Imagine a “LexBlog Con” where leading legal brands from startups to traditional larger players to law firms are offered the opportunity to connect with legal bloggers. After all, legal bloggers are quickly supplanting reporters and traditional media as the influencers of our legal community.

From a blogger attendee, today, at BlogHer19 in Brooklyn.

There may not be a better way for legal industry companies to connect with the biggest influencers in legal than a conference of legal bloggers, ala LexBlog Con.

LexBlog Con could start as simple as BlogHer did years ago and, as we had discussed for this last year, as a larger meetup of legal bloggers for a day of blogger education and networking.

But instead of thinking “internal” to bloggers, alone, and thinking of sponsors as other legal conferences do, we recognize that we have the most influential people in the legal industry in the form of legal bloggers.

Rather than sponsoring a conference or buying exhibition space at a conference, alone, to reach lawyer attendees, one by one, legal companies and law firms connect with the legal bloggers who reach and connect with virtually the entire legal community.

It’s like inviting legal companies to a conference of news publishers and industry reporters who may then walk away with favorable impressions of the companies and law firms based on relationships formed by connecting and engaging face to face.

Beyond reach, bloggers have trust – perhaps more than reporters, editors and traditional publishers. Bloggers are apt to write in a real and authentic way. Relationships are formed with influencers in their space and trust is established with their audience.

As an alternative to solely spending five, ten or twenty-five thousand dollars on an ad, sponsorship, exhibit space or traditional public relations, legal companies and law firms send some of their principals and leaders to connect as people connect.

Letting people with their own audiences write their own story about your product or service is eighty times more effective than you writing the story and trying to get people to come to your website or press release to read it.

For those not familiar with BlogHer, they’ve been empowering and inspiring women bloggers since 2005. BlogHer has formed a powerful community of women blogging on a countless number of subjects.

Sponsors and attendees at their conferences have included a who’s who of companies including an auto manufacturer who let attendees take their convertibles out for spin.

Blogher’s model may not be to far of a stretch for the law and legal bloggers.

One of the co-founders of BlogHer was Lisa Stone, who was part of founding the Legal Blog Network and Legal Blog Watch while at ALM and Law.com. Stone saw that legal bloggers were “on to something editorially exceptional.”

Stay tuned for more discussion on LexBlog Con. I welcome your feedback and ideas as well.