Yep, I Really Would

Sorry about the coffee, Bob. Yes, I think the lawyers in my firm are competent to author their own bios. Granted I don't know all 1,000 or so of them, but I've yet to meet one about whom I would say, "Y'know, [he or she] just isn't up to that task." Maybe some would appreciate and/or could use a little help, and firms could easily address this with competent marketing professionals and support staff. But I think most would be able to handle it on their own to everybody's satisfaction, and I suspect they'd be thrilled to have the hands-on ability to edit and republish in a speedy manner.

The real point of my post though was that it would be refreshing and a more information rich use of time and bandwidth to get away from the standard firm bio that is a static, brochure-style summary. I really like the Tribe.net concept of customizable modules that can include not just the old text summary, but a blog, links, other feeds the person writes or reads, recent projects, etc., etc. Don't take mine as an example! Creating an attorney bio for a law firm site was the last thing on my mind when I spent barely 3 minutes setting it up. But do take my word (I wish these were open for the public to play with, they're not yet, but you could ask Marc Canter about taking an early test spin) that the module concept Tribe is using to generate these pages is basically idiot-proof and has great potential in its ability to pull together all kinds of relevant related material from disparate sources.