Every time we post a roundup of new additions to Lawblogs.ca, we wonder if there’s a future Clawbies winner among them. Well, in today’s list, we’ve included several 2012 winners and finalists who were added since our last roundup or who only recently popped up on our radar, thanks to nominations from other Canadian law bloggers.

Enjoy this selection of new additions to the Canadian Law Blogs Directory – now at more than 400 blogs, about 10 times the number on Steve’s original list back in 2005!

• Vancouver Tech Law Blog (Jacob Kojfman)
• The Law of Privacy in Canada Blog (Borden Ladner Gervais)
• Droit-Inc.com
• Darryl Singer’s Blog
  
• Faits et Causes
  
• Offside: A Sports Law Blog (Eric Macramalla)
  
• SlawTips
• Green Valentine (Andrea Verwey)
  
• Yves Faguy
• The Sibling Fight (Charles Ticker)
  
• The Lean Law Firm (Gimbal Canada)
  
• SOQUIJ | Le Blogue
• Case in Point (Hicks Morley)
  
• Not for Profit and Charity Law in Canada Blog (Borden Ladner Gervais)

As always, blogs not already listed in the directory can be submitted here – please check the submission guidelines before you submit!

Over at the companion blog to his new book, Blogging in One Hour for Lawyers, Ernie Svenson has been running a great series called “Five Questions for a Law Blogger“. The standard five questions are:

1. Have there been any unexpected benefits to blogging, and if so, what are they?
2. What unexpected challenges did you find in blogging?
3. What did you envision would happen when you first started blogging?
4. Given what you know now about blogging, what advice would you give to lawyers contemplating taking the plunge?
5. If you were going to start this over again, what things might you do differently?

Legal bloggers Tom Mighell (Inter Alia), Jeff Richardson (iPhone JD), Molly DiBianca (Delaware Employment Law Blog), Townsend Myers (NOLA Criminal Law) share their experiences candidly.

There are some great lessons to be learned from these seasoned pros. Like, expect the unexpected:

“I had no idea that 10 years later, I would have written several books, appeared just about all over the country speaking to lawyers on technology issues, and become involved with a great group of law practice management experts.  I just thought I would get more readers for my newsletter.”

-Tom Mighell

Approach blogging authentically and enthusiastically:

“Don’t do it unless you have a narrow focus that you are interested in.  Adding posts on a regular schedule is difficult and will never be worth it if you don’t have a passion for what you are doing.  Don’t just start a blog for the sake of starting a blog.”

-Jeff Richardson

“Understand the medium before you try to lay claim to it.  By this, I mean that no one should write a blog unless he is a loyal blog reader.  It’s always easy to spot a blogger who doesn’t read blogs because they make the mistakes and missteps of a amateur. That image will not help you develop a readership and certainly won’t help you get new clients.”

-Molly DiBianca

Be realistic about the time commitment:

“Time, time, time. Plain and simple. Having a full time job, then trying to find time to blog about your full time job is tough.”

-Townsend Myers

But try to look on the bright side:

“I suppose the other challenge is keeping up with all of the excellent blogs in my practice area.  When I started my blog, there were about 50 high-quality blogs written by employment lawyers. Today, there are three times that, with more cropping up ever day. Having more resources and more great people to meet is a problem I think I can live with.”

-Molly DiBianca

I really hope Ernie continues with this series; the responses so far have been fascinating.

This past week, Global Web Index (GWI) released its December 2012 numbers for active users per social platform.  As expected Facebook owns the top spot with over 50% of global internet users actively engaged in their service.  The more interesting development, however, was the number of Google Plus (G+) active users surpassing the same count on Twitter. Check out the following graph:

Does that mean Twitter’s growth has slowed? Or is on the decline? Not at all. According to GWI, Twitter continues to open new accounts at the fastest rate of all the networks — particularly in the US, where growth is over double what we have here in Canada:

Now, here’s some perspective: Websites and social ecosystems like these come and go. The internet is constantly changing — not like it was 10 years ago, and different again in 10 years time. (You know this, I know.) So the challenge when building your firm’s online presence is to find your ‘window for participation‘ with these varying services. Maybe you can ‘do them all’, and maybe you have to prioritize your participation; but buy-in early enough to be an early adopter. Maximize the firm’s participation in that service before its time has passed. Getting there a year ahead of your competition is a real advantage.

This idea of a participation window was the basis for my advice back in summer 2011 on Attorney at Work, re: Google+.  Facebook is at the top now; but if one was betting on the future, G+ and Twitter have a lot more upside — for brands generally, and for law firms.

