Order C.B.S. Today:
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More On Ghostblogging
Dear Mr. Bennett,
Thank you for including my company in your blog post yesterday about the ethics of legal ghostblogging. As a (relatively) new form of communication, blogging is still in many ways going through its growing pains, and as more and more professionals and businesses begin to see the value of blogging I know that there will be many more debates about various aspects of it, including continuing ethical debates. Like you, I think these debates are important, and I look forward to seeing (and perhaps being a part of) how the field evolves.
The ethics of having a ghostwriter in a field that is still in many ways expected to be transparent is something that I discuss with each and every one of my clients; that is why some of my clients choose to have my tagline at the bottom of each post that I write for them, and every client of mine knows that I expect them to read and approve every post that appears on their blog. Personal and professional responsibility is not something I neglect or take lightly. As you might expect, I have many of my own opinions about this subject and would be happy to engage in conversation with you if you are interested in discussion.
The reason I am writing you today is because–although I have no desire to censor the debate–I would like to ask you, as a professional courtesy, to remove your reference and link to my client testimonials page. You are welcome to leave your reference to my business and my home page (your readers can find my client testimonials page from there if they are so inclined.) As I said above, professional responsibility is not something I take lightly, and I feel it is my professional responsibility to be the “front man” in this debate, and bear the brunt of this particular criticism. I realize that in the end this is your forum and your decision, and I appreciate your consideration of my clients and of my request.
If you would like to discuss this topic further I invite you to e-mail me privately at any time.
Best Regards,
Jenni Buchananwww.LegalGhostblogger.com
My blog: http://blogprofs.typepad.com/Dear Ms. Buchanan:
Thank you for your email.
Blogging is not so novel that there are no precedents. In the original post I drew analogies to claiming other lawyers’ results and résumés; in the non-legal world it’s like putting a picture of one thing on the outside of a can filled with another. I note that, of the five “bloggers” with testimonials on your testimonial page, only two use your tagline; Gene Osofsky, Rick Law, and Kimberly T. Lee do not. Why do you suppose that is?
It is very important for the discussion of the ethics of lawyers using ghostbloggers to be conducted publicly, in full view of those who might be affected by lawyers’ marketing choices—not only the clients whose fortunes and futures might be at stake, but also the lawyers whose reputations are at stake. You take professional responsibility seriously, but your clients are the ones with their licenses and their reputations on the line.
It is crucial that those with ultimate legal and ethical responsibility for online marketing (the lawyers) realize that they have some skin in the game. Some lawyers feeling that it is okay to have a “front man” causes many of the problems with unethical online marketing: they trust a non-lawyer to do it for them, and wind up paying for spam, splogging, or ghostblogging. I suspect that when lawyers realize that they might be called to public account for the things they delegate to others (Outsourcing Marketing = Outsourcing Ethics), they give a lot more thought to their marketing choices.
I’d be happy to hear your arguments that hiring a legal ghostblogger is ethical, but I don’t think your clients should be insulated from the effects of this particular decision.
Mark
7 responses to “More On Ghostblogging”
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I support professionalism and ethics, both of which are becoming vestigial tails wagging the legal marketing dog. Having said that, I remember in my early days as an articling student ghostwriting for partners who sometimes didn’t give credit, or, if credit was given, it was never co-authorship but merely a footnote. Perhaps times have changed, but it is difficult to reconcile promoting a lawyer’s or law firm’s website to prospective clients, while using a third party ghostwriter to post blog content. It’s like getting a rectal exam at the doctor’s office and then finding out that the doctor was away that day.
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My opinion may not be popular, but that’s never stopped me before…
While I agree with the integrity/ethical debate behind not outsourcing certain things, I am not convinced it always matters with blogging. Here’s why: Not all lawyers understand blogging well enough to know that it doesn’t need to be done.
I’m talking about the ones who don’t use blogs as a personal professional platform; they use them as websites. They look at blogging as nothing more than “Hey! This technology is easier to post articles to on a regular basis.” These aren’t the types of articles they sign their name to as a blog post would be (in modern blawgworld), but more like general information articles one would find on a website.
I wouldn’t consider this “ghostblogging” any more than I would consider it “ghostwriting” if a lawyer were to hire someone to write the copy/content of his website. I’ve worked for a lot of lawyers, and not all of them are excellent writers. Not all of them could type, either — but that’s a different tangent for another day.
Is it morally wrong — or professionally unethical — for a lawyer to hire someone to do something they feel needs to be done, but that they can’t do well or don’t have the time to do? Are we bad parents because we have a nanny? (Not the same, I know. But it’s midnight, and I’m tired.)
