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Legal Flawg Watch
Last year, Antonin Pribetic, the same lawyer who helped develop the idea of a "re-tweet taxonomy," coined a new term for use in the legal blog world: "flawg."
On his Trial Warrior Blog, Pribetic defines flawgs and flawgers as follows:
"Flawg": noun. A legal blog without any substantive legal content that is created, monetized and promoted exclusively for profit. A Flawg will often contain posts about the latest legal tech gadgets, or the how to gain new clients through the awesome power of the internet, in the absence of anything remotely legal to discuss;
"Flawger": noun: someone who flawgs. Usually, a non-lawyer/social media law marketer, (but also a disbarred/suspended/unemployed/underemployed/retired/or failed lawyer who quit) who writes blawg posts about how to write blawg posts, SEO, ROI, iPads, cloud computing, top ten lists, and enjoys attending law marketing conferences and twittering about using #hashtags.
As an example of a flawg post, Pribetic highlights one post from a self-described Law Marketing Blog that invites lawyers to purchase Martindale-Hubbell merchandise in order to "Show Off Your AV Rating." Like this:
[Note: I don't want to get off on a rant about this ridiculous windbreaker, but please know that if I see any of you wearing one of these, I will take your picture and send it immediately to [email protected]]
Scott Greenfield also discussed flawgs recently on his Simple Justice blog in a post entitled, The Year of the Flawg. Greenfield warns lawyers who are anxiously sitting by silent telephones to avoid falling for the flawg pitches of "the smiling marketers, the SEO salesmen, the schemers who claim they have big money cases just waiting for you to sign onto their network. ..." Some of these lawyers/Internet "n00bs," he fears, will be "targeted by the snakeoil salesmen," and "easily taken in by the former lawyers and their cohorts whose own financial security is dependent on the foolishness and ignorance of the desperate."
And for those who are thinking about starting a flawg of their own, Greenfield has another message: Please don't. "Don't let 2012 be the Year of the Flawg," he says. "It won't save your practice or feed your children. It will bring our profession into further disrepute."
Posted by Bruce Carton on January 9, 2012 at 04:31 PM | Permalink
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