Thursday, January 31, 2008

Jordan Furlong's Blog is Law21.ca

The Canadian legal blogosphere elevated a couple notches in recent weeks with the addition of CBA National editor Jordan Furlong. After dipping his toes in over at Slaw, Jordan is now blogging full-time at Law21.ca.

Jordan is a smart guy, a prolific writer, and I can't count the times I've been completely envious of the vision he offers. I can feel that law21 RSS subscriber count rising already!

Congrats Jordan on making the big plunge. And looking at the volume of content you've already generated, your post count should surpass mine in about three weeks. Nothing like making up for lost time... :-)

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Quickscribe Updates BC Legislation Manuals

I received a note from BC Legislation Service Quickscribe this morning that a number of their manuals were updated for January, 2008. Those included:
February updates are also in the works, and should be released soon.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Confirmed: Google Hates Librarians

See Librarian in Black, Cohen, Bradley and Abram.

Add me too... A 7 month summer break? tsk tsk Google. Shame on you!

Ah who are we kidding? We were lucking to get the invite. They were never going to show up and take us to the prom. Were they?

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

JD Supra is Soooo Close!

I seriously can't wait for the doors to open to JD Supra.

Larry Bodine's just posted
about how the site is set to go live in a couple weeks time. CMOs and Marketing Directors will also want to take note of what Larry says at the end. There's a great opportunity right now to build your firm's custom profile and get a website preview simply by becoming a founding contributor!

I'm also happy to relay that we're going to co-launch a blog for JD Supra! The crew at Lexblog are working hard as we speak write!

I really pushed hard for this one (big surprise!). Mostly because I think not having Aviva Cuyler (JD Supra's founder) in the legal blogosphere would be a wasted opportunity. Aviva already enjoys reading other law blogs, and frankly, her passion for legal research, KM and content sharing will be a valuable focal point for JD Supra users. It's also a great opportunity to put a human face to the project and respond publicly to feedback & suggestions.

And finally, I mentioned this in my last JD Supra post, but I'm still very excited about how this site could become the next generation of public-facing legal KM. Sharing one's expertise via work product, and linking it to web marketing makes a lot of sense -- both for KM & marketing purposes. You can check out the list of contributing firms in Larry's post, and buy-in will definitely be a factor, but we're really looking good so far!

Did I say I can't wait? :)

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Calling All Florida Lawyer Bloggers!

It may be sunny up here in Canada, but as usual, it isn't all that warm. So as announced and blogged over at Stem, I'm taking my first dip into warmer American climates - Florida to be exact!

The Florida Lawyers Blog Watch is a regional aggregator for the 50 most recent blog posts by Florida lawyers. Similar to my legalpubs website, I'm using RSS feed mixing to produce a watchable stream of lawyer commentary. And rather than new publications, this site will track the latest subjects of interest to Florida attorneys.

Working with Stem client Ron Chapman, who himself is based out of West Palm Beach, the site will be tracking 36 different lawyer blogs (listed below). Ron will serve as my regional lookout for new lawyer blogs, and also as a co-contact point for those wanting to be added to the site.

Interestingly, Florida is one of the most active regions for lawyer blogging, probably in the world, and makes for a fantastic test case. If the site is well received, I'll be looking into creating a mobile version as well.

But for now, please drop by and take a look!

At launch, and in no particular order, the blogs the site watches are:

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Congratulations Connie Crosby!

My friend Connie Crosby has made a huge decision! If you haven't already, please drop by and wish her well!

Let me tell you what I know about Connie. She's got the courage to tackle change, she experiences the web at a rapid pace, and she's got a knack for picking the winners.

So do I expect big things? You bet I do!

I can't express how much I appreciated her support as I came to a similar decision in December/06, and throughout 2007, first planning & then starting my company. Every step of the way, Connie had my back.

Connie, you have my full support. I congratulate you. And despite all this talk of 'leisure', Sorry, I'm not buying it. :) I can't wait for the next chapter!

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Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Canadian Blog Awards

Picked up on an interesting new site this morning, via this post that cites the Clawbies. ... Check-out the Canadian blog awards! Not just law blogs this time, but a whole bunch of Canadian blogs in a wide variety of categories.

Nominations are being accepted until January 11, 2008. ... So you know I fired in a nomination for Slaw for best blog. Couldn't resist. :-)

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Monday, January 07, 2008

Firm Websites & Blog Software

As I touched on Friday over on my Stem blog, I believe the future of law firm websites will increasingly be driven by web 2.0 technologies. And in particular, over the next couple years I'm expecting more what we experience to resemble what we know as blogs today -- more proper Content Management (or "CMS") software being used, and more emphasis on Lawyer commentary.

The interesting part here for me is how this commentary will be integrated, and I think that will depend a lot on the firm, and the firm's approach.

Under ideal circumstances, and a definite course for larger firms, IMO, is using something along the lines of my hub-n-wheel strategy -- service pages, profile pages and various qualification tools on the firm's principal site, surrounded by other content-based websites, each defined by the firm's core service lines and target audiences.

This is the type of approach I've tried to implement with Clark Wilson. The principal law firm website being at cwilson.com, and the spokes of that wheel being content sites like BCRELinks and the Canadian Trademark Blog.

The counter strategy here, and probably more applicable to smaller firms and solos, is to create a single CMS driven website that combines traditional legal website content with newer technologies that support online commentary. This type of site could be built on a blogging software like Wordpress, outsourced to a company like Lexblog, or created using a community portal CMS like Drupal. Any of these solutions would do.

As an example, in recent weeks I've been working with new Stem client Ron Chapman, a Florida criminal lawyer. On his site, we're looking at things like improving the service pages and more detail & examples within his lawyer profile. Ron's blog commentary will be front & centre on this website, with the service pages off in their own dedicated area. Ultimately, I'd like to see the link architecture give a little more prominence to those pages in the template design, but I think we're getting there.

There aren't a lot of people using blog software to build websites these days, but it is being done, and I think we're looking at a big increase soon. I've felt this way for a while, and it's one of the reasons I built my company site on Wordpress. Actually, it's two installs of Wordpress; one for the main website and one for my Strategy Blog.

Feature wise, using blog software has allowed me to:
  • offer RSS feeds for every page on the website;
  • integrate comment functionality in webpages, at my choosing;
  • use open source software & not pay for an expensive CMS product;
  • create new pages the same day I've conceived of a concept;
  • move the blog functionality off the homepage (not necessary, but something I wanted to do...);
  • repurpose the blog functionality for the site's news area, thus creating an easy publishing & RSS enabled press release function;
  • create a website with the SEO basics already baked in.
That last point is worth noting. Often when I get retained to SEO work for law firms, one the first challenges I face is to get those on-page optimization basics in order. By using blog software, the turn around time to getting a website ranking well can be cut in half. It's significant.

Blogs, comments & trackbacks, RSS functionality - all these features are here to stay. For me, the question now becomes how long before firms integrate these features into their principal site, and how prominent blog style commentary will become. Time will tell, I suppose. :-)

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Thursday, January 03, 2008

Thought Leadership Article Runs in the Texas Bar Journal

My article on Thought Leadership & brand building for lawyers, which originally ran on Slaw, has been published in the Texas Bar Journal!

A big thanks to TBJ's Technology Editor John Sirman for the opportunity.