Real Lawyers :: Have Blogs

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  • FindLaw and LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell lawyer directories – the next casualties of Google

    That's the word from legal marketing pro John Sailer.

    First it was The Yellow Book, The Real Yellow Pages and all the other phonebook directories.  Now it’s the online attorney directories like LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell and Findlaw’s attorney listing service that just may be the latest casualties of Google and the other search engines as more and more law firms develop websites and leverage pay-per-click and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. 

    As recent as five years ago, it was a sign of success for a law firm to advertise on the back cover of the local yellow pages directory and have firm listings and attorney listings with LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell and Findlaw – and it made good business sense.  But the benefits of using these legal directories have been declining for the last several years with many law firms either reducing their spending on directory services or are canceling their agreements altogether.

    And the reason per John,

    The directories and their ala cart services are typically overpriced for the value they provide as client-acquisition tools, especially when compared to pay-per-click campaigns, banner ads and other web-based marketing efforts.

    And it doesn't need to be banner ads or pay per click. Organic search results in Google may be readily obtainable by law firms.

    If a law firm's website were optimized to be found on Google, not done with most law firm websites, traffic to the firm's site, practice area pages, and lawyer bio's from Google would far exceed the traffic coming from banners and sponsored links. Would also exceed the traffic coming from from FindLaw or Martindale.


    Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:04:12 -0800

  • Susannah Gardner, author of Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies [LexBlog Q & A]

    Our first LexBlog Q & A of the week focuses less on the law and more on blogs: the impact they're having on journalism, how they've changed in recent years, and how authors manage to keep up with the industry.

    To guide us through the maze is Susannah Gardner, author of the 2005 how-to book Buzz Marketing With Blogs for Dummies (one of the staples of our in-house library here at LexBlog's Seattle office). Susannah, who recently wrote the second edition of Blogging For Dummies, works at the Vancouver-based web design copy Hop Studios.

    1. Rob La Gatta: From 1997-2003, you taught online publishing to journalism students at USC. Did you see students graduating from journalism school there with an understanding of new media's importance?

    Susie Gardner: Yes and no. Within the faculty of the school at that time, there was still a lot of resistance to including new media in every class, or even in most of them. And not just resistance – there were plenty of people who had had long and distinguished careers in journalism when new media had not been part of it, and so I think there was mixed message teaching at that point, where the students in some classes were hearing “new media is it, this is what its all about,” and in other classes hearing “newspapers are never going to go away.”

    The students who were able to deal with that conflict left in pretty good hands, but I’m sure we also graduated people who ended up taking positions on either side of the fence and who weren’t particularly prepared for new media.

    2. Rob La Gatta: Is it even necessary, then, to continue attending journalism school, when so many of these skills are self-taught and can just be done from home with an Internet connection?

    Susie Gardner: That question has been around for a long time, even before citizen journalism came about. There have always been people who believe that journalism school isn’t necessary, that you can become a journalist and a good reporter by doing...many top journalists took that route, and in a lot of ways I agree: people can become excellent journalists without having to attend journalism school. I don’t think that’s changed at all.

    But I do think it teaches some really good solid skills that, if journalism is your career choice, it’s not a waste of time at all: it’s going to give you skills that you will find useful and key, no matter if you end up in a new media newsroom or if you end up in a more traditional organization.

    3. Rob La Gatta: When did you first have the idea to write "Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies," and what sparked it?

    Susie Gardner: I started kicking around the idea of doing a book about blogging in early 2004, and pitched a "Blogging for Dummies" book to Wiley (the publisher of the "Dummies" series). They felt, at the time, that the market wasn’t ready for a "Blogging for Dummies" book, but that we could maybe position something aimed at business and organizational marketing folks. I actually agreed with that, the idea that business was going to be one of the big focuses and uses for blogging. So we worked together at that point to develop a book that was going to end up on the business shelf as opposed to the consumer technology shelf, and was designed to be used by marketing folks and by communications people or CEOs, or whoever needed to do marketing using a blog or marketing on a blog.

    And actually, the timing of that worked out great…early 2005 was when the idea of business blogging really took off.

    4. Rob La Gatta: When you look back at the first edition of the book, do you see a lot of information that’s no longer relevant? Or is most of it still applicable?

    Susie Gardner: I’m actually pleasantly surprised by the amount of information that is still valid. Partly, I think that’s because when I was writing the book, there was a constant struggle in my head about, “I’m going to write this down, but it’s going to be outdated, even before the book hits the shelf.” And I had conversations with people who were going to be featured in the screenshots or used as an example, who would say things like, “Well, I might change this facet of my blog that you’re showing.”

