Deliberations

Finding Good Blogs

This is off-topic, but maybe not so far off, because if there's any blog whose readers might need help navigating the blogosphere, it's mine. 

I know they're out there

Your average trial lawyer isn't spending much time in the world of Web 2.0.  I know, because I was the same way when I started.  I'd heard there were all these brilliant blogs out there, scooping mainstream journalists and opening the windows in scholarship's ivory tower.  But when I looked for them, running regular searches and trying to figure out blog search engines like Technorati, I couldn't find them among the thousands of navelgazers and crazies.  It was like trying to find a new town with an old map.

They're out there, though, and they're worth finding.  I learned the territory one or two blogs at a time, first coming to like and trust a few blogs (and bloggers) and then following their links and blogrolls to others. 

Useful guides

That's still a good way to find good blogs, but it's slow.    You can speed up the process with good directories and guides.  The main ones are:

• Blawg Review, the weekly law blog carnival.  Each week a different legal blogger writes a review of the week's posts in other law blogs, usually trying to outdo all who have come before in creativity and style.  (I was privileged to host Blawg Review last September, and stayed up half the night.)  If you read Blawg Review over even a few weeks, you'll see who shows up regularly;  if you read it regularly, you'll learn of good blogs you might never have seen otherwise.  Blawg Review is itself a blog, whose posts point you to the current host and lots of other things.
• The ABA Journal's Blawg Directory and Blawg 100 list.  The Blawg 100 was controversial when it came out because it omitted some wonderful blogs, and I'm not a neutral source because I'm in it.  That said, I'm a faithful follower of some blogs I first learned of because they were in the Blawg 100. 
• Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs.  It's a blog, not a guide, and since Kevin's company LexBlog sells a software platform and support for blogging lawyers, you'd think it might be a little provincial, but it isn't.  Kevin covers pretty much anything that has to do with legal blogging, and I've learned about many good blogs from his posts. 
• The law page at Alltop.com, a brand new directory from marketing guru Guy Kawasaki.  I wish I'd had this when I first started.  It's a "single-page aggregation," with "the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page."  (Even Alltop finds this hard to explain:  "You can think of an Alltop site as a 'dashboard,' 'table of contents,' or even a 'digital magazine rack' of the Internet.")  The sites and the order they're in keep shifting, and if you want to go beyond law, there are dozens of other pages and new ones coming all the time.  Note to the Francophiles at What About Clients?:  the France page debuted today, en Français. 

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Notes:

1. If you're going to follow more than a few blogs, you need an RSS feed reader, also called a feed aggregator.  If you don't know what that is, a few searches will educate you.  I use Google Reader -- it's fast, free, and works nicely with the rest of Google's products.
2. Full disclosure:  I think I move up in Alltop's algorithm by linking to them, but really, it's good.
3. While I'm off topic and talking about maps (and good blogs), check out the cool mindmaps in Vickie Pynchon's posts this week at Settle It Now Negotiation Blog (here and here), and her wise words on what they have to do with negotiation.
4. Guy Kawasaki and I share a birthday, so if there's anything to astrology, I should be famous and wildly successful sometime soon.
5. Related content here:  A Trial Lawyer's Guide To Social Networking Sites.  Some nonlawyers have told me they found it useful as well.

(Image from Library of Congress via pingnews at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pingnews/2122158366/; license details there.)

Thank-You Notes

If you're not quick with thank-you notes, they start to stack up.  So I can't delay any further in thanking:

1.  Blawg Review's wonderful Ed. -- for letting me host Blawg Review last year at all, and for awarding my effort a bronze medal, third best of the Blawg Review posts of 2007.  Since first- and second-place honors were so clear (Colin Samuels's final installment of his masterful Dante trilogy and Eric Turkewitz's brilliant New York Marathon edition), and the other submissions were so good, I'm extremely proud of this. 

2.  The ABA Journal's Stephanie Francis Ward for quoting me in her terrific story on trial blogs, "Full Court Coverage," in the current issue. 

