I still have lots of touch-up work to do, but I decided it was better to reopen the blog to access today as scheduled rather than spend another day or two tinkering without substantive updates. So, please bear with me as I clean up around here over the coming weeks.

The Ninth Circuit

Just before Christmas, I announced that this blog would be spinning off a new blog, The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals, with the start of the new year. I’m pleased to announce that The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals is now in session. This is the follow-up post I promised about how I reached the decision to split this blog and my plans for managing both of them.

First, an explanation as to why I am resuming blogging on a more regular basis. As regular readers recall, my blogging frequency dropped off dramatically in 2009. I posted from time to time, but not with the regularity and enthusiasm with which

I started this blog in spring of 2007. (Then again, I’m not sure any solo blogger could have kept up that pace for long.)

A funny thing happened while I was away from this blog.

Traffic doubled. People called and hired me after finding me through the blog. And, while I was worried that the drop off in my blogging would eventually catch up to me, and that I would be passed by other California appellate bloggers, it turns out many of them — the practicing attorneys, anyway — blogged even less than I did!

Now, all of that might suggest the whimsical view that infrequent blogging is the key to success! But I don’t look at it that way. I see the past year as evidence that renewed and consistent blogging will bring even more traffic and help reestablish my blogging niche. That way, I won’t be embarrassed at the state of the blog the next time I get mentioned at Lexblog.

Why spin off The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals?

There was one thing that was missing, or at least very infrequent, about the traffic generated by this blog: inquiries about

Ninth Circuit appeals. Virtually all my inquiries were about California state court appeals. When I did get an out-of-state inquiry, it was often for an appeal in some state court where I am not admitted to practice, or an appeal in another federal circuit.

That made me think that federal subject matter posted on this blog is hidden from the typical internet researcher. Who is going to look for information about federal appeals on a blog called The Calfornia Blog of Appeal, even if it shows up in their search results?

The new blog is an effort to reach those readers. It seems to me that someone with a federal case in Arizona who turns up a result on The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals is far more likely to look at it than at the identical content on The California Blog of Appeal, especially if that someone is a lawyer familiar with the terminology. (A fair number of my inquiries come from lawyers rather than their clients.) But even a party with little knowledge of the court system is likely to have learned from his trial lawyer that his appeal is to the Ninth Circuit.

I’ve taken steps (amateur ones) to ”SEO” the new blog. That’s “search engine optimization” for you non-techies. And its designed to draw ninth circuit traffic like flies. I hope.

What should regular readers expect here?

The state-federal division between the blogs isn’t as simple as it sounds. You lawyers out there can think of it as the Erie

doctrine for blogs. The question I face is similar to that faced by the Erie court both in the nature of the split and the difficulty of answering the question: when does a post belong on the state court blog The California Blog of Appeal and when does it belong on the federal court blog The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals?

Well, the easy answer is that posts about federal cases go on  The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals and those about California state court cases go on The California Blog of Appeal. The problem is, that is the easy answer, not necessarily a good one. Too many posts transcend jurisdiction.

For starters, what about cases that affect the law in both court systems? For example, a case where the Ninth Circuit certifies a question to the California Supreme Court? Or a United States Supreme Court case regarding constitutional criminal procedure that governs all criminal cases, state or federal?

In addition, I’ve blogged about many things besides developing case law. Legal humor, legal technology, legal education , and even law practice and marketing are occasional topics here. I blog about legal writing and legal research quite a bit. I even blog about blogging and note the occasional oddity.

So, I’ve been pondering for several weeks how to divide these seemingly transcendant posts between the blogs, and I’ve come up with a hard and fast rule: I’m going to wing it. But I’m going to wing it with an eye towards taking care of my regular readers. I may cross-post some posts at both blogs. I may write a summary on one blog that links to the full post on the other. I ma

y try to put a slightly different spin on the same post at the respective blogs. The lighter and more personal posts are likely to be posted here. Until I establish some kind of rhythm, my principle concern will be not to make the transition too jarring for my regular visitors. My apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

There is, however, one way to make sure you don’t miss anything. Subscribe to both RSS feeds! (State and Federal.)

So, go read my introductory post at The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals, poke around a bit, and feel free to offer any suggestions for improvement.

Finally, within the next week or so I will be converting The California Blog of Appeal to a new theme that complements the theme at The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals and will allow me to implement better search engine optimization. My target date for the new theme is Monday, January 11.  You may find this blog down occasionally until you see it with the new theme

.

And just how, you might be wondering, is a blog with a single blogger going to split up?

Since this blog’s inception, I have covered case law and issues in the Ninth Circuit as well as California state court. Based on responses to the blog, however, it appears few people arrive by looking for federal information. Am I missing out on readers — and maybe even business — by having coverage of federal issues buried in a blog called The California Blog of Appeal?

Well, I’m going to try to find out. Starting January 1, 2010, your humble blogger is going to be pulling double blog duty, covering case law and issues from California state court here and covering case law and federal issues in the Ninth Circuit at The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals. The new blog is still under construction, but if you care to bookmark it prior to the grand opening, click here.

I’ll have a lot more to say on January 1 about how I reached the decision to split the blog, how I intend to avoid duplicate posts on both blogs on subjects applicable to both (legal writing, e.g.), and how I intend to minimize inconvenience for my regular readers who wish to follow both blogs.

UPDATE (12/29/09): The split may be delayed until January 4. I’m running into technical difficulties with the design of the new blog. Nobody is going to be reading law blogs on New Year’s Day anyway . . . are they?

For the past few weeks, I’ve been considering how to get started blogging again. I’ve been mulling a change in focus of the blog, design changes, perhaps starting another one. Something I could do to rekindle my blogging spirit and herald my return to the keyboard.

Then, today I was thinking, “No. Forget about grand announcements. Forget about design changes. Forget about a shift in focus. Forget all that crap, and just start blogging again.”

As if on cue, I got linked today in a post at Real Lawyers Have Blogs. Some kind words, too, in an interview with Michael Reitz of The Supreme Court of Washington Blog:

Lisa Kennelly: What value do you feel a blog specifically covering a state’s Supreme Court provides? Do you think every state could stand to have a blog like yours?

Mike Reitz: Yes. Every state should have a blog that covers the state’s appellate courts. The state high courts are often the courts of last resort for noteworthy cases. Additionally, state supreme courts have led the revival of looking to state constitutions, rather than the U.S. Constitution only, for the protection of individual liberties. There are a number of quality bloggers covering their state courts—D. Todd Smith of the Texas Appellate Law Blog and Greg May of the California Blog of Appeal for example.

I was horrified. Horrified. People were clicking their way here and finding at the top of the blog . . . an 8-week old post on the riveting subject of the closure schedule for the state’s courts. If they bothered to work their way down the page, they saw three posts over the four months before that. Wow, I’ll bet they were impressed!

