Mr. Smith,
Given our law firm’s recent hiring of additional
attorneys and the emphasis that the senior partners have placed on acquiring
new business, blogging is definitely a viable option to attract potential
clients that would not have been aware of our services otherwise.
The field of law is one that is particularly
well suited to blogging, as it gives the firm an opportunity to update the
public on changes and trends in the NJ legal system, as well as advise them on
the necessary steps to take in various legal situations. This beneficial relationship between
the legal profession and blogging is reflected in 2012 statistics. While 28% of
corporations are actively blogging1, just over 60% of law firms
surveyed by the ALM Legal Intelligence service reported maintaining one or more
blogs2. Many of the law
firms in our own area competing for the same clients for divorce cases or
criminal law cases are operating their own blogs. It is in our best interest to join this trend to not only
provide a service to our existing clients, but more importantly to reach out to
an untapped customer base.
The start-up costs for setting up our own blog
are far from staggering.
Considering that we already have an administrative staff member with one
of his responsibilities being to operate our web site at a rate of $20, we are
already in a position where we have the requisite personnel to begin this
initiative. Seeing as how this
staff member is only part-time currently, it is reasonable for him to take on
the additional responsibilities of a blog. There are a few blog sites that are popular for law firms;
for the cost analysis I will be using the costs associated with Wordpress (a
popular blogging site that hosts over 60.8 million individual blogs3). In order to obtain our own domain name
such as www.smithlawnj.com instead of www.smithlawnj.wordpress.com,
the cost would be about $20 per year.
If we want our blog to look truly professional, we should opt to
purchase a premium theme that would incur a one-time cost of $70. This one up-front purchase would well
be worth it as it would save us the time and money associated with creating our
own visually pleasing site framework.
The real cost of running a blog would come from the time necessary to
maintain it with pertinent information and produce original content. If we were to mainly link to other
content found on the web, we should allocate about 10 hours a week to the
process of finding that material and uploading it. This would cost us the salary of our administrative staff
member of $20/hour X 10 hours for a total of $200 a week or $10,400 a year. If we were to have one of our junior
attorneys who bills out at $150/hour write original content once every other
week with an average of 1.5 hours per post, we would be losing an average of
$225 every two weeks or $5,850 in productivity a year. All of these costs would add to
an annual cost of approximately $16,270 a year.
Considering that our blog will have content
targeted to the demographics of clients we are seeking to obtain in the fields
of criminal law, education law, and divorce law and that we will heavily
promote our own contact information and personal website for the firm, we can
expect to see an increase in business. Based on the average results reported
from legal blogging from a midsize firm like
ours4, a conservative estimate of
increased business would be an additional 3 clients per year. If we were to obtain just 3 new clients
a year from our blogging, billing at an average of 80 hours per new client and
our average rate between junior and senior partners of $200/hour, this would
bring in an additional $48,000 in revenue to the firm annually.
There is a distinct reason that our competition
is engaging in blogging on sites like Wordpress and Blogspot and that is that
it produces tangible results.
Based on my estimates, our firm could expect to see a net revenue
increase of $31,730 per year from blogging. Aside from the additional benefit that our existing clients
might derive from our blog, adopting this technology as a significant addition
to our marketing mix would generate new business that could otherwise benefit
competing law firms. Thank you for
your time Mr. Smith and the consideration of my proposal.
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