Using Law Students to Power Your Blog: Win-Win for Everyone
When it comes to ghostwriting law blogs, the majority view within the blawgosphere is “don’t.” (For the precedent on this, see these selected opinions at Death and Taxes;
f/k/a;
Georgia Bankruptcy Blog; Home Office Lawyer and Simple Justice). At the same time, we all recognize that content makes a blog valuable to readers. So what can busy lawyers do to improve the quality of their blogs if they can’t spare the time to create original content themselves?
Here’s one possible solution that I discovered at Pennsylvania attorney, Neil Hendershot’s blog, Pennsylvania Elder, Estate & Fiduciary Blog: have a law student research and draft an articles for your blog, just as Hendershot did with Joshua Prince, a third year student in a class that Hendershot teaches on elder law. In the most recent of his three articles, Prince wrote a piece on the fascinating topic of Estate Planning Under the National Firearms Act. And Hendershot doubled the exposure of his article by soliciting input from firearms estate planning expert David Goldman, of Florida Estate Planning Blog, who cross referenced the article in his blog as well.
Hiring a law student to write an article for your blog presents a win-win situation for all involved. The lawyer obtains quality content at reasonable rates (or perhaps at no charge, if the student can use the research for a class). The student gains valuable feedback from the lawyer as well as an opportunity to publish his or her article on the national scene. And because the student receives credit for the article, the concerns underlying ghostwriting aren’t implicated.
Related post: Make A Positive Contact, Write Away.
I recently used a law school grad to write an article for my site. Unfortunately, when I did a little due diligence before posting the article, I found she had omitted large chunks of important information on the topic being disucssed. Needless to say, the article hasn’t been published yet.
So, while I’m all for using law students and grads to write posts, I recommend checking their work to be sure it is accurate and complete before it appears on your site.
I agree with this. I think the reason every says to avoid having law students write your blog for you is that it is hard for a law student to write with a “voice” which is what makes blogs popular in the first place. It is hard to have a voice when you are writing as anyone other than yourself.
Ron Miller
marylandinjurylawyerblog.com