Belly Up to the Bar V

Welcome to Belly Up to the Bar V. Based on the few submissions received for this week's edition, I'd say the legal field has a lot of ground to make up before we can compare ourselves to those medical guys and gals that are putting together one Grand Round after another.

Accordingly, why not follow a successful model. The following scope (as originally presented here) seems to have worked before:

Remember, the target audience here is NOT other [legal] bloggers, or people in the [legal] industry. It's the educated but [non-legal readers] coming from general-interest blogs. So write for that audience, if only for this one post (even if your blog is about [poultry law]). The idea is to introduce the wider world to the growing [legal] blogosphere -- the [lawyers, judges, paralegals, administrators, law students, and clients] who blog.

Personally speaking, the Grand Rounds have provided me an excellent introduction to the world of medical blogs. Hopefully, Belly Up to the Bar can grow into the same resource for the legal field and will serve as a tool for introducing the general public to the blawgosphere.

Despite the lack of a concerted effort, we are still generating a tremendous amount of writing that fulfills this objective. The following represents my effort at finding this week's crop.

Problems?? With the law!?
Musclehead started a great discussion when he theorized that "the legal profession has taken the notion of zealous representation to mean whatever the client wants," which, in turn, has led to mixed-up priorities for lawyers.

Notes from the (Legal) Underground responded with an opinion that over-the-top advertising has done more to harm the profession than over-zealous representation, drawing out Evan's old sparring partner--the blawger formerly known as the Ethical Esquire.

Based on this arithmetic from Yale Law School, it looks like new associates in BIG LAW don't have time to be concerned with things such as advertising and zealous representation. It's enough to turn The Prejudicial Effect and Preaching to the Perverted away from BIG LAW. Minor Wisdom noted the chart and his law partner, Bradley Parker, expanded the conversation to discuss law's dirty little secret.

Meanwhile, Scheherazade Fowler witnessed another path when she was in Miami last week.

Speaking of hip lawyers, Ernie the Attorney was profiled last week by JDBliss. And, speaking of bliss, JCA's dogged pursuit of law review was finally rewarded.

Apparently, considering rules to live by was prevalent last week, as noted by Lawtech Guru and Warren Buffett (admittedly not legally-related, but worth the time it takes to read it).

Getting Some Work Done
Back at the ranch, Structured Settlement started a Wikipedia entry on his specialty. The Wired GC was on a roll, first discussing BitTorrent and the Law and then 1-Click Lawyer Referrals (which was first noted by Kevin O'Keefe).

Tom Mighell promises some "highly scientific analysis of the blawg-o-sphere" and some statistics in the next week or two. And, finally, J. Matthew Buchanan has produced an excellent primer on patent reform.

If you are up to the task, take a shot at producing a post for submission in next week's Belly Up to the Bar. When it's done, send it here and I'll make sure it gets included in the next round.

Many thanks to Kevin at Tech Law Advisor for taking the initiative to get this started!

Posted by AJR at February 4, 2005 04:36 PM