Michael Ferguson

I am headed to the annual Legal Marketing Association Conference (“LMA”) in Atlanta next week. I’ll be joined Dan Mintz, who heads our sales and business development. Dan’s a good person who comes with a lot of passion and care. Like me, he sees business development as all about relationships. People buy people, not products. So don’t be surprised if Dan reaches out to say hi or to meet with you – if he hasn’t already.  With LexBlog’s evolution from solely a professional turnkey blog publishing platform to a legal news and commentary network with over 22,000 law blog contributors, the feel of LMA has changed for us. As the publisher of legal news and commentary, we’re looking to help, at no cost, law firms and those agencies helping law firms. LexBlog is now publishing and syndicating law firm blogs, at no cost, whether the law firm is using LexBlog’s publishing platform or not. Each lawyer, blog and law firm receives a profile, automatically and at no cost. We’re looking to...

I use Twitter more to give shout outs to the good stuff being done by others than to broadcast about LexBlog and our doings. I’ve always had a hard time believing I did something that qualified for bragging. Maybe that’s my Irish Catholic roots and my being an entrepreneur my whole life — nothing’s ever good enough and there’s no reason not to feel guilty. Selfishly though, it just always felt good to make others feel good about what they’re doing. Lawyers, the organizations supporting access to legal services and the innovators bringing us the future of the law also need an attagirl or attaboy now and again.  Turns out that sharing the good of others, rather than talking about my company and our products, is the most effective method of business development I have ever used. Dale Carnegie, in one of the best-selling books of all time, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ laid out six business principles for making people like you – an essential he believe needed for busi...

What if there was legal news service, ala UPI, that syndicated legal news, information and commentary so that such news and commentary could be published by third-parties? UPI (United Press International), founded in 1907, at its peak had more than 2,000 full-time employees, 200 news bureaus in 92 countries and more than 6,000 media subscribers, including newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations.  As a kid I thought it incredibly neat that our local daily small town newspaper could pull and publish UPI stories and photos from around the world, in what looked like instantaneous fashion.  Most of us who are old enough think Walter Cronkite broke the news of President Kennedy’s assassination. Not so, Cronkite got the news from UPI. The essence of UPI, as well as AP and Reuters is syndication. Collect the news in various formats (text, audio and video) and syndicate it to those in the news business.  With the decline in the traditional news business, these n...