Blogging, blogging etc

This is the start of my third week in the new office (remember, I am only here three days a week, the other two are spent out at my old corporate job), the past two weeks have also been complicated by school vacation week and a two week vacation by our day care providers. I don’t have any clients yet but I also have not done any active marketing. Yes I do have a plan, I am a little behind where I wanted to be at this point. I can remember telling friends I wanted to make a “running start” when I opened up. By that I meant that on day one, I wanted the web site up, the announcement emails ready to go, business cards in hand etc. That didn’t happen, in fact I am just (as of today) going to finish off my law web site. It took a little longer than expected to get the office, computer etc. set up and I expect there is a little procrastination involved, obsessing about getting the web site exactly right before I started reaching out to old friends and colleagues.

I have also spent a lot of time getting what I’ll call my practice blog ready for “prime time”; I started this back in November/December and had a hard time keeping it up but I was able to post every now and then. In the past few weeks, I have been filling out the content. One of my favorite forms of procrastination is to see how many visitors the search engines are sending my way, right now I am averaging about 60 to 70 unique visitors a day and have the top ranking in Google for a few two word search terms (no idea why!). I need to give the practice blog a face lift (have hired someone to do that for me, they are behind schedule) and put a link to my practice web site, bio etc. For me the practice blog serves three purposes: (1) keeps me up to date on developments in my area of law; (2) establishes credibility with potential clients; and (3) provides a source of client leads. I have done absolutely nothing to publicize the practice blog yet so I will be curious to see what happens over time as I spread the word.

As others have said, if you are thinking about starting a solo law practice, why not get the blog up and running now, even if you are in law school or a year or more away from launching your practice it can be a fun way to feel that you are actually taking steps to go solo and keep up on your area(s) of the law etc. Here is an example of a law student's blog I found today that was referenced in an email that BNA sends out summarizing developments in Internet law. Stop, back up, think about that. For all you navel gazers out there that moan (myself included) . .”but I don’t know enough to practice law on my own”, we have a law student that is being referenced by a BNA email letter that probably being read by thousands of lawyers in the field. As you might have seen on myshingle.com, over at the Benefits Blog which is celebrating its third year anniversary, they are getting 81,000 visitors a month. That’s just amazing.