Blawg Review

It's not just a blog carnival; it's the law! ~ a fool in the forest

Previewing Blawg Review #12

Kevin J. Heller, an intellectual property, technology and trademark litigation attorney in New York City New Jersey, is hosting the next Blawg Review at the new and improved Tech Law Advisor blog.

Kevin's one of a handful of lawyers who was blogging even before Denise Howell coined the word blawg. Heck, in his introduction post in August 2002, he even calls it a "web log" with the archaic two word variation of weblog.
The goals of the Tech Law Advisor web log are to provide information, resources and news commentary on issues at the intersection of Law, Technology and Liberty, especially to point out those times where individuals are attempting to use "law" to hinder and trample the rights of others; whether this be the right to share music, link to other web sites or to simply contract freely. Its long term goal is to help promote democratic values in a digital age, to study how new media alter culture and society and to investigate how law and technology interact.
Years later, this blawgfather is still living on the bleeding edge of the blogosphere. A scary place for most lawyers, Kevin is right in his element, applying technology in the practise of law.

Why TechLawADVISOR?
[client] finds it frustrating that his lawyers want to come in, solve a problem, and then get out -- but don't want to learn about the business, don't want to really work with the client and develop a relationship as an advisor, and don't really want to act as a team
Heller is a real "team player" when it comes to working with other lawyers on innovative projects like Blawgcast.com, and Blawg Review itself, which found its legs as a collaborative internet project for law bloggers based on Kevin's initiative and the "proof of concept" he started on his own―with the moniker "Belly Up to the Bar". Did we mention he's got a great sense of humor?

Overlawyered on Blawg Review

Walter Olson, who can't get enough of lawyers, really knows how to get the most out of participation in Blawg Review.

In a well-crafted post, he notes that Blawg Review #11 is up at Al Nye the Lawyer Guy, who picked up one of his posts from Overlawyered this week. Walter points to a couple of highlights of this week's issue that should be of interest to the many readers of Overlawyered. Much traffic followed the links back to Al Nye the Lawyer Guy.

By the way, did we mention that Blawg Review will be hosted at Overlawyered on November 21st? I look forward to seeing if Walter picks only blawg posts that are consistent with the Overlawyered thesis. If so, that would be quite different from a typical Blawg Review.

Independence Day Special

You won't believe who we got to agree to host the special issue of Blawg Review on the 4th of July. A lawyer by profession, he's arguably one of the most important political leaders in American history. It was a condition of hosting Blawg Review that we wouldn't identify who our mystery host would be, prior to publication on July 4, suffice to say that he's connected to the father of the Declaration of Independence in some way. And don't be surprised if this issue of Blawg Review ends up mentioned in a book someday.

Because this is a very special issue for Blawg Review, we're looking for submissions of law blog posts on topics that are appropriate for consideration on Independence Day. Topics might include the Patriot Act, civil rights, the Declaration of Independence, separation of powers, federalism and other constitutional issues, freedom and democracy, war and peace, American political culture and heritage, and anything else you think should be considered on the 4th of July.

For his Blawg Review #13, on Independence Day, our host will consider any law blog post written in the past year on a topic of interest for this special. Just follow these submission guidelines to get involved in this special celebration. Please spread the word.

Previewing Blawg Review #11

Al Nye the Lawyer Guy is among the best attorneys in the nation, but he doesn't know very many of them. Even though he's practiced law for over 25 years he is outstanding among his peers who blog because "lawyers typically are horrible writers" in Maine.

Al Nye the Lawyer Guy is a great read for lawyers who read blawgs and, for those who read books, he has book reviews too. And he also writes about law on his other blog, the Maine Divorce Law Blog, which is written as a guide to all aspects of Maine family law, including divorce, separation, child support, mediation, spousal support, child custody and property rights, and search engine optimization.

This guy Al Nye really knows how to blog; so if you want to increase your Google PageRank you'd be doing yourself a huge favor by submitting one of your posts for Blawg Review this week. Just send it in right now and over the weekend Al Nye will run with it.

What is a blog carnival?

a guest post by Bora Zivkovic of Science And Politics

Blog Carnivals And The Future Of Journalism

I recently assembled the fifth edition of the monthly Meta-Carnival, a round-up of all known blog carnivals. ... Bigwig of Silflay Hraka, the inventor of the very first carnival (as well as the term "carnival"), used to collect them but has recently decided to just link to my latest edition of the Meta-Carnival, as has the Editor of Blawg Review.

