So instead of typing out:

<blockquote>"I'm a quote!"</blockquote>

All you have to do is type:

>"I'm a quote!"

No more typing out bullet point code or long “a href=” you can simply use asterisks and square and curved brackets.

Install it into your WordPress blog to give it a run. As an added bonus, if you use MarsEdit, it has a preview text filter for Markdown.

There are a few plugins to choose from, I’m using Michael Fortin’s PHP markdown.

Please:

• Don’t place Google Ads on your lawyer website. You’re a lawyer not a professional blogger, and it’s highly unlikely you’re going to make any money anyway
• Don’t use blogger to host your blog.
• Don’t forget to use some sort of analytics software to keep track of your visitors.
• Don’t be afraid to pay someone to help with web design. It’s probably not as much as you think, and it does worlds for how professional your site works.

Don’t forget that your blog and website is your calling card to the world.

If you ignore the above advice about blogger, please at least do the following with your blogger website:

• Do make sure your RSS feeds are linked from your page
• Do pay someone or code your own theme – Don’t use one of bloggers default themes!
• Do get your own domain name and have it redirect there.

LPM blogs

Build a Solo practice. Susan Cartier Liebel’s blog and one of the first I started following when I developed my consultancy.

There are quite a few others that I dip in on regularly, such as Chuck Newton and Home Office Warrior. These days I mostly just see what is out there via the twitter people I follow, though I very sorely tempted to join Solo Practice University to give it a go.

Tech for the solo/small firm

Keep up to date with Future Lawyer and for the Mac users, subscribe to MILO and read iPhone JD if you have an iPhone.

SEO

SEO Moz comes in very handy and has lots of tools to help with SEO. My Pro subscription has been useful, but there are plenty of things to get you started for free.

SEO Book. I bought and read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book and it’s been a great help to understand the issues and where to improve (even if I don’t get to do all of what he and SEO Moz recommend).

UK

In the UK we have the SOLO IP group, which I’d hoped would offer more practice management tips and tricks, and still has the potential to be a really useful resource specifically for IP practitioners.

The answer: to help build your business!

You have a business. If you’re reading this blog, you’re likely a solo or small firm lawyer. But this applies whether you are a lawyer in Chicago, a consultant in London, or a widget manufacturer in Kazakhstan. You have a business, and it is not selling advertising on your web content.

Lawyers sell their services, not ads.

Blogging help you sell your services in many ways. Through it, you can increase your SEO, making it easier for potential clients to find you, and build out your networks and reputational capital to build referral business and boost your standing as an expert (and so charge higher rates).

Putting ads on your site sends the wrong message in this environment. It says you aren’t serious about blogging as part of your practice and it’s a distraction to the people you want to stay focussed on your site and your content (and not clicking through to other sites to buy things).

Besides that, those ads aren’t likely to be very successful. That one beer a month that you can buy with the GoogleAds on your blog will be useful to console you when you think about how the blog isn’t helping your business.