Ah, the ego validation that blawgers so crave.  The email just arrived, informing me that SJ has been selected as one of the Top 30 Law Blogs of 2013! Woo hoo!!!  I want to thank the Academy…oh, wait.  It’s not from the Academy. Not the Pulitzers. Not even the ABA Journal.

It’s from Best Degree Programs dot org, that deeply meaningful website that sends out the weekly inane infographics because they love us blawgers so very much and want to help us. Just please, please, include the backlink.  But the infographic scam can only work so many times before the flawgers figure out that it’s really not a matter of deep appreciation, but just your basic backlink scam. 

And so, every once in a while, they put together a “Best of” list. It’s brilliant, as it plays on the foremost issue in the minds of so many in the blawgosphere: Do they love me? Plus, they give you a really cool badge.

Impressive, right? And you have to work really hard to eliminate the code that installs the backlink no matter how often you delete it, because there is nothing more important to being the best than good backlink code.

Then comes the real question, how many blawgers will bite on this scam and post their deep appreciation for the important recognition on their blawgs? Ego much? Validation? Patsy?

Besides  Lat at ATL (who fell for it once but was inexplicably left off the list this time) and lawprofs, who are honored by an award given by Busy Bee Nursery School, who will bite? I have some suspicions, and will check tomorrow to see which “winners” are humbled by the great honor.

But since making fun of such a transparent ego play isn’t enough to fill me up, it’s time for dessert.

While In San Francisco to speak at the monthly San Francisco LMA luncheon on Website trends (with Barbara Abulafia, Keker & Van Nest, Jeff Yerkey, Right Hat and Per Casey, Tenrec), my colleague Keith Wewe, another couple and I were hosted by  Elizabeth Lampert for dinner at Twenty-Five Lusk. 

[I have no clue who all these LMA attendee types are, but they must be impressive in the legal marketing world since the post’s writer, Deborah McMurray, felt them worthy of some butt-kissing mention.]

Twenty-Five Lusk features a dessert called “Textures and Chaos” that lists only four ingredients on the menu, but clearly had several more (as you can see by the photo below).  This photo can’t begin to communicate the plated disaster that was proudly delivered to our table. 

 
Perhaps, in a desire to elevate the participation among his team (and create a sense of inclusion), the chef tried crowd-sourcing to create this dessert – where each member of the kitchen staff added a favorite ingredient – and, voila! – Textures and Chaos was born.  The result was so poorly conceived and executed that I was inspired to write about it.  It’s not only seriously ugly, but the tastes were as cacophonous as 5 p.m. rush hour in New York.

Why do I ask you to endure this nonsense? Stay with me. There’s a payoff. I promise.

What can lawyers learn from this? 

Not to order dessert at Lusk?

Firm strategy should start back in the kitchen-equivalent (not at the dinner table) and be a thoughtful consideration of audiences, markets, geographic reach, competition, threats and opportunities that are just cresting over the horizon.  This positioning stake in the ground informs what practice and industry teams could do, and what individual lawyers on those teams can do.  When well-intentioned, but overly independent lawyers go off and create their own Internet presence with no regard for their law firm, they miss the most important advantage available to them – leveraging the investments (strategy, time, reputation and money) made by the mother ship.

When many lawyers in a firm do their own thing without regard for the firm and practice group strategies, the result won’t be far away from “Textures and Chaos.”

True ’nuff. So instead of a result like “Textures and Chaos,” you can shoot for the focused, cohesive if untasty result achieved by Best Degree Programs.



Bon appétit!