It never ceases to amaze us how quickly January flies by! This month has been a great one for us at Stem: we just wrapped up our second-ever company retreat, two days of brainstorming, strategizing and of course, some fun stuff thrown in for good measure. We thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent together in person – something that doesn’t happen very often for a company with team members in four different cities! Our clients have been busy, too – take a look at what they’ve been up to over the past month:

• Cloud-based legal practice management software Clio announced the latest Clio Rewards program winners, noted the State Bar of Arizona has joined their affinity program, and blogged another #GoneClio customer profile. Oh, and one other little thing: at LegalTech New York, Themis Solutions unveiled phase one of Clio’s first ground-up redesign since its launch nearly five years ago. Congratulations!
• Fitness was the theme at Small Firm Innovation this month, with posts on the challenges of exercise for home office lawyers, devices to facilitate your fitness tracking, and using the Lose It! app to stick to your diet.  Next month’s theme is “defining customer service for your law firm”, and Gwynne Monahan welcomes submissions on the topic.
• BC legal support services provider Dye & Durham announced an upcoming webinar on the new Family Law Act. Participants are eligible for 2.0 CPD credits from the Law Society of BC. For more information, see the webinar flyer.
• Thorsteinssons tax lawyer Paul Gibney spoke on non-resident trusts at the 2013 CIBC Wealth Advisory Services National Conference; on the firm’s tax blog, Thomas McDonnell reflected on “fairness” in tax rulings; and the firm issued a tax alert on the CRA’s recent comments on eligibility for Non-Profit Organization status.
• Chilliwack, BC lawyer Daniel Sorensen, who practises with Waterstone’s Employment Law practice group, wrote about British Columbia’s newest statutory holiday, Family Day, and what employers and employees need to know about it.
• Oshawa area law firm Russell Alexander Collaborative Family Lawyers announced they’ve formed a working group with other local professionals to bring a Collaborative Practice Group to the Lindsay/Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario.
• On his FamilyLLB blog, Russell Alexander posted a video on the top three things Canadian parents should know about passports for children.
• Students at London, Ontario law firm Harrison Pensa blogged up a storm, with posts on getting involved in community legal aid, why law schools should offer legal marketing and practice management courses, and which skills are most important to develop in law school.
• Product injury firm Hissey Kientz created a dialysis resource guide, discussed cranial birth defects related to Zoloft, and added information on Stryker and BioMet hip replacements.
• New Jersey DWI attorney John Marshall explored whether a cash incentive program similar to one in Florida could help New Jersey police with drunk driving enforcement.
• Matthew Kraemer of Okanagan law firm Pushor Mitchell was named to the board of directors of the Westbank & District Chamber of Commerce (soon to be renamed the Greater Westside Board of Trade).
• The Canadian Corporate Counsel Association (CCCA) announced the keynote speakers for its annual Spring Conference in Toronto this April 14th to 16th: Fortune 500 veteran and past General Counsel of Starbucks Coffee Company, Paula Boggs, and the Judge Advocate General of the Canadian Forces, Major-General Blaise Cathcart, CD. Check out the conference microsite for more details.

That’s all for now, but be sure to check out what Stem’s been up to over the last little while, and we’ll see you again next month with more client news.

I’ve spent some time recently trying to contemplate the upcoming battle between Facebook and Google for the social search market — specifically, whether either company will have substantial influence on giving relevant exposure to law firm services.

To start, let me clarify my understanding of “social search” and the differing approaches taken to it by each company. We’re speaking about the extraction and measurement of opinion: the recommendations and support of your friends, family, peers and online relationships (not all the same, but more on that in a minute).  Both Facebook and Google are trying to extract this data from your personal online community; to quantify this affinity, whether positive or negative; and then to provide you with a search product that is influenced by those recommendations.

Where the approaches differ becomes clearer when you examine where each company is coming from. Google is a search product already — it’s attempting to add social data via its public-facing Google+ network. The Google search engine will become ‘social search’, and its users are being coaxed to participate and provide that social data. Facebook, on the other hand, is the 800-lb social gorilla with a huge data-set of personal relationship information but without a search product — until now. Facebook Graph Search is slowly being rolled out.

There are obviously lots of questions for both approaches. Google+ engagement is certainly growing (not as fast as Google would have us believe, but it is), but the data-set they have to draw from is smaller. Even with continued slow-steady growth, Google surely will not match up with Facebook in this regard anytime soon. Facebook, in turn, is trying to gain buy-in from its user community. It may have that enormous social data-set, but it doesn’t necessarily have proper permission to use that data to launch a new search service. So Facebook is trying to force matters by, once again, changing default privacy settings; but that doesn’t give it a clear mandate to monetize information that some consider private.

