What if you took all of the lawyer blogs within a given region, say Florida, and mixed them into a single location online? Well, ta-da! :) Let me introduce you to my latest RSS feed mixing effort – the Florida Lawyers Blog Watch.

I’ve wanted to create a website like this for a while. Something that tracks the latest lawyer blog commentary, but on a regional basis. Want to know what’s on the minds of Florida lawyers? This site will show you about three days worth of current topics, and more importantly, offers a quick 2-minute scan of the day’s headlines.

For me, publishing & mixing are the untold value of RSS. As I mentioned in a recent post, RSS needs to expand its boundries from the personal feed reader and create new context by placing sources together. I’m also a big believer in Author credit, so you’ll notice the blogroll on the right side of the website offers direct links to each of the Florida lawyer blogs the site tracks.

I want to thank Stem client and Florida lawyer Ron Chapman. Ron will serve as my regional lookout for any new lawyer blogs coming online, and also as a co-contact point for those wanting to be added to the site.

And finally, I’d like to point out that the full-text RSS feed for those blogs combined is available here. If you need to listen to what’s happening in Florida law and have an RSS reader, it’s an easy subscription choice. If you really wanted to get fancy, try monitoring specific topics or keywords by filtering the feed with a product like Feedrinse. Wonderful tool, IMO.

Hope everyone enjoys this website. A mobile version is in the works!

I love guerrilla marketing like Larry Bodine love’s guerrilla marketing. Time permitting, drop by Larry’s blog and check out some of the examples he’s just posted.

Larry’s also posted a podcast (mp3) recently that gives a great overview of why lawyers should invest their time marketing. Now I’m sure Larry would admit there’s nothing earth shattering about the interview he gave. However, I did think many of his questions were thought provoking, and especially for those lawyers that just can’t seem to justify investing the time required.

So here’s my guerrilla marketing idea … Larry should upload this podcast to 20 or 30 Ipods, and then send it parcel-post to the Marketing Directors of the firms he would most like to work with!

Or, what if some in-house CMOs did this themselves with a series of marketing training podcasts? If a travel schedule could be obtained for the firm’s attorneys, every business trip could also be a marketing training trip! Would that not be effective and well received?

I’ve always held the concept of guerrilla marketing in high regard. It’s a form of marketing that’s both creative & innovative. And done well, it can make a long lasting impression. I’d love to see more law firm marketing that fits this description.

And if there are legal marketers out there doing this kind of stuff already, please drop me a note. I’m more than willing to blog about this kind of stuff. I just think its fantastic!

You may have noticed all the new websites recently – LegalPubs.ca, Lawblogs.ca, the Clawbies. While mostly associated with the Canadian legal market, there’s also larger long-term goal in play here: to develop quality legal web content. This network will not remain entirely Canadian, and the number of websites will not stop at five. My goal for Stem is to expand this group of sites to 12 by the end of the first year of operations, in August/08.

So to that end, I offer a new page that defines Stem‘s legal web publishing network.

It’s no secret that I have an open view to web publishing and advertising. I don’t care much for conceptual barriers when it comes to developing content online. Whether a concept evolves from me directly, working with a client, partnering, advertising, or integrated with SEO, the end purpose is the same. You must do something of substance to get noticed online (ie. the attention economy), and how that occurs really doesn’t matter.

These additions reflect my wider vision for Stem, and also how I believe web marketing will be done in the future. Word of mouth advertising can have a huge impact; and while I am contractually protected from having to endorse clients and their projects, it’s often very easy for me to do. Mostly because I am advising or developing with the client, rather than being an outside third party. When you’ve been working for months on a site, or developing a strategy for someone, supporting the end product with an endorsement isn’t unreasonable. It’s very natural.

I would also direct your attention to the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog which is now sporting Stem’s first featured client, BC Legislation service Quickscribe.

Is this advertising? Well, yes and no. While I am promoting Quickscribe’s services, my endorsement is based on months of talking strategy with Mike Pasta, Quickscribe’s President. And back in October when I blogged about Mike’s Legislative RSS product, I did so because I believe it’s world class!

Advertising? Endorsements? Marketing with quality content? Yes friends, the lines are blurring. It needs to be done with the audience’s interests in mind. But then again, good quality advertising is always in that realm, without offending anyone.

And again, it must always be backed with substance.