Well, I am gearing up to blog again. And I still plan to do some tinkering with the blog. But I’ll just experiment as I go.

I do plan to get a substantive post up this week and get back on a regular posting schedule soon.  Just wanted you all to know the blog has not been abandoned.

As a welcome back treat, allow me to share a couple of blawg items I found interestting.

First, I just ran across a blog called “EvilEsq,” which I discovered when its author started following me on Twitter.  Here’s an image from it, which, along with the title, is probably enough to tell you that you don’t want your name to show up there:

Second, the blog of Fresno criminal defense lawyer Rick Horowitz has one of the best subtitles ever, at least if you’re an appellate guy:  Probable Cause: The Legal Blog with the Really Low Standard of Review.

Back to work, everyone.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, a fun New Year’s celebration, and a fantastic 2009.

My work schedule remains light as I continue to struggle through whatever crud I have.  Honestly, I thought I’d be over this by now, but the duration of this energy-sapping malady is going on four weeks!  Thanksgiving Day reminds me, however, that I should grateful my illness amounts to nothing more than a severe inconvenience. 

I haven’t been looking at the courts’ output for the last month or so, so if there’s anything of appellate interest that you think I should write about, email me with the case information and I’ll try to get to it. I am hopeful that I will resume posting next week.

 I’ve been able to work only on those projects demanding my immediate attention.  Since my blog can’t be dismissed for failure to post, while my cases can be dismissed for failure to file, my limited hours of coherence each day have been devoted to my cases.

I finally feel like I’m on the mend, and hopefully, I’ll be back up to speed next week.

And don’t let this stop you from sending me new cases!

Well, a young blog, at least, if not brand spanking new. The California Constitution was launched in August by Howard Rice partner Steve Mayer. Good luck!

Hat tip: California Punitive Damages.

Two things jumped out at me from Ben’s report.

First: Where were all the lawyers? Ben notes that the auditorium didn’t exactly look empty, but wasn’t close to capacity, either, and he wonders if Justice Alito is unpopular with the bar.

Second: Tenth Circuit Judge Michael McConnell gave some praise to the legal blogosphere (emphasis added):

Judge McConnell lamented that legal academics are often too political and ideological in their analysis of opinions. The first question should always be “is the opinion well grounded,” not a focus on the result. Politicians and practicing lawyers need to focus on results, but law professors shouldn’t. Blogs are beginning to provide appropriate critiques of judicial opinions, especially in certain substantive areas. Indeed, blogs are often the best (or only) feedback he gets on opinions, and thus he views them as a favorable and welcome development.

So different than what Judge Kozinski had to say about blogs, though that was some time ago.

UPDATE (8/7/08): Video of the conference here.  (Hat tip: Crime & Federalism.)

The article is about my experience during my first year or so of blogging. I thought it was timely, given a recent California Lawyer column that advised solo and small firm lawyers against blogging except in rare circumstances. 

As the title, “The Blog and Short of It,” suggests, it hasn’t all been a bed of roses.  But the downside of blogging is not so bad, either.  Click on the magazine cover at right for a PDF download of the August 2008 CITATIONS.

Oh, and let me extend a welcome to any any CITATIONS readers who may be visiting as a result of the article.  Come back soon.

Try 34. I’m no statistics expert, but I figure that puts the margin of error in the results somewhere around 12,000 percent.

The only category with zero responses?  Judge.

The responses broke down as follows:

Next time, I’ll do some fundraising for a “get out the vote” effort, maybe allow voting by absentee ballot!

In case any of you have been waiting, I should be back blogging tomorrow.

I’ll resume my regular blogging schedule next week.

If you haven’t responded to the survey in the right sidebar yet, why not take the opportunity to do it now? The survey comes down Monday morning, June 2.

To follow up on last Friday’s post: Over the weekend, I saw this post by Kevin O’Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs that, like mine, cited this post at Texas Appellate Law Blog. Added O’Keefe:

Many LexBlog lawyer clients tell me that high in their readership stats are visits from courthouses, especially the federal courts. Clerks at those federal courts, the ones in turn briefing the judges, tell me they are regular readers of law blogs.

***

No question that the day is near when lawyers with well written blogs on niche litigation subjects are going to be called in as co-counsel on an appeal or brief. The value of having a lawyer on your side whose material is regularly read by the court you’re before is priceless.

I can vouch for the blog visits from the courts. I have no idea who is actually at the other end, but traffic from federal courts always spikes whenever I post about a Ninth Circuit criminal case.

Now, we have at least anecdotal evidence that judges are reading blogs. Texas appellate lawyer D. Todd Smith posts at his Texas Appellate Law Blog about his chance encounter with a blog-reading judge at a professional event. In fact, the judge is not just a blog reader, but a regular reader of Smith’s blog.

So, now I’m really curious. I’m going to fiddle around with some of the poll gadgets for blogs, and hopefully by Monday I’ll have a poll up at the top of the right sidebar that allows visitors to identify themselves as a lawyer, judge, law person, etc.

But I doubt they’re sppeed readers over there, for the post is pretty spartan.  But they promise regular updates throughout the day, and since it’s a California law blog, it’s probably the blog to watch throughout the day.

Welcome to all first-time visitors led here from the mention of me and the blog in the May 2008 California Lawyer article, Debate Heats Up Over Unpublished Opinions. (For those who haven’t seen the piece, it highlights the recent case of Hild v. California Supreme Court (No. C-07-5107-JCS (N.D. Cal. filed Oct. 4, 2007)), which the article describes as arguing “that the state’s publication rules violate Californians’ due-process and equal-protection rights by creating ‘a de facto policy of refusing review of unpublished decisions in civil cases.’” The piece discusses the case in the context of the ongoing debate over whether the rules should allow citation to unpublished opinions.) My original post on Hild has some useful links, including a good article by How Appealing’s Howard Bashman.

By the way, the writer of the piece is freelance legal writer Lorelei Laird, whose own cleverly named blog, I Am Not a Lawyer, examines legal issues from the perspective of a non-lawyer.

I’m eager to get into the cover story for this issue, which is about law blogs, but I haven’t had a chance yet. From the look of the cover, though, it appears to make the legal blogosphere look scary! In any event, I’ll put up a post this weekend about my thoughts on the cover article.

Again, if you’re here because you saw the article, welcome! Stay awhile and poke around. Check out the sidebar information. If you’re going to scroll through entries, go back at least two weeks; last week was a light blogging week. Try pulling up all posts in the Legal Writing category, all posts in the Appellate Procedure category, or any other category in the right sidebar that catches your fancy. And come back soon, or subscribe to the RSS feed. (Not sure what an RSS feed is? Click here.)

UPDATE (5/8/08): Per my usual practice with these “welcome” posts, I’m going to leave this post atop the blog for the next few days so the targeted readers don’t miss it as they trickle in. Please look for new posts below this one until then.

