Maintaining a specialty law blog can also help attorneys establish that they are experts in their particular fields.

“I’m a great believer in what I call the ‘ubiquity’ factor in marketing,” he said. “The more you can get your name out there in different media online, and in different locations online, the more that comes back to your benefit.” Seattle, Wash.-based attorney William Marler, well-known throughout the country for handling food-poisoning cases, said his firm began an E. coli blog about five years ago and has since developed specialty blogs for most of the common forms of illness-causing bacteria. Marler said that the blogs, which are continuously updated by staff and now getting between 8,000 and 10,000 hits a day, are primarily a forum for providing information to the public.

Marler said he often spends as much as two hours a day blogging on issues relating to food poisoning and providing his opinions on how we can have a safer food supply. He’s convinced that blogging has helped elevate his stature in the legal and food safety advocate arenas. “Having a voice and having people comment and cite to your blog and understand you are a serious player in this business … it makes you feel a little bit better about what you do.”