Solomarketing List, Blawging for Lawyers and the Question of Blogging for Love v. Money

I don’t generally post endorsements or recommendations about products or services at my site.   But every so often, as now, I’ll make an exception where I believe that the service is worth passing on to others.

First up is my friend and colleague Jon Stein’s lawyer marketing email list.  Jon put the list together a couple of years ago as a break off from Solosez and it’s been thriving ever since.  I check in frequently because I’m always looking for new marketing tips.  Even better, the list lets me learn from other lawyers’ experiences – so if they share an idea that hasn’t worked, I can either try to figure out a way to modify it or perhaps, would forego it entirely.  You can post a message to the list at sololawyermarketing@yahoogroups.com and subscribe at sololawyermarketing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

The second service I want to mention is Blawging Lawyers, by my friend Grant Griffiths and his partner, Michael Martine.  I won’t mince words – this is a program that is designed to show you how to use blawging for marketing and client generation.  And there’s no one more qualified to teach than Grant Griffiths, a former lawyer renowned for relying on his blog on his sole marketing tool.

I’m familiar with the great blawgosphere debate from a few months back over whether lawyers can or should blog for love (i.e., conversation) or money (i.e., marketing).   I never quite understood the debate because frankly, a blog designed for marketing and a blog intended to stimulate conversation are two separate animals entirely, just as self-help books fall into an entirely different category than writings by philosophers like Camus or Buber or Kant which on their most basic level also try to help individuals make sense of their place in the world.  Which genre is superior?  Of course, I have my own views but mostly, it depends on what the reader wants.  Somehow, I’m not so sure that a lawyer who’s just lost a job will be up for plowing through Sartre’s essays to realize that even when things seem hopeless we all have a choice- he’d probably prefer the breezy-easy-reassuring tone of the self-help book instead.

The point is that there’s room in the lawyer blogosphere for all types of blogs and the existence of one form doesn’t diminish the other – or at least, it shouldn’t.  For those who want to blog to provoke debate and stimulate discussion or simply because you have something compelling to say, you’ll find no better models than Scott Greenfield or David Giacalone just to mention a few, though there are plenty more.  On the other hand, for those who want to learn to blog to market and generate clients, then Blawging Lawyers is one good place to go.