It’s hard to say how all this will shake out, but the challenges pretty much add up to a race between “Adding social to your search” versus “adding search to your social.”

Will all this social influence add up to a better search product for those of us marketing legal services?  I’d say that depends on: 1) what people are searching for; and 2) the demographics of the community they are asking.

My first concern is the query question. Take, for example, “Does anyone know a good divorce lawyer?“. Presumably, your friends and family on Facebook live in the same part of the world as you do. That’s a big plus for local search — an advantage to Facebook, a problem for Google. Now, if the question was to recommend a good local dentist, I’m completely on-board with social search having an influence. But there’s a major difference when dealing with legal matters — you would never throw an embarrassing question (bankruptcy, divorce, criminal defense) out to your network of family and friends. Would you?

So the point to take away here is that neither Facebook nor Google will have seen those types of exchanges — they will have little to no data to call upon to generate any actual relevance for legal matters within their search products.

My second big concern here is demographics. Do users actually value the opinion of their network? I’d say that really depends on who is in a user’s network. Your friends, family, and mild acquaintances might be people you enjoy conversing with, but whether you value their opinion will depend a lot on what information you are seeking. For those marketing business law services, personal networks on Google+ (which tend to sway more towards public-facing and professional relationships) or LinkedIn (which will surely be in this game soon too) will have an obvious advantage. Facebook networks, on the other hand, are rarely cultivated towards any particular demographic, and while they run stronger on common geography, the logical approach for most users will be to ask their social network community their question outright. At least then, you have the opportunity to gauge the source of each response, and you won’t be dependent on a mathematical search algorithm.

In the grand scheme of social search directions, I have to admit that at this stage … I’m siding with Google. Its solution of using social engagement as one of many ranking signals in its search product seems the wiser approach, since the dials can always be turned up or down to maximize influence. Google is much less of a one-trick pony than Facebook, which may have the best social data-set to build their product on, but cannot have the hundreds of other search signals that Google engages to create search engine relevance.

It’s been a couple years since we last posted a roundup of Clawbies “acceptance speeches”, but over the last few days, so many of the winning and finalist blogs in the 7th annual Canadian Law Blog Awards took the time to comment that we thought it would be nice to share them. Check out the responses from some of Canada’s best and brightest legal bloggers below.

• Fodden Award for Best Canadian Law Blog winner Doorey’s Workplace Law Blog and runners up BC Injury Law and ICBC Claims Blog and Barry Sookman
• Best Practitioner Blog winners A Bon Droit and The Trial Warrior
• Non-Legal Audience Blog runner up Family Law Refocused
• Legal Culture Award winner First Reference Talks
• Legal News winner Wise Law Blog
• Best Practice Management Blog winner AvoidAClaim
• Law Library Blog winner Off the Shelf (Osgoode Hall Law School Library) and runner up Library Technician Dialog
• Practice Group Blog winner Entertainment and Media Law Signal
• Best Law School/Law Professor Blog winner ABlawg (University of Calgary Faculty of Law) and runner up Ideablawg

Congratulations to all this year’s Clawbies winners and finalists!

The 2012 Clawbies are now in the books, and if you haven’t yet reviewed our picks for the best of the Canadian legal blawgosphere, now’s your chance. We think you’ll agree that this year’s winners were truly outstanding and that good law blogs are flourishing right across the country.

I thought I might also share with you, however, some observations I made during the assessment and judging process about areas in which law blogs (not just Canadian ones, by any means) could improve. As encouraging as the massive growth in lawyers’ online legal publishing has been, I’m also seeing some worrying habits start to develop in many blogs, especially those that have debuted in the last year or so. I’d like to highlight some of these trends and encourage law bloggers to minimize or avoid them as much as possible.

Put differently, if you’re wondering, “How can my blog win a Clawbie in future?”, this would be a good list of features not to adopt.