I think the problem is that these types of folks shouldn’t be blogging in the first place, but they’ve been convinced by the hypesters that blogging will get them business. Similar to the way people who think flinging up SEO articles will get them business, and the way people think spamming blog comments will increase their page rank…. ugh! There are many many idiots doing a lot of things I don’t understand. (How some of these folks passed the bar, I would love to know, but I digress.)
I did blog consulting for a few years, and one of the reasons I didn’t make a great deal of money at it and eventually went back to legal assistant work is that I began each call by asking people why they thought they needed to do this; I talked most of them out of it. I don’t have what it takes to be a “guru.”
As a freelance writer, I have written web copy and content for lawyer websites. I have also contributed to multi-author “law blogs” that weren’t really blogs, in my opinion, so much as websites. My name was on them, so I’m not sure that’s classified as “ghostblogging.” If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go back and do that type of work again — it was a waste of time. Were the lawyers I did the work for unethical? I honestly don’t think so. I think they just had it in their heads that they should try this latest new thing, and that’s as far as it went.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m naive or uninformed, because I’m not a lawyer. I’m relatively young and still learning. I’m not saying I think it’s a good idea, only that I understand it from a different view point. I’ve spent countless hours trying to talk people out of this stuff. Seriously. Most of them aren’t bad people. They just don’t know any better. Does that make it ok? I dunno… I’ve made my share of mistakes.
I think it was Scott (maybe?) who posted a while back about chatting with a group of lawyers at a conference or event and realizing most of them will never see this stuff? That’s kind of how I view this problem. World’s apart. The commute would be a full-time job, and you’d still never get through. Trust me. I’ve tried.
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If we were selling vacuum cleaners or plastic surgery, I would say that it doesn’t really matter who writes the copy. But for lawyers, the blog is more like the merchandise displayed in the window or the label on the can. Thought and its expression are our stock-in-trade.
Most lawyers wouldn’t give a moment’s thought to the ethics of ghostblogging; the sad truth is that most lawyers don’t give a moment’s thought to the ethics of anything.
They don’t, but they should. If hiring a ghostblogger is unethical, not considering its ramifications doesn’t make it ethical.
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Amy Derby January 30th, 2010 at 20:31
What about websites? Should lawyers write their own websites? Or does the “ghostwriting” ethics thing only apply to blogging?
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Mark Bennett January 30th, 2010 at 21:13
Lawyers should write their own website content too. That’s more a quality-control issue than an ethical issue, though, because I don’t think people expect a website to reflect the lawyer’s thought processes in the same way that they expect a blog to.
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Amy Derby January 30th, 2010 at 23:26
That’s interesting. For the lawyers who use blogs as websites — which is silly, in my opinion, but it’s commonly done — I don’t see the distinction.
For example, if you had a “blog” set up with general information articles about criminal defense law — not opinions or legal discussions, but just plain old info, and it was written by a ghostwriter but was factually correct, I don’t see the problem. If you hired someone to ghostwrite a blog like your Defending People blog, that I would take issue with.
The former is common in the personal injury world. I’ve had dozens of personal injury firms call me and say “We’d like to hire you to write a series of articles for our blog about our practice areas.” What they mean is, they want general information articles for a website that is set up on Wordpress. The content would be well researched, fact-checked, and reviewed by the lawyers before being posted to the site. I stopped accepting jobs like that, but not for ethical reasons.
Just curious where the lines are drawn. As a paralegal, I worked for lawyers who couldn’t manage to write their own bios without getting at least two staff members involved. So I don’t think it’s realistic to expect that every lawyer is going to have the skill or time to write all of his own web content.
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Who’s to say what a blog should look like and what a website should look like? And even if I agreed with the legal ethics argument (for me the jury is still out), I don’t know that it’s a winnable battle. It certainly doesn’t justify public shaming as a way to enforce one person’s ethical views.
The blogs I follow — such as Defending People and Scott Greenfield’s Simple Justice — reflect the very distinctive voices of their authors. If a ghostwriter were able to imitate this distinctive voice, would it matter to me that the entry was written by a ghostwriter and not, say, Scott Greenfield?
They say that, by the end, JFK’s ghostwriter Ted Sorensen sounded more like JFK than JFK himself. Sorensen wrote in his autobiography that he himself cannot remember which of JFK’s famous lines were penned by him and which were written by JFK. If Sorensen can’t remember and doesn’t seem to care, why should we?
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Antonin I. Pribetic January 29th, 2010 at 15:55