    You just sort of realize after a while that if you’re writing about the Internet in a book, it’s going to be outdated, and people will (hopefully) understand that that’s the case. But in general, I think the basics and the principles are still solid…the chapters on ethics, and law, and the basic marketing approaches are still valid.

    5. Rob La Gatta: What do you know now about the art of blogging that you wish you knew when you first started?

    Susie Gardner: I wish I’d realized that it’s okay when you start a blog to not intend to keep it around forever. I think a lot of people get into the situation where they start a blog, they’re really excited about it, they write it for a while, and it sort of dies a slow death...they lose interest or their priorities change, but they feel like they can’t just stop writing the blog. I wish I’d realized that it’s okay to start a blog for a short-term project and have an end date on which you’re going to stop publishing it.

    I also don’t think I realized at the time just how pervasive [blogging] was going to be, and that it was going to change the way that all kinds of people build websites. Hop Studios is a web design company, and 3 or 4 years ago we got a lot of inquiries about brochure-type websites: people wanted to put up 5 or 6 pages and never touch it again.

    These days, that’s a very rare request. People want something dynamic, something that’s going to be updated…it may not be a blog, but the idea that you need a website that is active and refreshed and current has really trickled down to everybody.

    Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

    Or, see our full list of legal blog interviews.


    Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:26:45 -0800

  • I'll be in Chicago next month : Want to meet up?

    Chicago ABA TechShowI'll be in Chicago for the ABA TechShow from Wednesday March 12 through Saturday March 15. In between some meetings about blogs with a few large law firms, I'll have plenty of free time in that I do not present until Saturday.

    Anyone want to get together to discuss blogs, or anything else for that matter? I'd be happy to come by your office or meet for coffee, beer, or a meal.

    Also discussing with Ed Adams of the ABA Journal co-hosting a blogger meet-up over beers in the Hilton Hotel's bar. I'm sure blog readers would be welcome as well.

    Give me a call, 206 340 8204, or drop me an email if you want to hook up. Look forward to seeing folks.


    Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:59:20 -0800

  • Corporate clients want lawyers who blog

    Holden Oliver (a/k/a JD Hull?) at What About Clients, referencing Teri Rassmussen's post yesterday, believes law firm blogs aren't worth a lick when it comes to client development, especially sophisticated corporate clients his firm is seeking.

    ...[M]ost clients worth having--and certainly busy in-house counsel--have no time to read blogs, think about blogs or to blog themselves. Real clients want their real lawyers working their asses off solving problems--not blogging. Blogger-professionals need to get over themselves. A client's knowledge that you are blogging regularly is about as helpful--or harmful--as knowing that you go to the track a couple of times a week with your drunken philandering stoner high school friend Ernie from Glen Burnie. Colorful and interesting--but so what? And with the wrong client, it could even hurt. Moreover, blogging still has a geeky connotation with the over-45 crowd who control much of the work law firms get. Clients could care less if you blog and might even resent it.

    Very shortsighted and self limiting belief.

    It's the busiest people in this country who are reading blogs - including execs and in-house counsel. As long as 2 years ago, over 20% of execs read at least one business blog a week. The same study found senior execs much more familiar with the value of blogs than lawyers.

    LexBlog has multiple AmLaw 200 law firms who publish blogs for the sole reason of keeping their clients up to speed on legal issues in niches - something their corporate clients demand because of the significant legal fees they were paying.

    I have had multiple in-house counsel at Fortune 500 companies tell me they wish more of the lawyers they use would blog. One, general counsel for a top 50 Fortune 500 firm told me he prefers sending legal work to lawyers who blog. He told me the newsletters he gets from the large firms are ridiculous - the content isn't even giving him credit for being a lawyer.

    Why? Insight and commentary on niche areas of the law. Understanding a lawyer's philosophy and take on things. As well as some of the things Rasmussen mentions.

    'What about clients' has dissed the value of blogs in the corporate space for a long time. The reason being apparently that the firm's clients are above blogs.

    It may be that their failure to understand the value of blogs to sophisticated corporate clients and dissing the value of blogs to their clients is self limiting. It's keeping them apart from exec's, in-house counsel, and corporate clients that appreciate blogs.

    Also very perplexing that if blogs are aren't worth a lick to the firm's clients, why is that the 'What about Clients?' blog continues to expand right along with its law firm?


    Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:35:11 -0800

  • Bloggers realize self-interest isn’t everything

    Traditional economic models assume that people are self-interested, they do things which are in their financial interest. But at some point, people begin acting for the greater good. This per the New York Times' Robert Frank's article, 'When Self-Interest Isn’t Everything.'

    Though Frank's article was about the phenomenon of political campaigns driven by supporters’ willingness to set narrow self-interest to one side, I couldn't help but think of bloggers publishing content for the greater good. Especially blogging lawyers giving away knowledge they usually sell.

    We already have 5 or 10 thousand lawyers engaging in online conversations offering insight and commentary in niche areas of the law. We're accumulating free legal information at speeds never seen before. Thousands of legal blog posts per day is going to turn into tens of thousands of posts by the end of this decade.

    Turns out lawyer dissatisfaction with their careers may be the reason why lawyers have chosen to blog for the greater good. It's personal disappointment that gets people to put self-interest aside per Frank's article.

    Albert O. Hirschman, an economist at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, was one of the first to grapple seriously with [the concept of participating in something larger than oneself]. In his 1982 book ‘Shifting Involvements,’ he acknowledges that self-interest indeed appears to be the dominant human motive in some eras. But over time, he argues, many people begin to experience disappointment as they continue to accumulate material goods. When consumption standards escalate, people must work harder just to hold their place. Stress levels rise. People become less willing to devote resources to the public sphere, which begins to deteriorate. Against this backdrop, disenchanted consumers become increasingly receptive to appeals from the organizers of social movements.

    Eventually, Mr. Hirschman argues, a tipping point is reached. In growing numbers, people peel away from their private rat race to devote energy to collective goals. The free-rider problem ceases to inhibit them, not only because they now assign less value to private consumption, but also because they find satisfaction in the very act of contributing to the common good. Activities viewed as costs by self-interest models are thus seen as benefits instead.

    Though Frank's reports a cycle of working for the greater good may only last for 20 years before people resume pursuing private accumulation, I'll take a 20 year wave of lawyer blogging. Not because of my own pecuniary interests, but because blogging is good for lawyers and our society at large.


    Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:35:02 -0800

  • Legal News - LexBlogosphere: 2/10/08

    Legal News - LexBlogosphereNews on this Sunday comes from as close as Seattle and as far away as Australia, where Nicholas Weston writes about an ongoing legal battle between two leading names in the chocolate business.


    Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:34:36 -0800

  • How not to get sued for bloggers

    CUNY Prof. Geanne Rosenberg has put up an online course for bloggers and media practitioners with the 10 things you need to know to stay out of court. As Jeff Jarvis, my source on this post, says it’s quick, clear, easy, and fun with videos and quizzes.

    The 10 rules to blog by:

    1. Check your facts.
    2. Avoid virtual vendettas.
    3. Obey the law.
    4. Weigh promises.
    5. Reveal secrets selectively.
    6. Consider what you copy.
    7. Learn recording limits.
    8. Don’t abuse anonymity.
    9. Shun conflicts of interest.
    10. Seek legal advice.

    Jeff also mentions Berkman Center at Harvard, who helped produced this course, is putting online a legal guide with information on such topics as setting up a publishing business.


    Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:21:11 -0800

  • Martindale-Hubbell TV ads for lawyers.com : Will they work?

    Martindale-Hubbell lawyers.comWow! Watching the election results this evening I caught a commercial for Martindale-Hubbell's lawyers.com. Traditional lawyer talking with screen shots of the lawyers.com website.

    No question such ads will draw traffic to the website. It will put a lot of wind in the sails of LexisNexis Martindale's salespeople calling on lawyers to retain their listings in Martindale-Hubbell, a requirement to be listed in lawyers.com, Martindale's consumer and small business law website. Also puts FindLaw in a difficult position as there's no way FindLaw is going to be running ads on its revenues which are far less than Martindale's.

    Something strikes me as odd about the ads though. It would be like Google advertising for people to come to their online directory to do searches so Google could earn more money from ads.

    Martindale is selling ads at lawyers.com in the form of directory listings and banner ads on directory pages. Martindale is now buying ads so they can get lawyers to buy ads.

    Martindale may have already proven buying ads to sell ads is not a formula for success. Martindale used to do big buys at Google for lawyers.com so that when people searched for a lawyer a large lawyers.com link would display above the organic search results. Martindale appears to have abandoned that ad campaign.

