Is It Worthwhile to Conduct Formal Surveys for Your Law Firm’s Blog?

One of the keys to success in the legal profession is knowing which questions to ask.  You do this when identifying claims to make in a legal complaint or refuting these in your response to a complaint.  Examining your own witnesses and cross-examining your opponent’s witnesses is all about knowing which questions will strengthen your position or weaken your opponent’s position.  If you have made it this far as a lawyer, you have the mind of a researcher.  You observe trends in the cases you represent and imagine yourself designing research studies that could inform policy decisions that would remove obstacles to the pursuit of justice.  You read everything, including published research, with a critical eye.  Is your blog the place to venture into original research in ways that you cannot do in your own cases?  Probably not, unless you have so much free time that you can afford to engage in research while also working as a trial lawyer.  Your legal marketing content is, however, a good place to showcase your analytical abilities by commenting on existing research.

Original Research, When Done Well, Requires a Big Investment of Time and Money

Formal research, of the kind published in peer-reviewed journals, requires multiple steps of planning and preparation; market research to determine how audiences will respond to a new product is less rigorous.  Furthermore, you must get permission from regulatory bodies before conducting research on human subjects, even if they are only responding to multiple-choice questionnaires or answering open-ended questions in interviews.  In other words, formal research is a full-time job, and if you have ever visited the Retraction Watch website, you know that even professional researchers do not always do it correctly.

You Can Get Plenty of Blog Content Inspiration From Existing Published Research

A lawyer’s relationship to research is different from a researcher’s relationship to research.  Sometimes, the deciding factor in a successful outcome to a case is when an expert witness interprets published research for the jury.  Pursuant to the Daubert standard, before the jury can hear the research, the judge must review it to make sure that the research has sound methodology.  Your blog is an ideal venue for discussing research methodology and the flaws and ambiguities in published studies.

Discussing published research on your blog gives you the opportunity to show your wide-ranging and detailed knowledge of the content of the type of cases you represent, as well as the laws surrounding them.  Almost any research study that gets a lot of media coverage is at least a little bit overhyped and has room for reasonable doubt.  Instead of using your blog to cheer about how you always win, use it to show how much you know and how willing you are to share your knowledge.

Conquer Your Own Corner of the Internet

The professional law firm content marketers at Law Blog Writers, LLC can help you show readers a unique perspective on information they have heard about before in the mainstream media.