Legal blogging a ‘discernible trend’ for firms

As clients increasingly demand free information up front, firms are turning to blogging to save themselves and their clients time and money, according to a NewLaw CEO.

Lara Bullock • 14 January 2016 • NewLaw

The cornerstone of LegalVision’s marketing strategy is its online blog content and CEO Lachlan McKnight (pictured) said it’s becoming more popular in other firms.

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“There is a discernible trend for both new and old law to leverage online blogging,” Mr McKnight said.

“Traditional firms are recognising the benefits in giving away legal information for free through their blogs and using it as a platform to talk about issues relevant to the industries they assist with.”

Mr McKnight said clients expect free and accessible information these days and a blog is one way firms can deliver this.

“Clients expect more information up front [...] that can they can access on any device in any location,” he said.

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“Having a blog is no longer an addition to a law firm’s marketing strategy – it’s essential. Law firms are setting themselves up to provide legal services to a generation who is accustomed to using tech to find the answer immediately. Law blogs need to reflect this expectation.”

Mr McKnight said that having a blog means that when a client contacts the firm they can more articulately describe their issue, which helps the firm to quickly determine how to help.

“A law blog that has easily accessible legal information about key issues and terms means that firms don’t waste clients' time talking about what they already know. You save their time, and yours, as well as cost.”

Mr McKnight said that LegalVision’s content marketing is at the heart of its client acquisition strategy and that all of its lawyers are expected to generate content on a monthly basis.

“We expect full-time employees to write between 8-10 articles a month and each person has one day to complete these articles,” he explained.

“Before accepting a position with our business, we make sure our employees understand the importance of our content marketing strategy. To produce high-quality content, contributors must understand why they are writing, their audience and its purpose.”

LegalVision now has almost 2,000 articles about every subsection of commercial and business law, which they monitor through Google Analytics, according to Mr McKnight.

LegalVision has a dedicated content manager who provides induction training for new lawyers on how to write blogs, coordinates the content calendar, generates article ideas, fact checks and proofs all articles, and ensures consistency across all articles.

Sally Sanderson Wednesday, 20 January 2016

You betcha Ralph. Most lawyers can't string a couple of sentences together unless there's a manual on how to write it.Additionally, writing skills are not taught at uni level aside from AGLC stuff which turns lawyers into very dull and clinical writers.Good Legal bloggers, like Georgia Byrne, Mark Robert Bradbury and David Mejia-Canales are (apart from their public blogging) already in very high demand privately.

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Dan Toombs Thursday, 14 January 2016

Great read! In our experience, even with outsourced writers, lawyers quite rightly are reticent in putting their name to something that isn't in their own words or doesn't match "their voice." We had a content writing team in-house, headed up by a lawyer, but even then, the round of edits by the lawyers who were putting their name to these articles were counter-productive, in that it would have been easier to have the lawyer write it themselves. I like what Lachlan has done here, insisting that client acquisition in 2016 means that lawyers have to write. There are a number of firms that we work with who are enshrining this important marketing objective into employee KPIs, among others!

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Ralph Grayden Thursday, 14 January 2016

Good on LegalVision, not just an innovator in the way they provide legal services but also pointing the way forward when it comes to attracting new clients - the link between quality content (ie relevant blogs) and quality web traffic is undeniable. Next, a disclaimer: Antelope Media does content marketing for professional services clients, including law firms. Now that's out of the way, while many firms now see the value in content marketing, I doubt most can emulate the same model for producing articles using in-house resources. Taking a lawyer 'off the tools' to write 8-10 articles a month is a very big ask. You'd also need to train lawyers to master a style of writing very different to the one they're used to. Another approach is to get the lawyer to provide the bones of an article and then to use legal journalists/content producers to craft each piece so that it engages the target audience. Ralph Grayden, Antelope Media.

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