What is a blog carnival?

A blog carnival is a blog-post that contains links to posts on other blogs. How does that differ from a linkfest, or for that matter from most of the stuff that early blogs (and many blogs today) routinely did? In the early days of blogs, there was no original content - blogs WERE collections of links. How are carnivals different?

Rounding the carnivals up every month, in addition to frequent hosting, sending entries and linking to new editions, gave me, I think, some insights into what makes a carnival and especially what makes a succesful carnival. I'll now attempt to systematize what I think I learned. I will repeatedly use analogies to hard-copy journalism and to physical spaces.

What makes a carnival successful?

In order to succeed, a blog carnival needs to: a) have a clearly stated purpose, b) appear with predictable regularity, c) rotate editors, d) have a homepage and archives, and e) have more than one person doing heavy lifting. Let me go over these one at a time.

A) Purpose. Several carnivals, particularly the older ones (e.g., Carnival of Vanities), are all-purpose "Best of..." blog-newspapers and magazines. Nothing wrong with it, of course. NY Times is an all-purpose newspaper and Time is an all-purpose magazine. However, nobody collects NY Times as a prized collection: once read, the issue gets recycled or used for lining the bird cage. Similarly, having a post on - or even hosting - such a carnival may bring you an avalanche of hits for a few days but is highly unlikely to bring you new regular readers. If you prefer a physical analogy, it is like going downtown or to a park when the weather is nice and bumping into a lot of nice people, yet it is unlikely that you will exchange e-mail addresses with any of them, or ever see them again. This was a chance encounter.

Contrast that to more narrowly focused carnivals (e.g., Grand Rounds for medicine and Nursing Moment for nursing). They are blog equivalents of specialty magazines or even technical journals. In physical space, they are analogous to political rallies, MeetUps, seminars, or even scientific conferences. These are the places to go when you are looking for people who share a specific interest with you. You are likely to exchange a lot of e-mail addresses because you want to stay in touch with such people. Sending an entry to a specialized carnival exposes you to bloggers who are inherently interested in your writing. Hosting one makes you even more visible (like giving a plenary lecture at a meeting) and after the temporary avalanche of hits subsides, you will realize you have acquired a number of new regular readers, bloggers who put you on their blogrolls and on their RSS feeds, who keep coming back and linking to your posts. This is how a community is built.

B) Regularity. It really does not matter how often a carnival is posted as long as it is posted at regular intervals. Blog Of The Day and Funny Stuff are dailies. Most carnivals are weeklies. Some carnivals appear every two (e.g., Tangled Bank and Smarter Thank I) or every three weeks (e.g., History), or once a month (e.g., Balkans), or even quarterly (e.g., Carnivalesque and Carnival of Bad History). More narrowly focused a carnival, and more expertise it requires from the bloggers who submit their entries, less frequently the carnival can appear and still retain a decent size and a high level of quality of posts. Carnivals with unpredictable schedules tend to be neglected as unreliable. Can you imagine a newspaper that sometimes shows up on news-stands and sometimes does not? Ferdy, for instance, does not link to carnivals that have irregular schedules. Do it right, or don't do it.

C) Rotation. The first blogs in history were link-fests. Content appeared later. So, if you publish a blog-post that contains a bunch of links to other blogs, how is that a carnival? How is that different from just any other blog-post that is full of links? Even if you give it a name, and a theme and very regular schedule, it is only YOUR post. It better be a very creative and unique service to the blogging community (e.g., Friday Ark) or else nobody will come.

Most carnivals rotate hosts. Every issue is hosted by someone different. Some carnivals have definite "homes", yet the carnival makes regular trips to other blogs for guest-hosting (e.g., Carnival of Education, or Carnival of Sin). Best Of Me Symphony is always on the same blog, but the editor is always somebody else (a guest-editor), and that carnival is always done very well textually and visually and has earned a reputation over time.

Carnivals that are always hosted on the same blog, always by the same editor, and are sometimes irregular in scheduling tend to die off. Add to that linking primarily to posts chosen by the editor (e.g., Blog Tower and Carnival of Insanities) and I would not call it a carnival any more, but a vanity press. It is just a link-rich post by that person on that person's blog - something we all do at least occasionally.

