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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Blah, Blah Blog Sheep,|Have You Any News?

There are more legal professionals than there used to be!

Bloomberg last week reported that "the legal services sector added 2,300 jobs last month."

So the U.S. "legal industry" (arch nemesis of the illegal industry) employed 1,122,100, up from 1,119,800 the month before.

Hurray?

I have no idea what that means or why we need to know it. Apparently, the statistics include janitors and people who get coffee at law firms, so maybe it means law offices are cleaner and more pleasant.

But let's be optimistic for a change and assume there are more lawyers out there hustling for clients. How do you win that competition?

Another Bloomberg blog last week titled "What Lawyers Put in Their Bios vs. What Clients Want" offered some good suggestions for making attorney LinkedIn bios more attractive to clients.

I won't quibble with any of the ideas, but it seems to me a lot of lawyers are going to use those suggestions - and then they won't stand out.

So here are a few other things to try on LinkedIn to get noticed:

Nude photos: I know some of you may think this will turn away clients rather than bring them in, but you can always claim someone posted them without your permission and that you're outraged.

Sympathy works in your favor and it's a surefire way to get noticed.

Then there will be clients who like the photos ...

Treasure: People on the Internet love games.

Post a picture of yourself in a pirate costume (preferably with a parrot to attract animal lovers) and offer clues to buried online riches. Then you can charge for hints and tools (e.g., a sparkling magical shovel with a built-in treasure-finding GPS system).

Anyone reaching Golden Client Level in the game should be entitled to a free legal consultation.

You'll be guaranteed clients with just the right mix of strategic intelligence, stubbornness and greed.

Cats: Include videos of cats in your office.

The Internet loves this.

More blogging: Also last week, an outfit called Manzama Inc. issued a press release announcing it was teaming up with something called LexBlog Inc. to ... well, I'm not really too sure what they're doing but they say it in a lot of words.

Check out the release - I see it as sort of the AntiTwitter - kind of like the way a lot of lawyers write.

Sample sentence from the release: "From there, it's on the lawyer to act, and that includes establishing a social media footprint to appropriately communicate and position themselves and their firms to achieve their desired outcomes, that's where LexBlog's expertise adds value."

Sic.

As far as I can tell, Manzama is sort of like Reddit and LexBlog is sort of like Tumblr and the press release claims that "this powerful partnership between two leading companies in content discovery and sharing will enable legal professional who are looking to increase authentic online engagement to do so more easily."

It's so hard to be authentic when no one is feeding you material.

So are potential clients reading lawyer blogs?

Check out LexBlog.com. Apparently, it's a matter of faith. The words "We Believe" get repeated a lot.

There are also a lot of blocks of color. I found myself squinting after a couple of minutes.

There are lots of blogs - lawyers explaining things at length and spouting opinions - but I couldn't find a single cat video.

This will never work.

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