are also big firm versus small firm dynamics at work. I got a call a few months ago at 4 pm from a National news network who wanted to know if I could go on the air the next morning at 6 am to talk about an international law issue. I said yes and was there the next day. I asked how they got my name and they told me that a big firm New York lawyer who they initially called suggested me because he would not be able to go on with such short notice because he would need his firm's approval.
The reality is that the big firms have such a large reach that they are rightfully afraid to say anything for fear of offending someone. My firm could offend 99.9% of the world and still have plenty of business to keep us busy.
This is not in any way a bad reflection on the big firms, since I fully understand their thinking on these things.
PS -- Always a good idea to imply that your clients are smart.
Posted by: China Law Blog | October 12, 2006 6:20 PM
Dan's right about this.
Also gives smaller firms edge with blogs. Talked with lawyer earlier this week who loved idea of blogs but realized in their firm they would never work. All outgoing material needed to be vetted at multiple levels, in same cases with senior management.
Posted by: Kevin OKeefe | October 12, 2006 10:03 PM
Josh,
It's indeed true that working with PR for a big law firm needs careful considerations regarding what you can say and not say. But from my perspective there still has to be room to experiment with blogs, RSS etc.
Linklaters have been using RSS feeds in Sweden since Nov 2004 and have been blogging for 16 months. Everything we try isn't a huge success, but pioneers need to risk failure.
Admittedly, there's an advantage of working in a language that only 9 million people speak :)
Posted by: Hans K | October 13, 2006 10:48 AM