December 26th, 2007

Blawggies and Blawg Review

Two law blog items:

First, if you didn’t get enough Christmas yesterday, you can go back for more with the Christmas Eve themed Blawg Review #140 presented by Jonathan Frieden at E-Commerce Law. Frieden mixes commerce and Christmas with law blogs in his 12 Days of Christmas (plus stocking-stuffers).

Next up, Dennis Kennedy gives out his 2007 “Blawggies” for the best law oriented law blogs, and gives one to “niche blogs” as the most important trend. What is a niche blog? According to Kennedy, they “have titles like [State Name] [Practice Area] Law Blog.”

While it’s an interesting concept, it seems that the vast majority of law blogs actually fall into the category of “niche” once you get past the name, including his own on law technology and the one for best blawg about blawging (to Kevin O’Keefe, of course), among others he has chosen. As a percentage of the legal blogosphere there are really very few law blogs that focus outside of a niche.

While it’s true that some blogs have descriptive names, such as this one, this is often done to give new readers a quick overview of where they landed. But it isn’t the name that creates the niche but the content. If I used my name for a title instead of my practice area, would I no longer be a niche?

 

December 26th, 2007

New York’s Million Dollar Dog Bite

Headlines like this always catch my eye: PUTTIN‘ $1M BITE ON DOG ‘OWNER’. It comes out of the New York Post and catches my eye for the obvious reason that NY personal injury law is my thing, and therefore the headline screams out something to me that the casual reader doesn’t see: The attorney who brought the million dollar lawsuit doesn’t really know personal injury law.

How do I know this? Because in New York you aren’t allowed anymore to make that monetary demand for damages when you file a lawsuit. (See: New York Cleans Up Claims Act.) We dumped that idiotic rule in the mid-80s for malpractice suits and dumped it in 2003 for the rest of the personal injury suits.

A read of the article shows absolutely nothing remarkable about the suit except for two things: The amount claimed and access to a publicist to pitch the story based on the very tangential pseudo-celebrity “news” that the defendant is a former wife of Morton Downey, Jr., a deceased talk talk show host who used a trash talk format.

I’m tempted to write about the story barking at me, it’s a real woofer, etc. but I find little humor when I see such headlines that ultimately disparage the profession, since the article doesn’t specify any damages worthy of such a demand. Moreover, such articles alter the perceptions of potential litigants to unreasonably think that every claim will result in a million dollar result. The law just doesn’t work that way.

 

December 21st, 2007

Random Notes

The Center for Justice and Democracy sends some must-read “fanmail” to the American Tort “Reform” Association, based on its “dishonest” Judicial Hellholes “report,” which essentially surveyed its own big business membership to find out which jurisdictions were least likely to afford immunity for negligent conduct (via TortDeform);

Legal Literacy hosts Blawg Review #139;

Law, risk and insurance meet up at the Cavalcade of Risk, hosted by American Consumer News;

David Harlow hosts the Health Wonk Review at HealthBlawg;

CIGNA Insurance waffles on a liver transplant for a girl, and she dies. (The Consumerist);

The Vioxx setlment is showing cracks, as some of the plaintiff’s with better cases are opting out (Pharmalot) and the lawyers face the predicted ethical issues of recommending settlements (Ted Frank at Point of Law rounded up the posts on November 13th, at the 9th bullet point);

NYT–Study Shows Marathons Aren’t Likely to Kill You (whew).

 

December 20th, 2007

Is the Legal Blogosphere Saturated? Fat Chance!

Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy thinks that legal blogosphere has hit its saturation point. He couldn’t be more wrong.

Kerr writes, without citation, that “For the most part this was a year of little growth or even a slight decline among law blogs.”

I thought that was crazy when I read it, but then I saw Dan Solove at Concurring Opinions agree with him. He also did so without citation to any empirical data, other than his group’s own traffic and that traffic has almost doubled in the past year! But, he goes on to say, that the big will just get bigger, and the little niche guys (like me or Scott Greenfield who also clearly disagrees), won’t really go anywhere. He writes, “There are so many blogs that a person can read, and many folks have found their favorites now and are content,” as if the number of blog readers is some static number instead of a dynamic one. His opinion on the future doesn’t even mention the practicing lawyers who are opening up their own internet outposts.

Now I know that real data is hard to come by, so I’m not too critical, but I think these professors need to look outside their ivory towers.

Here is why they are not just wrong, but very, very wrong, and here is what you will see in the future:

First the present, from my own niche: According to Justia there are 33 New York blogs. The ABA Journal‘s Blawg Directory lists 41 New York blogs. According to the ABA, however, there are 147,096 lawyers in New York. I, for one, see a bit of room for growth with that disparity.

But wait, there’s much more. The New York State Trial Lawyers Association has about 4,500 members that handle predominantly personal injury matters. There must easily be 10,000 lawyers in New York who handle them (or think they can handle them) as many are not members. Yet I can count on one hand the number of my brethren covering the subject on blogs.

Rather than being saturated, I think the legal blogosphere is in its infancy.

Now here is the future: There are precious few (if any) group blogs for practicing lawyers. The group blogs belong to the law school set. This will change. Someone, perhaps myself, will start gathering in more practicing lawyers for a group blog, perhaps modeled on the Huffington Post (TurkewitzTimes, anyone?) These lawyer/bloggers will be collected through the growing use of listserves, where small practitioners share tips. It is the perfect format for those who want to opine occasionally without the need to keep their blog up constantly. There will be several of these, and they will rival anything that currently exists.

Saturated? Stagnant? Profs. Kerr and Solove (and David Hoffman before that), you guys ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Links to this post:

blawg review #140
the blawg review is a weekly review of the best law-related posts from a variety of blogs. having enjoyed hosting blawg review #103 (the baseblawg review) in april, i eagerly volunteered to host another installment. …

posted by Jonathan Frieden @ December 24, 2007 9:16 AM

the state of the – *yawn*
it seems like every month or so, one of these posts makes the rounds [that’s five already; six if you count this. there’s room for two more in my phrase. who wants to step up?] of the blogosphere. can the blogosphere survive yet another …
posted by Gideon @ December 20, 2007 9:46 PM