    Martindale may be better served by getting its directory of all lawyers indexed in Google, lawyer by lawyer, and do so with a search engine optimization wallop that only Martindale could bring. Lawyers would be lined up to pay Martindale for a listing then. But Martindale, as best as any one can tell, does not allow Google to index all the lawyer bio's and firm profiles that Martindale has.

    Martindale has a huge asset. Its lawyer directory is the best in the industry when combining the number of lawyers and detailed biographical information on those lawyers.

    At the same time, far more people go to Google for search than lawyers.com. Google perfects its search regularly to better provide what people are looking for, lawyers included. Lawyers.com is an outmoded directory using limited search fields as opposed to a full text search.

    Rather than compete with Google (we've seen a lot of losers) why not leverage your asset in conjunction with Google's strength? Wouldn't Martindale be better off using the latest technology to get their lawyers' profiles fully indexed at Google? Wouldn't that be a win/win for Martindale and its lawyer customers?

    What say you guys at Martindale?


    Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:46:10 -0800

  • Columbus law firm blogs becoming less of a novelty

    Columbus Ohio Law firm blogsColumbus law firms are waking up to blogs as a client development tool per Columbus First's Brent Wilder.

    While blogging is not yet widespread in the Columbus legal community, it is catching on among individual attorneys and is likely to become less of a novelty in law firm communication as blogging becomes increasingly common in the business world.

    Long considered a forum in which to expound upon celebrity hijinks or myopic personal interests, Web logs have taken a toehold in corporate America as a means to convey behind-the-scenes product development and a sense of business identity beyond static Web site content.

    The article is one of American City Business Journal's publications so you have to subscribe to the Columbus Business Journal, something that makes eminent sense for someone in Seattle. If someone in Columbus can shoot me a copy of the full article that would be most appreciated.

    And note to American City Business Journals, Inc., if you make your articles free to the online community you'll see an increase in your revenues. The New York Times has proven that free content is cited more often, which in turn causes more click throughs to your site, and in turn, more revenue from your online ads. And kicking out RSS feeds to content which the public must pay to see is an asshat kind of thing to do anyway.

    Update: Columbus lawyer Teri Rasmussen emailed a copy of the Columbus law blog article (word doc). Interesting quotes from Teri, publisher of Ohio Practical Business Law, Michael Bonasera, publisher of Ohio Trust & Estate Blog, Dino Tsibouris, who thinks clients would view the firm as hypocritical if it did not keep up to date with tech advances such as blogging, and Law Prof Douglas Berman, publisher of Sentencing Law and Policy blog, who says he is surprised more local firms have not embraced blogging.


    Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:26:54 -0800

  • Legal News - LexBlogosphere: 2/9/08

    Legal News - LexBlogosphereChain letters, judicial scandal and Chinese politics are just a few of the matters highlighted in today's abridged post. All this news...on a Saturday, no less.


    Sat, 09 Feb 2008 12:27:44 -0800

  • Why every client should want an attorney who blogs

    That's the title of a wonderful post from Columbus business attorney Teri Rasmussen.

    Not only does Teri's Ohio business law blog draw more traffic then her 30 person law firm website after only three months and draw referrals at an 'exponentially expanding rate,' Teri is convinced that blogging has made her a far better and more useful lawyer to her current and prospective clients. 

    Here’s why (abbreviated from original post):  

    • Knowledge Entrepreneur.  A blogging lawyer researches those extra questions of clients that they don't quite know the answer to because she knows she can offer such info to prospective clients via her blog. Blogging lawyers are naturally curious and love to learn new stuff, all the more beneficial to a client.

    • Communication 101.  By reading a lawyer's blog a client will have a good idea whether they're going to be able to understand a word the lawyers says or writes about. In most cases, it doesn’t much matter how brilliant the lawyer is if a client cannot understand them and communicate effectively with the lawyer.

    • Authenticity and ‘Real Voice’. Blogs show a little personality. When clients read a lawyers blog they get at bit of a ‘sneak preview’ of what the lawyer is really like. 

    • Quality and Competence. A client can actually assess the quality and competence of their lawyer to be. They can take what the lawyer has written and ask their favorite friend attorney (who you don’t want to hire because you don’t want to mix personal and business or for some other reason), CPA, financial advisor, etc., what they think – or even research us on the web by seeing what other folks have to say about the same topic, or even about we’ve said about particular subjects. Without a blog clients generally can never really evaluate whether their lawyer actually knows anything so they try to select a lawyer based on irrelevant factors.

