Michael Ferguson

If the cold of New York City weren’t enough, I am headed for another round in Chicago for the rest of the week. ABA TechShow is what’s in store. Entrepreneurs and innovators on both sides of the aisle. Startup and emerging growth tech companies run by entrepreneurs on one side. On the other side, lawyers operating smaller firms, who by necessity to effectively serve real people and crack the financial nut, are entrepreneurs in every sense of the word. I’m at home with these folks. I practiced as a trial lawyer 280 miles up the road in Wisconsin for almost 20 years. I was an entrepreneur as a lawyer and have been an entrepreneur for the last 20 years in legal tech companies. Having a beer, sharing a meal, and doing business with these women and men who are shaping the law as the law relates to the vast majority of Americans, consumers and small business people, is the stuff that life – and real law – is made of. Rather than being dominated by large companies, some of whom totally...

Technologist and the founder of blogging, Dave Winer,   blogged this week that if he were the CEO of The New York Times he would start a blog hosting service, with Times branding. People would know, per Winer, that this is blog space, not editorial space. Blogs would be sources, from which the Times editorial people would be encouraged to quote. Winer would also recruit people whose ideas were valuable enough to be otherwise quoted in the Times to begin to blog – or at least offer them a blog. There would be a central place for the aggregation of all the blog posts with the ability to subscribe to individual blogs, all under reader control.  Winer’s description of a New York Times blog hosting service sounds a lot like LexBlog and where we are going. We have the service – more expansive than hosting alone. Had it for 15 years. The last year plus we begin to aggregate and curate the blog posts coming from now over 20,000 legal bloggers. With Bob Ambrogi, as Editor-in-C...

There was recent discussion on Twitter and LinkedIn as to the ideal length of a law blog post. Lost in all of the noise was what is real law blogging for business development. A conversation. Listen first to what the people you want to engage/meet are saying/writing and what is being said/written about them. Then blog about what they are saying/writing or what is being said/written about them. They’ll engage you in return. You may find the people and organizations you’ll want to engage like this will be the influencers of a lot of people that you want to reach – reporters, bloggers, respected social media users, conference coordinators, association leaders and corporate leaders. My company has generated a lot of business from my blog (company was in fact built from my blog), but most of our customers did not find me from my blog posts nor had they ever read my blog. My company and I built trust and a reputation through blogging, or perhaps better called, networking through th...

Following   word from Bob Ambrogi this morning that Axiom , a global legal services company providing legal professionals and technology to legal departments in the largest companies in the world, was going public, I started wondering who are the “alternative” legal service providers. Are traditional law firms an alternative? Axiom already has 2,000 employees across three continents.   A few weeks ago, Frank Ready of Legaltech News reported  that Elevate , providing consulting, technology and services to major corporations and law firms, worldwide, is considering purchasing a UK law firm and going public, following the recent acquisition of two companies. From Elevate’s flounder and executive chair, Liam Brown : We’d rather bring in public company capital so that the management team can continue to control the strategy and direction and growth of the business. When companies such as Axiom and Elevate were started, they were viewed as alternatives to the way legal ...

What a hashtag coming yesterday from law blog pioneer, legal tech veteran and now law professor,  Dennis Kenned y. Kennedy used the hashtag in a  blog post  as his solution to a growing problem legal professionals face when writing for third party publishers – #blogfirst. I’ve been rethinking my approach to publishing articles in publications. To my horror, I’ve seen links to hundreds of my old articles take people to “file not found” or other 404 pages. Other articles are now behind subscription or pay walls, or can be read only as you navigate through ad mazes. That was never what I wanted. I don’t think any author would ever want that. I want as many readers as possible. Then we have people finding a reference, and previous working link, to one of the articles you did for a third party publication in another article, presentation materials or a blog post. They coming knocking. At best, in most cases I at least have my last draft that I submitted for publication s...

Legal blogging is often referred to as content marketing.  But watching the depth and breath of the law blog posts on our network, I continue to see legal blogging as something so much more important. Not only has legal blogging democratized legal publishing, but legal blogging represents a body of secondary law.  I was speaking to a communications and outreach person with a major law school today regarding a project or two. Our discussion got into the significant role that legal bloggers play in our society. The law exists not only in codes and regs, but in our interpretation of that primary law. The law is alive and continues to evolve and be shaped by this ongoing interpretation. This interpretation of the law coming from those in the law, ranging from the judiciary’s deciding cases to legal professionals developing secondary law through their writings.  Traditionally, secondary law – legal insight and commentary – came from the “learned lawyers” who had access ...

I have been asked by law school professors, placement offices and students on best practices for blogging. I am reluctant to share “X Tips” on this or that for fear that my post will look as if I am I trying to garner SEO — and that the minute I publish the post I’l think of something else to add. Expect to see the number of tips change, No question law students and law schools need guidance on blogging though. Here’s  a few tips to get us started. Establish a goal you want to accomplish through blogging. Saying I blogged is not the accomplishment of a goal. Rather than legal writing, set a goal of understanding how to network through the Internet by the time you graduate from law school. Commit to building a name for yourself and building professional relationships through blogging. Such goals land you internships, clerkships and a job doing what you want to do for whom you want to work for upon graduation. Focus on a niche you can get passsionate about. Blogging on a niche ...

I’m little slow sharing an email I received from LexBlog’s Associate Editor, Melissa Lin , a couple weeks ago. Gave me goosebumps to feel her excitement and passion and to know we were on our way to showcasing blogs and bloggers, worldwide. I thought it a perfect way to share with you how the LexBlog network is growing.   ———————————————————————————————————— As I announced at our company goals meeting last week, the publishing team will add 1000 member blogs to the LexBlog network by the end of 2019.  We have added 76 feeds since starting the project and 16 of those were from this week alone! I’m hoping to keep this momentum going and want to remind everyone that if there’s a blog we’re missing, to please let me or others on publishing team know.  Here are all the blogs we added this week: Construction Law in North Carolina Centre Knowledge Blog Comm Law Center Gravel2Gravel Policyholder Pulse Internet & Social Media Law Blog U.S. Income Tax for Expatria...

I recently heard of law firms posting job opportunities at law school placement offices for law students to pen blog posts for their law firm. As with legal marketing companies selling ghostwritten blog posts to law firms, the law student would presumably get paid per post, with the firm running the posts in a lawyer’s name. The problem with such a scenario is that it’s misleading. And the type of law blogs being run like this fall within the definition of advertising in virtually every states legal ethics rules. Advertising rules that proscribe saying or doing anything that’s misleading in your advertising.  What’s misleading? That you as a lawyer or law firm are holding out that you wrote the blog post.  Ask anyone who they think wrote a blog post listing the author blogger when it’s posted on the New York Times, Harvard Business Review or ESPN? They’ll look at you kind of strange wondering why you’re asking and say the person in the byline, of course. For whatever rea...