Recent reforms on foreign investments control in France have contributed to a substantial evolution of its regime and, in particular, to strengthening its implementation. While Decree No. 2018-1057 of November 29, 2018 initially eased the prior authorization procedure for investment by introducing a preliminary written request to the French Ministry of Economy and Finance (the “Ministry”) for both the French target company and the foreign investor, strengthening of the foreign investments control in France has been intensified. In this context, the so-called “PACTE” Law of May 22, 2019 (i.e., the French law on the Action Plan for Business Growth and Transformation), which became effective on February 22, 2020, strengthened and broadened the prior authorization procedure for foreign investment, in particular by strengthening the power of the Ministry to issue an injunction in the event that a foreign investment would have been made without prior authorization. Subsequently, Decree No. 2019-1590 of December 31, 2019 clarified the French foreign investments control regime by lowering the ownership threshold above which foreign investment is subject to control to 25% of voting rights compared to 33.33% of voting rights and capital previously. Such Decree also extended the French foreign investments control regime to certain strategic activities such as R&D relating to critical technologies or data processing, transmission or storage activities, etc.

I fear the question arises out of a lot misinformation on law blogging flying around.

This afternoon I read Good2bSocial’s Joe Balestrino’s post on how to generate leads (I’d call it business) from your law blog in which he called out the importance of long form blog posts.

Does the number of words matter? Yes, it does, especially if you want to see your post on the first page of search engines. During the infancy of blogging, it was enough to create a 300-word post and you could expect it to rank high on search engines. But those days are gone because of today’s tight competition.

Thousands of blogs are created each day and that means marketers need to be a little more creative in producing content for their business’s blog. High-quality, long-form content with more than 1,000 words tends to rank higher in search engines compared to posts with fewer words.

Generating business, or even attention, is not dependent on the length a law blog.

The best way to build visibility and a reputation through blogging is blogging on a niche and referencing the existing discussion taking place in that niche.

You can pen 1,500 word blog posts and never get heard, never get cited, never build a name and and never generate any work. Now identify the influencers in your niche and start to talk in your blog about what they are discussing, giving them the appropriate attribution, and you’ll get seen, get cited and grow a reputation.

Blogging is a conversation, it’s not about content. Listen first to the influencers and engage in that conversation. That’s why law blogging is often referred to as networking through the Internet – as opposed to writing content.

Think of a room where all the leading bloggers, reporters and other leaders in your niche are gathered discussing matters, offering their take and sharing insight. You’re across the street with lengthy wonderful content hoping someone sees you. It’s not going to happen. You need to get in that room and listen, engage and provide your take.

Get in that room and no matter the length of what you share and the insight you offer, you’ll get seen, grow a reputation and grow relationships. You’ll generate work.

Get focused on a real tight niche, and you’ll become an intelligent agent, a must-have publication. Rather than AI in general, how about AI and the law in pharmaceuticals or AI and the law in race cars.

There are lawyers in this country who have done quick blog summaries on cases they have cherry picked from a federal circuit court or district court on a particular niche. They got known and generated work — and still do.

If it takes 1,000 words to share and express yourself in a blog post, have at it. If it takes 300 words, that’s okay to.

The magic to generating business from law blogging does not lie in the length of your blog posts.