Every month we have a networking lunch at a lovely spot in Maryland.  A bunch of solo and small firm attorneys come to eat salad and salmon, have coffee and pass around business cards.  We sit in a big square and the young’uns ask questions of the more ahem, experiened, attorneys.  Ironically enough, the big topic of discussion yesterday was blogging – does blogging actually get you clients? I had just checked my iphone (my dear thing is never far from my side) and saw Mr. Bennett’s comment, and after many false starts (its a room full of lawyers who have no one to talk to during the day, you think about how it might have been to get a word in edgewise) I finally got a chance to read the comment out loud to the group of about 20 or so lawyers. 

The reaction?

They laughed.

The lawyer who had originally put forth the question said that Mr. Bennett was completely incorrect, that the ONLY reason to blog was to market yourself and to get clients.  The discussion went on for a while, and it seemed that I was in the minority — people who write just to write without concern for profit generation or client credibility.  One of the longest running and most highly acclaimed legal blogs has a still anonymous writer.  In fact, the PD blogs, the ones that are not written for any reason other than to get it out there, are some of the most interesting around.  They aren’t getting clients, or even referrals, because of their blogs.  But, they are clever and informative.  And, most importantly (to me anyway) they are inspiring.

I don’t read the other kind of blog.  You know the ones – the ones that cite specific laws or analyze cases, unless they are witty and say something unusual.  I can read and analyze laws and cases myself (in fact, I am once again, paid to do so)  Most of them are dry and, well, boring.  In the olden days you’d write an article after doing months of research and submit it to your local law journal, or try to get it into an ABA publication or a law review.  Now, all you have to do is cut and paste from open source information, add a few lame lines, and call yourself published.  Yawn.  If that is getting you clients, awesome for you.  I don’t know if I believe that its your blog that is drawing them there, as opposed to the SEO generated by your blog (which really isn’t the same thing as writing things that people want to read).

This conversation is very different from ones we had in 2004 when there were just a few criminal defense bloggers out there.  Well, we actually never talked about doing this as a marketing tool.  It didn’t even cross our pea-brains.  Regardless, I’m very proud of the fact that this blog has been in existence for six years (with a brief hiatus)  Six years.  That’s longer than just about any other committment I’ve ever had.

In other news, I just did a google search on this blog.  One site, Bust.com, labeled me this way:  Ramblings of a currently unemployed criminal defense attorney.  See, I was right.  Even if no one is paying you to do it, you ARE it.