Seethat huge freakin’ ad next to this post? By Monday, it will be gone.Why? Effective Monday, I’m no longer a member of the Law.com network.Long story short, my blog is “going in a different direction” than thenetwork (their words, not mine). Like all but one Apprenticecontestant each season, I was fired.
But this isn’t a rant against Law.com. Instead, Iwant to thank them for their help in bringing my blog to more readers,and I want to offer some suggestions that I think will make the networkbetter (even in my absence). I’d also like to solicit your feedback inhopes of helping all of the crew at Law.com grow the network andimprove upon it.
- First things first: Lisa Stone is fantastic. She “gets” blogging (as demonstrated by her phenomenal success with Blogher) and continues to do an excellent job with the Inside Opinions feature she writes twice a week.
- Second, I’ve been privileged to get to know myfellow Law.com bloggers. All of them are great bloggers and each oftheir blogs will continue to have a place in my aggregator. I’ve evenhad the good fortune to meet several of them in person and I wish themthe best in the future.
- Third, Law.com deserves a tremendous amount ofrespect for being the first mainstream legal media outlet to recognizethe power of blogging and try to harness it. (As an aside, I had theprivilege of meeting the American Lawyer Media CEO William Pollack atthe inaugural LexThink event and he struck me as a technologicallysavvy and ahead-of-the-curve chief exec. ALM is in good hands.)
- Fourth, I want to apologize to everyone at Law.comif you ever thought my comments and criticisms (including the frequentjabs at the size of the honkin’ huge ad) were anything more than agenuine effort to improve the network of which I was a part (and adesire to reclaim some valuable screen real estate).
- Fifth, if I’d known in what direction my blog wasgoing that diverged from Law.com’s intended path, I’d have made thechange. If you wanted less LexThink, I’d have complied. LessGrace? Check. More baseball? Check. If you didn’t want my blog toserve as a marketing vehicle for my projects, I’d have toned thatdown too. (Though, isn’t that one of the purposes of blogs?) If youwanted more hard-core law … well, I’d have to draw the line somewhere.That said, thanks for never telling me what to write, or how to writeit.
Now that I’m out of the network, here are the thingsI’d do to improve it. Law.com has heard some of these before, but toencourage debate among my readers and to get as much constructivefeedback as possible to Law.com, I’ll share them with you.
- I know this is beating a dead horse, but is a 300 x 600 pixel ad really necessary? Perhaps on a blog like Monica Bay’s Common Scold,which has a tremendous amount of terrific extra stuff in the sidebars,a large ad is necessary to stand out, but when there is only one ad onthe whole site, is the huge size really non-negotiable?
- Now, go visit each of the law.com blogs and checkout the ad. Reload the page (along with the ad). It seems that atleast 9/10 ad impressions are for American Lawyer Media properties —free advertising for ALM for which I don’t believe I was paid (Note, ifI’m wrong here, please correct me and I’ll print a retraction).If Law.com/ALM is having trouble selling ads to traditional advertisers(not hard to believe, given the relative newness of blogs) wouldn’t apartnership with a blog advertising service make more sense? (UPDATE:As I visit the sites now, the ALM ads have disappeared and all I seeare paying ads. I would have really, really liked this to be the casefor the last six months).
- Help your bloggers help Law.com and ALM. TheLaw.com bloggers are a really cool group of people. I’ve met a bunch,and corresponded with the rest. I can’t imagine a better group ofcutting-edge tech savvy lawyers to advise anyone on what blogging is,where it’s headed, and how lawyers can benefit. The problem? Ourbrains weren’t picked and our collective smarts underutilized. Peopleare paying big bucks to have access to the kinds of talent ALMassembled in this network. ALM had us for free (well, almost). Thefirst thing I’d do to change this is institute a monthly conferencecall among the remaining Law.com bloggers to get their ideas forimproving the network (I’d even join in if they’d have me). I’d alsoparade them around every ALM event where a blogger panel is appropriate— and identify them as part of the network. Legal Tech NY and LA areobvious targets. Blogs are hot. ALM has a stable of amazingbloggers. Show them off. Use them.
- When a Law.com blogger suggests another bloggerhe/she thinks should be part of the network, run (don’t walk) to signthat person up.
- Get into podcasting. Now. Bethe place for legal podcasters to host and syndicate their content.You’ve got the servers, give that space to lawyers doing podcasts. Forfree. Promote the podcasts in Lisa’s column and promote the best ofthe best on the Law.com front page. Also, use podcasting technology tosupplement interviews in the print publications.
- Build content-similar blawg silos, and aggregate(and make searchable) the RSS feeds. I’d love to have an aggregatedand searchable feed for all the IP blogs out there. Same goes for themarketing blogs, and the trial tips blogs, and the ethics blogs, etc.Right now, the only common thread is that all the blogs are great, butthere are not many other common themes running through the network.However, now that I’m gone, that may be changing.
- Build a branded RSS reader, and make it dead simpleto use. Lawyers don’t all get blogs, and those that do don’t allunderstand the power of RSS. If you built them a super-easyBloglines-like RSS reader (or adopted an existing one) you’d control abunch of the content lawyers read and make it even easier for them toread your stuff.
- Dump the e-mail, embrace RSS. Keep the e-maillists, but offer a feed for every one of your e-mail publications.Combined with the branded reader, you would have unbelievable contentto deliver to the desktops of your audience.
- Take blog content and repurpose it in regular columns in the ALM print publications.
And thanks for everything.
Oh, and if you still want to advertise all of thoseALM events and publications on my blog, come Monday, I’ll have somespace for sale. ;-)