    • Commitment to ‘the Law’ Made Practical. Most of us would rather deal with someone who isn’t just ‘in it for the money’. We all believe that someone who ultimately cares about the product or service being provided ’just because’ it’s what they enjoy doing will offer superior service.  Well, no one cares more about ‘the law’ ‘in the real world’ than lawyers who blog. We really are the folks who became lawyers because we were philosophically attracted to the questions law poses and tries to address every day. However, unlike law school professors called to teach, at the same time we desperately yearned to be always ‘relevant’. 
      •  

    The day is going to come when clients, especially the most informed and desirable clients, expect lawyers to blog. Lawyers and legal publishers who dismiss blogs today will find it's going to come back to bite them.


    Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:18:18 -0800

  • Google ought to buy Salesforce.com

    The more I use Google's web based software, whether it be Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Gmail, or Google Reader, the more I wish Google would buy Salesforce.com, the web based CRM system we use at LexBlog. I also see the day when lawyers will be using Google Business Solutions in place of Microsoft Office software.

    Google Docs flies. Salesforce.com crawls. Gmail is absent of spam. Salesforce.com's web intake to lead form collects spam like it's going out of style. When Google's tools are not up to user expectations, they fix them fast. When Salesforce.com's software doesn't work they tell me a fix will be reviewed for upcoming releases (that was almost 2 years ago). Google would never tell you to write your own software to correct problems. Salesforce.com tells you that their spam must be causing you such a big problem that you as the customer have no other alternative than to write software correcting the problem.

    Salesforce.com and Google already have a combined Web site allowing Salesforce.com to act as a reseller for Google's AdWords. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Google and Salesforce.com were holding talks over a possible alliance that could see the two companies bundle Web-based applications. Just buy'em out guys.

    And with Microsoft trying to integrate Yahoo's new media solutions and ad sales into Microsoft's system, what better time than to continue to erode Microsoft's share of the desktop software market with Google Web based business solutions?

    And yes, I can filter Salesforce.com's 'spam leads' on my laptop via email filters, but it's a pain trying to clear my eyes in the morning viewing 75 Salesforce.com spam leads on my iPhone.


    Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:55:52 -0800

  • Martindale-Hubbell blog transparency?

    On Wednesday LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell blogged about law firm's waning interest in blogs while hyping law firms' interest in social networking and online video.

    I responded by asking if Martindale's informal survey of where law firms' marketing interests lied had something to do with the company's own interests and Martinadle's blog product failure. In addition to my suggesting an upcoming social networking function, I asked 'What do you bet LexisNexis will be or already is peddling online video at prices greatly exceeding blogs?'

    A day later comes LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell's press release announcing 'online video at the Martindale-Hubbell professionally produced by TurnHere, Inc, a leading online video solutions platform.'

    Offer video, that's fine. But to start a corporate blog on the premise you wish to create a dialogue with customers and the legal blogosphere, and to take such a two faced approach is silly. Blogging like that is only going to create more antagonists of Martindale.


    Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:57:16 -0800

  • Live LexBlog blogs for the week of 2/4-2/8

    We saw 6 blogs go live this past week  - 5 new blogs and 1 redesign - which should add some fresh voices to the discussion...and presents us with a slew of new authors to watch for in the daily LexBlogosphere updates.

    The blogs launched between February 4-8 were:

    Check back next Friday to see what we've got in store for the coming week.


    Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:07:57 -0800

  • Doug Berman of Sentencing Law & Policy Blog [LexBlog Q & A]

    Doug Berman, professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, is today's LexBlog Q & A guest. Doug's Sentencing Law & Policy Blog is part of the Law Professor Blogs network. As early as 2004, the SL&P blog received national coverage in the Wall Street Journal after it was cited in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee and by New York's Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

    Doug's latest project is Views From The Field, a blog designed to allow discourse between practitioners and academics in the criminal law world. Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit cited a post from the blog authored by U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf.

    1. Rob La Gatta: How did the idea for Views From The Field first develop?

    Doug Berman: I’ve been blogging on my Sentencing Law & Policy Blog for a while, and have been inspired by the number of thoughtful practitioners who will say things in comments and through e-mails that give me really distinctive views on the federal sentencing world. Being involved with the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, I thought we ought to have an online supplement, one that avowedly focused on getting the perspective of thoughtful practitioners (rather than just providing opportunities for law professors to write smaller versions of longer ideas).

