In one of Clyde Lear’s early blog posts, he talks about a mistake our company made some years ago. No weasly words, just “we shouldn’t have done that.”

I flashed on Clyde’s post as I read this article by David H. Freedman at Inc.com:

Many corporate blogs are sanitized, public-relations-oriented affairs intended to create bonds with existing and potential customers. Others serve as internal message boards to keep employees up to date. But I’m proposing something else: a blog that encourages employees and managers to tell their peers what they themselves have done wrong. It’s an easy step that could quickly effect a large, positive change in your corporate culture.

That’s the name of Kevin O’Keefe’s blog. He chatted with me today about blogging and lawyers and I could kick myself for not asking how he came up with “Real Lawyers Have Blogs.”

The blog is part of LexBlog, a consulting company that helps lawyers with Internet marketing and business development puts a strong emphasis on blogging.

Kevin was a trial lawyer for 17 years but stopped practicing in 1999 and founded an “online law community” called Prairielaw.com (which was later acquired by LexisNexis).

Kevin is my kind of blogger. He thinks every business should be blogging and says all lawyers will have blogs by the end of the decade (even though less than 1% of attorneys currently have blogs).

LexBlog has created some really nice looking blogs for their clients. These are some of the best looking websites I’ve seen and they got all the blog tools and features.

Kevin pooh-poohed my suggestion that blogging was difficult for some people. They either hadn’t found the right tools or weren’t ready to blog (yet). He’s right of course.

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After listening to Kevin for a few minutes and looking at and reading the blogs of some of his clients… I can’t imagine why every lawyer isn’t blogging. I guess the real ones are.

It does pain me to look at the little calendar to the right and see that entire days have gone by with not a single post here at smays.com. Four days last week! Cripes! What’s the point of living if you’re too busy to blog about it? What have I been doing that is more important than this?

We relaunched one of our websites last week. WRN.com is the online home of Wisconsin Radio Network. Our news network websites are among the oldest in the company. Almost ten years for a couple of them. Waaay overdue for an overhaul. RadioIowa.com is next and then Missourinet.com.

The Amazing Andy (Gestalt Inc) does all of our sites and he’s done a nice job with these. All sites optimized for blogging, RSS, podcasting, etc. Still miles to go but I’m hoping to have all three up and running before the end of the year.

Spending more and more time talking with clients about blogging and podcasting. The vast majority are still clueless about these tools but there are little flashes of “get it” here and there and we’re trying to fan these tiny sparks into roaring infernos.

But it’s all web-o-licious and I can’t remember the last time I heard the phrase “this Internet thing” at Camp Learfield.