Fast forward to 2006: the blog gets 50,000 visits each week. Crouch, a third-year associate with Hulbert & Berghoff – a 55- lawyer IP law firm – has been quoted in Business Week, Forbes, Law Bulletin, IP Law Bulletin ands many other publications. The blog has brought in many new business inquiries including one from a Fortune 100 company, and generated patent prosecution work, domain name dispute litigation and patent litigation for the firm.  The blog is the authority in the field.

By definition, a blog is a Web site.  A firm can have both, and they complement and send traffic to each other.  The difference is that a blog has a limited scope – it covers a single aspect of one area of law – and new content is ordered chronologically, with the newest item at the top of the list. Blogs also have a personal voice and typically reflect the analysis, insight and opinion of the writer.  A professional blog discusses a substantive topic and does not include personal material.

“It’s been much more of a business developer than I expected,” the boyish-looking Crouch says.  What’s amazed him the most is that the blog has generated referrals from attorneys he’s never met, but who sent him work based on his blog alone.

Comments to Crouch show the blog is a runaway hit.  "The blog is really good. You do a great job," wrote Professor Douglas Lichtman, The University of Chicago Law School, to Crouch. "We link to the blog internally as a good source for patent info," said an email from Kirkland & Ellis – a competitor!  "I check your website everyday and I find it a valuable source of information for my job," wrote as US Patent and Trademark Office Patent Examiner.

7 compelling reasons to start a professional blog

There are powerful reasons for lawyers to start their own professional blogs:

1. They are easy to set up and use. Simply go to Blogger at www.blogger.com or TypePad at http://www.typepad.com/ and open an account. Once the blog is established, you can simply type in the text of your post in an online box.  You don't need to know HTML code. To put your message online, just click on the appropriate button. The software will select a Web address.

2. They are cheap. Some are free and others offer a month's free trial.  I use Typepad and my account costs me only $11.96 per month. This is much cheaper than hiring a developer to create a Web site for you.

3. They are highly visible and quickly draw visitors. Search engines rank blogs highly because they contain predominately text and they are updated frequently – two things that attract search engines.

4. Blog programs allow multiple authors to update the blog, so that a firm can launch a practice group blog and enlist numerous authors to share the writing duties.

5. The topic can be about anything. A blog can simply recount a person's thoughts, viewpoints and news. They can also be used for firm announcements, client newsletters, legal updates, and answers to common client questions.

6. They give the author instant credibility and expert status on the topic.  Journalists read and subscribe to blogs, so be ready for phone calls from reporters looking for a quote.

…and this is the reason that compelled me to start The Professional Marketing Blog at http://blog.LarryBodine.com/:

7. If you fail to set up a blog on your special topic, someone else will claim it before you do. The attention and traffic goes to the early adopters, not the lawyers who wait to decide to join the trend a year later.

Blogging megatrend

The point of the Patently-O blog is that any lawyer – from a big firm or small -- can start a blog and generate new business.  The trick lies in doing it right, as I discuss below.

Many lawyers are blogging.  The “blogosphere” -- all blogs combined -- started in March 2003 and has doubled in size every three months, according to Steve Rubel, senior vice president of CooperKatz & Co., a public relations firm in New York. A blog is online all year, 24 hours a day. There are 1.2 million blog posts every day — 33,000 posts per hour, according to Technorati.com.   Further, every day, 70,000 new blogs are started. As of late May, there were at least 1,283 law-related Web sites in 208 legal categories, according to Blawg.org.

The marketing effect is titanic.  Big firms have blogs: Preston Gates & Ellis launched the Electronic Discovery Law blog in 2005 at http://www.ediscoverylaw.com/.  In the first month alone the blog had more than 70,000 hits and saw 3,000 unique visitors.  Today the blog has hundreds of email subscribers and countless others who receive content via RSS, including leading policy makers, federal judges and in-house counsel.

“The blog has become a core element in our marketing and business development efforts, and has already delivered an ROI many times over in helping land new clients.  It’s become an easy way for our practice to demonstrate our knowledge leadership in the area of electronic discovery,” said David Bowerman, Business Development Manager in Seattle.

Small firms have blogs. It took about 10 minutes for lawyer Andrew W. Ewalt to set up a Weblog and step onto the cutting edge of marketing. For Andrew, a solo practitioner in Storrs, Connecticut, starting up a blog was no sweat. Within 30 days he had a top listing in Google.

After 10 months of blogging, he achieved his initial goal: building a niche Web destination giving practical advice to his clients in the greater Hartford, Connecticut, area. He posts two to three times a week at http://andrewewaltslawblog.blogs.com and now has 80 posts or “articles.” His blog received 485 page views, 344 unique visitors, 305 first-time visitors and 39 returning visitors in January 2006. The number of unique and first-time visitors is a very healthy sign. Traffic is gradually climbing.

Tips to have a successful blog

There are millions of abandoned blogs, which were dropped because the author bungled the job.  Following are tips for success that I give to lawyers who are starting to blog:

1. Post at least twice a week.  A blog is supposed to be actively involved in its topic.  Posting any less will lead to the death of your blog.
2. Stick to your topic. Focus posts only on your professional topics.  Keep pictures of your kids, vacation photos and opinions about new movies off the blog.
3. Keep it short.  The ideal blog post is three paragraphs long: it makes the point, states an opinion and offers a link for more information.  Bloggers who post 2,000-word articles are boring their readers and driving their audience away.
4. Keep the Web address you start with.  When you move a blog, you lose all the readers who’ve bookmarked or subscribed using the original URL.  Accordingly, think through carefully what you want the address of your blog to be.
5. Turn on the Commenting feature.  This allows readers to make comments about your posts, creating an interactive environment and starting a conversation with your reader.
6. Come up with a catchy title and make sure it includes your name.  That’s why my blog is officially named “Larry Bodine’s Professional Marketing Blog.”
7. Make it interesting and readable.  Post about the news of the day, a new opinion or regulation, an emerging trend or a contrary viewpoint.  Make it fun to read and convey practical information.
8. Use you firm’s existing branding.  Use the look and feel of your firm’s Web site.  This may require hiring a professional blog developer, such as eLawMarketing at www.eLawMarketing.com.  Check out their portfolio online.
9. Promote the blog.  Email every blogger you know and ask them to mention the birth of your blog.  Send a print or emailing to all your clients announcing the blog.  Put a link to the blog on your firm’s home page.
10. Visit other related blogs and post comments on them.  This will put you into the online discussion of a topic and include a link back to your own blog.