Not Enough Time

I recently offered Texas lawyers a free web marketing consultation. We did a little web-presence review, and I suggested some things they could do to improve their visibility (without outsourcing their reputations).

In response to the advice that the best way to do so was to produce new substantive content, as with a blog or a CMS, the refrain that I heard, time after time, was “I don’t have time for that.”

These were lawyers looking for more clients. Let’s suppose, conservatively, that they aspired to get only one additional client a month, and that they were real slackers, who would spend an average of two hours on a case, from beginning to end. So they wanted two additional hours of work a month, but they didn’t have time to spend a half hour a week blogging.

“I don’t have time” is an excuse. These lawyers think they have two hours a month for new cases, but not two hours a month for blogging. I know lawyers who play golf, who watch football, who hang out at bars, and who claim not to understand how I have time to write. (I tell them my days just have more hours than theirs.)

Like most things, it’s matter of priorities. When writing is more important to you than golf or football or alcohol, it’s easy to find time to write.

(I say “write” because the written word is the most indexable medium. Lawyers wanting to participate online could just as well record audio or video podcasts, or publish original photography or artwork.)