Good couple days last week with Jennifer Brand,  Josh Lynch and Conner O’Keefe from the LexBlog team introducing the State Bar of Texas Website Platform powered by LexBlog to Texas lawyers at their Annual Meeting in Houston.

The platform is presently being offered by the State Bar exclusively to attendee’s of the Bar’s Annual Meeting. This way LexBlog receives  a sample group of lawyers using the platform before the State Bar launches it to all members. This will give our products team data to improve and tailor the platform as needed — primarily focused on ease oif use.

It felt good to hear comments such as “Wow, this is a great offering from the bar,” and “I just need a professional presence at a fair price and this is it.”

I got the real sense that lawyers trusted the State Bar to bring them a sound offering like the bar does with heatlh insurance, retirement plans and legal research.

A lot of small firm lawyers don’t seem to trust the traditional legal website companies, especially the larger ones. At least in Texas, there is a sense that the State Bar does right by me, as a lawyer, and solving the problem of who to trust and what to pay for a website is now being solved by the State Bar.

I wasn’t gung-ho to do a website solution on our publishing platform, but serving lawyers and the State Bar combined with the competitive feeling that comes with a new challenge had me pretty fired up by day two. Josh doing a heck of a job leading the development and launch of this offering didn’t hurt either. It was also Josh who also felt strongly that we should help lawyers where we can.

Our COO, Garry Vander Voort, was also right that getting the team to work on something outside our normal process driven regiment would be good for us. I cannot say there hasn’t been some stress, and I am sure there will more ahead, but it’s making for better relationships across the team and is giving us the assurance we can handle new challenges and opportunities ahead.

When Conner joined LexBlog he wanted a job where he could best help the company and have the most impact. He’s been working withe the success team for the last year plus but has now jumped over to sales. 

With a little coaching from Jen, who has the strong marketing, communications and relationships background/experience, Conner did a heck of a job. Reaching out and talking to lawyers he picked up the vast majority of the lawyers who will be moving forward on using the platform. Maybe he’s picked up the salesperson blood from my Dad.

LexBlog exists on relationships, blogging, social media and will, so we tend to be a rag group when someone asks us to “display” at a conference, something we rarely do.

Having Jen on board to help in Houston was invaluable. Beyond being a pro in all she does and giving us counsel at every turn (with a soft touch), she just makes people feel good – lawyers, State Bar staff and us. Made for better work on our part and more lawyers trusting us. Jen also left us with a nice list of things where we’re not perfect yet. 😉 

I look forward to continuing work on the State Bar website platform offering and after the launch to the entire bar offering the solution to lawyers in other states through their bar associations.