1. An over-reliance on case comments. Sometimes, when I look at the blawgosphere, I feel like I’m back in law school. The case comment is by far the most ubiquitous form of blog post entry: the summary of a recent case in the blog’s area of practice, with some brief commentary on what it means. Unfortunately, the vast majority of case comments seem to be written by lawyers, for lawyers: heavy on the facts and applicable law, weighed down with lengthy excerpts from the judge’s ruling, and light on analysis and implications for readers. If you’re going to include case comments, you should strive to reverse the weight ratio for these two aspects of the post. Readers don’t care about the facts nearly so much as the result and the repercussions. Which leads me to:

2. An absence of reader relevance. The old saying about publishing, especially online, is that “content is king.” I think we need to modify that to “The reader is king or queen.” Every law blogger needs to remember their audience: for whom are they writing, and what do those readers care about? Some law blogs are in fact written for other lawyers, especially those authored by specialists seeking referrals. But most law blogs are meant to be read and acted upon by clients, and it’s their interests that have to dictate tone and content. Just because you find that particular tribunal ruling fascinating doesn’t mean your audience will. Who are your readers? What matters to them today, right now? What will they read, and what will they remember? These are the questions law bloggers need to ask and answer before writing a single word.

3. A tendency to go on … and on. Remember the classic line: “My apologies for this lengthy letter; I had no time to write a shorter one.” Lawyers in a hurry (which is to say, almost all lawyers) frequently fall into the trap of posting a lengthy blog entry that, with some time and editing, could have been reduced to a shorter, stronger, and more readable one. Attention spans online are notoriously short, and readers confronted with a sea of grey text that extends more than a couple of screens often abandon the effort before starting. Strive to be concise: if a topic requires extensive analysis, break it into several shorter posts over the course of a week. This circles back again to the idea of serving your reader, as well as doing your topic justice: don’t punish your point by burying it inside 2,000 words of prose where it will never be found.

4. A reluctance to take a position. This may be the most common shortfall in law blogs today: the blandness of neutrality. The most successful and widely read blogs are those in which the voice and opinion of the author are clear and unmistakable. Readers want more than the facts: they want insight, analysis, perspective, judgment, and opinion. They want bloggers who will put themselves and their positions on the line, making a call about whether something is positive or negative and backing it up with reasons. These blogs are more than reporting services: they’re dispatches from expert correspondents, and they build loyal followings almost immediately. Harvard’s Clayton Christensen has a great line: “Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.” That should be part of your blog’s mission statement.

Those are four ways in which I see law blogs underachieving, falling short of their potential and failing to maximize value to both reader and author. Have you observed others? What are your peeves about law blogs, and how could they be remediated?

Can you believe it? 2012 is just hours from over! The Clawbies went live earlier today, and this roundup wraps up the last of our December commitments. Here’s our final look of the year at client happenings:

• Just days before the end of the year, Stem was pleased to announce one more website redesign, as Russell Alexander relaunched their new site on December 28th!
• The winter 2012 issue of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association magazine features a Q&A with former Competition Bureau Commissioner Melanie Aitken and a spotlight on CCCA‘s 25th anniversary.
• Cloud-based practice management software Clio got top marks from TechnoLawyer. Not surprising; 2012 was a great year for Clio, which over the last 12 months rolled out a host of new features including Document Automation, the Clio Platform, Flexible Billing Rates, Time Rounding and Offline Time Tracking , “Scan to Clio” with Fujitsu Scanners, Google Drive integration, new Referral Program and Custom Fields that integrates with their Document Automation feature.
• Clio’s Small Firm Innovation blog had a couple of standout posts: Google+ Communities, Salesforce and Zoho: CRMs and Your Law Firm, Reflecting on 2012 Gals and Ask Yourself Two Questions. Clio thanks all those who voted for SFI in the ABA Journal Blawg 100 Business of Law category, and is looking for post contributions on January’s theme: fitness, personal health and how to fit it into a busy lawyer’s schedule (send submissions to Gwynne Monahan).
• BC legal support services provider Dye & Durham was pleased that David Bilinsky and Erik Magraken both nominated their BC Law Watch blog in the 2012 Clawbies awards.
• Thorsteinssons continues to publish on their tax blog. Efforts from authors such as Thomas McDonnell have made this publication well worth tracking.
• After practicing law for almost 40 years, Pushor Mitchell has announced the retirement of one of their founding partners, Rick Pushor. Rick was a big part of both the firm’s culture and his community.
• Harrison Pensa celebrated the holiday season with another fun offering to their clients; coupled nicely with raising more than $8000 to buy holiday turkeys at the firm’s annual Turkey Bowl.
• Daniel Sorensen at Waterstone Law Group wrote about whether giving two-weeks notice when resigning a position in BC is considered “adequate notice” under provincial law.
• Koplow Law Firm moved its principal office location to the Chase Bank Tower in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. The new address was updated across all the firm’s online properties.
• Hissey Kientz firm publishing was strong again this month, with new pages for Granuflo, and Actos; along with pieces on Zoloft and abdominal birth defects, and TVM organ perforation.