One of the biggest areas of unexplored territory in legal web marketing these days is the power of RSS, or real simple syndication.

I’ve written in the past on the use of RSS in law firms (see here and here), and how those in the legal industry can be better consumers of information using this technology. However, for those of us on the marketing side of things, the best opportunities for RSS right now are in publishing, not consuming.

A great example, Infolaw’s Nick Holmes over in the UK has mixed together the content of 13 different family law blogs into a single feed using Yahoo Pipes. Now, Nick has followed up in a comment saying this was ‘no big deal’, but I’ll tell you what is a big deal: the opportunity this type of feed mixing offers to law firms and their web presence.

Many law firms are slowly adopting and getting onto the RSS bandwagon. And that’s great! For firms that don’t currently offer it, I hope there’s a plan in place to syndicate soon. I guarantee you’ll be hearing a lot more about RSS in 2008.

Now that said, once you do have your content RSS enabled, the next obvious question is — what are you going to do with it?

Your firm website will offer those feeds, probably running through a tracking service like Feedburner to get a subscriber count. But then what?

This is where the mixing that Nick has done comes in. For another example, check out Stem’s feed mix of Canadian legal publications; it was created using Yahoo pipes too. The power comes from taking these feeds and combining (or mixing) them. Content can take a completely different flavour, and be directed at a completely different audience when using this technique.

And most important, be automated to extend the firm’s content reach with no further effort by lawyers or staff!

Law firms frequently put together cross-disciplinary service groups, either for a target industry, or a specific client. Imagine being able to take the various online commentary from your contributing internal groups, and combine it to create a new dedicated product. Or, imagine being able to filter everything the firm publishes for the keyword “environment” and publish it to a new online location, and then directing those clients interested in environmental issues.

For me, that’s why law firms should take notice. RSS is easy, it’s cheap, and is probably the most flexible new technology the web currently has to offer.

Following up on a Stem news item I just posted, I’d like to offer a blogging welcome to Florida criminal lawyer Ron Chapman. Ron became a Stem client just after Christmas, and we’ve been slowly retooling some of the aspects of his blog & website.

Here’s a short snippet about Ron’s practice:

About Ronald Chapman, P.A.: Since 1990, Mr. Chapman’s law firm has represented those who have been accused of committing crimes in both State and Federal Courts within the State of Florida. Mr. Chapman is a sole practitioner whose service areas include violent crimes, DUI offenses, drug offenses, domestic violence, Sentencing & Appeals and criminal records services.

Ron is also new law blogger, and a Lexblog customer. One of the big challenges we’re going to tackle is how to mix traditional law firm website features with blogging and providing legal commentary. And to that end, I think what we’re doing is somewhat unique. Working within the lexblog platform, we’re trying to integrate some of the traditional service-based website features, but, still use the blog as the public front-end of the website.

As an example, one of the first things we’ve done is to ‘beef up’ Ron’s service pages. Why? Well, blog commentary is great, but you still need to explain to people what services you offer. These pages aren’t yet exhaustive in describing Ron’s practice, but it’s a start.

How successful will we be? Hard to say at this point, but I’ve got high hopes. We’ll be using the same techniques as I did with the Stem site. You see, not only is this blog running off blog software, but Stem’s principle website is too – entirely built on WordPress. This time, we’ll be using Lexblog’s platform, and hopefully in a month or two, we’ll have Ron’s phone ringing off the hook. :)

So a big welcome to Ron! And thanks for agreeing to be a case study.

Update: I’ve added some related thoughts to this post over at the VLLB.

I’ve been having a lot of fun watching the comments & blog responses from the Clawbies. Check out some of the responses:

• Michael Geist
• Rob Hyndman
• Connie Crosby
• Slaw
• Law is Cool
• Garry Wise
• Library Boy
• Doug Cornelius
• Jason Eiseman
• Lo-Fi Librarian
• Moin Yahya
• David Fraser
• Dennis Kennedy
• Dan Michaluk
• Kevin O’Keefe’s quicklinks – which he picked up minutes after I announced the new site.
• Did I miss anyone?

Gary Wise & Connie Crosby both made the suggestion of blog award badges, which are now available. I’ve added some cut-n-paste code on the right-hand side of the website. And the truth be known, the badge’s design in actually Gary’s. I simply put the pieces together from the original logo files which were a bit higher resolution.

Thanks to everyone for the warm reception. Can’t wait for ’08!