简体中文
English
Website review
This review may include AI-generated content and is not individually verified. Domain, certificate and other facts come from the observed data on this page.
What is Real Lawyers Have Blogs?
Real Lawyers Have Blogs is a long-running legal publishing and content-marketing blog written by Kevin O’Keefe, CEO of LexBlog. Its central argument is that lawyers and law firms grow their reputation and business by publishing consistently, rather than by relying on advertising or referral networks alone. The blog covers the practical side of that work: starting and sustaining a legal blog, writing for a professional audience, using social platforms, and adapting to changes in how legal content is discovered.
It is written primarily for practicing lawyers, law firm marketing and business-development staff, and legal marketers. The tone is opinionated and experience-based rather than academic, which makes it most useful if you want a steady stream of arguments and examples you can act on, not a formal training manual.
A representative recent post, for example, argues that legal bloggers do a poor job of citing and linking to one another’s work, and suggests that inclusion in a citation system for secondary legal sources could change that. The post notes that Carolyn Elefant raised the hyperlinking complaint in a LinkedIn discussion — her observation, not the author’s — and O’Keefe responds with his own view of the problem. Practically, that means the blog often works as a running commentary on publishing habits in the legal profession, with the comment threads and linked discussions doing as much work as the posts themselves.
The site’s value depends on what you need:
| If you want… | This site is… |
|---|---|
| Arguments for why lawyers should publish | A strong fit; it has made that case for over 20 years |
| Practical guidance on blogging and content marketing | Useful, though framed as opinion and experience rather than step-by-step instruction |
| Formal legal research or citation guidance | Not the focus; citation appears as a topic of commentary |
| Neutral, current news coverage | Limited; expect a point of view tied to LexBlog’s work |
A reasonable next step is to skim the recent post archive first, since topics shift with whatever is happening in legal publishing and social media, then read a few posts in full to see whether the argument style suits you. If you are weighing whether to start a firm blog, compare this against more neutral publishing guidance from a bar association or legal marketing association, and treat the blog as one experienced practitioner’s case for publishing rather than a balanced survey of the options.
Why should lawyers start a blog to grow their practice?
Lawyers should blog because publishing consistently builds visibility, credibility and referral relationships over time — the core argument of Real Lawyers Have Blogs, where LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe has made that case for more than two decades. The practical logic is simple: people search for answers to legal problems before they call anyone, and a blog is the most direct way to be the lawyer whose explanation they find.
What blogging actually does for a practice
- Earns search visibility. Each post targets a question real clients ask. Over dozens of posts, that compounds into traffic you don't pay for per click.
- Demonstrates expertise in public. A clear explanation of a niche issue shows judgment in a way a directory listing cannot.
- Keeps you in front of referrers. Other lawyers, accountants and former clients who follow your feed remember you when a matter lands on their desk.
- Creates reusable material. Posts become newsletter content, speaking topics, client handouts and social posts.
- Builds an archive you own. Unlike social feeds, a blog accumulates on a domain you control.
The trade-off worth knowing
Volume alone doesn't work. The recurring criticism on that blog — and one Carolyn Elefant has raised directly — is that legal bloggers often fail to link to each other's work or to the underlying law. A post that cites the statute, the case and a colleague's analysis is more useful and more credible than an unsupported opinion piece. Linking outward also brings you into the wider conversation, which is where referral traffic and reputation actually come from.
A realistic starting scenario
A solo employment lawyer picks one narrow question — say, how severance agreements interact with non-compete clauses in her state — and writes 800 honest words answering it, linking to the statute and to two other lawyers who have written on adjacent issues. She does that twice a month. Within a year she has 24 pages that answer client questions, a link she can send instead of repeating herself on calls, and a body of work that demonstrates she handles exactly this kind of matter.
Next step
Before writing, decide three things: the specific audience (small-business owners, injured workers, in-house counsel), the questions that audience actually types into search, and a publishing rhythm you can sustain when you're busy. Then write the first post as if answering a client who just emailed you — that's usually the version that ranks and gets shared.
How can legal bloggers improve their linking and citation practices?