Time to upgrade Wordpress again, this time to version 2.5.1.  I’ll be doing that this weekend, so the blog may be unavailable briefly on Saturday or Sunday.  I tend to do these things in the wee hours, when there’s less traffic, to minimize the disruption.  But you never know.

Many law bloggers, including yours truly, will miss his writing, which I once described as “Gold . . . Pure Gold.” He’s done a stellar job for years, If I tried to keep up the pace he did, I probably would have been beaten into the ground long ago. When I put his blog in my top 10, I wrote, “I still can’t figure out how Loblaw gets these posts up so close on the heels of the release of the decisions. It’s as if the courts e-mail the decisions straight to his brain.”

Good luck to you, Robert Loblaw!

The California Blog of Appeal launched at 3:12 pm on April 30, 2007, with a first post entitled “The California Blog of Appeal Will Now Come to Order!” (Seemed clever at the time, anyway.) I don’t think I’ve wandered far from the vision I described in that post.  So, if I may be self-congratulatory for a few minutes . . .

This is the 539th post on this blog.  The 539 posts span 135 categories (I may be going a bit overboard on cateogrization) and altogether contain more than 164,000 words. That’s the equivalent of nearly a dozen maximum length civil appellate briefs. Whew!

As for readership, the blog had 767 page views last June and has more than 4300 page views this month – nearly a 6-fold increase.  As the graph below shows, the last two months have exceeded even last October’s traffic spike, which resulted in large measure from a single post that got picked up and linked to by Overlawyered (and hosting Blawg Review #155 this month with a link from Instapundit sure didn’t hurt):

Of course, part of that growth is due purely to the increasing number of posts over time, which means more and more posts will be found in Google searches.

In the same period, RSS feed subscriptions have gone up from 9 to around 150 (though the badge in the right sidebar often shows about half that because it often fails to include Netvibes subscribers).

To everyone: thanks for reading, commenting and linking here. Here’s hoping you see a post here on the blog’s second anniversary — and many more between now and then.

P.S. One not-so-good stat: more than 16,000 spam comments intercepted by my spam blocker! That stuff is everywhere.

I’ve added The Complex Litigator, a very young blog, to my blogroll under the “Blogs – 9th Circuit State – California” category. Its subtitle:

A California-centric collection of comments and resources concerning the practice and procedures that make complex litigation and class actions uniquely challenging.

Every time you think all the legal niches are taken, a new law blog comes along to surprise you. And it starts with one of the best first posts of all time, which may actually describe what a lot of us law bloggers felt when we started blogging.

Finally, you gotta love the double meaning in the name. When I read it, I think, “Boy, that litigator is sure a complex guy.” The blog has a sculpture in its header image, but I think I would have used “The Thinker” (pictured) instead.

Welcome aboard to The Complex Litigator!

Hat tip: Wage Law.

(Photograph used wth permission pursuant to terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.)

There once was a blogger named May
Who thought he had something to say
Then he signed up to host
A serial post
Blawg Review one five five is today!

April is National Poetry Month! Which, in conjunction with hosting Blawg Review #155, makes it Bad Poetry Day here at The California Blog of Appeal. Here’s a haiku version of that introduction:

after a weekend
considering submissions
Blawg Review is here!

Ouch. If you’re still reading, allow me to welcome you to Blawg Review #155. Asking me to improve on Blawg Review numbers 1 through 154 is a pretty tall order, and not one that I’ll claim to accomplish. But I have tried to put together an interesting set of links for those who follow the legal blogosphere, and I hope I make them look tempting enough for you to check out. Recite the following haiku to yourself before getting started:

links to law blog posts
so tempting, drawing me in
read them all I must

OK, now you’re in the right frame of mind to get started. (Update: I’m being lambasted I was unaware that people have complained about desecrating the haiku genre in blog carnivals like this one. No offense meant, of course. My point isn’t to make fun of the haiku – it’s to make fun of my pathetic “poetry” skills. Hopefully, my prefatory comments to each poem avoid the second complaint about haikus — that they don’t communicate enough about the linked post to make it worthwhile to click through.)

(Note: in this post, blog names are linked to the home pages of their respective blogs; click on linked narrative text to go to the referenced post. Oh, and full disclosure: a number of these links are to blogs I follow regularly, and I may know the authors of some of these blogs personally.)

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

At least one law blogger beat me to it on the poetry theme. At Convictions, Kenji Yoshino notes tension between “serious” judicial writing and the injection of literature into same.

Other than that, I haven’t seen much poetic on the law blogs this week. So, in order to continue with the theme, I’ll have to provide the poetry for you with this series of totally unrelated blog posts.

Does a wedding photographer have to take a job to photograph a “commitment” ceremony? Professor Volokh has several related posts prompted by a real life case:

Need wedding photos?
Sure I can do it for you
same sex? then never mind!

Image via Wikipedia

In the internet age, you really have to be careful what you write, because sooner or later, someone is going to dig it up. But Wal-Mart is having trouble with pre-internet technology coming back to haunt it, according to Kraig Baker at Technology, e-Business & Digital Media Law Blog:

A retail giant named Wal-Mart
for some reason thought it would be smart
to tape all its meetings
now lawyers are feeding
on leaked tapes that give them a head start!

Jonathan Frieden thinks there’s another internet service that should probably keep an eye on the Roommates.com case, in which the Ninth Circuit held that section 230 of the Communications Decency Act did not confer immunity on an internet-based roommate matching service from liability for potentially discriminatory advertisements for roommates:

A person who wanted a roommate
Thought he’d say with whom he would associate
Then the Ninth said two-thirty
Cannot make less dirty
An ad that might discriminate

The BigLaw blogging duo at Drug & Device Law discusses the California Supreme Court’s adoption of the “sophisticated user” doctrine in product liability cases:

don’t you know better?
yes, sayeth the supreme court
no money for you, buster

Justice Scalia has been quoted in the course of promoting his new book with Bryan Garner, as noted by Civil Procedure Prof Blog:

Justice Scalia
promoting book with Garner
says he is no nut

Craig Ball at EDD Update takes on a data recovery urban legend:

the hard drive turning
data overwritten, safe?
more than you might think

Wow, this poetry writing is time-consuming. Thank goodness I have a second theme to move on to.

Image via Wikipedia

NATIONAL STRESS AWARENESS MONTH

From goofy poems to something more serious; it also happens to be National Stress Awareness Month. So lets take a look at how the blawgosphere has addressed some of the stressors in our profession in the last week.

If you’re a law student or possible lateral move stressing out over that job interview, just concentrate on the high points. That’s all that seems to matter, according to Law 21’s Jordan Furlong, who writes from the Great White North but says that law firm recruiting practices across North America utilize shallow evaluations of candidates and that law firms could learn a thing or two from Major League Baseball.

At Concurring Opinions, William & Mary law professor and young curmudgeon Nate Oman suggests that law professors could shed some stress by shedding some guilt over the accusation that law schools don’t prepare students for the practice of law.

