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While many legal technology developers have focused their efforts on areas like e-discovery and contract management, some are starting to offer solutions for more business-focused needs.

Clearview Social, for example, launched its eponymous social media management tool in 2014 to help law firms better execute social media marketing. Now, the company is looking to further innovate legal marketing with the launch of PostHaste, a blog automation and management platform that aims to help attorneys engage more with conversations online.

Adrian Dayton, founder and CEO of Clearview Social, described PostHaste as a tool for attorneys “to quickly assemble reactions to certain issues” and “give their unique insight.”

PostHaste is installed as an extension on web browsers. When attorneys are reading content that interests them online, they can highlight a quote or passage they want to respond to and click the PostHaste extension, which will bring up a template for a blog post.

The template will automatically contain the highlighted passage as a block quote and make sure to give proper attribution to its original author. Based on the passage, PostHaste will also use artificial intelligence software to recommend an accompanying picture from Shutterstock, which has a partnership with Clearview that gives the platform's users rights to stock images.

PostHaste will also recommend a title for the blog post and show the user a selection of tweets that have responded to the content from which the original passage was pulled.

An attorney then writes the blog content, which PostHaste will automatically either publish to the attorney's WordPress blog or any proprietary website the attorney's law firm may have. PostHaste can also first send the blog to a law firm's marketing team for approval, or have the marketing team assign attorneys specific blog topics through an editorial calendar.

Dayton noted that the idea for PostHaste came out of the fact that while attorneys and their law firms appreciated Clearview Social, they did not have much content to promote. “I found that almost half of the firms just weren't creating enough content to get really any benefit from social media,” he said.

He added that “we wanted to give them an easy way to become part of a bigger conversation” around topics they were interested in or had expertise through their practice areas.

The ultimate goal of Clearview Social and PostHaste is to allow law firms to increase their social media presence and engagement in order to attract more clients and business. But social media doesn't always come easy for attorneys.

Much like their clients and judges, attorneys can face legal risks by being too active on social media or blogging websites. Dayton, however, believes that law firms have realized the business advantages of having an online presence. “In terms of firms wanting their lawyers to stay off of social media, I heard that a lot eight years ago, but now what I'm hearing from firms is the exact opposite.”

Still, some argue that the legal marketing space is being inundated with too much content, with an emphasis on quantity over quality. But Dayton believes that this is a problem of having too many marketers write content and enough attorneys engaging online.

“I've heard this discussion about there is so much content already, do we really need more content that isn't high quality?” he said. “To be honest, the people that are creating the most content out there—and let's just call it what it is, it's just garbage—are people hiring marketing or public relations professionals to write for them.”

“When you think about it, the people we really want to hear from really want insights from our the experts,” he said.