Use Collaborative Content Development to Enhance Credibility and Build Visibility
A version of this article was originally published in The Legal Intelligencer on April 24,2024, here.
In a collaborative content process, lawyers as subject matter experts can conceptualize the topics and frame the discussion to address the needs and questions of their audiences, provide guidance and feedback throughout the process, and review, finalize and approve the content before release.
Last month, one of my favorite commentators in the legal content space, Kevin O’Keefe, posted some musings on LinkedIn about the place of legal blogging in the legal publishing pantheon. O’Keefe, the founder of LexBlog and writer of the blog “Real Lawyers Have Blogs,” is a big proponent of legal blogs—as am I. In the post, he asked whether legal blogging should be considered part of legal publishing and concluded that it should: “Legal blogs are not the same as the mediums used for legal publishing in days past, but blogs may represent legal publishing—or at least a part of legal publishing today. Technology, the internet—and soon AI—may redefine what we call legal publishing.” (You can read his LinkedIn post here.)
I couldn’t agree more with his conclusion that blogs had become authoritative sources for legal content, allowing lawyers to showcase their expertise and provide legal insights in an accessible format.
But I was brought up short by this aside in his post: “Blogs, in their junk form, are written by legal marketers without regard to legal information and posted to a website to get search rankings and mislead the public.”
The comment seems a little harsh and a bit reductive, labeling blog content not written by the bylined lawyer as junk published with the intention of misleading the public. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so. He received some commentary on the post, which he addressed in a follow-up blog post, “The Integrity Challenge: Ensuring Authenticity in Legal Blogs.”
While acknowledging that “junk blog” was “maybe too harsh a term,” O’Keefe asserted that marketing or ghostwritten blog posts cannot be considered legal blogging, adding: “When the content is not authored by the legal professionals listed, the integrity and credibility of these sources are called into question.”
According to O’Keefe, to allow this content to be considered legal blogging would lead us down the path to libraries full of books and articles not written by their supposed authors but by ghostwriters; newspapers publishing pieces not written by the bylined authors but by other (less costly) writers; and “treatises and law reviews … authored not by legal scholars but by marketing professionals aiming to spotlight lawyers, law professors, and law students for name recognition and professional gain.”
Who’s going to tell him that much of this already exists?
Libraries are indeed full of books and articles written by ghostwriters, and newspapers publish op-ed and opinion pieces that are credited to public figures and noted experts but written at least in part by paid communications professionals. And many, many well-respected legal platforms, publications and treatises include articles and chapters developed not by the credited lawyers but by teams that might include folks from the firm’s library or research services, paralegals, law clerks, associates, marketing communications professionals and outsourced resources like me and my team.
I do agree that there are blogs that are, at best, what I call “legal light” (often a lot of information but not a lot of real legal insight or analysis) and, at worst, sales copy barely disguised as informational content. While I might not call them junk, I also don’t believe many people would confuse this content with true legal thought leadership or scholarship. This content serves the purpose for which it was intended—marketing and business development. Which is, after all, at least one of the purposes of nearly all legal blogs and other content published by lawyers and law firms today.
The issue as I see it really isn’t whether in-house or outsourced legal marketing or content professionals should have a role in creating blogs and other content published by lawyers and firms—they can and do for very good reasons.
Instead, it’s how best to use those resources to ensure that legal blogs—and by extension other thought leadership and branded content such as alerts, newsletters, videos and podcasts—are credible and useful sources of legal insight for readers, as well as effective tools for marketing and business development.
As someone who is in the business of helping lawyers and firms develop content, I have some thoughts.
Use a collaborative content approach
When I mention that my team and I help lawyers and law firms develop branded content and thought leadership, people often reply: “Oh, you’re ghostwriters!”
Well, not really.
Ghostwriting involves writing content for someone to use as their own. Collaborative content development involves working with lawyers (and law firms) to create content that is their own—because they are involved in the process from start to finish.
Lawyers are subject matter experts when it comes to their practices and the clients and industries they serve. Indeed, the point of legal blogging and other thought leadership is to establish them as trusted authorities and go-to problem solvers for their clients. But lawyers often don’t have the time (or sometimes the desire) to create the content they need to maintain their visibility in the marketplace. Time spent on content is time not spent on client work—in other words, nonbillable time.
Most lawyers are also very skilled in the kind of content that is at the core of their practice, whether that’s motions and briefs or complex transactional or regulatory documents. But they are not necessarily as well versed in marketing and business development or as adept at presenting their knowledge and insight to their audiences of clients, prospects and referral sources, many of whom may not be lawyers, in an accessible way. That’s where marketing content professionals can help.
In a collaborative content process, lawyers as subject matter experts can conceptualize the topics and frame the discussion to address the needs and questions of their audiences, provide guidance and feedback throughout the process, and review, finalize and approve the content before release. Content marketing professionals can fill in the resource gaps in the creation and dissemination processes. Their work could include research, writing first drafts with direction from lawyers or from outlines or notes, editing lawyer-written content so it’s appropriate for use across channels—whether that’s a blog, alert, newsletter or social media post, or perhaps even a piece in a form that’s not traditional written media, such as a video, podcast or webinar—and managing the process to get content finalized and out into the world.
Choose and use content resources carefully
The goal of a collaborative content approach is to fill resource gaps in the content process, from concept through creation to publication or release, so that more and better content gets to the right audiences—clients, prospects and referral sources. One key to successfully using a collaborative content approach is choosing the right content resource and using that person appropriately.
Here are some questions to consider:
What are your content objectives?
What’s preventing you from meeting those objectives?
Where are you stuck: Conceptualizing topics? Finding time to write or edit? Or getting content over the finish line and out over the right channels?
Do you need help developing and launching a new initiative or keeping content for an existing program going?
Is this a one-time or an ongoing need?
Conceptualizing and creating substantive content at the intersection of law and marketing requires some specific knowledge and skills. While it doesn’t always require a legal background, the more complex the legal issues and the more sophisticated the intended audiences for the content, the more useful it will be for any resource—in-house or outsourced—to have a grounding in law. On the marketing side, the ability to understand and effectively communicate with audiences, and to incorporate your (and your firm’s) tone and style, is important.
Use AI-enabled resources cautiously
The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology—including tools that are available to the public (such as ChatGPT) as well as those that are being built specifically for law firms—means that your content creation resources may not be people, but programs. Use those resources cautiously.
Generative AI can “hallucinate”—generating content that includes made-up facts and statements. We’ve all read about the cringe-worthy situations where lawyers used AI-enabled tools to draft legal briefs that turned out to include citations to cases that didn’t actually exist. In the same way that you would review and critically assess any drafts provided by a human writer or editor, you need to vet AI-generated content as closely, if not more so. It’s also worth asking anyone working on your content whether they are using AI-enabled tools.
The right content resource, whether in-house or outsourced, can help lawyers and firms publish a steady flow of valuable, insightful and authoritative content—enhancing and ensuring the credibility and authenticity of those resources.
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