The constant demand to bring in new business is also stressful, whether you’re a solo or an ambitious member of a large firm. The Greatest American Lawyer suggests you let the client generation take care of itself while you worry about something else instead. Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle suggests off-hours practice as a way to get a jump on practice while not giving up your day job. Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog.com says you’re making a big mistake if you’re not interviewing your clients. David Swanner at South Carolina Trial Law Blog advises not to succumb automatically to the temptation of a good case.

How about some high level stress? How do you hold onto your key partners? Who are they? And what about the other partners? Victoria Pynchon of the Settle it Now! Negotiation Blog sorts it out in a guest post at Connecticut Employment Law Blog offering suggestions for determining a partnership compensation model that satisfies the largest possible number of partners and is good for the firm, to boot. As if that’s not enough, American BigLaw management has to worry about being overtaken by London’s “Magic Circle” law firms, says Holden Oliver at What About Clients? — with a link to the Lawyer 2 Lawyer podcast on the subject. Also at What About Clients?, JD Hull points out that bigger BigLaw is not better BigLaw. More for BigLaw management to stress over.

Work/life balance is a constant, stressful struggle for man of us, and Atlanta Injury Law and Civil Litigation Blog responded to a study from the New York State Bar on the topic, including . Tami Cowden at Appealing in Nevada notes a recent study finding that lawyer productivity goes up after the lawyer has a child . . . provided the lawyer is the right parent. And with 24/7/365 communication, might you not be relieved if your firm banned Blackberries, at least some of the time, as Mitch Rubinstein at Adjunct Law Prof Blog tells us one New York firm has done?

It seems consumers want to avoid stress as much as lawyers. That’s at least one conclusion that might be drawn from their overwhelming preference for arbitration over litigation, a preference questioned by Barry Barnett at Blawgletter. Why go to court when only 2% of filed civil cases ever make it to a jury? (Profanity warning for that last link, which Florida Arbitration Law.com cleans up as best it can while still getting the point across.)

Litigation is stressful for attorneys, too. And aren’t depositions stressful enough without the witness dropping the F-bomb more than four times as often as he references the contract at issue? And do we really need to paper each other so badly that the court refuses to award costs, as Ray Ward of the (new) legal writer tells us happened in one tenth circuit case? Then again, maybe litigation isn’t so stressful if you’ve got what it takes to be a great trial lawyer per John Day of Day on Torts. Speaking of trial skills, here’s some pointers on PowerPoint for trial presentation, from Winning Trial Advocacy Techniques.

Actually, I wonder if we (that’s lawyers in general) don’t complain too much about stress. Imagine having a seizure disorder brought about by a brain injury. Gordon Johnson at Brain Damage Blog gives us a glimpse into the amazing world of seizure dogs and discrimination issues related to service dogs generally.

There’s nothing to relieve stress like a great motorcycle ride. Great for clearing your head. Norman Gregory Fernandez of the Biker Law Blog — who also happens to have the best blog portrait I’ve ever seen — offers some springtime riding safety tips. Geez, do I miss my motorcycle.

Maybe if we could work off more stress, we’d avoid incidents like these — rude hand gestures in court, racial segregation in the courtroom, fistfights on the courthouse steps, and more — described by John Browning at Arguments. And with all we’ve got on our minds, a little accidental shoplifting now and then is to be expected, and for Jamie Spencer at Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer, it puts his own advice to clients in a whole new perspective. We may be stressed, and it may affect our behavior from time to time, but we’re certainly not a bunch of “evil, malevolent people,” as Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice takes pains to point out in response to some nasty commenters who have lately come out of the woodwork.

SOME UN-THEMED AND SERIOUS STUFF.

Even if I were capable of writing something witty about the posts in this next section, I wouldn’t. No goofy poems. No stress jokes.

There’s nothing funny about interrogation. It’s deadly serious business. Eric Posner and Marty Lederman go back and forth on torture-related issues at Convictions. Professor Bainbridge raises what he calls “the elephant in the room” of that debate. Jack Balkin at Balkinization takes a close look at the issue of whether “torture memo” author John Yoo violated canons of professional ethics, and Brad Wendel at Legal Ethics Forum weighs in on the debate over whether Yoo should be fired from his Berkeley professorship. Mike Rappaport at The Right Coast wonders why, in a nation fixated on the torture debate, so little attention is paid to prison rape. (That last post may be a day too early for inclusion in this week’s review, but it’s too on point to ignore.)

And in closing:

my brain exhausted
poetry too hard for me
Blawg Review is done

Blawg Review has information about next week’s host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

Remember, on Monday, April 14, I’ll be hosting Blawg Review #155. It will be a very different type of post than what you are used to seeing here; so much so that regular readers may assume that the site has been hacked.

I’ll resume posting on Tuesday.

My biggest day of blog traffic to date (and this blog is nearly a year old) was last Thursday, and more than half of the hits were to my post complaining about the misuse of “which” for “that.” Curious, I checked my Sitemeter stats and saw that a tremendous number of those hits were referred from the Chicago-Kent College of Law, to which I linked in the post.

I was ready to attribute the traffic spike to some sort of automated web crawling by the school’s servers, but there were also a huge number of clicks out from my post to several of the links in it. All of which makes me wonder if people are really hungry for clear guidance on grammar.

As much as I enjoyed the traffic spike, my writing posts will continue to concentrate on style, with the occasional grammar post. I’ll leave the regular grammar instruction to Grammar Girl.

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.

If you visit a couple of Blawg Reviews, you’ll note that most bloggers who host the Blawg Review do so with a clever theme. I haven’t settled on a theme yet, let alone a clever one, because it may depend in part upon the posts submitted for consideration. But for now, I’m leaning toward posts about (1) lawyers or judges in trouble for breaking rules — ethical rules, court rules, even rules of human decency; (2) posts about intrigue, skullduggery, conspiracy and corruption — essentially, anything that John Grisham might decide to write about; (3) oddities.

If you run across a post you think is worthy of inclusion in next week’s Blawg Review — even a post from your own blog, and regardless of whether it fits within the themes described above — notify the Blawg Review blog editor directly according to these instructions at Blawg Review. Those submissions will be forwarded to me automatically. Please, please, please, do NOT send submissions to me directly.

Hat tip: Legal Writing Prof Blog, where John Marshall Law School professor Mark Wojcik offers some commentary on the subject.

It was just last June when University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos wrote in a tongue-in-cheek way about being perhaps the last law professor in America without a blog.

You’ll see precious little personal info on this blog. I only got around to adding my picture a week or so ago. And that’s not exactly private in any event. Like many legal blogs, this blog functions in part as a marketing tool. Having my picture in the sidebar is no different than having it in the county bar directory.

In early February, I requested input for inclusion in a presentation I am making soon. Thanks to all who commented and who publicized the request on their own blogs.