D) Homepage and Archives. Whenever I assemble an issue of the Meta-Carnival, it takes me a few minutes to update carnivals with homepages and hours to update the carnivals without homepages. In a sense I am a "professional" while doing this search, but how about "amateurs"? They'll find it even harder. Imagine a new blogger who first discovers a carnival and reads an issue #23 or so, and wants to check out previous issues. If there is a homepage (or home-blog-post) that contains the archives of all previous issues, it is a breeze. If there is no such thing, the task is extremely difficult, in some cases impossible. Now imagine 50 years from now, when there is an issue #2523. Imagine the immensity of the archives and its value to historians. Start your archives now, while it is still relatively easy to have everything organized. If mainstream media hides its archives behind subscripton wall, while carnivals keep well-organized archives for free, guess who will be more relevant in the future?

E) Community Effort. On my own blog, I am the King. So are you on yours. Why should I come to your blog and submit to your iron-fist rule? One reason why carnivals hosted by a single blog/editor do not have wide readership and tend to whither away is because of a lack of a sense of ownership by a broader community. All the points above, e.g., a sense of purpose, rotation of hosts, regularity/predictability, and the existence of a central place and archives, tend to foster the sense of community. People find each other through the carnivals and keep coming back for more. They see how entering a carnival leads to an increase of regular readership, and hosting one even more so. The originator of the carnival wisely fades into the shadows and lets the carnival take a life of its own.

Carnivals as the Glue of the Blogging Community

There are two ways blogs in general and carnivals in particular can foster community. One is to introduce to each other people from all over the world who are interested in the same topic. I have written at length about this process, with a particular example of how blogging is going to change the future of science. In a sense, that is what one tends to think of first about the benefits of the Internet in general. If you have access to the Web, it does not matter who you are or where you are - you are an equal participant in the global endeavor, whatever that may be. If you like cats, you will meet other cat-lovers from all around the world at the Carnival of Cats.

The second way blogs foster community is on a local level - meeting people locally. This is particularly relevant for political organizing, and to some extent for doing business locally, but meeting local bloggers with similar hobbies and interests (or even dating!) is just around the corner. Geographically delineated carnivals help people in finding each other. So far, carnivals of Indian, Asian, Iraqi and Afghan, British, Canadian (separated into Lefty and Righty) and Balkan bloggers have been doing well. While Blogger, Google and Techorati estimate that there are about 10 million blogs worldwide, with thousands being started every day, I have heard recently that there are additional 10 million bloggers in China! I am assuming they developed their own software and are thus invisible to our search engines. However, those are still large land areas to cover. More recently, two even more narrowly local carnivals appeared (I guess a certain critical mass of bloggers needed to be attained first): North Carolina bloggers and Montana bloggers. These carnivals serve as virtual MeetUps, and often lead to real-life meetups as well as community action.

Lefty and Righty Carnivals

Why does it appear that conservative bloggers are dominating carnivals? It could be due to chance, or perhaps there is a reason, or perhaps this is just an illusion. Is it the greater connectivity of conservatives? Is it the greater individualism of liberals?

Let's look at it historically. The very first carnival, Carnival Of Vanities, was started by a conservative blogger and attracted primarily other conservative bloggers. How many liberals regularly read Silflay Hraka after all? So, this was natural.

For about a year, this was the only existing carnival. During this time, many conservatives got aquanted with the idea of a carnival and soon started a few new ones (e.g., Bonfire Of Vanities, Carnival of Capitalists, Blog Mela, and SEVERAL! Christian carnivals), while most liberals have still never heard of the concept. Another year passed. Once new carnivals got started around topics that have nothing to do with one's political persuasion, e.g., medicine (Grand Rounds), science (Tangled Bank), history, or philosophy, the liberal bloggers got gradually introduced to the concept.

