I presented “Blawgs” 101: Incorporating Legal Blogs into Your Practice to the Business Litigation Section of the Ventura County Bar Association at their monthly luncheon today, and had a great time doing it. I think I managed to pique the curiosity of a few folks, which is what I was trying to accomplish. I’m hoping that curiosity will take them to their computers with the resources list I provided (PDF download) in hand to explore law blogs.
To any participants here looking for the PDF of the resource list, the link in this post is the same as the link in the left sidebar that I directed you to. In fact, I’ll be taking down the sidebar link in a week or so, but this post, with its link, will stay up.
Thanks again for having me, and special thanks to Dennis LaRochelle and his committee for taking a chance on a topic very different from the usual VCBA Business Litigation Section luncheon presentation.
Thanks also to the following bloggers for responding to my call for input on how my readers use legal blogs.
- Mitch Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof Blog.
- Victoria Pynchon, Settle it Now Negotiation Blog.
- Lorelei Laird, I am Not a Lawyer. (She’s a writer — ed.)
- “Busy Klerk,” Appellate Review.
Your input helped me prepare.
UPDATE (4/9/08): See the comments for an attendee’s account of her success using blogs for research.
Great presentation yesterday at VCBA. Very timely: last week I needed to work on a trust petition, and I haven’t thought about trusts since law school. The matter involved a “reverse QTIP”. I needed a cup of coffee and a quick refresher in trusts and estates. I googled “QTIP blog”, skipped all the weird posts about cotton swabs, and read several blawgs advising about trusts. I had my mind right in about .3 hours, and was able to get close enough in the IRC and Probate Codes to start my Westlaw search. I also happened upon your own blog yesterday morning in trying to answer a legal ethics question about who is my client, a corp or its principal. Not quite sure what California Blog of Appeal had to say about this, but your site came up in my google search. Good luck with it!