On my blog, Real Lawyers Have Blogs, now in its 15th year, I share information, news and insight to help legal professionals looking to network online, whether it be via blogging or other social media.
In addition to my blog, I liberally share others’ insight on Twitter. Feel free to engage me there as well on LinkedIn and Facebook.
October 2019
True authority, the kind that earns a lawyer and their commentary citations inside large language models (LLMs) is far deeper than that achieved by a few quick SEO-like steps.
Authority in AI mirrors how people once judged a lawyer’s standing before search engines and SEO existed. It rests on building a verifiable, lasting public record
LexBlog being the largest network of lawyer-authored legal publishing, I am regularly asked about how this publishing should be used by large language models (LLMs).
The questions are understandable. Many people hold the view that legal publishing should not be used by LLMs at all, especially with headlines like the latest gimmick from Perplexity—its Comet
I’ve been a track and field junkie since law school. That’s when I started racing marathons, not anywhere near Olympic level, but enough to qualify for the major marathons and compete in my age group.
I loved the training, competing, and racing marathons despite some of the physical pain and the disappoint that came with
I was talking to a lawyer last week who has made her name through real and authentic publishing over the last two decades.
She now wants to show lawyers how to build a real name for themselves. Not with SEO but by publishing to build authority. Sharing authentic insight on legal matters they know best.
Cyndy McCollough—founder and principal consultant at McCollough Consulting—joins Kevin to talk about moving firm marketing from AI dabbling to an actual roadmap. We get into training first, picking one small pilot, winning buy-in with a middle-out model, and the everyday use cases that free teams to do higher-value work.
Watch the episode below or
Greg Siskind was publishing online before most lawyers had email. In this episode of the Real Lawyers podcast, he retraces grabbing a domain in 1993, launching an immigration bulletin in 1994 and learning netiquette on Usenet.
He walks through early ABA advertising fights, the daily grind of updating a website and how that visibility led
Large law firms lagged small firms when it came to the use of the Internet for marketing and after that publishing (particularly blogging) to build authority and business and then SEO for high search rankings.
The problem in the case of many large law firms is that they are lagging again.
Rather than recognizing that
There’s all this hype and discussion going on about AI and legal blogging and publishing. Most is focused on how AI can improve your publishing, enable you to publish faster, proof/edit your copy or even write your publishing for you.
The last one is not a big leap in that marketing companies are already writing
David Lat has shaped modern legal media more than almost anyone. From the pseudonymous blog Underneath Their Robes to launching Above the Law in 2006 and now publishing the reader-funded Substack Original Jurisdiction, he shows how gossip, hustle and independent vision can build a lasting journalism career.
In this episode Kevin digs into that journey,
Hamish McKenzie–a veteran journalist, 21 year publisher and co-founder of Substack–inspired the heck out of me with his post yesterday, “Civilization on the Electronic Frontier.”
I’m not the Chief Writing Officer around here, as he is at Substack, but I’m honored to share the views he expresses about real sharing, real engagement,