Last year saw an explosion of new carnivals. Every month I have to add a few new ones to the Meta-Carnival (while also reporting on the demise of some). Is there a Liberal Carnival as an equivalent to and balance to the Carnival of Vanities? No. An early attempt was Blog Tower, but it violated all of the rules (A through E above) of successful carnivals and I doubt it will recover. A few weeks ago, the idea was broached on Crooked Timber (and a cool name - Speaker's Corner - was suggested), but nothing came out of it due to, I suspect, a conflict between the wish of Timberites to make it a Crooked Timber kind-of-thing, and the wish of others to have it community-run. Recently, a new (and excellent!) Carnival of Un-Capitalists was founded with an explicit purpose to counter the Carnival of Capitalists, i.e., to put together best posts about economic issues from a Progressive perspective. Canadian Liberals have the Cavalcade Of The Canucks, as a counterbalance to the Canadian Right wing's The Red Ensign.

Some recent carnivals are dominated by liberals, even though politics is not important for the topic. For instance, Carnival of the Godless, Skeptic's Circle, Carnival of Bad History and Tangled Bank tend to attract the folks from the reality-based community who are largely liberal. Carnivals of the Balkan bloggers and Montana bloggers are liberal due to chance: their founders are liberal and the first entries were naturally from other liberal blogs. Some other carnivals are pretty evenly balanced, e.g., carnivals of history, philosophy, kids, education, and Tar Heel Tavern (NC bloggers) are consciously kept politically balanced. Thus, while MSM may be perceived as liberal by the Right, and perceived as spineless sellouts to the Bush regime's propaganda machine by the Left, the carnivals, all in all, are pretty balanced. There is a complete range of opinions voiced from one extreme, through the moderate middle, to the other extreme.

I think that the New York Times of the Lefty blogosphere is DailyKos! Every year Markos Moulitzas gets irate when people nominate DailyKos for Koufax Awards in the category of "group blogs". He loudly proclaims that it is HIS blog. But, it is not. Not any more. Ever since he enabled Diaries, Kos has lost control of his blog. I personally almost never read the posts by Markos. I rarely ever go to the front page. But I go there often and read the Diaries. DailyKos has grown into the biggest and best carnival online today. It is the Carnival Of Record in a sense that NYTimes is a Newspaper of Record. Likewise, in comparison to DailyKos, Carnival of Vanities is like Washington Times: the main Righty outlet, but far from the influence of NYTimes.

Carnivals as Journalism

Blogs themselves, no matter what is written on them, are often thought of as "new journalism", a bottom-up kind of journalism that will complement (and keep on their toes) the better-funded top-down journalism of the MSM. With 10 million Chinese blogs and another 10 million blogs around the rest of the world, and the numbers rising fast, the amount of material on blogs is overwhelming. Daily news aggregators (like del.icio.us) and other blog aggregators are worthy attempts at sifting through the mass and concentrating worthy information in one place. Blog-specific search-engines, like Technorati (and the invention of Tags), is another attempt to organize the enormous amount of blog-generated information.

I have a hunch that in the future it will be the blog carnivals that will emerge as the online equivalents of hard-copy media. Carnivals organized around strong concepts, published on rigorous schedules, well-archived, and community-run will outlive their mushy competitors and become the online equivalents of not just TIME magazine, but also GQ, Vogue, Parenting, National Geographic, People, and, why not, Science and Nature.

Carnivals are still new and young. Most people are trying to be nice to each other. Hosts/editors are usually quite happy to publish links to every entry they get. However, this is already starting to change. With an increased popularity of carnivals and number of entries, the editors are starting to, well, editorialize. Recently, a host of the Carnival of Vanities, Dr.Zen, quite rightfully and forcefully slammed some shallow ideological pieces submitted to the carnival, resulting in quite a discontent in the conservative blog circles. Even more recently, an editor of Skeptic's Circle published but strongly criticized one of the entries, leading to an excellent discussion in the comments. The Modulator, host of the Friday Ark has very strict rules about what is accepted: only posts that contain photographs of extant animals. However, he still publishes the links to posts that are not accepted (e.g., fossils, drawings, plants, bacteria, etc.) in a separate "chapter" of the carnival. I have hosted nine carnivals so far and once I decided to not include and entry that was a pure piece of political propaganda, chockfull of erroneous "facts" and much misleading language. I never mentioned that I did it. It was my editorial prerogative to chose what not to include in the carnival. I assume that other hosts have done the same over time.