Legal bloggers can improve linking and citation practices by treating every post as part of a shared legal conversation, not a standalone essay. The page evidence centers on a LinkedIn discussion in which Carolyn Elefant observed that after 23 years of blogging, the common practice of not hyperlinking by most bloggers is her biggest pet peeve. Kevin O'Keefe, writing on Real Lawyers Have Blogs, agrees that legal bloggers do a poor job of linking, at least to each other's publishing if not to the law, and suggests inclusion in a citation system for secondary law could be a start.
That observation points to a practical gap: legal bloggers often cite cases and statutes but skip the secondary sources, peer commentary, and prior blog posts that would help readers follow the reasoning. The fix is mostly habit and a small amount of structure.
Practical habits that raise citation quality
- Link the primary authority. When you mention a case, statute, or rule, link to a reliable official or public source so readers can verify the text.
- Link the secondary conversation. If another blogger or commentator made the argument first, link to that post rather than paraphrasing it without credit.
- Cite the specific paragraph or section. A bare link to a homepage or a long opinion is less useful than a link to the relevant anchor or page.
- Use descriptive anchor text. "This analysis of the discovery ruling" tells the reader more than "click here."
- Add a short "sources" or "further reading" line when a post builds on several prior pieces.
- Correct and update links. When a cited post moves or a decision is appealed, note the change rather than leaving a dead link.
Why this matters for different audiences
| Audience | What good linking gives them |
|---|---|
| Clients and prospective clients | Confidence that claims are grounded in verifiable law |
| Other lawyers | A map of the relevant authorities and commentary |
| Journalists and researchers | A traceable chain of sources they can follow and credit |
| The blogger | Better search visibility and a place in the ongoing conversation |
A useful next step: before publishing, run a two-minute citation pass. Highlight every factual or legal assertion, then ask whether a reader could reach the underlying source in one click. If not, add the link or soften the claim. For a solo blogger, building a personal list of frequently cited cases, statutes, and trusted commentators makes this pass faster over time.
The trade-off is time. Careful linking slows publishing slightly, but it improves credibility and makes posts more useful to the readers who matter most. Kevin O'Keefe's broader point is that publishing helps lawyers build a name and grow a business; consistent, well-sourced linking is part of how that reputation compounds.
What are the risks of relying only on social media like Twitter/X for legal publishing?
Relying only on Twitter/X for legal publishing concentrates your entire audience, archive and referral value inside a platform you don't control. If the algorithm changes, the account is suspended or the service declines, your reach and history can shrink overnight.
The main risks
- No durable archive. Posts are hard to search, cite and read in sequence, so the body of work you built over years becomes difficult to find or reuse.
- Weak citation and linking culture. The site's own discussion notes that legal bloggers link poorly to each other's work, and short-form social posts rarely carry the hyperlinks and context that make a legal argument traceable. A reader who wants to check your reasoning on a statute or case often can't.
- Audience rented, not owned. Followers belong to the platform's distribution rules. You can't export them, email them or guarantee they see anything.
- Fragmented ownership of your record. When publishing lives in someone else's product, preserving and archiving your published work becomes a separate problem rather than a byproduct of writing.
- Thin credibility signal. Legal analysis benefits from length, structure and stable URLs. A stream of short posts gives clients, journalists and referring lawyers little to evaluate.
What to do instead
Treat social as distribution and a home site as the record. Publish the full analysis on your own domain, link out to sources and to other lawyers' posts, then use X to point people there. If you want to see how a long-running legal publishing practice approaches this, Real Lawyers Have Blogs discusses linking, archiving and platform shifts from a publisher's perspective.
Decision criterion: if losing your account tomorrow would erase your ability to show a client or colleague what you've written, you're relying too heavily on the platform.
How should a lawyer choose between blogging on their own site versus a platform like LexBlog?
Choose based on what you want the writing to do long-term: a platform like LexBlog is built for visibility and peer connection inside the legal publishing world, while your own site is built for ownership and control. Most lawyers don't need to pick one forever — they need to pick the one that matches their goal in the next 12–24 months.
