The Marketing Value of Publishing: 1440 to 2008

Over at "Drug and Device Law," they kicked up a little storm last Friday by asking why the marketing value of practicing lawyers' writing a blog seemed to be undervalued.  I first learned of it when my friend Mark Herrmann of Jones Day sent me a heads-up asking if I could respond.    Unfortunately, before I had a chance to do so, the WSJ Law Blog also picked up the story this afternoon. 

Here's the issue:  "Drug and Device Law" is apparently the most widely read site on drug and device product liability, with 25,000 page-views/month.  But the law firms the authors belong to (Jones Day, of course, for Mark, and Dechert, for his co-author James Beck) seem remarkably indifferent to and only passively supportive of the blog.  Why might that be?  Mark and Jim propose four theories (as aptly summarized by the WSJ Law Blog):

“Most widely read product liability blog” = “World’s tallest midget”: 25,000 pageviews is a drop in the bucket, and there’s essentially no institutional benefit to blogging. If the two of us — Beck and Herrmann, the blogging morons — want to waste our Saturday mornings feeding this beast, we should go ahead and entertain ourselves.

Power of blogosphere eludes firm management: Management is basically folks over 50 who start their days sipping a cup of coffee and reading the Journal. Only people under 40 start their days sipping a cup of coffee and checking [legal blogs].

Blogs attract the wrong eyeballs: The target market for big firms such as ours is the general counsel and C-level management of Fortune 500 companies. With all due respect to our visitors — and we love you guys; really! — you folks are younger and less important.

Where’s the money in this? It takes many hours of effort each week for the two of us to provide regular, fresh content to this site, and the amount of business generated doesn’t justify the effort. If the two of us get some personal satisfaction from blogging, no one will interfere, but firms do cost-benefit analyses of marketing initiatives, and this one flunks the test.

Both the original piece and the WSJ followup have received numerous comments, which while they have few common threads do coalesce around the proposition that most blogs are a waste of time or worse, and that sorting the gems from the rest is time-consuming.  Interestingly, almost everyone who advances this view also adds the caveat that finding the  good stuff is highly rewarding—and a robust counterpoint to the mainstream media.

So what do I think here at "Adam Smith, Esq.?"  Not being in a large firm any more, I fortunately don't have anyone whatsoever looking over my shoulder when I write and hit the "publish" button.  But I think each of Mark & Jim's hypotheses has some merit, most particularly #4, "show me the money." 

There seems to be less and less time for labors of love, for things we do not because they contribute to the bottom line but because they advance our learned profession, serve the cause of justice or the disenfranchised, or boost the flagging morale of a colleague.  And it's very hard to infer any 1:1 correspondence between what I write here on "Adam Smith, Esq.," and my speaking and consulting engagements with firms, just as it is—so I suspect—very hard for Mark and Jim to identify clients who have come to them through "D&D Law."

That's not why I created "Adam Smith, Esq.," and I suspect it's not why they created D&D Law.

I part company with them, however, on ##2 and 3, "management doesn't get it" and "the wrong eyeballs."  At least judging from my experience, some of the most loyal, dedicated, and enthusiastic readers of "Adam Smith, Esq.," are managing partners and firm chairs at BigLaw firms.  I also believe firmly that there's no such thing as "the wrong eyeballs."  In the famous six degrees of separation syndrome, some of the most rewarding encounters I've had in the real world with people new to me have come through a friend of a friend of a referral of a reader who pointed them to "Adam Smith, Esq."

Since time immemorial—or at least since Gutenberg (1440)—lawyers have indirectly promoted their visibility and enhanced (with luck!) their credibility by publishing on legal issues and gaining a reputation for being thoughtful observers. Now that we can do it in the online medium, nothing fundamentally has changed.  The basic equation remains the same:  "Assertion persuades not; but demonstration convinces." 

It does me no good to ask you to believe that I'm a thoughtful fellow who cares deeply about the management of law firms and I would not insult your intelligence or waste your time by saying that.   But it has apparently done no small bit of good to have founded and be publishing "Adam Smith, Esq."

So my words of advice to Mark & Jim?  Hey, just keep it up.  As long as it is its own reward.  Because your site, in and of itself, will never be more (and should never be less; if it becomes so, it's time to pull the virtual plug).

Or, as my wife has observed, be realistic about this salient fact:  "'Adam Smith, Esq.' is, itself, nonprofit."