Apparently, Michael Doudna, a criminal defense lawyer in California, heard that there was magic happening on the internet, and he wanted his piece.  All a lawyer needed was a dollar and a dream to hop on the internet train to wealth and success.  He was 52 years old and a lawyer since 1985.  He was no dumb kid scrambling to pretend he was a lawyer, but if there was business flocking to internet lawyers, he wanted some.

Michael Doudna ended up getting less, and more, than he bargained for. 

He hired an internet marketing named  Kenney and Associates in March, 2011, run by a woman named Harmony Kenney.  Whether there were any associates is unknown, but who cared, as long as they can get him on that runaway train filled with clients, the internet.  So Kenney nailed down a wordpress blog at DoudnaLaw. 

The blog went live on the internet in March 2011, at the internet address (URL) “doudnalaw.wordpress.com.” The blog contained information about the firm, including the types of cases Mr. Doudna handled (i.e, criminal defense and bankruptcies), and his contact information, namely his office address, telephone and fax numbers, email address, and URLs.

Michael Doudna wasn’t really interested in being a blogger.  He had no desire to write posts, no passion for joining the conversation.  Doudna wanted what so many people want from the internet, business.  He heard the chorus, just start a blog and the phone will start ringing.  Just start a blog and they world will beat a path to your door.  Just start a blog and become an internet sensation. So he did.
Harmony Kenney was the marketing pro, and the only thing she needed from Doudna was a check. So he sent his check and Kenney did her magic.  Up went the blog and in went the posts.  Not Doudna’s posts, but Kenney’s.

A “Criminal Law News” section was included in the blog. In order to provide interesting content for that section, I reviewed articles that were publically available online, such as those published by the ABA Journal (Online) of the American Bar Association.

Safe, easy and interesting.  Just take the feed from the ABA Journal and you’ve got a blog in minutes.  And you’re on the internet juggernaut headed to overnight success. Kenney would take the ABA Journal story, right a short synopsis, include a link to the original, and voilà, a blog was born and populated with fabulous content.

Let the phone start a’ringing.

By mid-April, 2011, I had not received any new business as result of the blog. I was, however, incurring fees by KA for maintaining the blog. Therefore, on or about April 14, 2011 I cancelled the KA’s services referable to the blog.

Nothing. Nada. Zip, zero, zilch. Certainly the posts were interesting, as they were merely rehashes of the ABA Journal, the motherload of whitebread fascination.  The blog contained all the salient information, so it’s not like the waiting throngs of clients didn’t know where to find Michael Doudna.  And yet, not a single new case came across the interwebz.

In fairness, it would appear that the blog was live for a grand total of six weeks at most by the time he decided to pull the plug.  While the whispers in the courthouse hallway said that he should be able to buy a new Mercedes by then, six weeks really isn’t a very long time to establish a blog.  He expected to see something, anything, come from the internet magic, and yet the phone didn’t ring at all. Not even once.

The problem was that the silence of the phone was exacerbated by the appearance of the bills for the services rendered.  No money coming in, but definitely money going out.  This is where the cheerleaders’ talk of the incalculability of an ROI for blogging hits a lawyer square in the face, as the warm and fuzzy feeling he gets from the vast array of benefits of blogging, none of which translate into a monetary value, doesn’t make the marketer’s bill any easier to pay.

And so Michael Doudna, having given it the best six weeks of his life, pulled the plug.

Heck, it was worth a try, right?  So he’s out a few bucks, but at least the internet train didn’t leave the station without him.  He rode it and learned it went nowhere, but there will be no shame when the guys chat over beers about how you have to give it the old law school try.

But this really isn’t a story about how California criminal defense lawyer Michael Doudna got sucked into blogging, or internet marketing, and threw some money into the toilet and flushed.  It’s not about the failure of the internet to be that magic bullet all the cheerleaders yell about.  It’s not about the lack of ROI in blogging,  It’s not about how marketers sell snake oil, or how marketing isn’t the answer.

Harmony Kenney’s internet marketing business folded right after Doudna pulled the plug.  But this isn’t a post about how internet marketers may sell themselves as winners, as the magicians who make the magic of the internet happen.  Whether Kenney and Associates had any other customers isn’t known, but losing Doudna certainly didn’t help Harmony.  But this post isn’t about Harmony.

It seems that Harmony Kenney, when glomming on the ABA Journal’s content to make Michael Doudna’s blog as interesting as possible, happened on a story on April 4, 2011.

On or about April 8, 2011, I drafted a synopsis of the ABA Journal article and posted it to Mr. Doudna ‘s blog, under the title: “D.C. ‘s Lawyer’s Inexperience Obvious; Judge Declares Mistrial” .

On May 18, 2011, Michael Doudna learned that he had been named as a defendant in Rakofsky v. Internet.  It seems like the magic bullet hit Doudna right between the eyes.  And that’s what this post is all about.