Penned by Kevin O’Keefe this is well worth a read and we’d suggest for the umpteenth time it’s an easy revenue line for law firms. All the skills are there in house to be able to become a publisher . At least for the pleasure of clawing back some money from Lexis Nexis by selling them your competing product !
Is the legal vertical as big as companies serving legal professionals sometimes believe? How about in the case of legal publishing and legal media? And if not, perhaps that’s an opportunity for small legal publishers to build a brand and a good-sized company.
In the late 90s, I founded Prairielaw.com, a virtual legal community later sold to LexisNexis and incorporated into its lawyers.com.
In my mind, nothing could have been more valuable to lawyers and the people they served than a legal community founded on message boards, chats, listservs, and articles — all broken down by area of the law and state. After all, online communities built by AOL, iVillage, About.com, and Yahoo established large user bases with communities and channels focused on various verticals including travel, entertainment, family, finance, home decorating, and sports.
But when I met with these companies I often got the cold shoulder. It did not deter me from pounding on them, but they were not nearly as receptive as LexisNexis’s Martindale-Hubbell, West Publishing, American Lawyer Media, and Court TV.
It was not until later that I realized that these non-legal Internet media companies did not see the legal market as all that big in size. Big to me and other legal startups, but not to them.
Appears we have the same thing going on today. Mainstream publishers and social networks do not break out legal channels. If approached by a legal player, I am not sure they would consider such a play.
Look at last week’s news that Facebook is going to test News Feeds by category. A Facebook spokesperson told PCMag:
People have told us they’d like new options to see and have conversations about more stories on Facebook around specific topics they’re interested in. So we are testing feeds for people to view different stories from people and Pages based on topic areas.
But what are the topics you’ll get to choose from in customed news on the most popular site in the world? Sports, pets and animals, health and fitness, politics, music, entertainment, travel, science and technology, and games. No law.
Sure, lawyers sharing insight and commentary can navigate their way into the discussion on news about tech, science, and music. But it’s not the same.
It will not be a News Feed attracting lawyers looking to engage, collaborate, and network. It will not be a News Feed where consumers of legal services — whether execs/in-house counsel or consumers/small business people would go for legal information — or to follow discussion among thought leaders in the law.
The lack of legal channels in the mainstream media or on social networks is an opportunity for legal publishers and the legal media though. We have the opportunity to use technology and innovation and come up with something of value to lawyers and the consumers of legal services. Never before could we leverage the long tail to give niche topics the visibility and reach they can now have. Costs have never been lower.
For the most part, we can do it without the fear that large publishers and media companies will come in and wipe us out. The mainstream publishers and networks do not see the legal vertical as large enough to chase. In the legal vertical itself, we have not seen a lot of innovation in the area of user-generated content or other solutions from the major legal publishers — Thomson Reuters, West, LexisNexis, Wolters Kluwer, ALM, and Bloomberg BNA.
Look at this publication, Above The Law, founded by lawyer turned legal commentator David Lat. Lat had been blogging anonymously with his judicial gossip blog Underneath Their Robes, until he launched Above the Law, originally with a deep focus on law firm gossip. Ten years later, Above the Law may be drawing a larger online audience than ALM’s Law.com. And ALM is a company that was last purchased for over $400 million.
Look at Fastcase, who by innovatively leveraging technology is offering law firms a cost-effective legal research solution with deep federal and state coverage of cases, codes, and regulations. The company did not exist 15 years ago, yet today competes with the likes of Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis.
Of course I like a model that democratizes publishing by getting blogging lawyers on their own branded site supported by highly performing technology and service, but I am quick to acknowledge there are of course other legal publishing models being driven by some very talented folks.
Bottom line, large players not making an innovative play around legal publishing and legal media represents an opportunity for the innovative and ambitious guys.