3.  Gideon for hitting Publish on a post at Public Defender Stuff that contained the phrase, "the incomparable Anne Reed."  I may never get over it.

(Photo by Gisela Giardino at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/304120801/; license details there.)

Welcome, Court-O-Rama Blog

Legal Blog Watch posted today about bloggers' resolutions for the New Year, and I'll confess I have one:  stop trying to post daily.  The fact is I'm no Scott Greenfield (less than 48 hours into 2008, the man has ten posts up, for heaven's sake), and if this project is going to remain fun, I have to slow it down.

But fear not:  if I haven't posted lately and you're looking for timely, spirited, approachable, and sometimes funny material about courts and juries written by a lawyer named Anne, there's a new blog for you.  Anne Skove, former editor of the National Center for State Courts' weekly Jur-E-Bulletin, is a blogger now, at Court-O-Rama, "the least dangerous blog."  She and her co-blogger Tom Carlson explain simply:  "It's a blog. About the courts. We hope you learn something new, and if you're not careful, you just might enjoy yourself."

If you subscribed to Anne's wonderful Jur-E-Bulletin, you'll join me in expecting great things here.  If you didn't, you still should; the style and substance she brought to it are still there.

(Photo by Michel Verburg at http://www.flickr.com/photos/michelos/1015826394/; license details there.)

Deliberations In The ABA Journal Blawg 100

The ABA Journal's editors picked "100 best web sites by lawyers for lawyers" today, and it's an honor to say that Deliberations is on the list.  Now they're asking readers to vote for their favorites, by category.  I'm in a "toolkit" category with all the big general-interest law practice blogs:  Adam Smith, Esq., Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices, Bag and Baggage, Build a Solo Practice, and that's just the A's and B's.  So I have no expectation of finishing anywhere near the top, but still it would be nice to get some votes, which you can cast (one per blog, as many blogs as you like) by clicking the link above. 

"The height of folly"

I was in danger of getting really puffed up over this today until Kevin O'Keefe's post arrived with perfect timing:

Maybe it's lawyers' low self esteem that requires their egos to be stroked by being on someone's list of the 100 best this or that. Maybe lawyers are so bored that they love gimmicks. Maybe it's websites and organizations that are so starved for attention or relevance that they need to have contests to get their beauty pageant contestants to tell others of the website. I don't know.

But to get sucked into believing a contest like the ABA Journal's 100 best lawyer blogs means something is the height [of ] folly.

I've learned to trust most anything Kevin O'Keefe says about blogging, and I know he's right on this too.   Anyone can see that Blawgletter, New York Personal Injury Law Blog, Defending People, Drug and Device Law, Corrections Sentencing, and Kevin's own blog Real Lawyers Have Blogs are just a few of many blogs that are better than mine and aren't on the list.  More to Kevin's point, one of the strengths of the legal blogging world is that there's a different "best" blog out there for each reader.  "What's best and what's good," he says, "is determined by the value the blog offers a niche audience."  That message gave me hope and vision back when I was sure I'd never have more than seven readers, and it still shapes this blog today.

A map, at least

Kevin's real complaint is that the ABA Journal's recognition is "damaging to the growth of law blogs."  He argues that a handpicked list like this distracts readers from the real value of the blogosphere, which is the opposite of handpicked.  Your browser, he says, is a door to a democratic world where "a lawyer in a town with a water tower, an old grain elevator and 3 four way stops is on equal footing with a lawyer who clerked for a Supreme Court Judge." 

It's self-serving to say it, but I do think I differ with him here.  It's true that there are wonderful blogs that won't show up on any national "best" list, but at least in my own case, any map I could get was very helpful when I was first learning the territory.  You find blogs you trust when they're cited in other blogs you trust, and you have to start somewhere.  I've gotten a startling number of visitors today from the ABA Journal site, and I hope some of those visitors come to rely on other blogs they learn about here.

Bottom line . . .

