A theme amongst social media pseudo-gurus is that it works, but only if a lawyer identifies a peculiar, underserved, niche of the law. 

Even if your skills and abilities allow you to practice broadly, you need to market yourself very narrowly. Here are a few great examples: 

• Mixed Martial Arts Law Blog
• Spatial Law and Policy (that’s right, spatial as in outer space)
• Furniture Law

Now if you have a passion for mixed martial arts law (and who doesn’t?), then this could be sound advice.  The problem is that the “advice” is worthless, bordering on idiotic, if outer space law isn’t your thing.  The gurus might be aware of this is they were lawyers.  Not lawyers in the sense that they have a license to practice law, but lawyers in the sense of being a member of a learned profession. 

Marketing philosopher Seth Godin expressed the problem this way.

If you want something done, perhaps you would ask a professional to do it. Someone who costs a lot but is worth more than they charge. Someone who shows up even when she doesn’t feel like it. Someone who stands behind her work, gets better over time and is quite serious indeed about the transaction.

Or perhaps you could hire a passionate amateur. That’s a forum leader doing it for love, not money. An obsessive in love with the craft. A talented person willing to trade income for the chance to do what he loves, with freedom.

Please, though, don’t hire someone who just thinks it’s a job.

While the amateur in his post may not apply to this situation, his point remains.  It’s better to have someone who cares than someone who couldn’t care less.  Better still to have someone who cares and has the ability to perform.

Don’t look to the verbiage to guide you.  The pseudo-gurus use language that conveys the impression of substance, often stealing substantive words from some other use and inserting them in a manner that renders them utterly meaningless.  They love this stuff so much that others jump on board, repeat the pointless words as if its lack of meaning suggests depth of thought.  Then others applaud them, express how amazing their deep thoughts are and bask in their reflected awesomeness.

These folks speak to people who want jobs and call them professionals.  They aren’t professionals.  Professionals don’t change direction on a dime to follow the possibility of making a quick buck. 

Most lawyers enter the profession for a reason, with a goal in mind.  They want to practice law.  Perhaps they want to prosecute the accused or defend them, but there is a practice area that draws them in and holds their interest.  Perhaps they just want to help people, itself a worthy goal.  Perhaps they enjoy the thrill of the megadeal or the closing argument.  What it’s not about is getting a paycheck.  If that was the case, they would do far better to contract with a factory in China to make women’s dresses, and save a fortune on law school tuition.

But if you weren’t making the big bucks you hoped for as a public defender, would you switch gears and become a furniture lawyer?  Not because you’re into the intricacies of hard wood and eight-way-tied-springs, but because there was a big opening in the blawgosphere for furniture law and you have the chance to fill it?

There are quite a few new criminal defense lawyers that come around here, and flit about twitter, who are full of exuberance about their chosen legal niche.  It’s really pretty cool to see so much interest and zeal, though I can’t help but wonder what they’ll be doing 20 years from now.  No doubt most will assure me that they will be right in the thick of criminal defense, but experience suggests that for some, criminal defense will be nothing more than a distant memory.  It happens.  Things change.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.

It may be that lawyers find themselves gravitating to other practice areas, some due to fortuitous circumstance and others due to necessity.  Some will find a different niche more interesting, satisfying or worthwhile.  All of these are perfectly fine reasons to hitch your wagon to an area of law.

But if you decide tomorrow to become a mixed martial arts lawyer because there’s an empty hole in the blawgosphere that some social media pseudo-guru suggests you can fill, then you do so merely to try to grab a quick buck.  You may be a lawyer, but you aren’t a professional.   For you, it’s just a job, and as Godin says, “don’t hire someone who just thinks it’s a job.”

The path to wealth and fame as a lawyer isn’t by finding an empty hole, no matter what proponents of social media tell you.  It’s by wanting to fill that hole.