In the last of our pieces on Web 2.0 and digital marketing for law firms, PR specialist Gavin Ingham Brooke outlines why they are worth understanding




Just when the best law firms are displaying ruthless management effectiveness and consistently posting fiscal figures that bury any former image as amateur businesses, along comes the revolution known as Web 2.0 to challenge hardy old business models and competitive certainties.



The questions for law firm management and business development functions are: just where is the continually building new media wave headed next, where is it likely to hit, how will it impact, how hard and when? What are the wider and longer-term implications of Web 2.0 functionality?



The key insight into the new social interaction technologies, practices and software that make up Web 2.0 is that they place much greater power in the hands of the consumers or users of content or services, rather than in the hands of the central publishers of content or providers of services. This is a subtle but profound shift in the power dynamic - and it is particularly relevant in brand, marketing and public relations terms.



You might say that law firms were happy with the notion of a stylish brochure-ware website, even e-learning modules through which the better-resourced among them can repackage professional support lawyers' work and, yes, even electronic newsletters which are cheap to produce and easy to target. But are firms so happy to put their painstakingly amassed goodwill asset, the firm's brand, or specialist know-how in play via an external blog - or series of them?



Our view is that it is essential to abide by tried and tested branding, marketing and communications principles as your firm evolves its own, incremental approach to exploiting the opportunities.



While the new technologies do indeed tend to be 'pulled' by their end-users as opposed to being 'pushed' by providers, the firms that win through will need to remain crystal clear about their strategic and business development objectives, find and project their authentic brand voice (even if that voice emerges over time via debate and discussion in the ether), differentiate themselves, map their stakeholders (the firm's people, universities, recruitment consultants, clients, prospects, professional collaborators and reporters to mention a few) and segment them, prior to deciding exactly what to 'offer' to them or what to communicate. In other words, they must focus their resources cleverly.



Most firms will have to raise their game. They will need to put out more. Culturally, the social networking/knowledge-sharing environment demands that firms open themselves up not just to the blogosphere, but also the wider business community which may be several steps ahead of them in the game of innovation.



Blog, wiki and Google Outlook technologies can all offer potential for single-minded solo, niche or well-resourced larger legal players. Yet meeting demanding stakeholder expectations in the social networking era means that firms will have to create exactly the right dialogue, on the right issues, providing the right information blend to stakeholders - with fresh material in constant supply.



Expect firms' brands to be tested for vitality and/or consistency when so many different types of information are in the public domain. Sustaining a credible performance across too many areas has daunting resource implications. That is why some firms are focusing on a narrow band of issues or relatively low-risk, firm-wide topics such as trainees blogging about first work experiences.



That is not the only challenge. Remember the 'universal' search function for text, pictures and video, launched by Google? Many law firms loathe the idea of losing control of 'their' factbase or orthodoxy in an unendorsed, unsubstantiated medium where distracting or damaging folkloric myths may suddenly kindle.



Good and bad news can spread virally on Facebook groups or news-sharing sites such as Digg or Reddit. More monitoring will be entailed, and more nimble and concerted action, of the legal or public relations kind, may be required to correct misinformation so a negative post does not lie on the 'public file'. Yet the role of blogs and electronic newsletters alongside traditional media cannot be ignored.



The radical question that all law firms should be considering is not whether they should do a blog alongside their website but whether they should be incrementally and gradually rebasing much of their internal and external digital interface within a Web 2.0 framework and mindset.



One thing the web does superbly well is to connect people with common information requirements. Lawyers have an abundance of intellectual content and the new technologies offer them a new way of projecting that far more effectively. By getting into stakeholders' RSS newsfeeds and inviting them to subscribe to the firm's own information/blog services, they can, over time, sustain the precise dialogue and develop the specific reputation that will mobilise more people, both clients and hires, to their cause.



Gavin Ingham Brooke is managing director of Spada, a marketing and communications firm for legal and other professional services