In the news: "Attorney Robert J. Ambrogi heard that blogs are dead in the legal profession. Indeed, he declares legal blogging alive, well and thriving. Since the future is foretold by the new, Ambrogi highlights recently launched blogs, all of which show continuing vitality in the blawgosphere."

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Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 2 September 2010. Copyright 2009.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

This post was written by Simon Chester: "We didn't get around to noticing the Law Library of Congress' new blog In Custodia Legis, which explains its name and aim here.

Today, it featured a new post on the developments at Thomas to make legislative information more accessible. There aren't a lot of comments yet, but it's early days.

The high spots for me were on Social Media and a Legislative Map at the State level, which looks simple but is only simple to use..."

Continue reading this interesting post and reach the active links by clicking on the author's name.

Source: Slaw.ca, 30 August 2010. Reproduced with permission of Simon Fodden, founder of Slaw.

This post was written by Nicole Black: "This week's Daily Record column is entitled "Blogging for lawyers has changed."

A pdf of the article can be found here and my past Daily Record articles can be accessed here.

*****

Blogging for Lawyers Has Changed

When I first wrote about blogging for lawyers in 2006, the benefits were clear-cut.

At the time, publishing a legal blog was one of the only ways to create an effective online presence, and was well worth the effort expended to maintain a blog.

...

Things have changed a bit since then, but a few things remain the same..."

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Source: Sui Generis--a New York law blog, 10 August 2010, reproduced with permission of the author

In the news: "In a world where a claim of expertise is often indistinguishable from actual expertise, it's critical as a lawyer to clearly exhibit subject matter expertise to your target market, notes Timothy B. Corcoran, a senior consultant with Altman Weil. One effective method of establishing such expertise, says Corcoran, is with a blog. He discusses the benefits of blogging and also some of the basic issues that can arise, such as how often to post and whether outsourcing is a good idea."

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Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire. 5 August 2010. Copyright 2009.  ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Subscribe  <http://store.law.com/registration/register.asp?subscribeto=nw>.

This post was written by Bonnie Shucha: "Zimmerman's Legal Research Guide is a tremendous resource for discovering the best resources in specific areas of law. I often use the online encyclopedia when I'm presented with a research question on an unfamiliar topic..."

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Source: WisBlawg, 30 July 2010, reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Lee Rosen: "You'd like to create a blog and post to it regularly. Maybe you already have a blog and you're not posting to it very often. Lots of lawyers get stuck for ideas about content.

Here's the deal: you've got to think about your audience. Most of you are blogging for prospective clients, so think about what prospective clients want to know.

What they most want to know is how you address a problem like their problem. They want to hear stories about recent situations that sound exactly like their situation. They want to know how you solved the problem, what the solution looked like, what it felt like, how long it took to achieve, and what it cost. They want to know how it felt to have the problem, what it felt like as it was being solved, and how it felt after it was resolved..."

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Source:  Divorce Discourse, 26 July 2010. Copyright 2010, Lee Rosen, reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Tom Mighell: "Mitch Jackson and Lisa Wilson are Laguna Hills, California trial attorneys with 20 years worth of trial experience each. They're sharing their knowledge at TrialLawyerTips.com, with posts on making adjustments during trial, non-lawyer trial feedback, telling a powerful story at trial, and jury selection, among others."

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Source: Inter Alia, 16 July 2010, reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Michelle Golden: "I gave a presentation yesterday (hosted by Association for Accounting Marketing, but open to all) on Blogging 101, but it wasn't about "what" a blog is or "why" to have one...it was about "how" to go about setting one up, particularly in a professional firm. 

We covered topic selection, traits that make a successful author, the process in making strategic and technical set-up decisions, and a bit about content and promotion. Here are the documents I shared for the teleseminar. (I was excited that the slide deck was selected by Slideshare's editors as their featured presentation today in the How-To and DIY category!)

If you missed the session, you might still enjoy the handouts, and think about attending the second part on Aug 10 (details below)...

View slide shows and get info on part two by clicking on the link for Michelle's name above.

Source: Golden Practices Blog, 13 July 2010, reproduced with permission of the author.

Podcast description from the site: "Preserving the professional rules with regard to original content reporting and attribution to original sources is the topic on this Lawyer2Lawyer.  Attorneys and co-hosts, J. Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi welcome Alan Schwarz, a prolific sports writer from The New York Times, to discuss the legal and ethical issues pertaining to digital media. They discuss copyright law, the extent to which bloggers should give credit to original reportorial sources and the ethical guidelines bloggers and journalists should be following when it comes to content.

Special thanks to our sponsors, SunTrust, and Clio

Active links and podcast are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Legal Talk Network, 1 July 2010. © 2010 · Legal Talk Network. Reproduced with permission of Scott R. Hess.

This post was written by Jordan Furlong: "Following on earlier posts about Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for law firms, this entry will look at the last of the Big Four social media tools, blogs. In all the recent excitement over the three famous brand options, we sometimes forget that blogs started it all; equally, we can confidently predict that if unforeseen disasters were to befall social networking, blogs would be the last ones standing. As before, this post will look at the use of blogs in the enterprise context, for firms in general rather than for individual lawyers. That's an important distinction for all these tools, but especially for blogs.

I wrote about law firm blogging 2 1/2 years ago, at Law21, and my opinion at that time was that blogs were a mediocre fit for law firms (as opposed to the lawyers inside them):

...So I'm now prepared to say that yes, a law firm can use blogs effectively as a modern marketing, communications and branding tool -- especially since blogs also function very effectively as "conversation starters" in the other three social media networks. But firms still need to follow some rules if they want to continue to extract value from blogs and increase that value over time. Here are some of my recommendations about how a law firm can blog effectively..."

Full text and active links are available by clicking on the author's name.

Source: Law Firm Web Strategy, 23 June 2010. Copyright © 2007 - 2010 Stem Legal Web Enterprises Inc. Reproduced with permission of the author.