f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

  I’m pleased to be able to share some good news about lawyers with you, for a change. Through the magic of the internet, law Professor James R. Elkins (College of Law, West Virginia University) discovered that we both share an interest in ethics and poetry and contacted me last week. In addition to discovering a wealth of materials on legal ethics and morality, I was delighted and humbled by Prof. Elkins’ amazing creation – Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poetry.

I immediately shared this great resource with that dapper, cultured weblawger, George Wallace, who had this to say in a posting today at The Fool in the Forest:

Poet Lawreates

[David called my attention to] Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poetry — a most impressive compilation of lawyer-poets and poet-lawyers both contemporary and not. The familiar suspects are represented — Wallace Stevens, Archibald MacLeish, even Francis Scott Key [whose poetry we learn was edited after his death by U.S Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney] — as are many more obscure figures. I can see that I’m likely to lose significant amounts of time in exploring Professor Elkins’ site on my return, and I commend it to you in my absence.

Professor Elkins has an array of other material posted dealing with the intersection of law and Culture. I’m particularly curious about his discussions of Lawyers and Mythology. A thorough directory of the professor’s online offerings can be found here.

Today, Prof. Elkins sent me the following good news: “Off the Record: An Anthology of Poetry By Lawyers” is now at the printer and will appear later this month as Volume 28 of the Legal Studies Forum. If you know of anyone interested in this curious, historical first — the first-ever published collection of poetry by lawyers which gets beyond the rather stale notion of “legal verse”– let me know.” [update: see our posting “every law library needs this volume” announcing the publication of Vol. 28, March 11, 2004]

• Off the Record has 699 pages of poetry by lawyers. You can Contact Professor Elkins directly to let him know that you’d like a copy of Off the Record. Hurry to get the pre-publication price of $15.

skepticalEsq (who is feeling neglected amonst this positive stuff) asks: ” Do you think all those assigned counsel are writing poetry instead of interviewing clients?” No, I don’t!

e&h-e&h-e&h

Postscript (02-05-04): I couldn’t figure out where all the traffic was coming from for this little artsy post, until I discovered that I had been mentioned by the immensely popular, immensely-(though unnecessarily)-modest Scheherazade. I’ll take her links over hot-shot-professor links anyday. And thanks to Evan for his link, too.

“Litigators, corporate lawyers and intellectual property specialists were most likely to make partner this year at Washington, D.C.’s biggest firms. Increasingly, though, firms are using counsel as an intermediary step and stretching out the partnership track to eight years or more. Nor does getting the nod mean you’re home free — new partners face new pressures to land clients, supervise others and market themselves.”   

. .

• This sounds like a very promising experiment.  Naturally, e&h wonders whether fees will be adjusted downward to reflect the expedited process. 
  
• Postscript (02-04-04):  MyShingle’s Carolyn Elefant has posted on this topic at eLawyerBlog, opining that it would be unethical for plaintiff’s lawyer not to take the expedited procedure into account when arranging for or charging a contingency fee.  What’s striking is that there are so many lawyers who would disagree. 

Yesterday, we wondered about the effects of ghost-written, “absentee” legal weblogs on the weblog community and lawyer marketing.   Today, Ernie the Attorney Svensen talks about Howard Bashman starting his own law practice and asks Websites or Weblogs? – What’s best for attorneys?.   Ernie quickly concludes:

 “Obviously, this question has no one answer, but Howard Bashman’s recent decision to start his own law practice (and leave the big firm in the big city) is illustrative of the power of weblogs.”

“Howard’s weblog helped propagate news of his great talent and strong reputation, and made it easier, at a minimum, for him to set out on his own.”

Howard and Ernie have had exceptional success with their weblogs, which are perfect examples of what it takes to create a really good weblog — a combination of special skill and valuable information, presented with a personal voice.   But, they are both statistical outliers, and their success tells us very little about the ability of weblogs in general to create reputation, generate clients or facilitate starting your own firm. 

Carolyn Elefant left a very apt Comment yesterday at this site:

As to marketing, here I will show that I can be as skeptical as you! If you read my recent piece on blogs in law.com (link is here), I don’t believe that blogs serve as a marketing tool anymore than printing business cards. In other words, just because a lawyer prints up business cards, doesn’t mean he or she is going to get clients and just because a lawyer runs a blog, it doesn’t mean that clients will find, retain or decide to hire that lawyer. But…blogs are all part of the marketing puzzle – when lawyers start a blog with a personality and a voice, they get exposure which leads to quotes or articles in the media which leads to opportunities to “show off” to prospects by sending those articles as part of a marketing package. Or maybe someone will see the article you’ve been quoted in as a result of a journalist finding you via the blog. But despite what blog marketers may say, there’s no way that blogs are generating business for lawyers nor have I seen or heard evidence of clients finding a lawyer by virtue of coming across a blog.

Lawyers created reputations with their skills and successes long before websites existed — and broke away to start their own firms, too.  I don’t think we can generalize at all about the power of weblogs from the exceptional success of exceptional lawyers and webloggers.

• 
  
  ethicalEsq wants to add its voice to all the other webloggers sending Howard our best wishes as he starts his own appellate practice law firm today.

Follow-up (02-07-04):  Weblawg-vendor Kevin O’Keefe discusses Ernie and Howard and the power of weblogs here. 

“[T]he introduction of attorneys into the court where litigants traditionally represent themselves. 

