It’s something they just don’t teach in law school: how to trade in arcane legalese for pithy paragraphs — and budget time for it.

Attorneys and law firms are increasingly launching blogs to market themselves as experts on a specific topic or niche practice area, and many are finding that feeding the blog beast with fresh content is a legal challenge unto itself. Lawyers and blog specialists say the best legal blogs generate at least several posts per week. For time-starved lawyers, this means writing at 3 a.m. or while shuffling between airports and depositions.

“It’s like a demanding mistress,” said Stephen Rosenberg of The McCormack Law Firm LLP in Boston, who blogs about employee benefit issues. “I’m trying to get ready for a trial, but feel obliged to find a few minutes to post something.”

Recently a week went by when he didn’t post a thing — a minor lapse compared to Lee Gesmer of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, who has not updated his blog on business and intellectual property litigation since June. Gesmer admitted he lost momentum after working 16-hour days, seven days per week, since the summer.

“It’s like looking into a closet that is like a fire risk,” Gesmer said. “You know you need to clean it, and it makes you feel guilty.”

Laurin Mills, a Nixon Peabody LLP attorney who oversees the firm’s technology and IP blog, stressed the importance of having a number of contributors to balance the workload among time-starved lawyers.

“It can be hard for litigators to blog when the emphasis is on billable hours,” Mills said. “That’s why you need a team to cover each other’s backs.”

The Surge in Legal Blogging

Kevin O’Keefe, CEO of Lexblog, a Seattle-based company that helps lawyers launch and maintain blogs, estimates there are between 7,000 and 9,000 legal blogs currently produced by a range of lawyers, from solo practitioners to those at big-name firms. Of those, only about 1,000 to 1,500 are producing quality material, O’Keefe said. “The vast majority doesn’t know what they’re doing and probably are accomplishing very little,” he said.

According to O’Keefe, a well-run legal blog offers insight and commentary on what’s already being said about a particular subject. By referencing that subject in a blog, a lawyer starts participating in a conversation and will be seen by other people talking about the issue. “People are more likely to hire a lawyer who is following things and staying up to speed, expressing thoughts and being used as a source,” he explained.

Foley Hoag LLP hired Lexblog to help launch three of its four blogs in 2008.

“The firm was embracing social media and hearing from clients that they wanted to be engaged in an ongoing dialog,” said marketing director Jeff Scalzi.

Seth Jaffe, who authors the firm’s environmental law blog, said that because the firm already focuses more on broad scale marketing than sales efforts, blogging makes sense since it is a very cost-effective use of the firm’s broad marketing time.