Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Trial

Do you blog? More and more lawyers do, with only a modicum of Internet know-how and plenty of opinions to share. Today's Web technology means working on a law journal isn't just for law school anymore.

Article Excerpt
Open your office door, drop the briefcase on a chair, power up the computer, park the Starbucks cup near at hand, and flip through the news gathered on a Findlaw or Yahoo home page. It's how you used to start your day.

Now, you do all that--but you also glance at a page listing four short articles dated yesterday on a pending change to your state's evidence rules, plus 27 other articles written in the last few hours on topics you regularly follow.

With caffeine speeding through your veins and a chorus of fresh viewpoints foremost in your mind, you open a program in a separate window. A box appears, and you type a few sentences about your latest small victory in an ongoing products case, then add a link to the trial judge's recent order. It's as if you were sending an e-mail to a colleague, but instead, you click a button that posts it on the Internet for anyone with a computer to read.

You have just blogged.

"A blog is the unedited voice of a single person," said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. "It's relatively off-the-cuff and occasionally reflective."

Blogs are personal, but publicly accessible, Web pages on which the "owner" posts journal entries by date, discussing his or her topic of choice. Topics can range from the armchair pundit's views on the election, to a teenager's impressions of a month at soccer camp, to a new mother's thoughts on her decision to give up the corner office to raise her child.

Palfrey's blog discusses the emerging area of Internet law. (1) It resides on Harvard's server, which currently hosts about 550 blogs. That number reflects the soaring popularity of these online glimpses into the inner thoughts of strangers.

In early 2004, the Pew Research Center estimated that of the 53 million U.S. adults using the Internet, about 2 percent (1.06 million) post blogs, and 11 percent (5.8 million) read them. (2) According to other estimates, as many as 8 million Americans blog. (3)

So-called blawgs use this format to focus on legal topics. (4) Blawg writers, generally lawyers or other legal professionals, express their thoughts about a subject of interest in a few paragraphs--unlike traditional law journal-or brief-writing, but with a similar aim of analysis and assistance. Most posts include links to court opinions, articles for further reading, or other online information. Most blogs are updated frequently and arranged in chronological order, with the most recent additions at the top.

Time-pressed lawyers are increasingly turning to blogs to keep abreast of the latest legal news in areas that interest them.

"One reason why lawyers like blogs is that...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!