Seek Professional Help

Brett Trout, the author of Internet Laws Affecting Your Company, is hosting Blawg Review #106 next at Blawg IT.

If you feel this blog speaks to you, you must seek professional help (heck, why not talk to a patent lawyer while you are at it). If you see something you like, join in the conversation.

Today, in a post titled Link Love and the Practice of Law, Brett writes about his own experience as a blogger.

The best thing about blogging is that it naturally weeds out the bad eggs. Blogs make you transparent. If you are honest, that shows through. If you are nice, people can see that. You can try to hide it, but your blog will eventually bring out your true personality. Blogging is putting a new face on an oft criticized profession. People are using blogs to sort the wheat from the chaff and find the best lawyers out there. Based upon the lawyer bloggers I have met, and continue to meet, I have a new found optimism that the legal profession is more civil, more collegial, smarter and more caring than it was even five years ago, and it is getting more so every day.

A finalist in the 2006 Weblog Awards, Blawg IT is definitely worth reading often and adding to your blogrolls and feed readers if you haven't already done so.

Connie Crosby

Thanks to Simon Fodden for this interesting image of Connie Crosby, host of this week's Blawg Review #105.

About the experience of hosting Blawg Review, Connie writes at the group blog for Canadian law librarians and infoscience professioals, Slaw.ca:

I wish I had time to add in some pretty visuals to help break it up, but it was already a monumental task:

* I reviewed 60+ submitted posts, and wrote annotations for those included. To be fair, most people submitted comments which I cribbed from. But I still wanted to have a look at what I was linking to.

* added about 6-8 of my own posts from blogs I read regularly.

* ensured all links worked correctly. Some of the links broke when I copied everything from my text editor into my blog software, so I had to go through it a second time. If you find any broken links, please let me know!

* catalogued each post according to Library of Congress schedule for K - Law. I am not a cataloguer so for most this meant looking at the classification scheme and comparing with books of a similar nature in the Library of Congress catalogue. No doubt most are at least somewhat imprecise. But I thought this would be a fun touch.

* went through the whole post to ensure the formatting was consistent. I'm sure it's not perfect. But therein lies madness…I am leaving it now unless obvious fatal errors appear.

In total, not including researching background on the UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day and the Library of Congress Classification Outline, this probably took about 10 hours over several days. Wow.

Read Blawg Review #105 here.

Linkworthy

10 things they didn't tell you about blogging, a thoughtful blog post by Rajesh Setty, includes a secret that's at the heart of the success of Blawg Review, the carnival of law bloggers:

7. If you want to succeed, you HAVE to start making others succeed.

You want to succeed in your blogging initiatives. Others want to do the same. If everyone thinks that ONLY they want to succeed, it will be hard work for everyone. Please spread the word about other blogs. You don't have to promote other blogs blatantly. A little bit of "link love" will go a long way. Don't worry. People will reciprocate if you write "linkworthy" content.

Brett Trout, who will be hosting Blawg Review #106 on April 30th, has compiled the Top 10 Ways to Commit Malpractice with Your Blog. Now, that's linkworthy.

Indefatigable Sheryl Schelin

Many of us remember when former in-house lawyer Sheryl Schelin hosted Blawg Review #63 at The Airport Lawyer. Well, now that her solo practice has taken off, she's back with a focus on employment law and a fresh Blawg Review #104 at the SC Employment Law Blog.

Although she's apparently dog tired from this past week of law blog reviewing, Sheryl already has plans to be back again on August 13th to host Blawg Review on her Inspired Solo lawyer blog, featured recently on Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog as the site of the week.

Hosting must be fun; this powerblogger has booked yet another date to host Blawg Review a record fourth time during National Consumer Protection Week on her SC Bankruptcy & Consumer Law Blog. Four issues of Blawg Review on different law blogs by the same lawyer -- indefatigable!

Who's On First?

Jon Frieden, our designated hitter for Blawg Review #103, hits one right out of the park this week at his E-Commerce Law blog. His practice includes the litigation of intellectual property matters and other complex commercial disputes and the counseling of e-commerce businesses. Oh, did we mention he likes baseball too?

If only Monica Bay, our resident baseball editor, had anticipated a beisbol theme this week, she might have delivered this pitch.

And David Giacalone is sorry he arrived late to the game, adding on his weblog f/k/a:

If we had known that Jonathan Friedan was constructing Blawg Review #103 around a baseball theme, we would have reminded him of f/k/a’s recent mixture of our beathless punditry with one-breath poems from the new, critically-acclaimed volume Baseball Haiku (prior post) (for example, here, here, there). We might have even noted humbly that one of the poets included in the anthology is indeed a legal weblogger. Having missed that opportunity, your Editor doesn’t want you to miss out on Blawg Review #103 at Jonathan’s E-Commerce Law weblog.

bottom of the 8th
eight determined drunks
get the wave going . . .

…………………………….. by tom clausen - Baseball Haiku (2007)

Easter Monday
a day-late basket filled
with half-price candy

……………………………… by dagosan, f/k/a David Giacalone

The Law Blog Review

We're changing the name of Blawg Review to The Law Blog Review. Thanks to David Giacalone and Kevin O'Keefe for their persistence in arguing for this name change. I suppose it was only a matter of time.

Marking this momentous day for us with a very special presentation is this week's host, George M. Wallace, at his weblog, a fool in the forest. George, an accomplished wordsmith in his own right, is credited with our tagline -- It's not just a blog carnival; it's the law!