On behalf of everyone at Stem, Happy New Year and all the very best in 2013!

A quick post to congratulate Attorney At Work on their second anniversary! (It’s actually on Dec. 9th, but that’s a Sunday, so I’m jumping the gun.)

With new posts every single day of the work week, that’s more than 500 “really good ideas” – an outstanding accomplishment. Created by Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, Mark Feldman, and Joan Feldman, Attorney at Work launched in December of 2010 with the goal of sharing ideas “to give you everything you need to create a law practice — and a life — you can love.”

Over the last two years the site has produced many excellent downloads above and beyond the blog (like A Field Guide for Mobile Lawyers, Top iPhone and iPad Apps for Lawyers, and 101 Really Good Ideas for You and Your Law Practice). They’ve established a solid following on Twitter (@attnyatwork). And did I mention that Attorney at Work is named in the 2012 ABA Blawg 100 Awards?

Jordan and I have thoroughly enjoyed our time working with an outstanding group of other advisors and contributors (I think Jordan put it best when he said, “The other members of Attorney At Work’s advisory board make you hope you judge us by the company we keep!”).

So congratulations again, to Attorney at Work and everyone who’s contributed to the site’s outstanding success over the last two years. Here’s to another 500 really good ideas – and beyond!

It’s official: the 2012 Clawbies are open for business! From now until Thursday,  December 27th, we’re looking for nominations of your favourite Canadian law blogs for the 7th annual Canadian Law Blog Awards (a.k.a. the Clawbies).

We’re following the same nomination process as last year: tweet (using the hashtag #clawbies2012), send me an email, or better yet, write a blog post sharing who you think are the most outstanding Canadian law blogs of 2012. Head on over to Clawbies.ca for more details on these three methods, and to lawblogs.ca to see our list of several hundred candidates!

Joining me on the judges’ panel again this year are Jordan Furlong and Simon Fodden, whose own blogs, of course, won’t be eligible for Clawbies, but are excellent examples of what we’re looking for (Jordan’s Law21 took home honours in 2008, and Simon’s brainchild, Slaw, was permanently retired from the race in 2010 after winning four years in a row).

While everyone anticipates the big reveal of the Clawbies winners on New Year’s Eve, the bottom line is that this process is designed to celebrate and publicize all the bloggers and readers who participate; everyone benefits from our open and social media nominations system. Last year we had 40+ blogged and tweeted nominations – let’s aim for even more this year!

2012 is almost over, and here at Stem we are gearing up for the 7th annual Clawbies – nominations open on Monday! Stem’s clients seem determined to end the year on a high note, too. Here’s a look at some client news and activities from the month of November:

• Kelowna, BC law firm Pushor Mitchell‘s own Paul Mitchell, Q.C., was awarded the Blythe Eagles Volunteer Leadership Award, part of the UBC Alumni Awards, in honour of his outstanding commitment to community. Paul has held leadership roles in nearly 40 organizations and was instrumental in bringing the UBC Okanagan campus to fruition. Congratulations!
• London, Ontario law firm Harrison Pensa welcomed Senator Roméo Dallaire, this year’s featured speaker in the Claude & Elaine Pensa Lecture on Human Rights and a popular one at that: the lecture hall was “bursting at the seams”. The firm also shared that they raised close to $2000 at their annual pancake breakfast in support of the United Way of London & Middlesex.
• Cloud-based practice management software company Clio published the results of its 3rd annual Apple in Law Firms survey, saw the State Bar of Wisconsin join their Affinity program, and announced a relief program to help victims of Hurricane Sandy.
• Small Firm Innovation, created and maintained by Clio, has been named in the ABA Journal Blawg100 for a second year. Help make it the top “Business of Law” blog by voting now!
• Canadian tax lawyers Michael McLaren and Michael Colborne of Thorsteinssons penned articles for The International Comparative Legal Guide to: Corporate Tax and The International Tax Review’s World Tax 2013.
• Writing on Waterstone Law Group‘s Employment Lawyer Blog, lawyer Daniel Sorensen discussed what rights employers have when key employees quit, debunking the myth that in BC,  employees can quit on just two weeks’ notice.
• BC legal support services provider Dye & Durham announced a complimentary webinar, Advanced ECORP & Corporate Practice Management Webinar for Legal Support Staff, to be held next month.
• Ontario divorce lawyer Russell Alexander blogged about whether a spouse who refuses to disclose income be permitted to appeal the court’s best-guess estimate, and posted a video that explains 5 things you should know about common law relationships.
• Chicago personal injury lawyer Jonathan Rosenfeld shared a roundup of his social media outposts, and wrote about a groundbreaking decision on Medicare, which will ensure disabled people can get the skilled nursing care they require, regardless of whether their condition is likely to improve.
• Product injury firm Hissey Kientz launched a new microsite for its GranuFlo and NaturaLyte recall practice, posted news items regarding contaminated epidural steroid injections, added FAQs to its Zoloft birth defects microsite, and updated its transvaginal mesh patch site.
• New Jersey DWI lawyer Jonathan Marshall discussed the NJ Supreme Court’s recent decision to maintain Kyleigh’s Law, which requires under-21 drivers with a permit or probationary license to display decals that warn police and other drivers to that effect, and Leandra’s Law, which makes it a felony to drive drunk with minors in the same car.
• The Canadian Corporate Counsel Association revealed the charity  of choice for their Spring Conference is Family Association for Mental Health Everywhere. The organization also issued the Fall 2012 issue of CCCA Magazine, featuring articles on proxy fights, diversity in hiring, and an interview with Paul Lippe, CEO of OnRamp Systems.

