November 22nd, 2011

Five Years of Blogging (And Happy Thanksgiving)

Photo credit: Steven Stein, NewRo Runners

My five-year blogging anniversary slipped by last week without me noticing. Having now noticed, I’d like to interrupt this blog to make an important announcement:

I enjoy blogging.

Now I know that doesn’t come as a revelation to some, but the fact is, to keep writing for five years, you have to enjoy it. Because if you don’t, two things will happen; You’ll be miserable and you’ll have no readership. If you don’t enjoy it, it shows.

Do I blog every day? No. I do it when I want and when the spirit — or news story, legal decision or capricious whim — moves me. Sometimes I slow down, sometimes I speed up. It matters not, for it is mine.

Now you can see that I have a couple pictures here of me in a turkey suit, shot Sunday at a local Turkey Trot. And you might be wondering what the heck that has to do with blogging, or lawyering, or five-year anniveraries. And, you also might wonder if I’m nuts to put them up here, out of concern that it diminishes the seriousness of what I do for clients in the courtroom. Or that it might be seen by a potential client who will quickly hightail it elsewhere.

Glad you asked.

I see my fair share of human misery come through the doors with busted up bodies that shouldn’t be busted up. Anyone that deals with the consumer end of law will see variations on this theme, from divorce, criminal charges, bankruptcy, etc. And seeing those things gives me (and should give everyone) a greater appreciation for what we have. I know, from seeing it happen to others, that a car could blast through an intersection and instantaneously change my life and those of my family forever. Don’t say it couldn’t happen to you, because it sure happens to some people, who’s only fault might have been sitting patiently at a light. And it only takes a momentary lapse of attention on the part of a driver.

There is no limit to the number of ways that life could be quickly altered for the worse, and I’m not sitting in the middle of a war zone.

So I am thankful for each day that I get. And if I get the chance to dress up silly and run a 1-mile Gobbler race with a few hundred local kids, giving out gift certificates to a local cupcake shop for those that finish near my feathers, then yeah, I’m going to do it. And if I can have a few hundred adults in the 5K race chase the turkey, with a chance to win free entry into a little half marathon trail race I put together, well that is fun too. Community events are often like that. Fun. And it’s nice not just to participate, but to help create them.

In deciding to dress like a turkey for this event for the third year in a row — and with my name I’m the natural choice for this gig — I’m also mindful of Benjamin Franklin’s view of this particular fowl, as he advocated for it to be our national bird instead of the bald eagle:

For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

I decline the opportunity to put on the “serious lawyer face” 24/7. You might see the suit and tie shot on my website, but you won’t see it on my blog. Here I get to let my feathers down.

Photo credit: Andrew Dallos via Twitter

I write this blog the same way I go through life. I try to enjoy it, while at the same time taking what I do for a living very seriously. I think that’s reflected in the 1,000+ posts that I’ve done. And yes, this is the same reason that I have for running the occasional April Fool’s gag.

This week is Thanksgiving. Look around you. Be thankful for what you have. And live each day to the fullest.

I hate to use Latin phrases in law, as it invariably sounds pretentious, but I’ll make an exception today. Carpe diem.

Now if someone could please cue up a copy of Alice’s Restaurant, I’d be most grateful. I hear Arlo may be coming to dinner….

May 11th, 2011

Keeping Blog Spam At Bay (Akismet and WordPress)

Over at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield had a nice little piece about a spammer claiming to go by the name of Tom Sanders. “Tom,” it seems, wants Greenfield to pay him money to leave blog comment spam. Greenfield — noting that he got 500 comment spams overnight — has some fun with this pathetic excuse for a human.

And so I wondered, how much blog comment spam do I get? I’ve had spam problems before, most irritatingly from law firms because they should know better than to outsource their marketing since it’s tied to ethics. But I don’t get as much as I used to.

Why has the problem seemed to diminish for me? After I changed over to WordPress from Blogger a year ago, my techie guy installed a widget called Akismet. Not only does it do a great job keeping out the spam — I just checked and saw 23,000+ were blocked in the last 60 days — but it has a great feature that I use that Blogger didn’t have when I left it.

And that feature is that, when spam comes through, I get the pleasure of marking it as spam. And Akismet learns from it. The info is sent to its central computer brain, and applies it to its database. In other words, when the spam comes in I get the satisfaction of knowing I am helping to block that loser from getting spam through to others. It is, as far as I can tell, the only good part about spam; I get to give the spammer an electronic kick in the shins.

Here is a little bit more about how it works:

When comments are submitted to your blog, the Akismet plugin analyses them, consults the Akismet servers, and if the comment is identified as spam, it moves the comment to your spam section. The comments remain there so that you can review them if you wish. If you do nothing, Akismet will delete it in 15 days, but if you review a comment and decide that it is not spam, when you click the not spam link, this sends details about the comment to the Akismet servers so that they can learn from your decisions. As more users put the service on their blogs, it gets better and better at identifying what is spam from what is not. Imagine the power behind that, and how much it could add to email spam suppression if they could apply that to email!

