No one thinks it is unusual or wrong for a professional copy editor to write copy for a law firm's website. But blogging has always been a more personal endeavor. Some lawyers who are time-challenged or whose writing skills are better for briefs than blog posts have turned to "ghost bloggers" and now some lawyer blogging services will include the blog content seemingly written by the lawyer for a fee. So does that practice mean a lawyer is posting "misleading" advertising content that violates a lawyer's ethical responsibilities?
Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog, who writes the Real Lawyers Have Blogs blog joins Sharon Nelson and me for a lively discussion on the ethics of ghost blogging on our August 2013 edition of the Digital Edge podcast Lawyers Swarm to Ghost Blogging, But is it Ethical? If you know Kevin, you know that he is not shy about sharing his opinions and he thinks the ethics of ghost blogging are very questionable. But Kevin also explores how this shortcut practice also robs the lawyer-blogger of the true value of blogging– building relationships online and establishing the lawyer's individual expertise and personality.