We’ll be back next month with our final client roundup of the year!

The best law firm website biographies in the world (with apologies to my clients) are in Australia. Check out the website of Marque Lawyers, a highly diverse full-service law firm in Sydney that bills by fixed fees and monthly retainers. Its lawyer profiles are utterly brilliant: charming, insightful, engaging, funny and warm, not to mention extraordinarily well-written. A few examples:

In training since she was 5 years old for her dream job as an Amazing Race contestant, Carol runs, works, talks and eats at high speed. We have to keep telling her to go home and we’re trying hard to find her dark side, but no luck yet. Could be she’s just awesome. ….

We weren’t fooled for a minute by Kiran’s impressive-sounding “European Master in Law and Economics” degree which was as we suspected just an excuse to live in Italy, Belgium and France while pretending to study. Still, it does demonstrate solid skills in research and enterprise, which we like. …

She’s drafted more contracts than you’ve had slices of pizza and can document the purchase of a private island in the Caribbean if you like (she has a precedent). A lawyer with commercial nous! That’s rare enough, but Enjel combines it with awesome negotiating skills and an obsession with finding the perfect takeaway coffee. …

Not our tallest but definitely our highest employee, Owen has scaled some of the world’s most demanding mountains (he says Everest is for tourists) and can tell you exactly what it feels like to fall off a cliff – because he’s done it. …

Here’s why these are great profiles: they make you want to meet the lawyer, and they make you want to hang around the firm. They provide foundational information about the lawyer’s professional skills and expertise; but more importantly, they casually intersperse that information within concise, illuminating and fun stories that tell you about the person. In the space of just a few paragraphs, they not only introduce the lawyer, but also create several entry points for further conversations (Everest? Italy? The Caribbean? The Amazing Race?). After reading these bios, you feel like you’ve learned a lot about the lawyer, but would still like to learn more.

These are also great profiles because they are perfectly integrated within the firm’s overall voice and brand. Most law firms assemble their lawyer biographies piecemeal, over the course of several months, and don’t always edit the bios afterwards to provide a unifying tone or style. Marque’s profiles clearly have all been written simultaneously, by the same author, with a highly specific style and branding goal in mind. Each profile supports all the others and supports the overall firm message: we are a team of smart, interesting, multi-talented, and friendly lawyers focused on the single goal of helping you.

No doubt, there are lawyers reading this post who would dismiss these profiles as “frivolous,” “unprofessional” or “irrelevant.” I worked with one lawyer who, when asked to provide information about his local and legal community activities (and he had many), responded: “What is this for? I don’t understand why this is important.” It’s important because your professional qualifications and expertise do not set you apart. Every other lawyer in your field is “excellent,” “experienced,” “client-focused,” etc. That does not differentiate you. Where you attended law school does not differentiate you. Who you are, uniquely, does differentiate you. Use it.

Lawyer website profiles are far more important than most lawyers and firms realize, and not just for SEO reasons (which are manifold). They’re important because they send a message (positive or not, intentionally or not) about what the lawyer thinks is important and what the firm thinks clients care about. Lawyers who create hackneyed, dull, self-centered biographies are telling the world that they’re hackneyed, dull, self-centered people; firms that post these biographies are telling the world they’re just fine with that impression.