What I was trying to do with the previous paragraph was to illustrate that many carnivals are now in the process of leaving the initial phase of sweet-tempered grab-bags of whatever people submit, and entering a phase where editors are starting to pay attention to quality. The "rules" of submission are being tightened. Entries are being denied. Editors are starting to editorialize. The comments are not just "good job on hosting the carnival, Bob!" but actual discussions of the pieces presented in the carnival. The carnivals are now well on the road to becoming real journals, but, importantly, they will ALWAYS remain bottom-up community-run journals, and that is what is going to revolutionize the world of journalism.

Update 07/27/05: Bora Zivkovic, who wrote this guest post, recently penned a follow-up article about the current state of blog carnivals—a pithy meta-carnival in which he calls it like he sees it.

Blawg Review is included in his overview among a select few "carnivals that are doing everything right and more" to quote Zivkovic. High praise indeed, which we appreciate, but we're not sure we agree with his impression that posts submitted to Blawg Review "come mostly from conservative bloggers." Others might have thought just the opposite. As a matter of fact, we think that the submissions to Blawg Review are as diverse as the persuasions of lawyers in the general population (not in the prison sense).

Previewing Blawg Review #10

Evan D. Brown, a Chicago attorney, keeps tabs on legal developments involving the Internet and new technologies at InternetCases.com.

Evan's presentation of the facts and law takes the form of headnotes with entertaining fact situations and curious applications of the law.
It's not too often that the courts get to pass judgment on the really important issues of our time. But in its March 24 decision in the case of Vogel v. Felice, the California Court of Appeal has determined that calling someone a "dumb ass" does not give rise to liability for defamation. "A statement that [a person] is a 'Dumb Ass,' even first among 'Dumb Asses,' communicates no factual proposition susceptible of proof or refutation."
And just when everyone is concerned about identity theft, wondering why dumb ass banks don't simply use encryption software to protect sensitive personal data, Evan reports on another interesting case.
A recent decision of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota in the case of State v. Levie, however, is worth noting in that the decision affirmed a controversial evidentiary ruling. The trial court judge had allowed into evidence the mere fact that the defendant had the encryption software PGP installed on his computer. The judge had determined that the presence of the software was relevant evidence to show that the defendant had engaged in improper conduct with a minor.
InternetCases.com is an informative journal of the latest developments in the law of technology, presented as an entertaining review of current case law. We're looking forward to Evan Brown's Blawg Review #10.

PHOSITA

a powerblog review by Anita Campbell

Phosita is an intellectual property blog and part of that special genre known as the law blog, or "blawg." It is the blog of the Oklahoma and Washington based law firm of Dunlap, Codding & Rogers. Douglas Sorocco, along with Melody Wirz, Neal Rogers and Julianna Deligans, are the bloggers.

Phosita has one of the most intriguing "about" sections of any blog out there, because it is a little lesson about the law:
"PHOSITA is everyone and no one in particular. PHOSITA is an intellectual property blawg or patent blog. In patent law, PHOSITA is a mythical person of ordinary skill in the art. Why is PHOSITA important? In order to be patentable, an invention must not be obvious to PHOSITA. This blawg (legal blog) aims to provide intellectual property information, explantion and advice that is of interest to the PHOSITA in all of us."
Law blogs are a unique animal. There are hundreds of them -- maybe more. They tend to be erudite and substantive. Yet they often have a kind of intellectual humor and wit, and can be very entertaining. Take, for instance, this recent post from Phosita about moleskine notebooks, which is not strictly about legal matters but seems right at home on the site:
It's Friday (TGIF) and I must admit, I am part of a cult. I am a Moleskine'ista. There isn't much I can do about it. These little notebooks have been with me all over the world and back. *** I have waived it at irate cabbies, hidden behind it while lounging over coffee, and used it to make a point during a speech. I once waived it so furiously during a seminar that the participants started giggling and offered up a resounding Hallelujah -- I guess I looked like some type of southern preacher with my bible in hand.
Some of the posts cover technical legal issues, and probably will be most meaningful and useful to other lawyers. And apparently they are. Phosita has been named by Managing Intellectual Property as one of the top ten intellectual property blogs on the net.

For non-lawyers, especially existing clients of the firm, a blog like Phosita can be useful, but in a different way. Many lawyers -- not necessarily the ones behind Phosita, but just in general -- can seem intimidating in the typical courtroom or office setting where most clients see them. Reading a post about something as interesting and human as a passion for moleskines helps humanize the attorneys and eventually lead to closer relationships. And along the way, it doesn't hurt to pick up a few tidbits about trademark law, etc.