The presentation is now less than two weeks off, so I am making a second request for input by reproducing the post in its entirety in the block quote. If you don’t have your own comment to make, an announcement of this request on your own blog, with a link to this post, would be very much appreciated.

How would you like your name up in lights? Or at least mentioned in a presentation? I can’t promise either, but you have a shot at the latter if you respond to my call for assistance at the end of this post.

I am preparing a presentation for a section of the local bar on the use of blogs in legal research. This will be something like the presentation I gave to the Los Angeles County Bar Association Appellate Courts Committee, though there I emphasized my personal experience a great deal, which I intend to downplay on this occasion.

For the upcoming presentation, I’d like to have a better feel about how my readers use blogs in their practices — for research or otherwise.

Most of my non-subscription readers — at least on those days where I am not linked to or from another blog — appear to reach this blog through Google searches. The client inquiries I’ve received through the blog tend to be self-represented litigants, but the stats occasionally show Google hits from very large (“BigLaw”) firms (only the domains of large firms show up by name, typically), which suggests to me that these searches are being conducted by lawyers for research purposes.

I’m curious how these searches are being used. For example, is the search the first legal research step, akin to opening up Witkin for general background, or is it undertaken instead after an attorney is stumped on an issue and hopes to find some recent development that hasn’t made it into print?

I suspect some of the searches are to supplement Westlaw research. For example, if I find a case on Westlaw decided in the last month or so, I might Google it to see if other bloggers or commentators are discussing its implications. That, in turn, could help my own analysis of the case. The Google search terms usually give this away by incorporating the names of the parties.

Another use I know of is to find out if anyone is talking about YOUR case. I have had litigants contact me when I posted about their cases. One did so publicly in the comments. Another contacted me by e-mail. So I know that parties are out there looking.

In any event, I would very much appreciate comments from readers about how legal blogs have influenced or aided their research or practices. Anecdotes would be great. Broader comments about your habits are fine, too. Any background information about the nature of your practice and the blogs you follow would be helpful.

I prefer you make your remarks in a comment to this post rather than by e-mailing me. That way, after the presentation, I can refer the attendees to this blog post if they want to read your comments in detail.

Please note that by submitting information in response to this request, you are granting me permission for me to use all submitted information in the course of my presentation (which shouldn’t be a big deal, since you’re posting it publicly anyway, and might even get you some small amount of publicity). But if you want to leave an anonymous comment, that’s fine, too, and I will present it as such.

UPDATE (02/14/08): Thanks to the following for getting the word out about this post on their own 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.)

Hat Tip: Appellate Law & Practice

100 regular readers probably doesn’t seem like a lot, especially to those of you who are fellow bloggers.  But it’s a happy milestone nonetheless.

I have a way to go to catch up to University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, who, as of today, averages  245,870 hits per day at InstaPundit.

Baby steps.  Baby steps.

How would you like your name up in lights? Or at least mentioned in a presentation? I can’t promise either, but you have a shot at the latter if you respond to my call for assistance at the end of this post.

I am preparing a presentation for a section of the local bar on the use of blogs in legal research. This will be something like the presentation I gave to the Los Angeles County Bar Association Appellate Courts Committee, though there I emphasized my personal experience a great deal, which I intend to downplay on this occasion.

For the upcoming presentation, I’d like to have a better feel about how my readers use blogs in their practices — for research or otherwise.

Most of my non-subscription readers — at least on those days where I am not linked to or from another blog — appear to reach this blog through Google searches. The client inquiries I’ve received through the blog tend to be self-represented litigants, but the stats occasionally show Google hits from very large (“BigLaw”) firms (only the domains of large firms show up by name, typically), which suggests to me that these searches are being conducted by lawyers for research purposes.

I’m curious how these searches are being used. For example, is the search the first legal research step, akin to opening up Witkin for general background, or is it undertaken instead after an attorney is stumped on an issue and hopes to find some recent development that hasn’t made it into print?

I suspect some of the searches are to supplement Westlaw research. For example, if I find a case on Westlaw decided in the last month or so, I might Google it to see if other bloggers or commentators are discussing its implications. That, in turn, could help my own analysis of the case. The Google search terms usually give this away by incorporating the names of the parties.

Another use I know of is to find out if anyone is talking about YOUR case. I have had litigants contact me when I posted about their cases. One did so publicly in the comments. Another contacted me by e-mail. So I know that parties are out there looking.

In any event, I would very much appreciate comments from readers about how legal blogs have influenced or aided their research or practices. Anecdotes would be great. Broader comments about your habits are fine, too. Any background information about the nature of your practice and the blogs you follow would be helpful.

I prefer you make your remarks in a comment to this post rather than by e-mailing me. That way, after the presentation, I can refer the attendees to this blog post if they want to read your comments in detail.

Please note that by submitting information in response to this request, you are granting me permission for me to use all submitted information in the course of my presentation (which shouldn’t be a big deal, since you’re posting it publicly anyway, and might even get you some small amount of publicity). But if you want to leave an anonymous comment, that’s fine, too, and I will present it as such.

UPDATE (02/14/08): Thanks to the following for getting the word out about this post on their own 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.)

In a very detailed post entitled The Pro Bono Road to Riches! last October, I discussed the issue in the context of a California case, in which the dictum of the Court of Appeal seemed to indicate a predisposition to awarding fees in pro bono cases. In that case, the trial court trimmed the fee request by 50% right off the top because it deemed the engagement “mildly pro bono,” and ultimately awarded less than one third of the amount requested. The Court of Appeal’s dictum leaves little doubt that the firm left plenty of money on the table by not cross-appealing to contest the amount awarded. (My earlier post includes several links to information about the Seattle Schools case, by the way.)

My post caught the attention of the Overlawyered blog, which sent me a ton of traffic when they linked my post. In fact, the traffic from Overlawyered was responsible for my highest traffic ever for a single day, and accounts for the anomalous bump in traffic during October that you see in the chart to the right. Clearly, this is a hot issue. So I also followed it up with an article in our local bar publication, CITATIONS.

I continue to believe that a large part of the controversy in the Seattle Schools case is driven by the nature of the party from whom fees are sought: a school district. Obviously, many members of the public are going to think that the district has better uses for the money. (Of course, there were probably a lot of people who said the same thing about the money spent by the district in fighting the case.) I wonder, though, if the people who are outraged at the firm seeking fees from the school district would have been just as angry with the firm in the case I profiled, which successfully represented more than 30 tenants seeking damages on various causes of action arising from the landlord’s refusal to let the tenants return to their units after they were evacuated from an unsafe building by the city. That firm, too, was a BigLaw heavy-hitter, but I’m sure the landlord of an unsafe building is going to get far less sympathy from the public than a school district.