So my advice to lawyers is: break the traditional pattern. Show your clients (present and future) why you’re worth getting to know and worth the investment of their time and money. Show your colleagues that you care enough about your image and about the firm’s fortunes to craft a revealing, relevant, enjoyable biography to support the firm’s marketing efforts. And show yourself that it’s possible to be both personal and professional in your online profile.

You might not believe it, but trust me: you have a great story to tell. Be confident enough to tell it.

There is a small number of people who, when they talk about social media, you must listen. One is Chris Brogan, and here’s what he said in a recent post called “Social Media Isn’t Dead; It’s Boring“:

It’s boring to talk simply about the tools because the tools are just a way to reach people. We can argue the details endlessly (I don’t believe much in Klout, for instance), and we can announce the premature death of Tumblr/Twitter/Facebook and whoever. But it doesn’t matter. When we talk about restaurants (the tools), we mostly talk about the food (the content). When we talk about bands (tools), we talk about whether the music resonates (the content). When we talk about a good book (the content), we never ask what type of computer it was written on (the tools).

This is something I wish every law firm and legal marketer would understand, because it’s absolutely correct. Social media are tools. They’re instruments. They are means to an end — increasingly routine and unremarkable means, at that. The medium, with apologies to Mr. McLuhan, is not nearly so important as the message.

If you’re thinking about social media in your law firm, what you’re really thinking about (or ought to be thinking about) is content marketing. Create good, legitimate, practical, reader-oriented content. When you’ve done that, go back and create more. Then more again. Don’t even think about designing a blog, opening a Twitter account, starting up a Facebook page, whatever, until you’ve figured out very clearly what content you’re creating, why you’re creating it, and who you want to reach with it.

Many lawyers don’t seem to care about content, and if that’s the case within your firm, that’s a problem. No law firm anywhere can succeed at social media without (a) a content strategy and (b) its enthusiastic adoption by a critical mass of lawyers. Any social media effort that launches without both these features will fail.

So if you want to start a social media initiative within your firm, stop. Retrace your steps. And then set out instead to become an evangelist for content. Create a content strategy, then motivate lawyers to create strategic content by any means necessary. Get them excited about it. Reward them for it. Flatter them for creating it. Remind them that “content” does not equal yet another case commentary. “Content” = stuff that people, especially clients, like to read and want to circulate.

First why, then what, then how. Strategy first. Content second. Everything else third.

Steve’s latest Slaw column, Death of Blogging? Not So Fast!, went up on Slaw yesterday. The inspiration for the column comes from Adrian Lurssen’s recent piece, Are We Heading to a Post-Blogging World?, in which Lurssen describes

“the growing trend of writers foregoing their own blogs to publish under branded media platforms such as the Huffington Post. He cites the presence of a built-in audience and the ability to piggyback on brand reputation as answers to the problems of “how to be read” – reasoning that “how to publish” has never been easier.”

Steve explains why it’s a mistake for lawyers to rely solely on these platforms to build online profile, especially at the cost of self-publishing.

“Obviously, getting your content in front of target audiences is a boon, but that doesn’t have to mean the death of self-publishing. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Self-publish on your own blog first; then look to expand your publishing efforts elsewhere. Outsourcing your web presence entirely to third-party websites is a dangerous game.”

Similarly, as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter continue to refine their offerings, there have been musings that these sites could eventually replace firm websites and specifically, lawyer bios. For example, see Will LinkedIn Revolutionize Law Firm Publishing?, in which Molly Porter says LinkedIn’s new blogging feature looks like a game changer:

“Suddenly, all our blessed and branded publishing channels – blogs, microsites, the firm website and email alerts, especially – are competing with a site that has 175 million users, and on which every one of our lawyers probably already had a presence.

If a lawyer wants to publish content – and getting it done via marketing isn’t lightening fast and easy peasy – which do you think he or she is going to choose? What’s better – seamlessly delivering your thoughts to an audience of 500 qualified readers that you know personally, or following established firm protocol and procedure which can be byzantine and bureaucratic? One of these options looks like an easy button to me.”

Porter’s got a point. If lawyers encounter even the slightest bit of pushback or delay while collaborating with marketing departments, then they may well take matters into their own hands – and can you blame them?

But one thing is clear: no matter which social network is the darling of the day, the lawyer professional biography is the one aspect of online reputation that’s absolutely critical, and a couple of things in that vein caught my eye lately.

Kevin O’Keefe wonders if law firms will even be able to keep up with LinkedIn’s ever-evolving profiles, saying

“It’s hard enough for law firms to get their lawyers to acknowledge the value of LinkedIn, let alone to get lawyers to complete their profiles and use LinkedIn for networking.”

