Company bloggers make it up as they go.

Blogs are supposed to be racy, gossipy, sexy and above all, free-spirited, right? So where does a major L.A. law firm fit in?

Well, it doesn't--at least based on those qualifications. At Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP, which launched a series of blogs this year, George Bush, Michael Jackson and Deep Throat aren't likely to pop up. Instead, it's the latest and greatest information on bankruptcy, labor employment and anti-trust law.

And it's getting hits--1,700 a day for the anti-trust blog, with nuggets like "Canada: Commissioner of Competition seeks to intervene in appeal of dismissal finding that mere assignment of patent rights is not actionable under The Competition Act."

"It's all just marketing to me," said Tom Baldwin, the firm's chief knowledge officer.

Businesspeople of all types have discovered blogs (short for Web logs) and like most everyone else, they're writing the rules as they go along. What seems to matter most is for the blog to be relevant to someone. "A blog can be for a broad audience, but it can also be very narrow," said Jim Carroll, innovator and independent technology expert. It's all about connecting with your customers, he said, and having a real human voice.

Just how that's practiced runs the gamut, from folksy critiques to straight-arrow briefings.

Steve Rubel, vice president of public relations firm CooperKatz & Co., who helps companies set up blogs, says that businesses shouldn't be afraid of the new communications medium, noting that Mircosoft Corp. has hundreds of separate employee blogs. "If one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world is letting their employees blog freely without any serious concerns, perhaps anybody can," he said.

Not everyone, though, is jumping on board. Even tech companies like locally based video game publishers THQ Inc. and Activision Inc. do not have corporate blogs. Activision claims that its individual game titles have blogs associated with their sites, though its blog for "X-Men Legends" hasn't been updated since September of last year.

Some would argue that marketing-driven Web sites aren't really blogs at all. "It shouldn't just be a substitute for an e-mail newsletter," says Rick Bruner, director of research at DoubleClick Inc. and a blogging expert through his Web site, Business Blog Consulting. "But for small nuggets of information, it can be very efficient."

Moving from e-mail

While the writers of law blogs don't fit the free-wheeling, conversational stereotype of Web mavericks, they apparently work. "There's a perception that a blog has to have a particular kind of voice that is hip and sarcastic and flip, and it doesn't have to be," Brunet said. "Though personal voice is an important part of the blog phenomenon, you can be very utilitarian about it."

Sheppard Mullins' 13 practice groups used to produce monthly newsletters sent out as e-mail, but scheduling and production were getting out of hand. Plus, the firm was running the risk of being tagged as a spammer due to the high volume.

That led to the blogs. "We want to get every practice group that published a PDF newsletter on a regular basis to migrate from the e-mail to this," Baldwin said.

The firm's blogs are subject to an editorial review by its PR department before posting, and the firm is moving toward posting outside comments, subject to a 24-hour review process. To some, that is the antithesis of a blog--stripping it of its spontaneity and candor.

But when lawyers are involved, Baldwin says, it pays to be careful. "If we start to opine and editorialize, we could unwittingly alienate clients that are on the other side of the issue," he said. "We have to be careful to be impartial and just report the legal development."

Sheppard Mullin is getting what it wants--traffic. "For some reason search engines give greater weight to blogs," Baldwin said, making the firm's name appear more prominently in Web searches of legal issues.

Small businesses aren't under the same pressures of big law firms or giant tech companies.

Pamela Barsky, owner and designer of her own L.A.-based notebook and gift company, started a blog two years ago on pamelabarsky.com. She says it changed her business.

Pamela Barsky Boutique and Studio makes photo albums, notebooks, pins, belts and other crafty items using vintage scarves and paper products. Her manufacturing is done in L.A., and she sells to specialty paper stores, boutiques and museum gift stores all over the country.

"I started getting lots of orders for a particular product that I hadn't been pushing, and I realized it was because my blog was getting linked to other blogs," she said. After losing almost half her business in the downturn that followed the 2001 terrorist attacks, Barsky said orders surged 40 percent, with revenues hitting $500,000 last year.

Occasional rant

She said 300 to 500 people per day check in, and estimates her total audience at 7,000. Her blog gets hundreds of links per month from other craft-sites, gift sites and women's creative business sites.

"Clearly people are coming who I haven't solicited, so the only thing I can imagine is that they followed a link to my blog. Those do turn into orders," she said.

Barsky posts almost every day, sometimes a few times per day, about developments in her day-to-day business.

"Mostly I try and write about business, but we've been remodeling our house so that seeped in a little bit too," she said. Barsky admits to the occasional rant about warehouse rents, new health insurance premiums for her 45th birthday and having to chase down vendors to get paid.

Barsky connects by broadcasting the challenges, large and small, of running a business every day. Her health insurance shot up to $1,200 in March, and in May she was griping about the $10,000 price tag for a booth at the Christmas fair at Grand Central Station--"If you're not going to be honest, why bother?" she asked.

But she is mum on the details of products she's designing, doesn't mention the names of artists who make things for her in L.A., and won't talk about her gross margins. "I'm always honest, and pretty detailed--and it really hasn't come back to bite me yet," she said.