Real Lawyers Have Blogs is Kevin O'Keefe's long-running blog on legal publishing, and its recent posts show what that ecosystem values: archiving published work, connecting lawyers with readers, and legal bloggers linking to each other. One post quotes Carolyn Elefant's complaint that after 23 years of blogging, the common practice of not hyperlinking is her biggest pet peeve. That is a useful signal: on a legal publishing platform, the culture rewards citing and linking to other lawyers' work.
The trade-off, side by side
| Platform like LexBlog | Your own site | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Being discovered by other lawyers, media and legal-publishing peers | Controlling your domain, design, data and long-term archive |
| Effort to start | Lower — the publishing setup is largely handled | Higher — hosting, theme, SEO and maintenance are yours |
| Audience | A legal readership already gathered around the platform | Whoever you can attract yourself |
| Risk | Your reach depends on the platform's rules and direction | You own the asset, but you also own the silence if nobody finds it |
| Citation habits | Peer culture expects linking out to other bloggers and sources | Nothing forces it, so it's easy to under-link |
A practical way to decide
Ask yourself three questions:
- Do you want to be found by other lawyers and legal media? If yes, a platform with an existing legal audience gives you a head start.
- Is the blog a business asset you intend to keep for a decade? If yes, a domain you control matters more than short-term traffic.
- Will you actually link and cite? If you won't hyperlink to cases, statutes and other lawyers' posts, you weaken the main advantage of a legal blogging community.
A common middle path: publish on a platform to build readership and habits, and mirror or migrate the best posts to your own domain once you know what you're writing about.
Concrete example
A solo employment lawyer starts a weekly post explaining recent tribunal decisions. On a legal platform, other employment lawyers see it, link to it, and refer clients. Two years later, the lawyer moves the archive to their own domain so the content supports their firm's site directly. The platform phase built the audience; the own-site phase captured the value.
Next step: write down your primary goal — peer visibility, client leads, or a durable archive — then choose the option that serves it, and commit to linking out to at least one source or fellow blogger in every post.
How can lawyers archive and preserve their published legal writing for the long term?
Archiving legal writing is a publishing-discipline problem more than a storage problem: the work survives if it stays reachable, attributable and citable. Kevin O'Keefe's blog covers exactly this territory, including a post on what lawyers can learn from artists about archiving published work and another on the parallels between preserving local news and preserving legal publishing. A recurring observation on that blog, echoed by Carolyn Elefant, is that legal bloggers link to each other poorly — which matters for preservation because unlinked, unattributed writing is harder to trace once a platform changes.
A practical archiving routine
- Keep a canonical copy. Publish on a domain you control, and treat the platform version as a copy rather than the original. If the platform disappears, the canonical URL should still resolve.
- Own the domain and renew it. A lapsed domain breaks every inbound link and citation, which is the fastest way to erase years of writing.
- Export on a schedule. Pull a full export of posts and comments at least annually, and store it somewhere you control, not only in the platform's dashboard.
- Preserve URLs. If you migrate, redirect old post URLs to new ones. Redirects are what keep citations from third parties working.
- Cite and link your own archive. When a new piece builds on an old one, link back. That internal linking makes the archive navigable and signals which posts matter.
- Capture context. Note publication dates, and where relevant the state of the law at the time, so a reader years later can tell whether the analysis still holds.
Why citation matters here
The blog's argument is that inclusion in a citation system for secondary law would help legal blogging mature as a body of work. Whether or not that happens, the practical point stands: writing that other lawyers can find, quote and link to is writing that gets preserved. A post that is never linked is one search-algorithm change away from being invisible.
Choosing your approach
| Approach | Best for | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted blog with your own domain | Lawyers building a long-term body of work | You handle maintenance, backups and security |
| Platform-hosted blog | Fast start, low technical burden | Export and URL continuity depend on the provider |
| Periodic static archive or book | Preserving a finished series or career milestone | Frozen in time; new work lives elsewhere |
For most lawyers, the sensible combination is a self-hosted canonical blog plus scheduled exports, with a static archive for any series you consider finished. If you are starting from scratch, register the domain in your own name and set up redirects before you publish anything you would hate to lose.
For ongoing commentary on legal publishing, archiving and content strategy, see Real Lawyers Have Blogs.
Cloudflare
Google Workspace
User reviews (0)