I’ve long appreciated Jordon Furlong’s posts about the future of lawyers, seeing well down the road of technology and marketing.  It’s not that I think the picture is necessarily pretty, but nobody guaranteed that the future of the law would be rosey.

In a post at Stem Legal, Jordon’s day job, he implicitly states that blawging remains a mainstay for the future of law.  I’m down with that, since I don’t do Facebook or LinkedIn, and twitter is for those whose depth of thought is fully captured in 140 characters.  But, like most things, the devil is in the details, and this is where things get a bit shakey.  Jordon lays out the problem:

The principle is that the only reliable way for a law firm to build a lasting positive presence on the web is through the steady and timely production of relevant content: no amount of SEO gamesmanship will outperform good content that builds links with other websites. The theory is that law firms are filled with expert content producers who collectively can generate a tremendous amount of knowledge to fill the growing number of available vehicles (web pages, newsletters, blogs, Twitter, and so forth). The reality is that this is often more difficult to achieve than it sounds.

Jordon then looks for the cause:

It might be that such efforts are unbillable and therefore unattractive to busy lawyers under pressure to produce revenue. It might be that the firm has failed to sufficiently motivate and prioritize lawyer content production. Or it might simply be that lawyers want to practise law and leave the content to non-lawyer staff.

And thereafter, Jordon offers some cures:

Evangelize the benefits of content for increased prestige and prominence — if some lawyers aren’t yet sold on content’s virtues, show them how their competitors get attention and influence from content and encourage them to become “thought leaders” in their areas.

Doesn’t everybody want to be a “thought leader?”  This is where the pitch turns out to be screwball.  There remains a big strike zone for blawging problems, and yet Jordon’s pitches are low and outside.

As it’s already clear that there’s no empirical ROI to be had, legal marketers are forced to engage in Rube Goldberg-like machinations to justify their value, stringing wiggle words together, like “prestige and prominence.” to convey a warm, fuzzy and lucrative sense of worth.  But the hard gap can be found in the failure to recognize certain core problems with the pitch.

Blawging doesn’t bring in business.  Blawging doesn’t increase prestige and prominence.  Blawging doesn’t get attention or influence.  Blawging may do any or all of these things, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that if you blawg, anyone will care.  Take a gander at the thousands of abandoned blawgs, well-intended efforts, and some quite excellent, but just not worth the time or effort.  No amount of hyperbole will overcome the hard reality of empty, abandoned storefronts in the blawgosphere.

Much of the hype is in the form of silly, simplistic arguments offered by those who couldn’t cut it as lawyers so try to make a living as rainmaker coaches.  Smart lawyers laugh off these folks, seeing their tripe as another of the hundred pitches for law firm marketing bucks that come in daily.  We all get them, and that’s why computers have a delete button.

One of the nagging questions that lawyers ask is how it’s possible, given that there are a whole lot of lawyers out there, for all of them to spend their time creating content, producing an unreadable cacophany of lawyerly noise, to stand out sufficiently to make it worth their while.  Nobody wants to deal with this issue.  Obviously, if there are 10,000 blawgs floating in the ether, 9,900 aren’t going to be read.  Maybe more.  These are lousy odds.

Assuming one produces a blawg that gets some attention, how does that translate into being a “thought leader” as opposed to an embarrassment, a waste of time or the darling of readers who will never be capable of retaining your firm?  Again, no good answer.

For this reason, Jordon discusses the perpetual law firm rejoinder to blawging advocates:

From time to time, I’ve been asked (indirectly and otherwise) if in addition to advising law firms on blogging strategies and recommending an editorial direction, I would also be prepared to write the blog entries themselves. My response is always the same: I’m happy to review a draft post or brainstorm ideas, but the whole point of a blog post is that it’s personal and authentic. What is published under your name and your photo must come from you. Avoid “ghostblogging” in the law unless sincerity and trustworthiness aren’t important reputational assets to you.

While lawyers may be willing to give a blawg a go as a marketing tool, they aren’t willing to put their own time into the effort.  Maybe throwing a few bucks at some kid to write some slough on a blawg is worth the money, at least to see where it goes, but their time isn’t going to be wasted.  Jordon properly warns off ghostblogging, though his reasoning fails to capture the essence of the problem:  Put your reputation into the hands of some non-lawyer ghostblogger and you will find the quickest path to embarrassment and disgrace, maybe even some viral humiliation if it’s a slow day.

E-newsletters, sure: articles don’t even need bylines, and they can be professionally written with a lawyer’s input. Twitter feeds under the firm’s logo (but not under a lawyer’s name and photo) can and probably should be manned by professional communications staff; ditto a Facebook page. But blogs are a different animal. Bring in all the help you need to make a law firm or practice group blog timely, engaging and must-read. But the author and the voice of the blog must be the lawyer or lawyers behind it, or else all the relationship-, reputation-, and profile-enhancing aspects of blogging will be wasted, or worse.

Or maybe you’ll expend all these resources and get bupkis?

Make no mistake: your law firm needs lawyer-generated content if it hopes to compete for attention and respect on the Web.

Which leaves lawyers asking the only salient question.  Why do I want to get “attention and respect” on the web?  Until somebody comes up with a darn good answer to that question, blawging will remain a fun and enjoyable pastime for those of us who like writing stuff just in case anyone in the ether cares to read it, after which we can return to our work representing people. 

That the cottage industry of social media legal marketing exists may be troubling, but that lawyers aren’t willing to blindly swing at their pitches is encouraging.  Maybe there’s hope for lawyers yet?