To Blog or Not to Blog

I wrote most of this post about a month ago, when it looked like my blog was actually going to bear some fruit. But I can tell you that in that short time I have somewhat soured on blogging.

I work damn hard on my professional blog (I don't mean this one). I can't spend just 20 minutes a day on it like some law bloggers because I cannot "blog my work" -- it's not the nature of my blog.

So anyway, here is what I started writing about a month ago. I'm not sure I believe it any longer, for reasons I'll explain at the end.

Start reading a blog called Real Lawyers Have Blogs. The guy who writes it (and I believe founded the company Lexblog), Kevin O'Keefe, is considered an internet marketing sensation and he knows what he's talking about. There's reams of advice over there.

This post is going to give you some of my personal experience. Not for this blog, obviously, which isn't even two weeks old. No, this post concerns my professional, substantive law blog, which is less than a year old -- and which, in order to retain my anonymity, I cannot name, since my real name obviously appears on my professional blog.

I noticed that my blog started gaining more traffic as time went on, and when I looked at referral sources, I saw that most of it was from Google searches, and that a lot of the traffic was to older posts. Those two factors suggest that your traffic will naturally go up as the number of posts accumulates because there are now more Google searches that will turn up posts on your blog. You may be frustrated early on that non one seems to be reading your blog. Keep with it, and you will see the traffic grow.

A blog opens a relationship with your prospective clients and referral sources. Like all networking relationships, it takes time for it to bear fruit.

Blogging can be a little intimidating. Everyone that tells you to start one tells you to do so at least in part because a blogging on a particular area of the law connotes expertise in that area, and maybe you don't feel like an expert because you're going solo right out of law school or to start practice in a new area of the law. But you can't let that show. Who cares if you say something that people won't agree with. Lawyers disagree all the time. You're all smart enough to make sense most of the time, so don't be intimidated about blogging.

In fact, maybe you are going solo specifically to move into a new practice area. So you might start substantive blogging even BEFORE you open your practice. Your blog is probably portable -- as long as yours is the name on the blog and you do no more than describe yourself as an employee, you might be able to take your blog with you. I think Carolyn Elefant's new book, Solo by Choice, has a chapter on that subject.

My own professional blog is about nine months old. It took several months before it brought in a client inquiry, and it has brought in a total of 20 or so client inquiries, none of which I could take because none of them had any money. But the inquiries came, and they have lately increased. So I think the earlier, the better.

By the time you go solo, you will have found your true blogging voice and will be in fine form to announce your new solo status on the blog.

So, in ten months of blogging, I have converted exactly ZERO inquiries from it into paying clients because NONE OF THEM HAD ANY MONEY.

What's changed since I started this post a month ago is that I have finally become fed up with people expecting me to work for remotely distant, improbable deferred compensation. It is quite amazing to me that someone can sit in front of my desk, present their case, and then expect me to take it for free or for deferred compensation that has a very dim chance of materializing.

Do these people do this with their doctors? Veterinarians? Grocers? Gardeners? I doubt it. But somehow they think that when they need a service where there is a lot of money at stake, they should not be expected to pay anything up front or even pay as they go.

I suppose it is fallout from all of the personal injury advertising you see. But I am in a field that is not often suitable for contingency fees.

In any event, I am now convinced that the only thing I have accomplished with my blog is to educate other lawyers in my field, convince lawyers in other fields that they can do what I do without hiring me (when I am actually trying to convince them that they need my expertise), and attract penniless clients to my office like bees to honey. I'm getting rather tired of it.

So maybe one part of my advice stands: read the blogs about law blogging. Maybe you'll pick up some tips that will help you avoid my predicament. But honest to God, I have followed a lot of that advice myself, and it has gotten me nowhere.

I'm tired of hearing from people with no money. Do us both a favor. If you can't pay me, don't call me. As this post drags on, I realize that people with no money deserve their own post, so I'll stop here and get started on a new post.