What will weblogs mean for law firms? It's too early to tell anything for sure, but law firms face a slightly different business reality than most other businesses, and that will affect how law-firm and other legal weblogs develop. There'll be no legal analogue to the Scobleizer. But both firm-sponsored corporate blogs and privately-maintained individual lawyer weblogs could have great positive effects for law firms. Firm-sponsored weblogs showcase firm expertise and keep clients up-to-date on new developments in the law. Meanwhile, independent weblogs humanize the practice of law while demonstrating individuals' talents and participating in worthwhile conversations.
Microsoft may be one of the greatest implementers and beneficiaries of weblogs in business these days, between its MSDN blogs and Robert Scoble. As weblogs begin flourishing in a business context, I wonder more and more what impact they will have on the business of law practice.
Law firms have a different kind of customer relationship and a different kind of culture from what you would find at Microsoft. That reminds me of stories from lawyers who have worked for Microsoft as outside counsel about how they love visiting the Microsoft campus because of its different company culture, but those aren't my stories to tell. Can you imagine a law firm where an associate publicly criticized a controversial product or service the firm had once provided? (Scoble: "SmartTags in IE were evil".) How about where an associate criticizes an unnamed department for making a bad internet marketing decision? (Scoble: "You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed.")
I'm sure Scoble is making more than a few people at Microsoft anxious, but the awareness that these kinds of conversations might be happening at Microsoft plants in me a seed of hope for a company I haven't trusted for ages. (Just a seed, folks. I'm still planning to switch, although Apple's recently aggressive legal strategies have been bothering me.) I hope they'll realize there's an opportunity there.
One reason you won't see this sort of blogging at a law firm is that most of what lawyers do involves the confidences of their clients. I certainly can't say anything that would reveal my client's confidences. If I'm working on litigation, I may not want to disclose aspects of my litigation strategy until a certain time in the case. Most anything a lawyer could say about a case would come across as an attempt to try the case to the general public rather than a jury or the judge — just an attempt "to try the case in the [new] media." In the legal industry, the customer depends on confidential advice tailored to the client's specific situation. This conversation between the service provider and the customer cannot take place in an open forum.
A lawyer-weblogger would also have to take extreme care in criticizing any of the firm's prior work. When it comes down to the strategic decisions a law firm makes, no one can say, "I think we should have argued that losing case differently to the judge," because that's tantamount to saying, "Our client should consider suing us." Even if the perhaps-faulty strategic decision doesn't rise to the level of malpractice (and many bad decisions don't), that's a door you just don't want to open.
I suppose one could criticize the firm's marketing approach, or any of the very few other aspects of the firm that don't directly involve client service, but you had better not criticize your firm's methods of delivering its services. After all, as Andy Havens pointed out last week, your clients don't need you, and they can probably get comparable services from another firm. On the other hand, open criticism of old billing methods might fit well into an effort to show how clients get more better service under a new approach.
I also just haven't met that many law firms where people feel like saying, "This is a great place to work and we do wonderful things for our clients!" Microsoft gets that benefit from its employees' blogs, but most law firms won't. Perhaps that betrays something else wrong with law practice, but I'm not going to go there right now. This topic is more than enough to work on already. I'll just say that if I did find lawyers who were that enthusiastic about their firm, they'd get my attention very quickly.
So large law firms probably won't have the kinds of weblogs where the rank-and-file employees gloat about their amazing employer or where they openly criticize current or past company practices. The weblogs that law firms sponsor will probably be those that are designed to showcase a firm's talent in a particular area, demonstrate that the firm is on top of the latest developments in that field, and signal clients about developments in the law on which clients might want consultation. Off the top of my head, I can think of several large-firm weblogs in this vein that are already off and running: the Holland & Hart Health Care Law Blog, the Davis Wright Tremaine Telecom Law Blog, and Preston Gates Ellis's Electronic Discovery Law. There are more, and I expect they will serve as helpful marketing tools.
I've been focusing on firm-sponsored weblogs, especially in the large-firm world. But the weblogs that attorneys independently keep can also bring incidental benefits to their firms. In their independently-maintained weblogs, writers often participate in cross-blog conversations that thus far tend to exclude the staid corporate weblogs. I think that, as long as attorneys show a modicum of discretion in talking about their work, their personal weblogs can reflect positively on firms large and small. Consider: If you or a client had a civil legal problem arise in Louisiana, whom would you call first? I'd call Ernest Svenson without thinking twice. A case in California? Denise Howell would come to mind right away. And there are many more people whom I'd think of contacting first because of their weblogs, people who I'd trust to handle the matter well or to refer it either within their firms or to someone else qualified. Many webloggers cast a positive light on their partners and employers by their positive presence in the blogosphere.
What's more, I like to know that the lawyers I work with are real human beings with real lives and interests outside the law. The legal weblogs I read most avidly talk about more than law practice. (I could stand to improve my own writing in that respect.) They include glimpses of the author above and beyond that person's role as a practitioner. I deeply appreciate those glimpses, and they tend to promote my trust in the lawyer's integrity and wisdom. I trust the judgment of the well-rounded person more than I trust the person who never leaves the office, and that's also the kind of person I'd rather spend time with.
Now of course, a firm that has outspoken, lousy people for lawyers probably won't stand to gain from its lawyers' blogs, but I'll shed no tears for them. If a firm has to worry about that, it has more serious problems to think about than anything related to blogging.
I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of an imprint blogging makes on this profession. It's an exciting time, and I'm glad to be a small part of it.
Leave a comment