One commentator in the NLJ article raises a point I made to a reporter who called me about my post: Is it right for well-heeled firms who often burnish their images by conspicuously accepting pro bono engagements to then seek fees for those engagements? This is an especially valid question if the firm announces the engagement with some fanfare but keeps the fee request rather quiet. It makes one wonder whether anyone honored for their pro bono work has actually been collecting fees for part of it.

Actually, that wouldn’t bother me, as long as fees were disclosed. A semi-pro bono case — in which an attorney agrees to an engagement for which he is paid only if he can recover fees under a contractual or statutory provision — is really just another form of contingency fee case, with all of the same risks.

Hat tip to How Appealing for the link to the National Law Journal article.

Clicking on any of the blogs in the directory gives you an RSS feed right inside your browser window that shows teasers from the last few (up to 15) blog posts at that blog. Who knows how widely seen it may become? If you have your own law blog, you might as well get it up there now.

LawLink appears to be an attorney-only version of LinkedIn, an on-line networking tool designed to extend your network beyond your immediate contacts to those of your colleagues. I haven’t poked around LawLink too much, and my profile is bare bones for the time being. But the site appears to be designed to present an odd mix (in my opinion) of personal and professional information, considering that it is limited to attorneys. For example, there are fields to broadcast that you are looking for a personal relationship, whether or not you are single, etc.

Time will tell if it grows into a truly useful networking tool and blog resource.

UPDATE (2/6/08): The number of blogs has more than tripled since I registered this one on Saturday. The directory is now up to 25 blogs, some of which I have not seen before. This will definitely be worth checking every once in a while.

After sentencing a gang member to prison for murder, a Ventura County judge ripped into the jury foreman Tuesday, holding the juror in contempt of court for writing a blog that exposed details of the case during the trial.

The blog, or Web log, also criticized the judge’s staff and complained that the 19-day trial was taking too long.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Edward Brodie told the jury member, identified only as Juror No. 7, that he had failed to follow the judge’s daily instructions to refrain from discussing the case with anyone during the trial.

Attorneys said this apparently marks the first time a jury member in Ventura County has been accused of misconduct for producing a blog, an increasingly popular type of journal on the Internet.

“. . . an increasingly popular type of journal on the Internet.”  Ya think?

The jury foreman testified at his contempt proceedings that “he didn’t believe his blog constituted ‘discussing the case’ in defiance of the judge’s instructions.”  Really?  According to the defendant’s lawyer, the blog included a chat room where readers asked questions and the juror answered them.

The article includes some sparring between counsel over the merits of raising the blog as an issue on appeal.  The trial judge’s ruling, obviously, means that he did not think that the misconduct prejudiced the fairness of the trial.

According to the article, the blog is titled “The Misanthrope,” but none of the blogs I found that included “misanthrope” in the title had posts about the trial.  It’s possible the judge ordered the juror to take down the posts, but I couldn’t even find cached pages in Google.

First, blogging — or, at a minimum, blogging about substantive legal issues — is hard. Perhaps it’s easy to host a blog that simply pokes fun at current events by commenting on, and linking to, the news of the day. I wouldn’t know; I’ve never done that.

Amen and amen!

He follows the article up with this post at his blog describing reaction to the article. I recommend that anyone considering a blog check out both the article and the follow-up post.

At The Opening Brief, taking his own advice that improvement of one’s writing is a career-long endeavor, Sacramento appellate attorney Tom Caso resolves to work actively on his writing during the year.

At the (new) legal writer, New Orleans appellate attorney Raymond Ward resolves to keep in perspective such legal writing trivialities as whether to put one or two spaces after a period, where to place citations, and whether to fully justify text. Attention to detail is important, he says, but there’s room to disagree on things like this.

I’d like to say that I didn’t come up with any resolutions like this because my writing is already perfect, but alas, these reminders have led me to the same resolutions. We should all jump on board, if you ask me.

If you haven’t already made these resolutions, consider this your notice of default under rule 8.220(a), California Rules of Court, so you have 15 days from today to make your resolutions in a timely fashion.

In this post at The UCL Practitioner, Kimberly Kralowec updates some of her earlier reporting on the Apple lawsuit against some bloggers that had leaked internal Apple information. She provides links to a few articles about the settlement, reminds us that “in 2006, the Court of Appeal ruled that the bloggers were ‘journalists’ and that California’s shield law therefore protected their sources,” and links to some of her earlier coverage about the case.

After 10 days or so off from blogging, I’m ready to get started again. Did I miss it? Surprisingly, no.  I mean, I’m glad to get started again, but I was so busy while getting ready for “vacation” (that word is in quotes because I worked on two days), that I was just happy to rest.

I just checked my stats, and traffic was predictably light from just before Christmas through today.  At least nine people out there must not have had a very good Christmas, since they hit my blog that day.

Watch for posting to resume soon. 

The “maybe” refers to my anticipated posting hiatus while I am visiting family the entire week of Christmas. Not sure if I’ll blog or not. As much as a week’s break from blogging sounds to me like welcome relief right now — I put an awful lot of work into this — I feel like blogging is now “in my blood.” I’m not sure I can stop for a whole week! (Does this mean I fit into Judge Kozinski’s perception of bloggers?)

I will have access to a computer and the internet, so the temptation will be there. I’ll just have to wait and see.

I just don’t want any of you to think that I’ve given up for good if you don’t see anything new here until January.

Again, Merry Christmas to all!

The committee members were quite receptive and interactive, with great questions that were fun to answer. Thanks to all involved, including Denise, and to Ben Shatz for setting it up.

By the way, because I expect a few visits from committee members as a result of my shameless plug at the conclusion of the presentation, I intend to park this post at the top of the blog for a day or two. For that period, new posts will appear below this one.

The list includes three of the blogs that made my top 10 list in this meme about two months ago: WSJ.com Law Blog, Legal Pad, and Wayne Schiess’s legal-writing blog.

California lawyer blogs on the list include Pamela Fasick’s California Civil Litigation Quote of the Week and Denise Howell’s Bag and Baggage.

I don’t mind telling you I’m jealous as . . . heck.

There may be other California lawyer blogs on the list, but I need help identifying them. If you know that any of the other blogs on the list are authored by practicing California lawyers, please tell me which ones they are by shooting me an e-mail or posting a comment.

This link takes you straight to the voting page. It’s a little confusing at first. The blogs are divided into 12 categories, and only one category shows at a time. At the voting page, look for the logo that accompanies this post, and to its immediate right you’ll find a box with the categories listed. You change categories by clicking on the category you want.

ABA Journal says “Voting ends Jan. 2.” I don’t know whether that means you can only vote through Jan. 1 or through Jan. 2. So vote early.

By the way, I’m going to keep this post at the top of the blog at least through the end of the day Monday, so until then, look for new posts below this one.

But seriously, there’s nothing like regular blogging to hone your speed-writing skills!

I plan to keep this post at the top of the blog at least through the Monday or Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Until then, all new posts will appear below this one, so be sure to scroll down on return visits.

