Michael Ferguson

It was sixteen years ago when when was introduced in San Francisco to the Legal Marketing Association as the “national leader on blogs for lawyers” that I realized there could be an opportunity to start a “law blog company.” Law firm leaders came up and asked, “Can you help me and my firm.” I was thinking, “Help you do what? Set up a blog on Typepad by paying a $4.95 a month subscription as I was?” But I bit my tongue, realizing practicing lawyers were not going to do anything, especially something as high profile as blogging without knowing what they were doing and without acting in a professional fashion. Most importantly was the ROI. How much time should and would blogging take? Would I realize a good ROI for my time? What was the ROI? How could I assure I would realize this ROI? Lawyers needed strategic consulting, more than anything else for their blog to succeed. So “Strategic Consulting,” became the first of seven pieces in LexBlog’s “Professional Turnkey Blog Solution.”

The Internet has been around for over twenty-five years as a business development tool for lawyers. Early lawyers to the Internet built reputations and business, not with websites – they came later – but by networking through the Internet. Networking meaning seeing where people gathered online, where they asked questions, where people exchanged information. The lawyers jumped in and helped. Lawyers used Listserv’s, message boards, bulletin board systems and online communities, including America Online, Prodigy and Compuserv. Those of us using the Internet and these mediums made hay on the business development front by networking through the Internet. Other lawyers had not a clue, they had no idea how the Internet worked to build a reputation and land clients in our niches. I was getting clients typically reserved for the larger firms with bigger names and far bigger marketing and communications budgets. These lawyers couldn’t even see what we were doing. We were operating below

In reply to one of my recent Facebook posts about living downtown Seattle during the protests and pandemic, someone said they would NEVER live downtown Seattle. There is no infrastructure — grocery stores, dry cleaners, schools etc to support families living downtown. I couldn’t let this slide by and mislead those not familiar with downtown Seattle. People, of course, like different places. I have lived on seven acres on the edge of a small town, in the heart of a town on a park and on an island, where my five kids walked four blocks to school – and to a ferry to catch a major league ballgame downtown, while in their early teens. But downtown Seattle is a great place to live. I have a top of the line grocery store six blocks away – I walk to it. Another tier one grocer is opening two blocks away. If I need something faster, AmazonGo is across the street and Bartells, a large drugstore ala Walgreens, is under me. My dry cleaner is one block away – or my dry cleaning is picked up a