Blogging is a great way to capture ideas in a highly readable format.  Good blogging is generally brief but frequent.

Admittedly, I haven’t focused that much on my blog in recent years (it was more of a passion when I launched it in 2005); but when I’m at my best, I post to Counsel to Counsel several times a month.  Blogging is a way for me to gather my thoughts about career and marketing issues facing the legal community.  In a small way, blogging also helps me to raise my visibility in the legal community.  As it turns out, blogging can be a great tool for answering common questions that a lawyer may receive.  If you take a little time to organize yourself, you can use your library of blog posts as a way to efficiently communicate with clients, potential clients and referral sources.

Today, I sat down with Matt Yospin, a patent lawyer in Boston who has been very effective at using automation tools in his law practice. He told me how he has been able to leverage his blog in order to avoid reinventing the wheel (i.e. when he gets repeat questions about different aspects of intellectual property.)

Matt has written a lot of very practical posts on his blog. He has also figured out a very clever way to share these posts with people who contact him.

For example, if a potential client asks him questions about how one can use a registered trademark, Matt goes to a list of his posts and selects one that will provide the reader with the insights they need to understand trademarks. If he wants to warn clients about some common scams that can happen after patent or trademark application has been filed, he sends along that post.

To make it all work, Matt uses an app called TextExpander which essentially operates like a mini document assembly system.  He types in a code word into an email and up pops his form email introducing a particular blog post.

If he is not sure which post he wants to forward, he reviews his library of entries.  To keep it all simple, he also uses a URL shortener called Bit.ly.

If you think about how much time you can waste looking for resources you want to share (or answering the same questions over and over again), it’s a no brainer taking the time to set up a system like Matt’s.

 

 

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