"Case of reluctant lust" is how brandname digital describes defense bar & blogging

I promised help was on the way for legal digital wannabes.  And here it is, only anonymous.  This brandname digital who taught me and my clients much of what we do agreed to this exclusive interview only under wraps.  He does assignments for the legal industry and doesn't want to rock the boat by being candid.

*********************************************************************************************************************

JG:  We all know that in general the defense bar, just like the GOP, is behind the plaintiff bar and the Democrats on their use of the Internet - at least effective use.  There are plenty of dead websites put up there by them, which certainly are not pulling in new business or enhancing brandnames.  Why is this, Anon?

Anon:  Well, my theory is that much of the defense bar still embraces that white-shoe ethos.  It wants to avoid what it considers "unseemly."  Weblogs are to it what TV was in the 1950s: A new medium, raw and unknown. 

The establishment, represented by GOP Richard Nixon, didn't take TV seriously. We know how that ended.  But Nixon finally accepted the power of that medium.  I am seeing signs that the defense bar is also. 

But, Jane, it is taking the form of what I call "reluctant lust."  A defense firm will call me in, give me all kinds of go-ahead signals, then pull back.  If it does launch a weblog it's more print in tone and content than digital.

JG: Why is the plaintiff bar such as Marler Clark so ahead of the curve on digital?  I met up with Bill Marler over two years ago because of the brilliance of his blogging. Eventually he became a client. More than the business, I valued Marler's vote of confidence in my digital know-how.

Anon:  The plaintiff bar always had the strategic and tactical advantage, at least since the consumer movement of the 1970s, to not be constrained by that white-shoe legacy.  From the get-go, they were entrepreneurial and inventive.  You have to give Motley Rice credit for experimenting with the concept of public nuisance.

JG:  So how can the defense bar get up-to-speed in digital?  That's a must-do.  I talk to lobbying firms in Washington D.C. and they counsel their business clients to go digital, that the plaintiff bar is running rings around them in public opinion. My hunch is that the lead paint public nuisance litigation wouldn't have picked up the momentum it had if business lobbyists had been online.  Now, of course, we have effective weblogs like Overlawyered.com and Pointoflaw.com but we didn't in the late 1990s.

Anon: We don't know that but you could be right. Now the National Manufacturers Association has a blog.  But it didn't when Rhode Island was putting together its public nuisance suit.

JG:  So, how can the defense bar do digital effectively?

Anon:  First of all, they have to recognize that this medium is proven-out.  Its early-adopter phase is over.  Some even contend blogging is a mature medium. 

JG:  How will they come to accept the influence and power of digital?

Anon: Lose more business.  Some law firms are getting hit hard in this downturn.  They are clueless how to use digital as a branding, new-business development, research, community-building, information-transmittal, advocacy, and actual selling tool.  I get the most calls from firms in trouble. But I sense they're not hurting enough to make that leap into digital - yet.

JG:  Okay, what's the next step in going digital?

Anon: A seismic shift in mindset from vertical relationships or talking-down to horizontal ones. The whole web is all about a conversation, among equals.  It is difficult for successful, wealthy attorneys to default to being just another bozo on the bus, or, more accurately, on the web.  So many blogs in much of professional services, not only law, still address audiences top-down.

JG: How can a tone be changed?

Anon: Study effective blogs, then imitate. Read "The Cluetrain Manifesto" and "Naked Conversations."  If necessary, hire a blogging coach - like you.  You could teach them plenty about switching from the all-knowing voice of print to being in the question and figuring it out.  You went through that five years ago, and it was tough.  I remember. It was months and many posts on your first blog before you stopped sounding like a 1970s corporate annual report.

JG: The next must-do?

Anon: Because the world is undergoing so much change, no one knows what's really going on or what will happen tomorrow.  That's why our best communicators are adopting an ironic tone.  It distances them from the pain of all this uncertainty.  I fear the person who is too earnest, too close to things. 

JG:  I used to be Capitalist-Virgin Earnest.  That stance has no credibility, does it?

Anon: Not any more.  But ironic doesn't mean without knowledge.  It's informed, only not betting the ranch on its contentions and having a sense of the absurd.

JG:  Actually, successful influentials have had that stance long before the web.  In the early 1990s, I started doing assignments for Bob Dilenschneider, who founded the public affairs and global coaching service The Dilenschneider Group.  World leaders trusted him because he could distance himself from absolute certainty.  He never used the now-fashionable phrase - "we're figuring it out" - but that seemed to be his approach to whatever. It still is, incidentally.

Anon: The rest of the steps to digital at-homeness is practice.  Just get out there in cyberspace and keep trying out things.  The game moves so fast that mistakes are expected.  Also, it's always morphing.  So, you may think you messed up but you might have hit on a new approach in blogging.

JG: One more thing: Why is it so hard to start blogging?  I went through hell the first two or so months?

Anon:  To the bloggers, it's usually a new medium and that in itself is anxiety-inducing.  Also, if the bloggers are over-40, they assume they're too old to ever feel comfortable in cyberspace.  I then remind them that's exactly how they felt when their office switched from WordPerfect to Word.

JG:  Thank you.  Will you come back in a month and tell us about your clients' progress?

Anon: In a generic way, sure.

*****************************************************************************************************************

Readers can submit their blogging questions.  I will pass them onto Anon.  Please contact me at Mgenova981@aol.com.