Here’s wishing old and new readers alike — and everyone else, for that matter — a happy and meaningful Thanksgiving holiday.

The Appellate Practitioner poses a hypothetical regarding writ review, then provides the answer.

The UCL Practitioner links to an article on the state of legal blawgs.  Still healthy.  Getting stronger, in fact.

Pamela Fasick is back at California Civil Litigation.  Welcome back from hiatus, Pam.

Party of the First Part wonders if he’s found the worst on-line agreement ever.  It’s got to be close, at least.

WSJ.com Law Blog makes it sound like things have changed since I left “BigLaw.”  They also have a post up about a trademark dispute that you’ll find of interest if you like Samuel Adams beer.  Or maybe if you just like beer.

Law.com Newswire posts about SCOTUS agreeing to hear the Exxon Valdez punitive damages case.  They also have advice for giving bad news to clients.

California Business Litigation Blog finds that lawsuits are a pretty good sign that not everyone is happy with their iPhone, even though the writer thinks they should be.

Legal Pad writes a bout a malpractice claim against Irell & Manella that may remind you of the premise behind the great TV show “Ed” (the “Bowling Alley Lawyer,” if you need a reminder).

And finally, Blawg Review #132 is up at Home Office Lawyer.

And don’t forget to check in with me again tomorrow!

The Evidence Prof Blog is a new blog in the Law Professor Blogs Network. I only discovered them last Friday, though the blog has been up since October 2.

They recently posted regarding Rhoades v. Avon Products, Inc., case no. 05-56047 (9th Cir. Oct. 15, 2007), which applied Federal Rule of Evidence 408 in a trademark declaratory relief action. Issue: Whether a letter from counsel proposing settlement of a trademark dispute (and containing threats of litigation absent settlement) can be admitted to establish that a plaintiff seeking a declaratory judgment of non-infringement of the sender’s trademark has the requisite “real and reasonable apprehension that it would be subject to liability” if it continued to manufacture its product. Check ‘em out.

By the way, I discovered Evidence Prof Blog by following one of the links in the feed in the right sidebar of this blog titled “Blogosphere Coverage of he Ninth Circuit.”  It pays to check some of those posts out once in a while.

To Nominate

To nominate a blog, you’ll need these three pieces of information: (1) the name of the blog; (2) the URL for the blog; and (3) the URL for the blog’s RSS or Atom feed (to get the last of these, right-click on the subscription link for the blog and copy the link address).

You can click on the logo in the right sidebar (the logo in this post will not work) for the main page of the awards site, but it may be easier to go straight to the nominations index (which links to the nomination pages for all 49 categories) by clicking here. Or, if you’re only interested in nominating in the “Best Law Blog” category, you can go to that nomination page by clicking here.

It’s Still a Small Field in the “Best Law Blog” Category

There’s just a handful of blogs nominated in the “Best Law Blog” category as of this morning (12:30 a.m. PDT Saturday), so if you have a favorite, it seems like it has as good a chance as any. Again, you’re running out of time, so get over there now.

The first thing I noticed was the near perfect symmetry in the weekday points. (The first two data points are Saturday and Sunday, the last five are Monday through Friday). Too bad it looks like a dunce cap.

Then I thought, wow, this really does describe some weeks. A slight uptick in productivity on Monday as we get back from the weekend, ramping up to its midweek peak, then declining again toward Friday. I’ve heard you should try never to buy a car made on a Monday or a Friday. This chart illustrates why.

OK. maybe not so interesting. However, to satisfy your curiosity about the reason for the midweek peak in traffic: I got linked by Overlawyered. Could I get a little more of that?

UPDATE (10/19/07):  My request for “a little more of that” was rhetorical, but Overlawyered nonetheless obliges!

If you saw my Simply the Best Law Blogs post, you know that Decision of the Day is among those I listed.  Yes, the analysis is good, the posts are extraordinarily timely, and the Ninth Circuit gets its fair share of coverage . . . but I also keep reading it because of writing like this (my emphasis):

This Ninth Circuit criminal appeal is a cautionary tale about why you should do background checks on employees before you hire them – especially the white collar ones. The defendant was hired as a computer technician. Shortly after the defendant started work, his employer learned that when the defendant had said that he had no criminal record, what he really meant was that he had three prior convictions.

Gold.

Recognizing the faults with these types of lists, noted by (at least) Robert Loblaw and Robert Ambrogi and perhaps other participants in this meme, I should point out that my “best of” list is naturally skewed toward blogs relevant to the subject matter of my own.  Which, of course, leaves out innumerable terrific legal blogs.  I encourage everyone to check out my blogroll for additional quality blogs.

I am delighted to have been named to the “top 10″ lists of two other bloggers (well, in the case of one, the “Top 11″ list) already participating in this meme.  Both likewise appear in my list.  In the interest of full disclosure, they are marked with an asterisk.

Without further ado:

Ninth Circuit Blog – Federal public defenders comment on Ninth Circuit criminal cases.  (There’s one of these for just about every circuit.)

California Appellate Report – University of San Diego law professor Shaun Martin summarizes the cases from the California and Ninth Circuit courts that he finds most interesting.  Sometimes sarcastic, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, he really knows how to wrap up the essentials of a case in a blog post.

Decision of the Day* – self-described as a ” daily summary of the best (and worst) of federal appellate decisions,” this is an engaging blog.  I still can’t figure out how Loblaw gets these posts up so close on the heels of the release of the decisions.  It’s as if the courts e-mail the decisions straight to his brain.

The UCL Practitioner* – San Francisco plaintiff’s class action lawyer Kimberly Kralowek chronicles developments in California’s Unfair Competition law.  Which there’s plenty of.

the (new) legal writer – New Orleans appellate lawyer Raymond Ward offers tips and some great links to resources to help improve your legal writing.

The Party of the First Part – Legalese is admittedly an easy target for ridicule, but this blog targets it so well.

Wayne Schiess’s legal-writing blog – University of Texas law professor Wayne Schiess offers great advice and challenges legal writing “rules.”

WSJ.com Law Blog – A general legal news blog from the Wall Street Journal.  Naturally, it has more of a national perspective than a California one.  But with California accounting for more than 10 of the country’s population, and the Ninth Circuit being the largest in the nation, there’s plenty here for people that like my blog.

Legal Pad – This is put out by the online legal news publication Cal Law.  Think of it as a local version of the WSJ.com Law Blog, but with more frequent attention to particular legal cases in California.

The Mac Lawyer – Anyone using a Apple Macintosh computer in their practice should check this frequently.

Now go check out the blogroll!

Two things I am still experimenting with. First, I haven’t figured out a way to exclude links to my own posts, so some of the titles will look familiar. Second, I may be tweaking the search terms in the next few days if I don’t see the content changing much from day to day. Give it some time if the lists look static to you.

