Remember the days when legal blogging was at the bottom of the subject pile when it came to thinking about creating a blog. Now the Guardian (UK) is reporting that actually it’s the legal blog that’s on a major growth spurt.. Hurrah for the legal blog.
Not really that surprising since the legal publishers decided that legal publishing wasn’t exactly the business they wanted to be in
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Links at original article here? http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/butterworth-and-bowcott-on-law/2011/may/23/legal-blogging-lawblogs
Reports about the death of blogging are premature, at least as far as legal blogs are concerned. “I see an explosion going on in legal blogging,” said barrister Adam Wagner at the #lawblogs event in London last week “and it’s very meritocratic”.
“Blawgs” do seem to be in blossom. There are even blogs about blawgs, like UK Blawg Roundup. Several legal bloggers are involved in that, but the title of blogger-in-chief must go to Tessa Shepperson who finds time to write Landlord-Law blog, Solicitors Online, and Lodger Landlord while running a subscription-based landlord and tenant website.
Joshua Rozenberg took part in the #lawblogs panel discussion and expressed the view that blawgs fill a gap left by the mainstream media, which has largely abandoned detailed coverage of legal affairs in print: “Bloggers fill the role of legal commentators, with the ability to write in a simple clear way, which is all that journalism ever tries to do,” he said.
Also on the panel was David Allen Green (Twitter followers 12,000 and counting) who produces the Jack of Kent blog and writes regularly for the New Statesman. Green sees legal blogging in rather a different light: “It’s more akin to pamphleteering than journalism,” he said.
Several in-house lawyers are writing blogs, including Melanie Hatton, whose In-House Lawyer blog gives readers the benefit of her commercial legal experience, and Tim Bratton, general counsel at the Financial Times, who reflects on the day job in his Legal Brat blawg.
They are joined in the blawgosphere by the irreverent, funny, but definitely to be taken seriously, author of The Bizzle blog, who writes and tweets as @LegalBizzle (avatar, a teddy bear with a cigar). His recent posts, about clients on bonus schemes who would prefer it if he didn’t do a good job on their contracts, will ring true with many in-house lawyers.
Law firms and barristers chambers are also opening up online. The hugely well-regarded UK Human Rights Blog is written by members of 1 Crown Office Row and boasts 60,000 page views a month. Wagner is its star blogger and co-organised the #lawblogs event with Green, which gave legal bloggers the opportunity to meet face to face and talk to each other in sentences of more than 140 characters for a change. Getting rid of “legalese” was cited by Wagner as one of the aims of the UK Human Rights Blog. “It’s so easy to slip into technical terms,” he said.
Carl Gardner, whose excellent Head of Legal blog covers, among other things, constitutional, public, and European law (but not necessarily for a legal audience) was also on the #lawblogs speakers panel. In response to a rather lyrical question about the influence of legal blogs, which included a metaphor about trees falling in forests, the barrister and academic said:”The bar has been raised [for independent bloggers] not just by mainstream media but by new blogs.” He added: “People are listening to what we say if we are worth listening to.”
What is the ultimate aim of legal blogging? “I became a legal blogger by accident,” said Green, who began by writing about Simon Singh’s libel case.
“I realised I could publish the statements of case and could explain it in a way that hadn’t been done before.” The value of legal blogging he said is “to allow the readers to form their own view.” For Green, blogging is a means to an end: “As a law blogger my only aim is to join the debate” he told the audience.
I leave this subject with my mini blawg roll, by Twitter name ? and an apology for omissions because a list has to end somewhere.
Blawg roll
@lucindee (Lucy Reed) writes family law blog Pink Tape ? one of the best legal bloggers for style and content.
@_millymoo’s Beneath The Wig is about law and much more besides; the non-practising barrister’s disclaimer reads: “This is not legal advice, and should not be taken as such. I accept no responsibility for you taking any notice of stuff some chick on the interwebs has said. If you don’t accept this disclaimer, bugger off and do your own research.”
@tpittpayne (Timothy Pitt-Payne) writes for Panopticon a blog about public law, employment law and information law
@rbratby (Rob Bratby): Watching the Connectives writes about telecoms and technology
@copyrightgirl (Emily Goodhand) writes the highly regarded Copyright for Education
@jtownend writes Meeja Law. Journalist Judith Townend is currently involved in academic research about legal restraints on the media and her Meeja Law blog provides informed debate on this and other media law issues
@AshleyConnick blogs about being a law student
@lawthinkuk: brainy lawyers-to-be Leon Glenister, Justin Glenister and Yaaser Vanderman write about human rights law on the Law Think blog
@UKLegalEagle (Barry Gross) is a property lawyer and author of UKLegalEagle: “trying to blog about interesting things when my wife thinks my job is boring”
@BrianInkster: In The Time Blawg Inkster writes about legal practice and social media
@Charonqc: The Rioja-quaffing, chain-smoking, alter ego of Mike Semple Piggot, is legendary in the blawgosphere. He writes Charon QC.
@JonDickins: Digging the Dirt blogs about property law and environmental issues
@kilroyt (Tom Kilroy) is general counsel at a software company, writes in an all-views-my-own-capacity about law and other thingsat Eye View General Counsel
