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Monday, October 09, 2006

Law - More on: "Law blogs raising prickly ethical issues"

Yesterday the ILB posted excerpts from a National Law Journal article headlined "Law blogs raising prickly ethical issues."

Today the WSJ Blog links to the same article, in an entry titled "Should Lawyers’ Blogs Be Subject to Advertising Rules?" But WSJ blogger Peter Lattman goes one step further. He writes:

As a sampling, check out these blogs: China Law Blog, Silicon Valley Media Law blog, and the E. Coli blog. Do these constitute lawyer advertising that should be subject to regulation?
Interestingly, he gets a quick response back from the owner of the China Law Blog, who makes some good points:
I reviewed the other two blogs and I ended up spending quite a bit of time on them simply because I found them informative and interesting. I only hope you put my blog in their company because you see our blogs as similar, rather than contrasting.

I do not consider either of these blogs to constitute advertising. Sure, they may bring in business for the two law firms, but they do so by convincing their readers that these lawyers know their subject area — which I already knew about both firms.

If these two blogs are going to be considered advertising, we should start considering all lawyer written articles to be advertising as well. What about speaking at seminars?

Some of law blogs probably do constitute advertising, but I find it hard to believe those blogs have much of a readership. How many people will return to a lawyer advertising site?

Which leads to “my” revolutionary idea which seems to work well for almost everyone except lawyers: TRUST THE PEOPLE; LET THE MARKET DECIDE.

I would add to that - look at two of the most important new informational tools lawyers now have, in my opinion, for keeping totally current with law at the national level, How Appealing and SCOTUSblog.

The first is the output of Howard Bashman, a solo appellate practitioner; the second was started by Tom Goldstein, who does mostly U.S. Supreme Court appeals (who this year moved from his boutique firm to head the new Supreme Court practice group of a main-stream law firm).

Both have gained national reputations, at least among their peers in the legal community, as a result of their "must-read" blogs. I think their stories serve to reinforce the points made above by the China Law Blog.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 9, 2006 04:52 PM
Posted to General Law Related