As I was in hospital around the publication of this article on LLRX about the House of Butter blog I must admit to it bypassing me
Do have a read if you have a spare few minutes.
Former legal publishing executive and now consultant Robert McKay writes some very kind words about the blog and the website and for that we are eternally grateful.
Not only that, he writes with far more clarity and grace than iI can muster and understands where we are hoping taking House of Butter & the Practice Source website as a whole.
We’d love others to join us and help highlight those in the law, legal publishing, legal tech who aren’t part of the chatterateri, who can’t afford to go to conferences, who aren’t interested in constantly slapping themselves on the back .
Do get in touch with us if you are wanting to walk a similar path and we’ll write about you, let you write about yourself and also, we hasten to add….. If you are trapped inside a huge legal information conglomerate, law firm, legal tech outfit and think that there’s more than this.
You are correct, there is more to talking, writing about the law than they want you to believe so please do question / let your opinions be known. We are here to be the conduit
Robert introduces his article thus
Truth to Power
It was some years ago that I first came across the “House of Butter” blog, set up and run by Sean Hocking and forming part of Australia-based www.practicesource.com. Sean has made many Slaw contributions, so the origins of and thinking behind House of Butter are recorded in several articles, particularly in the period 2010-2014. Prior to Practice Source, he had established and published the regular PDF alerting service, Law Librarians News.
Our first exchange may have been after I read a piece from him which, I thought at the time, may have been a little dismissive or disrespectful of many whose careers are dedicated to providing the highest standards in law publishing. It may have been his Slaw post, Happy Hamsters Are Back on Their Wheel and the specific sentence “You can, though, substitute any legal publishing executive (hamster) from either of the companies and it’d all read the same”, which will have triggered my perceived need, having been one of them (a legal publishing executive, that is, not a hamster), to send Sean an email, to which he replied graciously. With hindsight, and on learning more, I realised that I was wrong, and it is clear that he is on the side of the good guys of legal and professional publishing, having been one of them himself, and that he understands and supports their talents, intelligence and the best of their objectives, often in the face of almost impossible challenges.
Since those days, although we have not met face-to-face or even spoken by telephone, I have remained in regular contact with Sean Hocking and regard House of Butter as an unmissable and essential daily read, as is Slaw. I follow the other blogs which form part of Practice Source less attentively, my focus and experience being in legal and professional information provision rather than librarianship, academia or professional practice. Without doubt, Practice Source and Sean Hocking have their eyes and ears on the bigger and ever-changing picture. Courage too, has been shown in addressing wide and important issues, concerning the environment and law, the defence and protection of rule of law and in support of those in legal practice who stand up for human rights and equality, rather than simply being focused on profit. Sean’s involvement with AnyLaw, is a testament to his support for the provision of certain free and accessible legal source material in the USA.
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