Rich Vetstein spent more than a decade practicing big-firm real estate law before moving into private practice in 2009. When he did, he also started his own blog, the Massachusetts Real Estate Law Blog.
His articles on local real estate topics have caught the attention of reporters and editors from Boston.com to Bloomberg News, and gotten the Framingham-based lawyer national attention.Rich Vetstein
Title: Founding Partner, Vetstein Law Group; Framingham
Age: 38
Experience: 13 years
Q: Did you know when you started that you wanted to specialize in real estate law?
A: At the time it was the best offer that I had. I’m looking down at my law school loans, and I was like, alright, I need to take this job. It was funny, because I did not like property [law] when I was in law school…But there was such a difference between property law in law school and doing it in real life, with all the developers, and the personalities, and from being around it I just fell in love with it.
Q: How did you get started with your blog?
A: I was trying to get it going at my old firm, and I got some pushback, people worried about giving advice over the internet, kind of that old-school mindset. So that was one of the first things that I knew I wanted to do, starting out. I had done a lot of research and spoken to a lot of people about whether it was successful for them…[and then] I just got on WordPress and started, downloaded a picture, stuck it up there and just started writing about whatever was going on. The first couple weeks I got like 30 hits a day, and I was like, oh my god! People are actually reading it! And then I started getting calls. Rona Fischman at Boston.com, she called and…asked me, “What do you think about doing a weekly thing for Boston.com?” Well, that sounds great. And then I started getting calls from reporters…who were finding me through Google. It just got more and more momentum. And then clients started coming in. They’d read an article – I try to write everything in very plain English, for the everyday person. Not dumbing it down, but I think a lot of lawyers aren’t good at explaining things in a clear, plain-English manner. That’s something that they need to work on.
Q: I always thought they beat that out of you in law school.
A: Well, there’s a way to write for the judge, and there’s a way to write for the masses. I’m lucky because I was a marketing and advertising major in college, and if I didn’t practice law I would have been like Don Draper on Mad Men, that kind of guy. So I learned the principles… a little different than your typical philosophy or history major that winds up being a lawyer.
Q: How do you pick your topics?
A: I set up a lot of Google alerts to keep tabs on what’s going on, and if I see something’s kind of trending, I’ll start writing about it… I write about current topics like the Ibanez case, but I also write more generic-type stuff, that’s almost more like a frequently asked question that I would see in my practice. I’ve gotten a lot of clients on adverse possession cases just because I wrote an article on spiked fences and boundary disputes. I just picked up four or five new clients who read that article and have a boundary dispute. It’s not like it’s anything in the news or timely, but it’s something that pops up from time to time with people.
Q: Has it changed the way you practice, doing the blog, especially with reporters calling you up to ask about all these larger issues?
A: It helps me be a better lawyer, absolutely. It forces you to stay on top of the issues. When you write about something, as opposed to reading it, you really can retain the information and analyze it. So now when I’m giving a talk – I did a seminar the other day for about 50 real estate agents – I know the stuff backwards and forwards. Social media, blogging – it’s a big part of new business development. I’m with Vetstein Law Group, but I’m also involved in conveying with my partner, Marc Canner. We created this entity called TitleHub Closing Services, and we emphasize engaging and connecting with our Realtor partners and our mortgage partners though social media. We’ve even gone so far as to set up a side company that coaches and builds out blog sites for real estate agents, called Hub Connect.
Q: When you first went into this, did you imagine doing all this? Was that your intention, or did it develop as you went along?
A: It sort of developed. I became successful using the social media, and then I started to see – it really translates well in the real estate business. Over 90 percent of new homebuyers use the internet [to search for homes] and being tight with a lot of Realtors, we saw what was going on and thought, ‘This is really the next big thing in marketing, so why don’t we teach it, coach it, talk about it and kind of get them involved in what we’re doing, create a network of like-minded people?’ So we help them create these sites with the hope that when it comes to real estate legal services, that they’re going to use us.
Vetstein’s Top 5 Tips For Social Media Marketing:
- Start a blog, and convert your print articles and presentations to online format.
- Create a Facebook business page, and start engaging.
- Experiment with Twitter.
- Use Google Alerts to keep up with industry trends and your competition.
- Have fun and accept change!