Of course, there is at least one law professor that actually likes spam. Go figure. I assume it’s because no one reads the blog and pays it much attention. So go follow Greenfield’s link and be sure to let said blogger know that, in the wise words of so many spammers: Your site is very useful. I will bookmark it for later use. Or, you can use the elegant prose of this literary giant:

If possible, as you on expertness, would you brainpower updating your blog with more information? It is hellishly utilitarian in behalf of me.

February 22nd, 2011

Blogs as Primary Research Tools For Lawyers

John Hochfelder, guru on the value of injuries as defined by New York appellate courts

It’s now happened to me three times in three months. There I was at John Hochfelder’s New York Injury Cases Blog doing research on damages, before I turned to the usual suspects of Westlaw or the New York Jury Verdict Reporter.

This posting isn’t just about Hochfelder’s blog, but also about how useful blogs can be as primary research tools, even as the New York Times discusses a decline in blogging in some sectors.

First let’s talk Hochfelder. He started his blog in December 2008, dedicated to filling a void in appellate law. He saw many decisions come regarding the excessiveness or inadequacy of jury awards, but these decisions were often empty of an actual analysis of the injuries. This made it virtually impossible to determine why the appellate court sustained or stuck the jury award, and therefore useless to cite for future litigants looking for similar cases. Yet those decisions form the heart of how our judiciary sets both minimum and maximum caps on damages.

Hochfelder has often railed against the appellate judiciary on this issue. Back in March 2009 he wrote about one case where a $2.6M verdict was reduced to $1.35M without explanation:

Failing to give the public facts upon which appellate courts reach their decisions as to pain and suffering damages is unfair both to the lawyers who rely upon the appellate court decisions for precedent and to non-lawyer citizens (by whose tax dollars, after all, the judges are hired and paid). We are all entitled to know how these august bodies make their decisions.

So Hochfelder does an analysis of those decisions by pulling appellate briefs, talking with the lawyers involved to get background information, and using illustrations to show the reader what, for instance, a torn ACL might actually look like. He may also supplement with lower court rulings, some of which are unpublished.

Then he drops them into neat categories in the sidebar. Want to know what the courts have done with other knee injuries? Presto, you have the decisions, briefs, illustrations and often the inside poop on what really happened from the lawyers involved. A quick look at the knee injury category and you will see what I mean.

Contrast that with blogs such as mine that dwell on analysis of stories in the news (ex: Bloomberg on tort reform) or differing types of appellate decisions (ex: “elective” amputation, $1M loss of consortium claim). Sometimes a blog such as this can break news (ex: Dominic Barbara, Takara Davis). But breaking news is a one-off type of thing, since most law bloggers have real jobs where we spend our time. Other times we may comment on people in the news related to law suits (ex: John Ritter, Dennis Quaid) or discuss political issues (ex: Will Congress support the constitution when it comes to tort reform?).

Hochfelder, however, has for two years been quietly and steadily building a database of cases and more cases, leaving aside popular stories that oft times generate inbound links, in favor of analyzing scores upon scores of New York injury cases. And because he stays faithful to his niche, finding exactly the kind of information you need, assuming such information exists, is easier on his site than anywhere else.

And this isn’t just my opinion. For after I found myself repeatedly returning to use the blog, I asked other New York PI lawyers if they were also using it. And they have. Let’s look at four responses before turning to the larger issue of blogs:

This response from David Roth mirrors my own thoughts:

The blog focuses on those things which are important to me in looking behind the mere reports and goes into detail about the basis for the numbers that are awarded or sustained. I have used it to explain injuries and compare the amounts awarded at trial to the amounts that the Appellate division reduced or sustained.

It differs from west and lexis in that it has information in an easily searchable format with pictures, diagrams and information that goes beyond the decisions. Often there are quotes from briefs which are intuitive to a personal injury lawyers needs, which saves me time from having to figure it out myself. The jury verdict reporter does not concentrate on sustainable numbers. The blog gets me the info I need without forcing me to do the extra research.

And attorney Steve Skor says:

We have used it to great effect on several high end negotiations. Judge [George] Silver was very impressed recently by a presentation we created relying heavily on the blog in a case. Helped get what I considered to be a very big settlement on an ankle fracture case with serious “issues.” The adjuster constantly looked at defense counsel as to say “Where is your authority to refute plaintiff’s numbers,” every time they said we were too high. A great resource.

From Stephen Frankel:

I’m on it at least once or twice a week. The blog saves a huge amount of time and gives excellent direction with respect to P&S values….Hochs blog is the best in NYS for valuing injuries and it is quite simply a fantastic research tool.

And one more, from Howard Trepp, before I turn to the essential point of this posting:

The Hoch blog is the first place to look for information on the value placed on injuries in the courts of the state of new York. Well organized, it is the most comprehensive source available to determine what the new York appellate courts deem fair and reasonable compensation for personal injuries.

Now on to the larger point. There are some people who think the legal blogosphere is saturated, and really can’t tolerate more. Not so. While there may be too many faux blogs that blast news of the latest car accident or DUI in the hopes the people involved will hire them (which is of questionable ethics), there is always room for more quality content. Just because the ABA Journal lists 3,000 law blogs doesn’t mean all of them are good. Or current.