 

“‘This will be an incentive for more attorneys to use small claims,’ he said, ‘The cost benefit wasn’t there, but with a $5000 limit, it could be lucrative.”

  Unfortunately, you need a subscription to see the article on the Gazette (I won’t pay, but I have a hardcopy) (“Small claims limit up,” 02-01-04, B1, by Steven Cook). 

The Sunday Gazette (Schenectady, New York) reports today that former marine and state trooper Paul Semanek has been elected 2004 president of the Capital Region Chapter of the Women’s Council of Realtors. (“Man heads women’s group,” 02-01-04, at B4, E5; available by subscription; confirmation is available here, from the Albany Business Review) 

Could this happen — has it happened — in the often hyper-gender-aware legal profession?  Wouldn’t it be a good sign?

• Another thing that happens among realtors but not in the legal profession:  Meaningful (and advertised) price competition for services which were historically provided at a “standard” percentage rate by all providers.   We can dream.   We’ll soon have more to say on this topic, when we discuss a recent law review article by Cardozo Prof. Lester Brickman,
  
  
  
  

  The Market for Contingent Fee-Financed Tort Litigation: Is It Price Competitive?

  (abstract) which looks at evidence and reasons for the lack of price competition over fees by p/i lawyers. 25 Cardozo L.Rev. 65 (Nov. 2003).  One section of the article contrasts price competition among realtors (with flat fees, lowered percentages, blended rates, etc.) with the lack of price competition among p/i lawyers. 

Weblogger, JD?

The notion of ghost-written weblogs scares me.   It looks like they’re coming, and they signal a new kind of weblogging devoid of the very spark of life that has put magic into this way of communicating and created a community.  [See yesterday‘s and today‘s Netlawblog, where Jerry Lawson tells of four vendors “selling blogs to lawyers.”]

Going from weblog as “the unedited voice of an individual” to weblog as the fabricated voice (and image) created for an individual lawyer will turn this fresh community into a stale commodity.  And it won’t work as a marketing tool, because what makes a weblog “good” and attracts repeat visitors is a strong personal voice, content that is interesting and well said, and rapid response time.  [“The Good, The Bad and the Blogly,” by Glenn Harlan Reynolds]   Those are three elements very unlikely to come from Blogs-R-Us (or, better, Weblogs-B-We).

There are times when I hate being the gadfly or prophet of doom.  The role is particularly uncomfortable when the ox that I might be goring is owned by people who I admire and like.  Jerry Lawson said yesterday that “Kevin [O’Keefe]’s approach looks promising, and not just because the Perry Mason photo is priceless.”  Jerry has been a constant supporter of this website, helping it gain credibility and an audience.  Kevin not only gave me my first cyber-pulpit at PrairieLaw.com (and signed the checks), but is creating a wonderful tool for serving legal consumers with his Project Lawyers Serve.  [I don’t even hold a grudge that Kevin continues to use the ugly little word “blog,” despite admitting “the term ‘blog’ sounds funny.” ]

• Consumer-friendly content in area of lawyer’s practice
• Law & news in relevant area of law regularly placed in blog
• Cyber publicity & search engine optimization

When answering the question “Why have a professional set up your blog?”, Kevin notes (emphasis added):

“[O]nly a small percentage of lawyers, best labeled as early adopters of technology, take the time to learn how to do [the things necessary to make a weblog successful]. It’s even a smaller group of lawyers who continue to execute over time. . . .

“For lawyers who do not have the time to regularly publish content to their blog so has to keep syndicating content to folks and stay at the top of search engines, we’ll do it for them – again at a very reasonable cost.”

That spectre of the absentee weblogger worries me the most. Visitors won’t know (or will be misled about) whose up-to-the-minute expertise they are reading.  On a page that answers the question what is a blog?, Kevin notes that “Blogs are usually personal publications as opposed to published by an entity or organization.  Readers get an honest feel for who the blog publisher is and tend to form a stronger bond with the publisher than with a firm that publishes a Web site. ”   Kevin ends the description of weblogs by saying:

“Come to think of it, a blog sounds a awful like a Web site with a few bells and whistles that make it a more powerful marketing tool for a lawyer than a typical Web site. Erik Heels, a pioneer on the law and the Internet, may be right when he defines blogs as websites created and maintained with weblog software.”   (emphases added)

That’s what weblogs will certainly become if they are not truly personal in nature.  For weblogs to remain more than a convenient way to create a website; for weblogs to create a community of colleagues and fans; for weblogs to actually become more effective marketing tools than traditional law firm sites (or e-brochures, or power-point presentations) — for them to be more than a technology and a fad — they must have a personal voice (even if there are multiple personalities).

• By the way, webloggers, please raise your hand if you’ve found that your weblog has brought you new clients.
• One more consumer advocate question:  If the lawyers who are the market for vended weblogs don’t have enough time to produce the weblog themselves, just where are they going to find the time to give competent and diligent service to the expected flood of new clients?
• FOLLOW-UP: This post sparked quite a few more here at f/k/a:  Especially see Selling the Perception of Expertise (April 14, 2004), which is my most complete explanation of what is wrong with a lawyer buying blawg content in order to establish himself or herself as an expert; and see Lawson Not Spooked by Ghosts and Lively Debate Over Ghostly Weblogs (April 15, 2004); plus making sausage and weblogs (April 17, 2004).
• update (March 14, 2006): Two years later, Death & Taxes is struggling with the idea of weblogs and ghost-writers; and see our “haunted by Frankenblawg“.