Kevin O'Keefe on LinkedIn: Don’t know what others do when going to meet someone for the first time. I… (2024)

Quick Guide to Covering Multiple Niches in One Law BlogCan You Cover Multiple Niches? Normally I’d say no, you’re unlikely to get known in two areas at once and it will be impossible to build multiple sets of relationships.Recently talk with a lawyer back East, I realized, yes, you can. Here’s some insights I gleaned from talking with her. She wanted to cover both startups and M&A law.Understand the Spectrum Versus the Topics+ Early-Stage Investments: Focus on initial funding rounds and getting startups off the ground.+ Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A): Involves buying companies or their assets, often seen as the domain of large law firms.Combine Startups and M&A in One Blog?+ Networking Tool: Focus on a blog enabling you to foster relationships with investors, entrepreneurs and other key players from startup stage through the acquisition or merger stage. + Profile Building: Highlight others while offering legal insight at the same time+ Market Synergy: In cities and areas of the country rich in innovation and capital, the blog will generate long-term business.Challenge and Solution+ Perceived Separation: Traditionally, startups and M&A are seen as distinct niches.+ Unified Approach: Focus on the people involved—investors and principals who navigate both startups and M&A - all along spectrum from beginning to end - as opposed to merely the topics.The Investment Cycle Blog+ Target Audience: Investors and principals involved in startups and M&A.+ Content Focus: From angel investment and VC funding to valuations and M&A transactions.+ Legal Needs: Share legal insight on the matters facing these people and organizations at each stage of the investment cycle.Blog Structure and Branding+ Crafting a Name and Tagline:•Name: Reflect the journey from startup to M&A.•Tagline: Provide insights for startups and investors from inception to acquisition.•About Section of blog:•Describe the lawyer’s expertise and passion.•Opt for a snappy, columnist-style profile over a traditional law firm bio.Networking and Engagement•Reference Industry Trends: Discuss what investors and startups are talking about in their blogs and news. Akin to reaching out to shake their hand.• Insights: Include perspectives and updates from the startup and M&A space.Combining multiple niches in one law blog is not only feasible but can be highly effective. Focus on the investment cycle (versus the “legal topic”), craft engaging content, and build a strong network to establish your blog as a trusted resource.

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🤔 Treat everyone with kindness. Even the greatest masterminds of M&A, while they may be loved by their company's leaders, if the professional staff dislikes them, will find friction in getting their work done.🤔 Decide on a niche. Think about what it is that you want to do and exactly in what niche you want to excel. Knowing that you can't be everything to everyone is an important step in developing your interests and your reputation. Wonderful post from Deborah Brightman Farone. I pulled a couple clips I liked. Treaty everyone with kindness and decide on a niche.The fist book I bought for everyone on my team in my law office, in 1996, was ‘Cyber-Writing: How to Promote Your Sevice Online’ by Joe Vitale. Open the cover and their was only one rule for using the Internet for business development, ‘Write in Kindness.’ And my oh my is the niche important. It’s how people know you and refer people and businesses to you. That niche is important everywhere, but a niche is the difference between success and failure when publishing and blogging to build your book of business.

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Anyone else try Twitter/X’s Grok. AI generated conversational answers to searches, available only to premium members. Much better, and more reliable, than my experience with Google’s “Overviews.While commentators say Grok lags behind other Chatbots, the search on my name and Lexblog weren’t bad.====================“Kevin O'Keefe is a multifaceted individual with a significant background in both legal and tech entrepreneurship. He is a trial lawyer turned legal tech entrepreneur and is currently the CEO and Founder of LexBlog, Inc., a company that has become the largest and most comprehensive legal news and information network globally, drawing on the contributions of over 30,000 legal professionals.Before founding LexBlog, O'Keefe was a trial lawyer in rural Wisconsin for 17 years, representing plaintiffs in various cases. He then ventured into the tech world by starting Prairielaw .com, a virtual law community that was later sold to LexisNexis. After this, he founded LexBlog in 2004, recognizing the potential of blogging for lawyers to build relationships and reputation in an era where traditional promotion was not common among legal professionals.Apart from his professional achievements, O'Keefe has been active in sharing his insights on social media and is known for his pioneering work in the legal field, particularly in the use of technology for practice development. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of the Pacific-McGeorge School of Law, and he continues to be a significant figure in the legal and tech industries.”====================“LexBlog, founded by Kevin O'Keefe in 2004, is a legal tech company that has evolved into the largest and most comprehensive legal news and information network globally. It provides a platform for over 30,000 legal professionals to share their insights and expertise, contributing to the development of a vibrant legal community.The company's journey began with a vision to leverage the power of blogging to help lawyers build their reputation and business. Over the years, LexBlog has expanded its services to include SaaS technology for powering blogs, focusing on cultivating and empowering environment that highlights the hard work of legal professionals. This approach has solidified LexBlog's reputation as a worldwide publishing network and a launching pad for legal thinkers to exchange ideas, share opportunities, and make the law more accessible to all.As of the latest updates in 2024, LexBlog continues to innovate and adapt to the changing landscape of legal tech and digital media. The company has introduced new initiatives like Legal Tech Daily by LexBlog Publishing, which aims to keep subscribers up to date with the latest blog posts, announcements, and news from leading legal tech companies and consultants. This reflects LexBlog's ongoing commitment to supporting and promoting the legal community through technology and digital platforms.” ====================

