Filtered Judgment

Since a lot of my classmates have written about how blogging at work or as a career, I wanted to look for people that recommend blogging, or at least a profession where it was common practice. Here is what I found.

There is a site called Lexblog which is a personal webspace hosting a significant number of blogs written by Lawyers.
One in particular, Kevin, wrote about 15 ways to become an influential blogger. As the author of the site, Kevin has quite a history. Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs is the leading source of information and commentary on the use of blogs, RSS, and social media for the marketing of law firms.

Kevin, President of LexBlog, Inc., was a trial lawyer for 17 years. Practicing law in rural Wisconsin, he successfully marketed his own law firm on the Internet in a such a positive way that USA Today said "If O'Keefe isn't careful, he may wind up giving lawyers a good name.

(information taken directly from his "about Kevin" page)

He ran his practice virtually online, and then moved towards blogging about bloggers in law, in a blog called prairelaw.com. This was later bought by lawyers.com, which unfortunately requires an account to sign in, so no link.

Kevin outlined a blog post by Skelliewag, another lawyer blogger, describing ways to blog like a professional, and become influential in your blogging community. Although geared towards other lawyers, its content is really universal. Some of my favorites:

# Respond to criticism with dignity. Every blogger with a readership will be criticized at some point. The way you deal with such criticism will leave a distinct mark on your profile, so make sure that mark is a positive one. Getting involved in a tit-for-tat may cause your credibility to spring a leak. As LexBlog's Creative Director, Greg Storey, would say, don't be an asshat. Lawyers are known for infighting. The blogoshere is not the place for it, word of it spreads far faster and wider. At the same time, defend your ground with passion, the blogosphere respects people with a spine.
# Use an authoritative voice. And no, that doesn’t mean talk like a police officer. There’s a common trait amongst most influential bloggers: they write well, they write fluently, they care about things like spelling, grammar and expression. They write with clarity. The more people who can understand you and ‘get’ what you’re trying to say, the further your ideas will spread.
(taken from the blog directly)

One very interesting concept he brought up was interviewing people and posting on the result on the blog as a great way for new quality content. I think this would be a good thing for many members of our class. It is a method to get to know each other as a unit, as well as give us blog posts. I, for instance, would love to talk in depth with someone who has a wealth of knowledge in the subject of programming, for I am an interested enthusiast that could use information gleaned from such a source. If not that, How about someone in the interest house willing to share the pros and cons? I would love to hear an insiders view on the subject. I'm looking at it as a living option currently and I'm very curious. This would also, obviously, add posts to our blog, which increases our grade (in some way, right?).

If you are interested in the blogs mentioned above, out of curiousness or an interest in Law, here are some RSS links:

Skelliewag

Kevin's Lexblog:

Particularly, for those interested in the plenty of valuable tidbits Kevin's blog may have to offer you all individually, this is his home page. The right column has several topics that may be of use to you.