Other than some criminal defense, appellate, immigration and plaintiff’s trial lawyers, I don’t see many lawyers blogging with conviction. The numbers are lower in larger firms.
If you feel comfortable getting out there, the opportunity is certainly there to provide thought provoking opinions and advocate change.Look at civil rights, pro bono and immigration lawyers advocating for change.They’re not only making a difference in the law by advocating for change, but they’re making a name for themselves. Though the latter may not have been their goal.Yes, it’s likely you’ll alienate some people, but expecting everyone to love you forever is foolhardy.
Advocating change, stating an opinion and calling out others can be done in a tasteful fashion. You need not stick a thumb in anyone’s eye.
One point for the practical-minded: Controversy can actually be good marketing. As noted by Conrad Saam in Lunch Hour Marketing at the Legal Talk Network:
I go out of my way to embrace someone from the local black lives matter movement. I sit down with them on video and we have a conversation about what transpired and I put that on my website. I don’t throw that on YouTube, I put that on my website. …
[I]f you have a piece of content that is very raw, very real, very relevant and very newsworthy and frankly, very link worthy for people to link back to your site, I would stoke that like mad. Again, you cannot let SEO dive to everything that you’re doing but that’s the kind of thing that a really, really good SEO agency would be thinking about.