I recently heard an interesting interview with Andrew Julien, editor of the Hartford Courant, and his colleague, digital editor Christine Taylor. The issue was how the reshaping of the media world was affecting the Courant, the nation’s oldest continuously operating newspaper. When old media imploded and social and mobile technology burst onto the scene, the folks in Hartford, like many other papers, started placing their content online in a bid to keep market share while they waited for the new information paradigm to take shape. Now that they have some idea of what tomorrow’s news media will look like, the Courant, as have many newspapers, is starting to erect paywalls, charging for premium content, and in other ways trying to monetize access to what it has been giving away. I was surprised at the parallels between their experience and ours in the law.

It reminds me of the old saw: “If you get the milk for free, why buy the cow?” Just like the Courant, the New York Times and just about every other news outlet, many of us have been responding to the new media world by giving our stuff away. Such sites as JD Supra are a wealth of great docs and forms, all free. Other lawyers blog on their favorite practice topics. Some, like me, write articles like this one. The idea is that consumers might call the authors for some help in the areas the lawyer wishes to practice. Maybe they will, or maybe they will just do it themselves using our ideas and docs. I admit that I shamelessly rip form documents from the Web and have saved countless hours of work doing so.

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