Blogging Your Way Into a Law Firm: A Guide for Law Students

This week, I spoke with a first-year law student about launching a legal blog. The student looked at blogging as helping him build a name, to learn and land a desirable job more than if he did law review.

What started as a conversation about setup and logistics turned into something strategic—about identity, courage to blog when professors questioned doing so, and using your voice as a law student.

If you’re in law school and wondering, “Should I publish a blog?”

The answer is yes. Blogging is apt to land you a job. Blogging is a powerful way to learn. And blogging builds relationships and a network in a way a resume never could.

Our discussion lead to some law student blogging guidelines I thought I’d share with law students and those helping law students.

1. Start with What You Care About—A Niche

You don’t need to be an expert to start blogging. You need to care. You need to have passion about something. It can be as little as something in which you’ve developed an interest and in which you want to learn more.

Whether it’s IP in entertainment titles, gulf of Texas environmental law, or Oregon small business tenant rights and commercial leasing, what matters most is starting with something you’re genuinely interested in and could seeing helping people on, long term. Don’t wait until you have the perfect niche or title—just begin.

Niches will not limit employment opportunities, they’ll have practice group leaders offering you a job, not because of your brilliance, but because they engaged with you via your niche and were impressed by your ingenuity and communication/networking skills.

Blogging has been described by some as not about showing what you know, but about showing how you think, how you engage and how you meet people. A “naked conversation” if you will.

2. Blogging Is Not Broadcasting—It’s Networking

The best legal blogs don’t shout. They connect.

Citing others, sharing commentary, and linking to relevant work opens the door for conversation and meeting people. The goal isn’t to prove you’re brilliant—it’s to show you’re engaged and listening.

Follow thought leaders in the field and reporters covering your niche. Reference what they have to say in a blog post, sharing why you cited their work, and let the thought leaders and reporters know, with a “cold” email that you shared with your readers their commentary and reporting with your own thoughts. Follow it up with an offer to connect on LinkedIn.

This “conversation” goes far beyond networking at a social function and lands connections coast to coast.

3. Publish Over Perfection

Most law students hesitate because they don’t feel “ready.” Some law professors and placement offices flame the fear by questioning what the student knows about the law and telling a student they’ll embarrass themselves out of a job. The truth is, if you wait until you’re ready, you might never start.

Write simply. Be honest. Publish consistently—could be twice a month. Be vulnerable. The length of a blog post doesn’t determine its value—when you’ve said what you wanted to say, stop. Aim for clarity in a conversational and engaging tone, not perfection.

Blogs are not law reviews. Blogs publish law in an engaging and conversational way.

4. Focus on Content, Not Design

A clean layout and your own voice are more important than colors, designs and logos. Leave those things for large law, where they are needed.

Think like a journalist, not a designer. Use images at the top your posts as The New York Times and magazines do in their reporting and commentary pieces. Your posts will look engaging and professional on mobile devices.

Add links to support your ideas, but don’t overthink it. Your words are what matter most.

Don’t get stuck trying to generate traffic via keywords as the content marketers are apt to do for lawyers and law firms interested in advertising over building a name, a lasting reputation and a network.

5. Use AI as a Companion, Not a Crutch

Tools like ChatGPT or LexBlog’s AI assistant, Lou, can help brainstorm ideas, summarize content you are referencing, or improve clarity. But they’re not a replacement for your voice.

In a world where AI can write, your human insight, tone, and curiosity are what will stand out.

Tomorrow’s lawyer won’t be the lawyer who can do what AI can—and should, it’ll be the lawyer who knows how to engage, analyze and network—yes, personally network and build a name to keep their job as a lawyer, when other lawyers and law firms are failing.

6. Define Success Your Way

Set a goal—write twice a month, connect with a new lawyer or an influencer through your blog twice a month, share what you have to say on LinkedIn and grow your relevant network on LinkedIn by five connections a month. Build a reputation and a network you’re proud of.

Your writing becomes your calling card. Content is not the goal, content is the currency of engagement.

Each post is a handshake. Over time, your body of work speaks for you—even when you’re not at the social networking event on the law school quad.

I ended my conversation with this law student by saying, “Why not have three offers in hand to do the work you want to do at firms you’d like to work for before the end of law school, with one of the offers coming unsolicited?”

Other law students have done so. By putting in the time to develop real-world publishing skills, they’ve not only enhanced their understanding of the law but also carved out unique professional identities.

Why shouldn’t you be among them? In the process, you can enrich your legal education and deepen your passion for the profession you’ve chosen.