A. This is a good question. The answer turns on the lawyer’s goal. In my view, it’s often worth a lawyer’s time to write on the side of law, particularly if her goal is to generate business (e.g., drive traffic to a firm’s website or to get noticed by potential clients in the local community), gain recognition as an expert, beef up a resume, or to keep active in the law while on a career detour or between jobs. If making money is the goal, though there is money to be made as a freelance writer, a lawyer might find it helpful to keep the money rolling in from her day job, while she builds her writing business. In other words, don’t quit your day job yet, at least not until you’ve done some research and maybe built up your savings. At the very least, read this L.A. Time’s article, Freelance Writing’s Unfortunate New Model, to see where the money is–and isn’t–at in 2010. If the goal of freelance writing is to follow a writing dream, for restorative purposes, or to improve work/life balance, writing for free or low-pay may just turn out to be the winning lottery ticket to the life of your dreams.

Student Lawyer  (American Bar Association publication).  From the Student Lawyer site:

Award-winning Student Lawyer magazine is published each month from September through May by the American Bar Association’s Law Student Division. It circulates to approximately 40,000 readers, most of whom are law student members of the ABA.

Student Lawyer is a legal-affairs features magazine, not a legal journal, that competes for a share of law students’ limited spare time. The articles we publish, therefore, must be informative, lively, well-researched good reads. We do not accept poetry, fiction, or footnoted academic articles or briefs. These guidelines are for freelance writer submissions only. For letters to the editor, reviews, opinion essays, and student/school news, please refer to our guidelines for those types of submissions.

To write for Student Lawyer, review the Writers’ Guidelines here.

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The American Lawyer. From the American Lawyer site:

AmericanLawyer.com is a leading daily news source covering legal business that is essential to lawyers and administrators at the largest law firms.

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The American Lawyer is a monthly feature magazine covering the business of large (AmLaw 200) law firms and the nation’s leading lawyers. While everything we write is related to the law, our focus is primarily on firms and people within this segment of the profession, rather than on the law itself or legal issues. Our audience is primarily composed of lawyers in these large firms, elite plaintiffs’ lawyers and government attorneys who deal with large firms, and in-house lawyers at major corporations who retain large firms. Personalities in the industry are a major focus of our reporting, as are “inside stories” about people and events that are shaping this segment of the legal industry.

Though American Lawyer journalists do most of the writing, the publication does occasionally use articles from freelancers. For editorial guidelines, click here.

• Allena Tapia’s (About.com Freelance Writing Guide) post, Freelance Writing Career By the Numbers
• Kristen King’s What Exactly is $70,000 in Freelance Income (an older post, but useful for thinking about the financial possibilities)
• Darren Rowse’s How Much Money Do Bloggers Make Blogging?
• Darren Rowe’s How to Make $30,000 a Year Blogging