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Legal Tech Daily from LexBlog Publishing is out. LexBlog has built its name and a business through trust and visibility on the Internet. The LexBlog network on which legal professionals share insight, legal developments, and commentary has been a key part in generating visibility for our company. Now, we’re extending this network to legal tech companies so that they, too, gain visibility for their good work and products. Legal Tech Daily represents a gateway to reaching over 40,000 legal professionals across the globe, including members of the largest law firms and influencers of legal professionals, whether they be reporters, bloggers, or associations. For readers of Legal Tech Daily, they will receive updates in commentary, information and product announcements via the web, email subscriptions and/or RSS. Legal Tech Daily runs on LexBlog’s Portal Technoloy, powering the aggregation and curation of a steady flow of publishing in aggregated form which in turn is curated by subject, author and publication.

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Google’s AI Overiews, powered by Google Gemini (AI), is out and operational on searches on Google. When it comes to legal searches, the results are sketchy, at best. The legal information shared in the Overviews I saw came from content written by marketing or copy professionals with no expertise on the subject, as opposed to lawyers. The copy was loaded with keywords and outgoing links for SEO, as opposed to information of help to people in need of legal informaton. If you haven’t been following, AI Overviews enable you to get a quick overview of a topic and accompanying links to a site or two to learn more when you do a Google search. Overviews are not on every search, but you’ll start to see them running on the top of a good number of your search results pages. In a blog post, last week, introducing Overviews and how they work Google said that “…[O]ver the past 25 years, we’ve continued to reimagine and expand what Google Search can do. We’ve meticulously honed our core information quality systems to help you find the best of what’s on the web. And we’ve built a knowledge base of billions of facts about people, places and things — all so you can get information you can trust in the blink of an eye.Now, with generative AI, Search can do more than you ever imagined. So you can ask whatever’s on your mind or whatever you need to get done — from researching to planning to brainstorming — and Google will take care of the legwork.This is all made possible by a new Gemini model customized for Google Search. It brings together Gemini’s advanced capabilities — including multi-step reasoning, planning and multimodality — with our best-in-class Search systems.”I welcome Google, at age 25, experimenting with new ideas, features and products - it’s a lesson for all of us.So rather than beating them up for a feature not perfect - yet - I look forward to Overiews providing some assistance to those seeking credible and helpful legal informaton. Whether the person searching is a lawyer, business or consumer.A link to Google’s intro to Overviews is in the comments.

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Cassandre Coyer has been great at Law.com. I have read her pieces as much as anyone’s.

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OpenAI's new ‘ChatGPT 4o Omni’ can receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos providing effective assistance both the practice of law and in legal publishing/blogging. It’s free and will make GPT available on desktop computers for the first time. My blog post, sharing more, is in the first comment.

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In what some are calling the biggest change in Google search in twenty years, AI-powered ‘Google Summaries,’ providing a concise answer to a search, could reduce traffic to publishers’ websites.‘Summaries’ could negatively impact lawyers and law firms who have not established authority in niches and locales through their publishing. Authority is likely to get the publishing of lawyers and law firms cited and linked to in the ‘Summaries’ to be displayed at the top of Google’s search results page.Look for ‘Summaries’ by the end of the week in the United States.Read my blog post for more information. Big hat tip to Kevin Roose of The New York Times for his reporting, yesterday,

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In the universe of legal expertise, small and solo law firms hold a treasure trove of specialized knowledge and practical insight. They have written hundreds of thousands of legal blog posts. Makes sense, seventy-five percent of lawyers work in such firms. However, despite their potential to contribute to a living library of secondary law, these firms remain in the shadows of larger firms.While chasing SEO visibility and viewership, the insight and understanding these lawyers have on niches and locales risks being lost. I share in a post today how we may be able to ensure their voices are valued and maintained in a “legal library” for the public and other lawyers.

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