legal sanity

Last week, Jonathan D. Frieden, Jim Hassett, Peter Marx and I presented a panel on blogs for the Law Firm Growth Management Conference held at New York’s Harvard Club. Over at his blog, Jonathan has a very nice synopsis of the points we covered . One topic that really struck a chord with me was how blogging might benefit large law firms. I suggested that there are many benefits to practice group blogs written by younger associates and supervised by partners, such as:

• Creating visibility for the group and establishing its expertise
• Keeping group members current on recent developments in their practice area
• Fostering group camaraderie and communication
• Giving young attorneys an avenue for sharing their voice, skills and wisdom (a nice counterpoint to trudging away anonymously on research, document review, contract drafting and the like)

Looking at this list, it’s fair to say that practice group blogs can do a lot to nurture the partner-associate business relationship and to foster meaningful connections between young – and often marginalized and disengaged – lawyers and their firms. By giving their associates (and, perhaps, summer associates) group blogging responsibilities, firms send a strong and clear message that they recognize the importance of keeping new lawyers engaged and challenged. The young lawyers, in turn, feel valuable and more integral to their practice group’s and firm’s successes.

For more insight into the topic of law firm blogging, check out these posts from Ron Friedmann, Steve Matthews and Kevin O’Keefe here and here.