Phosita has done a nice job integrating its blog with the law firm's website. For instance, each of the attorneys who post on the site are identified by full name, with links to their email addresses and their biographies. The law firm name and addresses are also clearly identified, along with a link to the firm's main website. And on the firm's website, there is a prominent menu item for the blog. The most recent blog post is also reproduced on the website home page. The lawyers have done a better job leveraging their blog for marketing purposes than many marketing professionals!

The Power of Phosita is in the way it puts a human face on the lawyers behind it. At the same time, it serves as a valuable resource to other attorneys interested in intellectual property law.

Blawg Review #9

Originally hosted by JMoore on JurisPundit

Welcome, everyone, to Blawg Review #9! While we won't be serving up any Scalia bobbleheads anytime soon, Blawg Review is still the best place to find out what everyone in the legal community is discussing. This week we have everything from Paris Hilton to Supreme Court speculations. Of course, that's just a normal week for A3G.

I hope you enjoy, because I am exhausted. As the regulars have noted, posting has been sparse lately due to my recent marriage and honeymoon (PLEASE do not attempt to mail any tupperware or picture frames...I assure you that the Mrs. and I have enough to last a lifetime). In any event, on to the material...

Who's Riding the Pine?

Everyone is abuzz with speculation on potential Supreme Court appointments, so this week's Blawg Review shouldn't miss out. To start us off, Jon of Outside the Whale provides a defense of an appointment of Michael McConnell to the Chief Justice.

Next we have a glowing endorsement of disturbingly prolific Richard Posner by Kaime Wagner of Prawfsblawg. Apparently not everyone share's this view, as Prof. Bainbridge explains here.

While we're on the topic of of chief justices, guess what's missing from this list of the "100 Greatest Americans"? That's right, as Jaybeas Corpus what's missing is that NO chief justice made the cut.

Stepping down from the high court we have the aptly titled blog, Nomination Watch, discussing what it would be like to live in Judge William Pryor's America.

Advice for Lawyers, Law Profs, Law Students, Law Firms, and Everyone Else

Monica Bay offers a scolding for those that unfairly employ stereotypes.

Robert Williamson over at South Carolina Trial Law Blog offers some clever advice on how to use your opponents expert witness to your advantage. If that wasn't enough, Robert's coblogger Dave Swanner has more in store for you here.

To consolidate or not to consolidate (student loans, that is), is the question Kristine at Divine Angst is answering.

According to Gerry Riskin (and Sun Tzu), a good idea for many law firms would be to hire an outside board member or a client mentor who is a not a lawyer.

AJLevy of Out-of-the-Box Lawyering directs out attention to Amy Cohen's latest article which offers this advice for law proffesor's: Get some real experience practicing the law.

Jeremy Richey encourages the good people of Illinois to stop underfunding legal aid programs.

E.L. Eversman of Automuse suggests that those concerned with the effects of Real ID on privacy should lighten up. After all, it's these people that routinely pay for the privilege of displaying information about themselves on their license plates.

Searching for the Truth

J. Craig Williams discusses study by Dartmouth researches which claims that it's not lawsuits causing malpractice premiums to rise, but, rather, it is a direct consequence of the insurance companies' decrease in investment returns.

To consolidate or not to consolidate (student loans, that is), is the question Kristine at Divine Angst is answering.

According to Gerry Riskin (and Sun Tzu), a good idea for many law firms would be to hire an outside board member or a client mentor who is a not a lawyer.

AJLevy of Out-of-the-Box Lawyering directs out attention to Amy Cohen's latest article which offers this advice for law proffesor's: Get some real experience practicing the law.

Jeremy Richey encourages the good people of Illinois to stop underfunding legal aid programs.

E. L. Eversman of Automuse suggests that those concerned with the effects of Real ID on privacy should lighten up. After all, it's these people that routinely pay for the privilege of displaying information about themselves on their license plates.

Substantive Discussion of Case Law, Statutes, and Regulations!

For the scoop on the new FTC rule requiring businesses and individuals to take appropriate measures to dispose of sensitive information derived from consumer reports, check out Michael Harris's post on his Employment Blawg. Also available is a reply post authored by coblogger George Lenard. (For the HR junkies in the crowd, check out George's round-up of HR/Employment posts.)

