How Many Law Firms Have Blogs – ABA Technology Survey Stats

There are some interesting stats from the latest  ABA Technology Survey. Only 10% of lawyers and 27% of law firms have blogs (does not mean they are actively blogging), but 39 percent of that group reported that blogging resulted in clients or referrals. There is no substitute for you taking the time to share your views about a matter you are working on, a new development in your area of expertise, legal news or otherwise in your city or state or just some editorial type comments.   Once you begin blogging you can syndicate that content to your law firm social media profiles.  This seems to be another area most firm’s forget about according to the survey with almost 23% having no social media presence at all,  yet 81% of lawyers using social media in their social lives.

But what really is blogging?

• If you a website as a lawyer and get a free blog thrown in as a page in the website, is that blogging?
• If you scrape accident reports and turn them into posts to try and trick Google, is that blogging?
• If you cut and paste “legal newsletter ” content into a blog, is that blogging?

None of the above is really blogging and is not going to make that connection with visitors to your site. Blogging is engaging your audience, demonstrating your expertise, giving potential clients insight into who you are, what you care about and how that translates into you being able to help them. Does every blog post have to be a literary masterpiece or written a law review article? No, not at all.  Just get something out there!  I think it is the best non-billable 1/2 hour or hour per week you will spend.

1. 89% of lawyers use mobile to check email; which may outpace the general population
2. 34% of lawyers use tablets in the court room
3. 26.9% of law firms have legal blogs; 10% of individual lawyers have blogs
4. 78% believe training a firm on technology is important
5. 50% one year increase in cloud services users
6. 48% use a tablet at work; the tablet is eating into laptop share
7. 17% of lawyers using litigation support software
8. 39.1% of blogs resulted in clients or referrals
9. 22% of respondents said training people on technology is not important
10. 40% solos use cloud services; 30% of all lawyers
11. 16% of lawyers use a Blackberry (BBRY has seen a little pop the last few months)
12. 22.6% of law firm have no social media presence
13. 81% of attorneys say they use social media; but not necessarily for professional use
14. 13% encrypt the who disk;
15. 58% use Dropbox
16. 94% say vendor name and reputation is important to decisions