Okay, a confession: I am definitely a legal geek. I love lawyers and I love the industry!
Image Courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net/Stuart Miles
In addition to studying legal marketing and business development on a constant basis (as well as every other aspect of marketing and sales for many different industries), I read about law firm management (for Big Law to Solos), legal technology; and I read lawyers’ blogs – the blogs written by attorneys to showcase their knowledge to their audience.
Perhaps you have heard that writing blogs to create authority in your industry or practice area is a worthwhile marketing activity.
It is.
As one of my colleagues in legal marketing, Allison Shields, writes:
“Blogging is an effective way for lawyers to generate traffic; demonstrate their expertise; develop relationships with strategic alliances, referral sources, and potential clients; create resources for clients, and more.”
In fact, there are studies and statistics which prove that lawyers who blog have gotten clients because of their blogging activity. According to the ABA TECHREPORT in 2016, the survey reported
:
“Of those who do personally maintain a legal topic blog, 42% responded that they had a client retain their legal services directly or via referral as a result of their legal topic blogging. Another 27% don’t know.”
And while those numbers are encouraging, I think they could be higher if lawyers decided for whom they are writing.
I have read blogs in almost every area of practice by lawyers who hail from every size firm imaginable. And the one thing that strikes me most is the lack of decision as for whom the attorney is writing. Most attorneys are still writing blogs from the stand point of the attorney or the court. If you are writing a treatise for a law journal, or a brief for your case, then the way you were taught to write in law school is perfect: you are writing for your audience of lawyers and judges.
However, unlike myself, who happens to like citations and being able to read the courts decisions (but that is definitely a result of my training as an attorney), most “normal” humans don’t care about that. And recently, I have been reading more lawyer blogs that seem like law review articles then actual blogs.
In order for your blog to become a successful way to showcase your authority and to obtain all of the benefits listed above, you need to step into the shoes of your reader.
A great way to do this is to imagine your ideal client or referral source is sitting directly in front of you and you are speaking, normally and naturally, to them about the idea about which you are going to write. What would they want to know about that topic?
And then, write from that standpoint.
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