Evan Brown over at InterCases.com informs us that if your GPS system fails in your car, you probably don't have a good case for consumer fraud.

There's a showdown between civil and military judges over an Air Force rape case and Jag Central has the scoop.

Speaking of showdowns, the battle between the FEC and the blogosphere is flaring up again. Over at Likelihood of Confusion, Ron Coleman is discussing a new penumbra: "Internet Free Speech."

Infamy or Praise points us to Kenneth Anderson's forthcoming article in Policy Review discussing the ramifications of the application of international law in the controversial Roper v. Simmons case.

Commentary on the Legal Practice

The Dark Goddess of Replevin discusses the readability of the new pattern interrogatories in her jurisdiction.

There's been some complaining lately that law firms are getting very secretive with their associate info in order to ward off poachers. Monica Bay has taken the time to grade the AmLaw top 10 on associate hiding.

David Giacalone, the haikuEsq, points us in the direction of the Law In Popular Culture (LPOP) Collection, where "you'll find information and materials on how the legal profession is portrayed in the our modern culture -- novels, posters, movies, tv, quotations, and much more."

Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. has released the results of his readership poll. Furthermore, a review of Adam Smith, Esq. has been provided by Lawcrossing.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

What better way to protest the Phillipino education system than to lie nude in the street? The Sassy Lawyer has the goods.

I'm starting to like how those LexThink guys are thinking. Who wouldn't like to see bikini clad Paris Hilton endorsing a new law firm billing model? Like the Greatest American Lawyer, I just can't see how law firm ads with Pam Anderson could possibly diminish the institution of law.

Well, that's all for now. There was loads more stuff to pile in, but time and utter exhaustion require this week's Blawg Review to end here. Be sure to check out next week's edition hosted by Evan Brown at Internetcases.com.

Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

Posted by JMoore on JurisPundit at 3:14 AM

Previewing Blawg Review #9

JurisPundit is the work of an anonymous law student blogger. Beyond law school, JMoore says he has big plans to practice in a large firm toiling away as just another cog in the machine of the corporate world. That is, until he can break away from the rat-race to start his own firm, or join a smaller firm, so he can enjoy the finer things in life: namely, his family, the Dallas Cowboys, and polka music.

As for the family, there's magic in the air, and we here at Blawg Review would like to take this opportunity to congratulate JMoore and the wife, who are on their honeymoon this week. C'mon now, don't make him spend his honeymoon looking for good blawg posts. He promises to get a great Blawg Review #9 together for us on Monday, if everyone will just help out at bit more with recommendations this week. Please submit at least one post—more if you see some interesting posts while browsing your favorite blawgs. Let's take this opportunity to introduce some new law bloggers to the mix this week.

We're confident he'll come back refreshed, feeling like a stud, and will be happy to get back to his first love—blogging. This isn't his only blog, but JurisPundit was created to improve upon and experiment with his writing skills. He admits that lately it has devolved into a "typical, run-of-the-mill blog, trolling through news reports looking for paragraphs about which [he] can write short quips." I think now we know why.

He's hopeful that Blawg Review #9 on Monday will add to JurisPundit an interesting mix of new creative writing and great legal thinking. For himself, he's thought long and hard about why he blogs in the first place.
What attracted me to the blogosphere was the notion of a free market for ideas, where the common man can share ideas with the rest of the world without institutional influences. For example, if I were to write columns for the New York Times, the readership, whether I deserve it or not, would be there. The same can be said about the academic world. However, in the blogosphere, ideas are rewarded by the market. While it may not be a perfect market for ideas, it is, by far, the closest we have found to date. I had a discussion earlier today with a professor about whether the blogosphere was democratic or not. I believe that the blogosphere is an extension of democracy in that a successful democracy depends upon the churning of ideas among the people in order for them to reach informed decisions. A marketplace for ideas helps this process occur.
It's not surprising that JMoore would be among those great legal thinkers who support Blawg Review. Where is there a more democratic marketplace for law bloggers' ideas?

If you would like to share your ideas with everyone who follows this traveling carnival of the law bloggers, simply submit one of your best recent posts or send in a link to another blogger's post you think deserves special attention. Just follow these submission guidelines. It's easy to submit a post, and fun to get reviewed.