Thursday, November 17, 2005

Podcasting, the next big thing?

With blogging becoming a bit more mainstream, well at least at my firm, the next frontier for lawyers to get their message out might be podcasting. Like blogging, the barrier to entry for podcasting is minimal. With a voice recording device (handheld or through your PC), a few hundred dollars worth of hardware and software and a website or blog to publish it to, and you're all set. Some lawyers even take advantage of their commute and author their podcasts while on the road. Reed Smith intellectual property lawyer and popular blawger Denise Howell's podcast features insightful talk about the ways in which advanced technology can help lawyers on the job. She produces her podcasts by recording herself on a cell phone as she drives to work. Let's hope she doesn't cause any major pile ups on the freeway!

What's compelling to me about this medium is that it's easy for lawyers to use and is richer than text for delivery. People can get feeds via RSS, which makes it even easier to get the word out about your podcast. From the consumer's perspective, you can download this to any MP3 player or your laptop and listen to it at your convenience.

Here's what you need to get started listening to podcasts. There are a number of free podcast clients available for download. The two most popular are iPodderX (available for free at ipodder.org) and Apple Computer's latest version of iTunes (Version 5.0; also a free download). Also a great article on Law.com (subscription required) which talks about this in more depth.

I'm not sure how far this will go, or if it's a fad, but we're certainly looking into it further.

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