Making Law, Scoring Points

by Jim Copland and the indefatigable editor of Point of Law

Walter, Ted, Jim, and other tort warriors will be teaming up to bring you Blawg Review #56, with all the group spirit of PointOfLaw.com. This web magazine was founded in June 2004 by the Manhattan Institute Center for Legal Policy, under the leadership of Overlawyered.com’s Walter Olson and his Manhattan Institute colleague Jim Copland. Joining in their efforts was Walter’s Overlawyered co-contributor Ted Frank, then a practicing attorney at O’Melveny and Myers and now the director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Liability Project, which has signed up to co-sponsor the Point of Law effort.

Among the blawgers on Point of Law’s Forum are folks you may know from elsewhere, including Larry Ribstein, Martin Grace, Tom Kirkendall, and Jonathan Wilson. Frequent contributors also include top torts and ethics professors like Michael Krauss, Lester Brickman, and Richard Epstein; and empirical scholars like Daniel Kessler and Alex Tabarrok. Not just a blawg, Point of Law hosts periodic point-counterpoint featured discussions and biweekly columns of reprinted or original material.

Sortable by topic, the website is also designed to be a research tool, and it includes topical write-ups, PDF versions of current and classic articles hand-selected by the editors, and a bibliography with synopses of key torts literature. The site even has four downloadable chapters of Walter Olson’s first book, The Litigation Explosion!

The folks at Point of Law have been keeping one eye on the plaintiffs’ bar, and the other on everything from judicial reform to vaccine fears to racial politics in Hawaii. But even if your field is far from torts—even or especially if you’re a plaintiffs’ lawyer—send in your submissions. Your only risk is rejection: we promise you won’t be sued.