The ABA Journal’s Blawg 100
The latest issue of the ABA Journal ranks the top 100 law-related blogs — the Blawg 100.
And guess what? You can cast your vote for your favorite blawg out of the 100 selected by the ABA Journal. Just visit this page, select a blog from any of 12 categories, and vote for it.
Guess what else? There’s not one blog published by a large law firm on the list.
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One law-related blog that has absolutely no chance of making this list is AdvertisingLaw.com, published by Arent Fox.
Here’s how its latest post looks:
Compare that to this recent shot from Above the Law, the #1 blawg:
Quite a difference in the legibility of the two, wouldn’t you say?
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When it comes to print publications, once you’ve produced the copies, you’re done, at least with one issue. When it comes to blogs and web sites and so on, it’s different. There’s regular maintenance.
If your firm isn’t commited to maintaining a blog — to doing the things that are needed to attract and hold an audience — then it shouldn’t start one.
If your firm does start a blog, but then abandons it, be sure to yank it before too much time has passed.
You don’t want people to discover it several years after it’s been abandoned. Not if you want your firm to appear like it’s on top of things.
6 December 2007 at 3:51
Very few big firms have blogs. But there is certainly at least one on the list:
AkinGump publishes SCOTUSblog.
6 December 2007 at 8:33
I’ve found quite a number of big firms with blogs, but most of them are just a listing of client alerts.
And I wonder: why do big firms publish blogs? what do they hope to gain? who do they hope to attract/influence/impress?
I believe that old adage applies: if you’re not going to do it right, why do it at all?
A blog could, methinks, do a firm more harm than good.
6 December 2007 at 10:25
Big firms and small firms alike publish lousy blogs. They are a very poor form of self-promotion, since no one will ever link to them and, therefore, few will ever find what was written.
Websites are for self-promotion.
Blogs are for writing.
6 December 2007 at 10:34
I agree. You can’t just take your client alerts and newsletters, publish them in a blog, and expect good results.
What happened, methinks, is that the buzz about blogs got some law firm marketeers to salivate over the prospects.
But following a trend is hardly the same as taking advantage of it.