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Will Blogs Improve the Image of Lawyers?
Blogs may be a relatively recent technological development, but as Justin Patten of Human Law comments here, blogs can play a rather old-fashioned function: engaging lawyers in "an ongoing community dialogue," which, ultimately, will benefit their reputations. Patten cites this new paper by Colin Samuels, Humanizing the Profession: Lawyers Find Their Voices Through Blogging. From the abstract:
Although the legal profession's public image difficulties have persisted for many years, widespread blogging by legal academics, practitioners, students, and others may offer a solution where bar association and firm advertising previously have failed.
Traditional advertising enables communication on a large scale but it is impersonal and heavy-handed; personal communication is inexpensive and effective but it can also be time-consuming and it is inherently small-scale. Blogging offers the best aspects of each -- it is scalable but remains personal and inexpensive; it offers timely information and, by caching and indexing blogged content, search engines make this information manageable and easily-retrievable on a long-term basis.
Will blogs change lawyers' image? Tell me what you think, below.
Posted by Carolyn Elefant on October 30, 2006 at 06:34 PM | Permalink
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