How Lawyers Can Improve Blogging and Linking Practices, According to Real Lawyers Have Blogs

Real Lawyers Have Blogs, written by LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe, makes one core argument about linking: legal bloggers do a poor job of linking to each other, and fixing that habit is one of the simplest improvements a lawyer-blogger can make. The blog's stated premise is that publishing helps lawyers build a name and grow their business, and it has carried that argument for over 20 years. The practical takeaway for a lawyer who blogs is to link out deliberately — to other legal bloggers and to the law itself — rather than publishing standalone posts that cite nothing.

The linking problem the blog identifies

The blog's most direct statement on this comes from a LinkedIn discussion it recounts with Carolyn Elefant, who after 23 years of blogging called the common practice of not hyperlinking by most bloggers her "biggest pet peeve." O'Keefe's own conclusion in that post is blunt: "Legal bloggers do a poor job of linking – at least as to each other's publishing, if not to the law."

Two distinct failures are bundled in that sentence, and they call for different fixes:

• Not linking to other legal bloggers. This is a community and credibility problem. When lawyers don't link to peers, readers lose the connective tissue between related commentary, and the blog stays isolated.
• Not linking to the law. This is a sourcing problem. A post about a case, statute, or filing that doesn't point readers to the underlying authority is harder to trust and less useful.

The blog's proposed direction is structural rather than purely behavioral: inclusion in a citation system for secondary law could give legal blogging a formal place in how legal sources are referenced. That is a longer-term idea, not something an individual blogger can adopt this week. The immediate, actionable part is the hyperlinking habit itself.

What to do in practice

If you accept the blog's framing, here is how it translates into a working routine for a lawyer who publishes.

Link to other legal bloggers

When you write about a development another lawyer has already covered, link to their post rather than restating it. This costs nothing and does two things: it gives your reader a second perspective, and it puts your blog into a network of mutual reference. The blog's complaint is that this is uncommon, which means doing it consistently is a differentiator rather than a baseline expectation.

Link to the law

Where your post discusses a case, statute, rule, or filing, point to the source. The blog's excerpt treats linking to the law and linking to peers as parts of the same deficiency, so both belong in the same habit.

Treat published work as an asset that accumulates

The blog's stated purpose — "Publishing helps lawyers build a name and grow their business" — frames each post as a contribution to a body of work rather than a one-off marketing push. The recent post list on the site reflects that: it includes pieces on archiving published work, on preserving legal publishing, and on how AI is changing how legal professionals connect with insight. The archiving angle is the operative one for a blogger. If your posts are assets, they need to remain reachable and linkable over time, which is an argument for stable URLs and for internal links between your own related posts.

A concrete example

Suppose you write a short post about a state appellate decision. Under the practice the blog argues for, that post would:

1. Link to the decision itself, so a reader can check the holding.
2. Link to a fellow lawyer's earlier post on the same case or the same line of authority, so the reader sees the discussion rather than only your summary.
3. Link back to your own prior post on the underlying issue, so the two pieces reinforce each other instead of sitting unconnected.

A post that does none of these is exactly the pattern the blog is criticizing. A post that does all three is more useful to the reader and more connected to the rest of the legal blogging community.

What this advice does and doesn't cover

The blog's linking critique is about practice, not about tools, platforms, or pricing — the site's materials don't specify costs or access requirements for anything discussed here, so treat the linking habit as the part you can act on immediately and the citation-system proposal as a longer-term idea the blog raises rather than a step you can complete. For a lawyer-blogger, the decision is straightforward: if you want your publishing to build a name and a business, link out — to the law and to your peers — as a matter of routine, and keep your published work reachable so those links keep working.