How many lawyers does it take to write a good blog?

It's not some kind of lawyer joke. Blogging, once the preserve of pajama-clad pundits and angst-ridden teens, is one of the hottest new developments in legal marketing.

The Yellow Pages are passé and TV commercials never caught on, says Karen Boxx, a professor at the University of Washington law school. As it has in so many other industries, technology is changing the way law firms get new business.

"The action is more in websites, blogs, that sort of thing," Boxx says. "That's more effective. It tells you what the lawyer is like, more than a commercial."

Former lawyer Kevin O'Keefe predicts that most lawyers will have blogs within three or four years. He's launched a Bainbridge Island company ? LexBlog ? to provide software for law firms to get on the Web. "I'm not sure how a lawyer can stay on the outside of that discourse," he says.

Legal marketing is a fairly new phenomenon, born in 1977 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned previous restrictions on advertising by lawyers.

For the next couple of decades, lawyers did little to take advantage of their new freedoms, says Jason Miller, who heads the Seattle chapter of the Legal Marketing Association. Many partnerships left the task up to their administrative assistants and legal secretaries, with a primary focus on Yellow Pages advertising.

"Marketing departments didn't really hit law firms till the late '90s," he says.

Now, more big firms are hiring marketing pros to raise the visibility and image of their firms ? and generate new business, he says. "Lawyers aren't used to that, but they're quickly learning."

Selling legal services is different from selling products, says Miller, who works as director of marketing and business development at the Seattle firm of Ryan, Swanson & Cleveland. ("In the legal market, 'business development' is just a fancy word for 'sales,' Miller says.) Legal marketing is "very much relationship-driven," he says.

That's where blogging comes in, according to O'Keefe. "Law firms have always got their best work by word of mouth and networking," he says. "Networking can occur much faster online."

Seattle attorney Michael Atkins agrees. He began blogging about copyright law last winter, and says he's making new contacts and generating business by posting regular updates to www.seattletrademarklawyer.com.

"I definitely have gotten clients directly from the blog and feelers from prospective clients, and other lawyers have contacted me because of the blog," he says. "It's totally fabulous. It's a great tool."

The secret, Atkins says, is "not saying, 'gosh, I'm a great lawyer,' but instead reporting news and information on your specialized area of law. If, in the process, they view you as an expert, they'll come to you in their time of need."

Blogs allow lawyers to show off their expertise, background, even their personalities, O'Keefe says. Regularly updated blogs get fed into search engines, which makes it easier for potential clients to find them.

Some state bar associations still put a lot of restrictions on law firm advertising, but Washington's rules are less severe, Boxx says. They're also vague, she adds. But generally, courts here have held that lawyers can't claim to be specialists or particular experts, because doing so creates an expectation that a client can expect a favorable outcome ? and that's a violation.

But with a blog, O'Keefe explains, lawyers can show expertise in a certain field of law. As a result, potential clients "recognize you as an authority," he says. "It's only a small step (from there) to being hired."

Miller agrees. "For a particular niche industry, it can be very effective," he says. "A lawyer or firm that provides regular updates on a specific field becomes a trusted source. If you need assistance in this area, they're top of mind. They're going to pop into your head."

In the Seattle area, K & L Gates and Davis Wright Tremaine are particularly good at this, Miller says. "They've been very aggressive with technology. You go to their websites and there's a lot of stuff going on."

Blogs can be time-consuming. Atkins says he spends five to 10 hours a week updating his ? hours he can't bill for. He also must still do regular business development work for his firm, Graham & Dunn.

Even so, it's cheaper and more effective than slickly printed brochures, Atkins says. "I love it," he adds. "A year from now, every law firm, I'd like to think, will have a blog."

Perry Mason and Ally McBeal might have made for good TV drama, but television typically isn't the best place for lawyers to find clients. "TV ads are a shotgun approach," O'Keefe says. "It's very shotgun and very expensive."

If legal marketing's still in its infancy, divorce lawyer Mike Gallagher is its grandfather in the Northwest ? or maybe its most colorful uncle.

His self-produced commercials urging divorcing spouses to "give me a call if you need help" started appearing on Seattle TV stations in 1989. He's the only lawyer currently advertising on TV in the Puget Sound area. Nine of his all-time favorite commercials are posted at his website www.dontbeaweekendparent.com.

J. Michael Gallagher is not your classic corporate counselor. He's got a satellite office in Monroe, where he's a regular at a burger joint. On this day, he strides past the hostess and finds his own table, asking whether his favorite waitress ? whom he's nicknamed "Erin Go Bragh-less" ? is working today. He's wearing a bow tie that straddles the line between tasteful and loud, but says he typically greets clients in a T-shirt. He laughs loudly, talks fast and uses language as salty as the fries. "You don't think I'm full of myself, do ya?" he asks with a grin.