Looking at my own niche, I know that I write only 1 out every 5-10 pieces I would like to write. It isn’t for lack of interest, but lack of time. Now magnify that by all the different practice areas and all the different states. What is lacking, of course, is finding more Hochfelders who can figure out how to organize the data into useful searchable form, and put in the time to do it. The resource is valuable because it is hard data, not an accumulation of Twitter followers following a one-breath statement. That makes the blog not just a valuable resource, but a primary resource because it is better than what existed previously.

In the New York Times on February 21st, there was an article on the decline of blogging due to Facebook and Twitter (Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter). But the decline comes from those who had previously used blogs as online diaries for purely social purposes. There are other forms of social media that may be better for letting friends know of your vacation pictures and weight loss successes.

But for professionals, blogs rule the roost and will for some time to come. And that is because readers often come from outside the circle of pre-approved “friends” or followers who may want to see the information. Facebook and Twitter may be fine for letting others know that you have a new blog post, but for professionals who blog they are no substitute.

So the legal blogosphere is, I think, still wide open to newcomers and receptive to quality sites. Hochfelder found his due to appellate failure. Ironcially, it is that appellate failure that may be preventing cases from settling. As Hochfelder explains, in one of the many cases where he takes the appellate courts to task:

The point is, though, that we are owed some guidance from the appeals courts, some justification for their decisions involving millions of dollars and we are more and more often getting no explanation at all. In my humble opinion, that’s got to change if the appeals courts want the bar and the public, as well as the parties before it, to be guided by their opinions and to act on them in a manner (i.e., settling cases for reasonable amounts) that will reduce the number of lawsuits brought to trial and appealed.

So to those who may be contemplating a new blog, and worried that the field is filled and all the good subjects covered, I say that you couldn’t be more wrong. If you write and analyze well, there is more than enough room for you. And if you know your stuff you may find, as Hochfelder has, people regularly turning to you for advice.

Elsewhere: An October 2009 Q&A with Hochfelder

And, regarding the same NYT story: Blogging ain’t dying among lawyers (Real Lawyers Have Blogs)

February 7th, 2011

Huffington Post Sold (The Future of the Legal Blogosphere and How Much Is Your Blog Worth?)

When I heard this morning that the Huffington Post was sold for $315 million to AOL, it made me wonder once again just how much a blog was “worth” if it was sold on the open market. I speculated on this once before, on April Fool’s Day 2009, when I put my blog up for sale on eBay for $1 million.

So, with a bit of number crunching, we get this: Huffington has 25 million visitors per month as per a NYT article I read this morning. Whether that is unique visitors, or some other way of calculating visitors, I don’t know. But my little corner of cyberspace had these metrics last year: 172K visitors, 207K visits, and 295K page views (using Google Analytics). That makes this a modestly successful law blog, if one is concerned with eyeballs (as per Alexa/Avvo, #46 if counting eyeballs). Roughly speaking, it seems that Huffington gets about 1,500 times as many visitors as I do.

So if Huffington has 1,500 times as many visitors, then this blog would have a value of about $200,000.

Of course, the ability to generate revenue would be a major issue for the blog. I’ve never gone out of my way to do that, with the exception of the ALM ad you see to the right that I discussed some time ago, but it seems that law blogs would have particularly favorable demographics for advertisers. Not just books, and legal support services, but high end products such as cars as well. So one would think that a premium would be paid for such sites (if they were for sale).

Some time ago, I speculated that a group law blog in the fashion of Huffington would work very well for the right entrepreneur, leading me to write The Future of the Legal Blogosphere in 2009. (See also a 2 minute interview I did at Legal Tech in 2009 on this.) And the sale of Huffington today reinforces that feeling.

November 18th, 2010

Abraham Lincoln, Twitter, and This Blog

Tomorrow is November 19th. Seven score and seven years ago, on that date, Abraham Lincoln dedicated the Gettysburg battle field with one of the great speeches in American history (reprinted below). And yet, it’s only 272 words. That’s something to think about when you hit page 20 of your next brief.

I also put Twitter in the post title. How can something so trite and easily abused be compared to the Gettysburg Address? Because it teaches people to be succinct.

And today is the four-year anniversary of this blog. When I started it, it was with the desire to take complex ideas and break them down to simple concepts. I don’t know how well that worked, but it’s something I strive for and seems related to the concepts above.

I picked up that lesson from my father, who ran one of the largest plaintiff’s medical malpractice departments in New York until he retired. He demanded that every case be described in one line, almost like a Twitter post. Because if you knew the one-liner, it meant you knew the case. It also came in handy when the judge asked you what the case was about. So a case might be described, for instance, as a “10 month failure to diagnose and treat breast cancer in a 53 year old woman resulting in…”

And master legal writer Bryan Garner insists that, when framing an issue for court, a lawyer should do so in no more than 75 words. If you can’t do it in 75 words you don’t understand it, and therefore you can’t communicate it to the court

Brevity and clarity are important. They focus the brain.

And with that, I give you America’s most famous trial lawyer, who delivered these words 147 years ago:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.