Wednesday, February 27, 2008

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.

Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down

Been a while since I've posted, but nobody's reading this anyway, so what the hell.
I've tried networking like crazy since before I opened my practice. About a year before I went solo, I joined a local board of lawyers on a local publication that met monthly. Since opening my office, I have joined two Inns of Court chapters in adjoining towns. Each chapter meets once a month (once ten times per year, one 8 times per year).
This seemed superior to attending other types of groups, because the Inns chapters are divided into teams, so you have dinner with the same group of people every month (that is, the ones in your team). I thought this would help develop deeper relationships than going to the kind of monthly get-togethers where you meet different people every month.
Total business revenue generated from referrals after nearly 3 years of meetings: $0.00.
Actually, I don't begrudge any of these guys. At least they were civil and cordial and wished me well.
Lawyers at some other functions, on the other hand, treated me like I had leprosy. Trouble with trying to break into the legal community of a small town, I guess. Business revenue generated from these meetings: $0.00.
I referred a good number of cases to other lawyers when I first opened up. I could have handled a lot of the cases myself, but they weren't in the field of my past experience or desired practice, so I referred them out. I read this was a good way to develop return referrals. Number of return referrals in the following three years: 0.
I talked with a new contact today, who lives and works in a town about 15 miles away. He told me that one of the challenges I faced in my town is that lawyers don't tend to refer cases, but instead keep them for themselves even if they have no experience at all and can't do a good job.
It was nice to hear my impression confirmed by an unsolicited comment.
Things are looking up lately through some other marketing, but I don't want to write about it because I don't want to jinx it. If something pans out from it -- or not -- I'll write about it then.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

I want to be a "Shingular Sensation," Yeah!

Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle inaugurated her "Shingular Sensations" series last week. She says that every week or two, she hopes "to interview a solo or a small firm lawyer who in one way or another represents the best that this genre has to offer," and who can also teach us a thing or two. She starts her series with a profile of Andy Simpson, a lawyer in the Virgin Islands who recently obtained a large damage award against the U.S. Marshals Service in a discrimination case.
Believe me, if I can turn around my practice from its present situation, that may be worthy of a "Shingular Sensation" accolade. That would be cool, except for having to relive again how I got here.
But maybe no one will remember that part. Just like when people heap praise on someone for turning their life around from one addiction or another. (Hell, people heap praise on someone just for entering rehab, let alone completing it.) They remember the turnaround, not the addiction.
I hope that's the way it is for me. But to find out, I need to accomplish the turnaround first.