Now he's talking into a flip phone, explaining to a client that his strategy for their upcoming court hearing was scuttled by the results of the client's drug test. He says he tends to take on the hard cases, messy divorce and child custody battles where one spouse has accused the other of serious wrongdoing ? drug use, physical abuse, even pedophilia.

Downtown law firms are "afraid of the clientele they'll get" if they advertise on television, Gallagher says. "But I love our clients. Our clients need help just like anybody else, and their money's just as green as the snobby clients'."

Gallagher doesn't get much repeat business. For most people, one messy divorce is enough, and word of mouth only goes so far. The commercials are key to his new business development, he says. "It's all TV in one way or another."

As Miller describes it, Gallagher has the kind of practice suited to TV advertising: one-time clients looking for a specific service, usually a divorce or personal-injury suit. The downtown firms aren't pursuing that business. With the corporate clients they covet, "no one's going to call you up and hire you because they see you on TV," Miller says.

Gallagher agrees. "Nobody wants to use a TV attorney. Seriously, I'm the attorney of last resort."

Getting the right tone for TV ads can be tricky, says Boxx. Try too hard to make them tasteful, and they end up being boring. On the other hand, "I enjoy bad lawyer ads as much as the next person," she quips.

As for Gallagher's ads, well, you couldn't call them boring. A recent one features a very pregnant woman in a bare-midriff top talking about how she married young and stayed home to raise a family ? only to have her no-good husband desert her after getting her pregnant with child No. 3.

Gallagher chortles as he describes the ad. "You don't see naked pregnant bellies on TV," he says. "You can't take your eyes off it."

Gallagher writes and directs his own ads, and often appears in them. He says they're based on scenarios he's seen with clients. He claims he likes it when he gets complaints.

"Do (people) get pissed off? You bet. Why? Because it's real," he says. "Television advertising is emotional. If it's not emotional, it's not any good."

But cold hard data can be a good marketing tool too, Miller says.

A good website is essential, Miller says. If a company's in-house counsel needs outside help for a specific case, one of the first things he or she will do is a Google-style search to find firms who practice in that area. Particularly around tech savvy Puget Sound, "you want to make sure your website's clicking on all cylinders," he says. So, don't have outdated information ? but do consider such things as Podcasts.

Miller also recommends that law firms invest in another kind of information technology ? client relationship management software. Such programs provide detailed lists of connections between potential clients and people at a firm: fellow club members, college classmates, even neighbors.

Good client relationship management software can provide a wealth of data to a team that's preparing a pitch to a potential new client, Miller says. "Everything I could possibly want to know is in one company record. Have we done anything for them before? Who do we know there?

"We gain insights there, so many strategic insights, just within our own firm," he says.

Lots of law firms have purchased the software, but "many firms haven't been utilizing it to its fullest extent," Miller says. Part of that is the firm, but some of the software is poorly written, he adds.

"It needs to be easy," he says. "They're lawyers. They've got other stuff to do."

The marketing team has other things to do as well.

While TV advertising may not work, other traditional forms of marketing are important, Miller says.

He says Perkins Coie in Seattle has been running a particularly effective print advertising campaign that talks about the kinds of clients the firm has ? from wine makers to the founders of the Craigslist website.

"It's about the client," Miller says. "Maybe somebody in my industry, or maybe someone in my position."

That kind of image advertising creates a good impression of the firm, so that a potential client will recognize the name when the business developer comes calling.

Rainmakers ? big-name partners who bring in lots of clients ? are still an important part of the legal marketing scene, Miller says. In Seattle, two of the biggest are former Gov. Gary Locke at Davis Wright Tremaine and former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton at K&L Gates.

Along with expertise in dealing with government, those two also help clients gain access to decision makers, Miller says. Plus, "they're speaking all over town. The speaking thing is huge. They're always in the paper. The firm is associated with that."

And what about ads in the good ol' Yellow Pages? O'Keefe says they're not credible. "I'm not sure how people select a lawyer from the Yellow Pages. Do you pick a lawyer whose name you like?"

You're probably better off focusing your energy ? and marketing dollars ? in other areas, Miller advises. "It's more effective to spend those dollars on other things."

There is a built-in culture clash between the marketing team and the partners who run the firm, Miller acknowledges. Yet it doesn't have to be that way, he continues. Lawyers, after all, are highly trained professional persuaders.

"It's most definitely a challenge. Marketers, by nature, want to be loud," he says, grinning. "Lawyers, by nature, aren't, of course, as rambunctious. It's a challenge for us to present it in a way that is not so bold, so not what the firm is, that we can't get anywhere."