Citing Molly Porter’s post, Robert Algeri at the Great Jakes blog says the law firm website isn’t going anywhere, in part because

“In the fractured universe of the web, where information about an attorney is scattered on dozens of sites like LinkedIn, JDSupra, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Wikipedia, as well as throughout your firm’s website, there needs to be a “home-base.” The attorney bio is evolving to be that home-base – a repository of an attorney’s entire thought leadership, social media activity, and personal interests.”

(emphasis mine)

And citing LexisNexis Martindale Hubbell’s recent survey of how international law firms use websites as part of their marketing strategy, Larry Bodine reveals that

“When asked about the most popular content on their website, lawyer biographies are the most visited pages (85% of respondents)”.

This has certainly been our experience at Stem, too.  Lawyer biographies get the majority of traffic on most firm websites we work on. Which makes sense, since law is a people business! But even though it’s common knowledge (and common sense) that lawyer bios are really important, many are still reluctant to devote much time and effort to them. That’s a shame, because believe it or not, it can actually be a fun process. Helping lawyers re-write their bios is one of the most interesting and satisfying things I do in this job.

If you’re in a need of some guidance on how to craft a great bio, reading Jordan Furlong’s post Where’s Your Fingerprint? Making Your Online Profile Unique, Lee Rosen’s Can You Be Too Professional For Your Clients? and Make One Change to Your Bio, and Adrian Dayton’s What’s Wrong with Your Law Firm Bio? would be a great start.

It’s Halloween, and it’s a treat (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun) to write about our clients’ activities and achievements from over the last few weeks. Here’s our regular client news roundup for October:

• The Canadian Corporate Counsel Association celebrated the 25th anniversary of its founding! Over the coming year there will be some special events to commemorate this milestone, including new awards and the launch of a CCCA Speakers Bureau.
• Over 100 lawyers and staff from Okanagan law firm Pushor Mitchell volunteered more than 400 hours for the United Way’s Days of Caring Program, through painting, assembling hampers, raking leaves, and building planter boxes for a variety of local organizations. Nicely done! And writing on the Canadian Tax Dispute Blog, Tom Fellhauer discussed problems with shareholder benefits in closely-held private companies.
• Fraser Valley firm Waterstone  Law Group was proud to help bring three members of the bronze medal-winning women’s Olympic soccer team to the Chilliwack FC Ultimate Raffle event, and employment lawyer Daniel Sorensen blogged about the risks employers take when they treat employees unfairly.
• Cloud-based practice management software Clio kicked off their 3rd annual Apple in Law Offices Survey which is open until November 7th.  Clio will randomly select 3 survey respondents to win iPad minis!
• Chris Thompson, returning articling student at Canadian tax law firm Thorsteinssons, was part of the winning team at this year’s Great Debate on the HST which raised money for the BC Law Institute.  The firm was also very pleased to share that counsel Thomas McDonnell, QC has received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. Congratulations!
• BC legal support services provider Dye & Durham focused this month on educating clients on the mandatory land titles e-filing procedures that become mandatory on November 1st, through alerts and webinars.
• Articling students at London law firm Harrison Pensa blogged about Ontario’s articling crisis, working weekends, and the benefits of community involvement.
• Products liability law firm Hissey Kientz added new practice areas for recalled dialysis agents GranuFlo and NaturaLyte,  as well as epidural steroid injections after a fungal meningitis outbreak occurred because of contaminated injections. The firm also updated its transvaginal mesh microsite.
• New Jersey DWI attorney John Marshall blogged about what’s a stake when professional drivers are charged with drunk driving, and announced new microsites for Middlesex County, Monmouth County, Passaic County, and Bergen County.
• Raleigh law firm Wilson Law PA issued an alert regarding the fungal meningitis-contaminated steroid injections, warning consumers that the contamination has been found in North Carolina.
• Russell Alexander, an Oshawa divorce lawyer, wrote a number of thought-provoking posts on his FamilyLLB blog, discussing whether kids have a legal right to make their own decisions, and if people are too casual about divorce. He also posted a primer on Ontario pre-nups and a video explaining five things you should know about common law relationships.
• Chicago injury lawyer Jonathan Rosenfeld wrote an update on metal-on-metal hip replacement defect cases, discussed what type of SSDI cases win disability benefits, and explored whether medical care is getting safer or fewer people are filing claims.

We’ll be back next month to share more news and accomplishments.