How can lawyers use Web feeds to their fullest? Adopt the list of top ten uses below, for a start. If you first need a primer on Really Simple Syndication (RSS), see the BBC's Feed Factory at www.bbc.co.uk/feedfactory.


Market your new content: create RSS feeds for new content added to your firm's Web site. Early adopters include Pinsent Masons' Out-Law, Jones Day, and DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary.



Monitor the media: create 'RSS search feeds' to monitor news and other activity on the Web about or affecting clients and their competitors. You can do this with Yahoo! News, Google News, and MSN Search and News. And for comment in the blogosphere, try Pubsub.com, Technorati.com and Feedster.com.



Watch the lawmakers: monitor legislative changes and shifts in government policy. Government Web sites are increasingly adding RSS feeds to their sites. The UK's NICE and the US's FDA are good examples.



Track listed company news: you can do this with Yahoo! Finance (biz.yahoo.com/rss.html). Enter a stock symbol and Yahoo! spits out a feed.



Track new SEC filings: form 20Fs filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are lucrative sources of information on companies obliged to file them. You can create feeds on specific companies with Pubsub.



Try tagging: create RSS feeds on the fly of useful articles and cases discovered in the course of legal practice. Try the Web site del.icio.us (with its excellent tagging system).



Be scientific: for those working in life sciences or perhaps intellectual property, create RSS search feeds for new medical journal articles relevant to your clients' products or cases. You can do this with PubMed (see the instructions at www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/mj05/mj05_rss.html).



Think in multimedia: share your knowledge with podcasting and even videocasting. You can post audio and video files to your site and distribute them via RSS.



Feed back into the firm: use RSS feeds as a source of relevant information for your firm's intranet and/or as a distribution stream for internal subject and client-related information.



Get job alerts: keep track of legal job opportunities. You can be informed by RSS feed of job openings matching your requirements with www.seek.co.uk.





Richard Best is a solicitor and founder of InsideoutLegal (Europe), a Web site for knowledge distribution from Europe's top law firms and chambers via feeds, podcasts and e-mail at www.insideoutlegal.com