So vote for Deliberations in the ABA Journal Blawg 100, if you're willing.  I've got to keep up with my dad's blog, and heaven knows I won't be in the next contest Kevin envisions.  "Why not have a contest as to which blogging lawyer looks best in a swim suit?" he asks.  Yikes. 

Welcome, Mortgage Meltdown Blog

My partners Laura Gramling Perez, Chris Ware, and Ellen Brostrom, with help from a growing number of our colleagues, have unveiled a blog on all things related to the subprime mortgage crisis.  It's called Mortgage Meltdown, and it covers everything from the basic ("What Is A Subprime Mortgage?") to the advanced ("FASB 157:  Day of Reckoning?"). 

Don't take my word for how good they are; Stephen Rosenberg of the Boston ERISA & Insurance Litigation Blog says they're "terrific (and wonderfully named)."  Which got me some points around the office, because I've been telling people for months how collegial and kind the world of legal blogging is.  It's great to have another Reinhart Boerner blog. 

(Photo by Francis Storr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fstorr/228542578/; license details there.)

Best Law Blog?

Definitely not, but I'm still delighted to have been nominated in the category of Best Law Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards. And I'm not too proud to say that the nomination can be seconded, by anyone who may be so moved, by clicking on the little plus sign in the nomination comment here. (The voting comes later, apparently.) Or you can go to the main post where you can second the nomination of some really good blogs, or nominate your own.

(Photo by Nichole Armageddon at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nmusser/150096657/; license details there.)

"Simply The Best"!

The anonymous editor of Blawg Review reads law blogs all day (or so it seems). Today he listed "the top ten law blogs he thinks are simply the best" -- and Deliberations is one of them!

I know, I was surprised too, especially in light of the nine luminaries who unsurprisingly made up the rest of the list: Above the Law, Adam Smith, Esq., Balkinization, Concurring Opinions, f/k/a, May It Please the Court, QuizLaw, Sentencing Law and Policy, and The Volokh Conspiracy.

"Sure, there may be better blawgs out there," says Ed., and he's definitely right that there are better blawgs than this one. This fact has now become my problem, since Ed. has challenged his ten best to name their ten best. I'll do that, when I dare -- and meanwhile, I'll try my best to behave at the grown-ups' table. Thanks, Ed.

Update:  my own "ten best" list is here. 

(Photo by Nichole Armageddon at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nmusser/150096657/; license details there.) 

Blawg Review Right Here Next Week

I'm privileged to be hosting Blawg Review next Monday -- and more than a little nervous.

I'll be honest. I don't think I fully understood when I signed up that the standard of, well, review on this thing is really high. There was Corporate Blawg UK who did the entire review in iambic pentameter. And there was Sheryl Schelin at SC Employment Law Blog, whose dog Rosemary wrote the whole thing for her. Then David Lat at Above The Law did it, which is fine for him because he's David Lat and he can say whatever he wants to.

I can't rhyme, my dog can't write, and I'm not David Lat -- so please, be kind. You can submit your blog post here. (Don't send it straight to me; when you send it through official channels, it's archived so somebody can step in and praise it if I get hit by a bus or something.) If your post deals with something I know anything about, like trials, so much the better. And see that "comments" box in the submission form? It's great if you put a little hint there as to what the post is about.

Crossing my fingers.

My Dad's Cooking Blog

I've never done an off-topic post, but my dad has a cooking blog, and I really like it. 

You have to understand:  he never used to cook, and he certainly never used to blog.  But I should have seen it coming when, several weeks ago, he E-mailed me:  "Anne:  what is a blog, and what is the derivation of the word?"

Pretty soon he had one.  He calls it Cooking Tools; It's a compilation of family recipes and accompanying stories.  I can vouch for the recipes, and I love the stories -- particularly the one I'm in, where he tells the tale of how, in his seventies, he learned to cook.

You'll make my dad very happy if you visit his blog.  It might change your life too; next thing you know, you'll be telling your dad what a blog is.

(Photo by Alfonso Pierantonio at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kruder396/340821582/; license details there.)