For example, I have removed the site stats from the right sidebar because the plug-in does not seem compatible with this new version of Wordpress. No big loss. Nobody was looking there to see that I have posted more than 71,000 words in 226 posts, right?

As far as commenting goes, comment previews seem to be working. The Blogfollow plug-in does not seem to be working, but I’d appreciate it if someone else would try posting a comment to this post so I can be sure the Blogfollow incompatibility has to do with the upgrade and not with the blog URL I was entering. When you post the comment, make sure to provide the URL of your blog. When the comment is approved, it will include a snippet from your own blog if the plug-in is working correctly. If not, I’ll know it’s not working and can get to work on fixing it.

Snapshots seem to be working. The comments spam filter seems to be working, so you shouldn’t see any offers for Viagra or investments in the comment threads.

I’ll be playing with the remaining plug-ins over the next few days, seeing what needs to be tweaked. If the site seems to behave strangely on your end, shoot me an e-mail to describe the odd behavior.

The widget displays headlines and blog (or author) names from feeds of legal blogs registered with BlogRush.  Just click on a headline in the widget — after you’ve read the brilliant new content on this blog, of course — to go to the corresponding post on the linked blog. 

BlogRush is a blog syndication network designed to increase traffic to its members.  Every time that widget loads, I earn “syndication credits” that get my blog posts exposure in the BlogRush widgets on other legal blogs.  Click my direct referral link to see a movie or view the FAQ for BlogRush.  And if you decide to sign up, I would appreciate it very much if you do so through my direct referral link  or by clicking on the part of the widget that says “Add Your Blog Posts — FREE.”  (By the way, according to an e-mail from BlogRush this morning, they have more than 40 million headline displays in their first 5 days.)

If you decide to sign up, you might want to check out this blog post about tips for taking full advantage of BlogRush.  (I’ve yet to try out the recommendations, so I can’t vouch for them, but they seem to make sense.)

I know I should depend on my impeccable writing, incisive analysis, and wry sense of humor to draw millions of daily readers.  But this is a young blog, so I’ll try any gadget that has the potential to increase traffic (probably just the kind of thing Judge Kozinski hates), so long as it’s not too obnoxious and doesn’t slow down the site.

If you do notice a significant slowdown in the loading time for the blog, please shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment on this post.  Thanks.

I suspected that some lawyers were moving away from print because this blog gets hits from law firms running searches in Google.  I don’t expect to replace Westlaw anytime soon, but I find it interesting that the searchers at these firms (some of them Big Law firms) are actually clicking through to the blog while doing research.

 I love online research, especially using the Key Number system on Westlaw.  But for initial research in secondary materials, or to actually read materials, it is far more satisfying for me to be in the library.

I suggest you read the summary post at Law Dawg Blawg first before going on to the Legal Times article.

This is far more humility than most bloggers have (including me)!  Matthew would seem to be a blogger that even Judge Kozinski – who famously derided bloggers for their lack of humility – would like.

Matt, welcome to the blogosphere, welcome to the bar, and good luck with both.   I think launching your blog this early in your career is an excellent idea, and I’m sure we will all find it more useful than you anticipate.

According to the Blawg Review website:

Blawg Review is the blog carnival for everyone interested in law. A blog carnival is a traveling post about a topic or theme. For example, there’s Carnival of the Capitalists, concerning business and economics, while Grand Rounds is about medicine and healthcare, and Blawg Review has topics discussed by lawyers, law students and law professors.

Each weekly issue of Blawg Review is made up of article submissions selected from the best recent law blog posts. The blogger that puts together the Blawg Review carnival each week is called the “host”. You can find the weblogs of our future hosts linked in the sidebar on the right, along with links to all the previous presentations.

I have applied to host a future Blawg Review, but it may be a while before that happens.

You may recall my post about an ethics complaint brought against a Florida lawyer who posted highly negative comments about a judge on a local internet forum.

For my detailed discussion of blogs and wikis in legal opinions, including lots of links on these topics, check this earlier post.  Especially if the word “wikis” in the last sentence didn’t look familiar to you.

Technorati Tags: law and technology, legal wikis, legal writing

Too late now.  I’ve already posted twenty-one times on the subject of writing!

Among writers in general, and bloggers in particular, alcohol and narcissism go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Psychologists define narcissistic personality disorder as involving a grandiose sense of self-importance, and an overwhelming need for the constant attention and admiration.

What better example of this can there be than bloggers obsessed with how many “hits” their posts are eliciting, or how often they’re mentioned on the Internet, and who take pride in drawing attention to themselves by being aggressively obnoxious?

Geez, I hope he’s not talking about me.  I do check my bog traffic regularly, especially since I’ve been at this for less than two months.  But narcissistic?

Blogs pose special dangers for academics. The whole point of academic life is to offer those who live it the time to spend months and years becoming expert about, and reflecting upon, complex issues, before committing thoughts on such matters to print.

The same can’t be said for the chardonnay-fueled rant posted at 3 in the morning, which may inadvertently tell your readers far more than they wish to know about your living-room decor, your psycho-sexual neuroses and your views on “American Idol.”

I promise you’ll never read about these things on this blog.  I do occasionally post at 3 in the morning.  But after a Bud Light, not chardonnay.

But he does mention by name some blogging academics he respects.  And if he is indeed the last law professor in America without a blog, my “Blogs by Law Profs” blogroll is way too short.

Well, that’s it for this post. It’s 3 a.m. and I’ve still got to check how many “hits” my blog got today.

UPDATE (6/28/07): There are several law professor blogs consolidated at Law Professor Blogs. I’ll try to add them to my blogroll over the weekend.

[Winner], a web site that, upon information and belief, doesn’t even consider itself a blog, let alone a law blog, has won the “Funniest Law Blog” contest by a landslide.

Go here for the complete results.

By the way, all of the sixteen nominated blogs that weren’t already on my Legal Humor blogroll have been added to it (except for one that, as far as I could tell, had nothing to do with the law).  I haven’t looked closely at any of them, so I can’t personally vouch for the quality of the humor on any of them.

I’m surprised there are not more comments regarding the absence.  Perhaps people aren’t bothering to check UTR any more.  Could this new post mean it is coming back, or does it mean instead that we’ll get a new post only when Lat wants to plug one of his articles?

Look for me to add a “Legal Humor” category to the blogroll in the next few days.

So it’s no surprise to me that a blog to discuss judicial performance has arisen in at least one jurisdiction. Kevin O’Keefe at Lexblog links to a Florida blog to which lawyers posted their opinions regarding judicial performance. Now an ethics complaint against a lawyer who posted highly negative comments about a judge is raising issues of professional ethics and freedom of speech. See O’Keefe’s post, and the links therein (to a newspaper article and to the blog itself), for details. Not all of the judges dislike it.

Actually, it seems like a wiki might be much better suited for this purpose. But no less dangerous.