Personal injury blogs have once again been ignored. This time it comes from the new web directory, Alltop. Constructed by web impresario Guy Kawaskaki, it’s law page is chock full of great law blogs, some mainstream and some in small niches. My quick count shows 105 of them, and it has the potential to be a great resource for people to see who is writing about what in a single glance.

But not a single blog deals with personal injury law as its main subject. Now you would think that with all the yelling and screaming about tort “reform,” jury verdicts, federal preemption, punitive damages and related subjects, that one or two blogs that devote themselves to the subject would be on the list. But they aren’t.

Have we seen this before? Yup. (See: Vote For Me In Blawg 100!! (Oh Wait, You Can’t))

So, in the event that the Alltop law page gets updated, here’s a tip to Guy for a few blogs on the subject to consider:

• Bill Childs (TortsProf)
• John Day (Day on Torts)
• Beck/Herrmann on defending BigDrug and BigDevice (Drug and Device Law)
• Bill Marler on food poisoning (Marler Blog)
• Byron Stier and Howard Erichson (Mass Tort Litigation Blog)
• Perlmutter & Schuelke, publishing weekly personal injury round-ups chock full of links to good personal injury blogs
• TortDeform on civil justice defense

For goodness sakes, pick one or two from the list, or use some of the many other fine ones that I haven’t mentioned. But ignoring an entire field of the law seems to be a mistake if the intent is to aggregate law blogs.

See also:

• Blawgs Get Kawasakied (Blawg Review)
• Blawg Stuff, How To Keep Up (Simple Justice)
• Finding Good Blogs (Deliberations)
• Law Alltop Launches (The Inspired Solo)

Who’d a thunk it? It was just five months ago that I let loose against the ABA for leaving all personal injury blogs out of their ABAJournal Blawg 100 (see: Vote For Me In Blawg 100!! (Oh Wait, You Can’t)). And today I learn that my blog has popped up as their Blawg of the Week.

When the ABAJournal re-invented its web site last July, I welcomed their redesign with “terrific news feeds” and “a great new compendium of blawgs.” It was clear they had done their homework. (See: Welcome New and Improved ABA Journal)

This being the ABA though, I was a bit concerned that its focus would be waaay too much on BigLaw, and not enough on the small and solo firms that make up the vast majority of America’s law firms and that do much of the grunt work. I even wrote last summer:

The new ABAJournal also has a featured blawg each week. Let’s hope they don’t just focus on the big name A-listers from the ivory towers and appellate world, and present the occasional up-and-comers from the “Practical Blawgosphere” that are out there in the courthouses on a day-to-day basis.

So while I was disappointed that the entire personal injury bar, both plaintiffs and defendants, was left in the dust of its vaunted 100, it’s obviously refreshing to see that, perhaps, things can change.

And yes, I did make sure to copy the page, under the theory that this was just a screw-up or practical joke and it disappears tomorrow.

A final note for new visitors: If you’d like to see some of the greatest hits of the blog, click that link. And feel free to add it to your RSS feed. No extra charge.

It happened, ironically, with an April Fool’s Day post. I passed the one million mark in page views.

I’m not quite sure what to make of it, since I’ve never really been able to figure out from the stats what represents human eyes and what represents spider eyes. And I know that many stumble in here simply because they are doing image searches or have used the images in various forums and blogs. Another stat, “visitors” passed the 500,000 mark and “unique visitors” is approaching 300,000.

If I had to decide what the most important metrics were, however, I would say:

• The number of comments, because that means folks are reading the content, and they often add new dimensions to the original post. I’ve never calculated them, though I can see there has been a marked increase in the last two months. Seeing 5-10 comments on a posting is no longer unusual, and some have generated over 20.
• The number of favorable comments, which of course, isn’t quite the same as overall comments. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you , that some folks seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to personal injury attorneys, no matter what is written.
• The incoming links, because that also means people are reading and finding it useful to point others here. Technorati counts those for me, and I see 1,600+ incoming links. Of course that also includes spam blogs and double links coming in from some places.

But for whoever it is out there that has stopped by my tiny corner of cyberspace these past 17 months, I thank you. I’ve very much enjoyed doing this, and hope to continue as time permits.

A small upgrade to the blog this week; Posts can now be emailed to people on a daily or weekly basis.

The Reason: While I had assumed that most folks would get blog postings via RSS feed, I noticed in the past month many coming to the site because some of my posts were passed around by email. Specifically, there were four posts that dealt with expert witnesses that bought a lot of new traffic: I posted a piece of evidence from one trial, about RICO suits against Allstate and State Farm, and a response from one of the RICO defendants.

Since many of the new visitors for this, or other stories, may be unfamiliar with RSS, I’ve added an email option.

Privacy: While it may be really tempting to sell all those email addresses I get — I bet I can get almost a penny apiece for the 50-100 that I may gather — I think I can resist that veritable gold mine. So even if I can figure out how to access those email addresses, I won’t do anything with them.

Removal: If you sign up and decide after a week or a month that I am really annoying or posting nonsense, then you can say adios to me very easily. Each email gives you the option to remove yourself from the service.

David Lat’s Above the Law has a guest post from Ted Frank. Put up at 10:20 this morning, it has already generated a staggering 345 comments.

The subject? An assertion by Frank that Barack Obama, if elected, would get rid of the Social Security cap that is currently at $102,000. And that would cost BigLaw lawyers lots of dough.

Frank doesn’t say where the money should come from, of course, for Social Security. That is apparently something for the next generation to worry about. Fiscal responsibility isn’t really important when trying to woo voters from BigLaw.

But back to the main point. With this kind of a hit on its hands, will Above the Law move away from its many (many, many, many) posts on salaries at this place and that and focus more on substance?

We’ll see.

Update (2/27/08 @ 5:30 pm): The post has now generated a record number of posts, well over 500 and still going. A new post was added by Ted Frank on the subject: NY to… 147K? More About Barack Obama’s Tax Plan (Or: Time to make the donuts?)