Adams and Reese attorney Jeff Richardson, a Partner in the law firm’s New Orleans office, was interviewed by New Orleans CityBusiness in an article, “Blogging Attorneys Share Niche Expertise,” published on August 15th.
The article discusses how a niche blog can do a lot to advance a law practice, and a report published by American Lawyer Monthly earlier this year showed that nearly four out of every five of the top 200 law firms in the United States have topic-driven websites or lawyers who blog. The most popular sites, extending to readers outside of the profession, tend to be about labor and employment issues, according to the report.
Richardson, who runs iphonejd.com, a blog on Apple mobile and tablet devices, blogs independently from work at Adams and Reese.
“For individual lawyers, blogging unquestionably helps the firm,” Richardson said. “Most clients hire a lawyer because that person is known in their field.”
Richardson said this could apply to younger attorneys, who are looking for a way to stand out.
“If you are putting out useful information, it can result in new business,” he said. “People should blog to help others understand them better, not just to show up more frequently in Google search results.”
For the second consecutive year in 2012, Richardson’s iPhone J.D. blog was selected the No. 1 Legal Tech Blog by the ABA Journal editors and more than 4,000 readers in the 2011 ABA Journal Blawg 100. This was the third consecutive year in which Richardson’s blog was ranked among the Top 100 Blogs by the ABA Journal Law News in its ABA Journal Blawg 100.
Richardson launched the blog to explore lawyerly uses for the iPhone, which he describes in his bio as the “perfect handheld device” he’s been searching for since the late 1980s. Richardson has served as an adjunct professor at Tulane University, teaching “Computers and the Law.”