    That was the model. I lucked out that there was a very capable student who had just joined the journal, who indicated an interest in getting involved in some new projects. He helped us run with it and put together a lot of the infrastructure. I’ve [also] been lucky - through my work on federal sentencing - to get to know a number of federal judges....I sent out an e-mail to a bunch of district judges and said "Hey, we’d like you to write for this." Fortunately, out of the 10 I wrote to, 4 not only wrote back, but actually wrote...and wrote really interesting stuff that, in a sense, comprised our first issue.

    2. Rob La Gatta:     Do you believe blogs have played a positive role in how law professors teach/articulate their ideas and get their message across?

    Doug Berman: Yes, absolutely...although I would say that blogging is a unique kind of media for expressing law professor ideas. I’ve been very fortunate to work in a field and to have kind of an A.D.D. attitude towards it that makes blogs a particularly useful way for me to get out a lot of smaller ideas. But I think for those who are interested in longer form idea development or other more traditional aspects of the scholarly conversation, blogs can be more challenging than beneficial. That’s where my big support for faculty blogging is based: a vision of the diversity of mediums that are valuable to get ideas out.

    3. Rob La Gatta: I saw that for a death penalty course at the end of 2007, you were using a class blog. Was that successful, trying to incorporate a blog into the classroom? Were there any challenges?

    Doug Berman: There are definitely challenges, in part because there isn’t the infrastructure for doing it easily. For a while, I was thinking about giving the students the password and having them blog directly, but for a variety of reasons I never quite got around to that; the comments sometimes got distracting; and because I try to maintain a lot of blogs, there were challenges with just keeping up.

    But I very much believe in the blog medium as having - particularly at this stage - so many more upsides than downsides, that not only is it something that I’m eager to share with my students, but am eager to get them to experience the pros and cons of [as well].

    4. Rob La Gatta: Do you think using a course blog is something you’ll do again in the future?

    Doug Berman: I actually have a blog being used in one of the classes I’m teaching now, and I definitely will continue to gravitate towards integrating blogging with the course instruction, course development and project development. Basically, I’m so pro blog that my instinct is, “Hey, you’ve got an idea? Ok, good...why don’t you start a blog to work on that.” I think a lot of people I interact with get bored of hearing me talk about the opportunity that the blogs present.

    There was a former prisoner, involved in a white collar offense who has gotten his life back in order, who wrote to me very nicely to say, “I really appreciate the work you’re doing...there are a lot of former offenders out here who are getting back on the straight and narrow, but there’s so much antipathy in various ways expressed to people who commit crimes, and such a misunderstanding of the opportunity for rehabilitation." And he asked, "What can I do to help with this?"

    I said, "Well, you should start a rehabilitation blog, and have stories about people who have gotten their lives back together."  I’ve become kind of the hammer to that nail. Part of what has reinforced that is that I’ve heard feedback from many people who I’ve encouraged to go and blog, that they’ve been very happy with the experience. Nobody who I’ve encouraged to go blog who started blogging has come back to me and said, "You know, that was a terrible idea."

    Obviously, people get engaged in the blogging enterprise in different ways...but to me, that’s the not only unique, but a uniquely valuable aspect of the medium: you can make it what you want to make it, and there are very few conventions, very few expectations, very few demands other than those that you put on yourself. That’s why I find the blog format so liberating. You get to make your own choices rather than have a set of expectations that you must live up to.

    5. Rob La Gatta: How have you seen traditional law reviews adjusting to handle the growth of the blogosphere?

    Doug Berman: These online supplements are a very direct acknowledgment of one thing that the blogs have contributed to the law professor universe: sometimes, law professors have things they want to say and can valuably say in 500 words rather than 500,000 words.

    As a byproduct of a lot of forces, law reviews had a size creep, where the standard article grew and grew (partially because technology made it easier to print more pages), and it got to the point where the norm of a law review was so massive and time consuming that even very senior and established faculty, who could get traditional scholarship placed in all sorts of ways, saw the virtue of expressing themselves and doing work in a blog setting.

    Then, (particularly younger) law students who are very tech savvy and who didn’t enjoy sitting in a dank library checking footnote #427, felt that they could use the law review stature and resources to become a more active participant in the online dialogue. That has been great, because among the other virtues of the blog and the blogosphere, there is very little true competition…there’s a lot of collaboration. If I see a law review that does a bunch of pieces about federal sentencing, I’m not going to say, “Oh, they’ve taken away from OSCJL Amici.” I’m going to say, "Did they cite us?  Great!" Then we can cite them, and link back. And then, the world just keeps on growing.

    Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

    Or, see our full list of legal blog interviews.


    Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:29:29 -0800

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