A Web site, usually maintained by one person or small group, that is easily updated on a regular basis, has a high concentration of repeat visitors, has its content pushed to subscribers and which may allow for interaction by commenting on the blogger's posts.

Though blog sites have traditionally been seen as a journal of life activities or one's Web browsing activity with content displayed in reverse chronological order and archived by month, that is just how blog software has traditionally been used to display a blog site. However blog software is actually a powerful data base driven content management tool that years ago would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Creatively deployed, blog software can be used to create professional business blog sites with features far surpassing traditional Web sites - even Web sites that are data base driven.

Blogs of the past may have included a post of: " I had a grilled cheese for lunch. I like cheese. Do you?" We think those days are over.

Blogs are often highly focused around a singular subject or theme. The aim is to provide the blog's readers with a continuous source of news, information and insight about a given topic. Maintained by professionals, like lawyers, blogs build and enhance the reputation of their publishers.

Done well, most people will not be able to tell the difference between a blog and a Web site. In fact, you are looking at a blog site right now. The big items Internet users will notice are blog sites will include new & fresh content because blogs are so easy to update, users can receive updates of new posts to the blog by RSS (real simple syndication) or email and at the option of the blog publisher users can Interact with the blog publisher by asking a question or adding a comment to a post on the Blog site.

Internet users find Blog sites the same way they find Web sites, by locating them in search engines, knowing the url address and keying it into the address bar in their Web browser or clicking on a link to the blog from a Web site or another blog. Lawyers will often have a link to their Web blog from their Web site, either in the main navigation of the site or from the lawyer's bio area, in the case of an individual lawyer's blog, as opposed to a firm blog. A smart lawyer will also include the url address for their blog in their signature line used in emails and in all collateral material such as business cards and letterhead.

Weblog is the unabbreviated name for what is now widely known as blog. In the mid '90's people began simple Web sites to keep a diary of their activity on the Internet. The logic was that folks would browse the Internet and keep track of the sites they saw by providing a list of the sites, usually with a common focus, with a brief annotation of what the sites were about on their simple Web sites. Other Internet users could then keep track of a topic by following the posts on these simple Web sites. Legend has it that the term 'weblog' was coined by a guy named Jorn Barger in December, 1997. Presumably because people were keeping a log of their Web activity.

Denise Howell, a California intellectual property lawyer with an excellent blog herself, coined the name to define a law blog. It has now stuck, in some legal circles, to cover blogs published by any legal professional. LexBlog believes lawyers' prospective clients will not be familiar with the term 'blawg' while during the coming year these same folks become very familiar with the term blog. LexBlog is advising our lawyer customers to stick with the term 'blog' in the naming of their blog site.

Lawyer blogs perform extremely well on all of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, routinely placing higher in search results than traditional Web sites.

Search engine algorithms reward law Web & Blog sites that they consider relevant. Relevance is determined by the number of links to a site and how often content is added to the site. Because lawyer blogs can be updated so easily, new content is added regularly. Blogs have numerous incoming links, one because they provide valuable information on a specific topic and two, because law blogs often link to each other in a community like fashion. These are two of the important factors in search engine optimization that lawyer Web sites do not have.

Adding a post to a blog is darn near as easy as writing an email. A blog allows you as a lawyer to type into a blank box, click a button and 'shazzam,' it's up on the net and syndicated to your audience. In addition you may incorporate html code by highlighting text and clicking a button so you can bold, underline, italicize or hot-link text so it links to another Web page.

Each time a new post, or content, is added to the lawyer blog the content is pushed, or what is described by the tecnology community, as syndicated to subscribers by RSS or email.

Most often referred to as really simple syndication, people may subscribe to a lawyer blog so that new content with a post title and brief synopsis is delivered to subscribers on a news aggregator on their desktop.

You hire LexBlog of course. Seriously though, there is blogging software to download for you to install and run from your desktop or on a server. There are also Web based services that allow you to create a blog that will be hosted and administered from the provider's Web site.

Though such software and services may be less expensive than using LexBlog, the majority of lawyers we talk to feel they do not have the time or technical aptitude to set up and administer a blog on their own. Lawyers also prefer a professional looking blog as opposed to the default interfaces offered by these services.

Like the early days of Web sites when anyone 'could' do a Web site, many lawyers want a blog site to look and feel professional.