Archive for December, 2005

Underneath Their Robes Again

Dec 31, 2005 Noticias

Article III Groupie, recognized as Persona of the Year in the recent Blawg Review Awards, is back at Underneath Their Robes.

It’s a good Newsday in the blogosphere:

David Lat, who raised eyebrows in November when it was revealed that he was the author of a spicy blog in which he claimed to be a young female lawyer, has left his job as an assistant federal prosecutor in Newark.

Lat, 30, sent an interoffice e-mail Friday to fellow staff at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, telling them that is was his last day. He told friends and colleagues that he would soon be going to Washington, D.C., to work.

Lat declined comment when contacted by The Star-Ledger of Newark. He simply wished a happy new year and said, “You’ll be hearing from me more.”

Welcome back, A3G. If you’d like to talk with us about how you felt being Persona of the Year, just give us a shout.

Volume 1 Blawg Review 2005

Dec 29, 2005 Noticias

Links to all the issues of Blawg Review in 2005.

Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects

Dec 27, 2005 Noticias

Hell hath no Fury like a woman scorned. E.L. Eversman, the AutoMuse, writes to say, “Excellent Blawg Review Awards!”

I might have known that that wench Themis would turn her nose up at awarding anything to a Muse. She was always jealous of us. Between the Graces and the Muses we did all the real work, but who gets all the glory? That’s right, little Miss Justice and those god-awful Fates and Furies. Now, I ask you, is that any way to run a world? I’ll bet when I start the Nemesis blawg everyone will sit up and take notice. Terpsichore is upstairs crying her eyes out, Clio is drowning her heartache in ice cream, but Erato is screaming for a rematch after reading you gave Creative Law Blog to that Haiku-wonk.

In Greek mythology, Nemesis is the goddess of divine justice and vengeance. Her anger is directed toward human transgression of the natural right order of things, and of the arrogance causing it. Nemesis pursues the insolent and the wicked with inflexible vengeance. She is portrayed as a serious looking woman, in her left hand a whip, a rein, a sword, or a pair of scales. In the Hellenistic period she was portrayed with a wheel. Heh, indeed.

Blawg Review Awards 2005

Dec 25, 2005 Noticias

Whenever awards are handed out by one’s peers, it is often said that it’s an honor just to be nominated. Nowhere is that more true, perhaps, than in Blawg Review, where a different host each week recommends the best recent law blog posts for everyone’s attention.

At year end, we take a break from our regular issues of Blawg Review, while Lady Justice passes judgment on law bloggers who, for better or worse, caught her eye as she peeked from underneath her blindfold.

In this image, I wanted to continue the humorous aspects of Dan’s writing, so here we have She-Hulk as “Lady Justice”. Of course, Justice is supposed to be blind, and she is peeking! For those who don’t know, She-Hulk’s real job is a lawyer, and she is always using her super-abilities to her advantage in her cases (or else she is getting herself in trouble with the judge!). Anyway, I am signed on to do these covers indefinitely, so there should be a lot more big beautiful greeness in our near future!

The Art of Greg Horn collects 144 pages of Greg’s best paintings from comics, video games, and advertising! Also included is a painting tutorial and many behind the scenes tales of his comic industry adventures. Available as a hard cover with dust jacket or trade paperback version, this book makes a great holiday gift for someone you love (or just like).

The name and likeness of She-Hulk is a trademark of Marvel Characters, Inc., and Marvel is bringing this character back in a new series of comics, including the 25th anniversary issue, featuring outstanding new cover art that is copyright by the original artist Greg Horn and/or Marvel. A few low resolution digital samples of these illustrations are included here in the context of our review and recommendation of this publication for lawyers and their families, which constitutes fair use. Please show your appreciation for this new cover art by clicking the illustrations and visiting Greg Horn’s website to see more of his art, including a new book, which looks fantastic. But I digress.

Themis, the Goddess of Justice and Law, is well-known for her clear sightedness. She typically holds a sword in one hand and scales in the other. The scales represent fairness and balance, and the sword signifies the power that is held by her making the decision. Justice is not blind; the blindfold, representing the impartiality with which justice is served, is a relatively late addition to the imagery of Lady Justice that “became a more common motif during the 17th century and after, when the idea began to take hold that the judiciary should stand apart from the sovereign. Justice blindfolded can’t see the signals a sovereign might send on how to rule in a case.”

As you may know, Themis had three attendants, minor gods of the Underworld, who also acted as judges over the souls of the dead. Any similarity between those three attendants and Blawg Review’s Contributing Editors, Kevin Heller, Mike Cernovich, and the Legal Underground’s Evan Schaeffer, is purely coincidental. They, who contributed substantially to the regular issues of Blawg Review throughout the year, are in no way responsible for the inclusion or exclusion of anyone’s law blog in these Blawg Review Awards.

This year’s Blawg Review Awards are judged and decided solely by Themis. You may agree or disagree with her decisions, and we trust that some of you might have a lot to say about these Blawg Review Awards on your own blogs. If you would like to acknowledge other award-worthy blawgs, by all means don’t hesitate to invent some new award categories and wield your authority like a law blogger by giving awards to your personal favorites—maybe even giving yourself the award you deserve.

But no amount of influence in the blogosphere, nor any number of friends voting for your law blog, gets you one of these statues. We simply don’t have the budget for such exquisite trophies in our first year of Blawg Review. Someday—maybe when pajama blogging is as lucrative as mainstream media—we might present some real hardware with Blawg Review Awards, and award-winners will be entitled to display an exclusive graphic on their weblogs.

Now, without further explanation or reasons for judgment, we present the winners of this year’s Blawg Review Awards.

Colin Samuels, at Infamy or Praise, receives the highest praise for extraordinary achievement as the host of Blawg Review #35, which is named officially the Blawg Review of the Year 2005.

David Lat, at Underneath Their Robes, picks up this year’s Blawg Review Award for Persona of the Year for Article III Groupie, affectionately called A3G by some judges.

The award for Intelligent Design is presented to Monica Bay for the Common Scold, which has evolved into quite the specimen blawg.

J. Craig Williams receives this year’s award for Best Graphics on a Law Blog for the gorgeous redesign of May It Please the Court.

The award for Best Blawg Theme goes to Patent Baristas, which presented a strong showing in the graphic design competition, as well.

Overlawyered picks up the award for Best Name for a legally-oriented blog. (Expect competition to heat up in this category next year, as the Greatest American Lawyer and the Ruthless Lawyer enter the fray, looking to establish domain name dominance.)

Best Tagline goes to law student Jeremy Richey’s Blawg, which gets the award for “When I’m not pounding the books, I’m pounding the law, the facts, or the table.”

Between Lawyers gets the award for Best Group Blog by Lawyers.

Crescat Sententia wins Best Group Blog by Law Students.

The Volokh Conspiracy takes Best Group Blog by Law Professors.

Douglas A. Berman gets recognition for the Best Blawg by a Law Professor for Sentencing Law and Policy.

Ambivalent Imbroglio is awarded Best Blawg by a Law Student.

Evan Schaeffer receives the award for Best Blog by a Practicing Attorney for The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog.

Patrick Lamb picks up the award for Best Practice Management Blog for In Search of Perfect Client Service.

Branham & Day gets the Law Firm Blogs Award for coordinating these diverse practice specialty blogs: Tennessee Business Litigation Blog, Day on Torts, Med Mal Blog and erisa on the web.

The nod for Best Politico Blog by Lawyers is given to both Daily Kos and Power Line, who will probably take opposite positions about which deserves this award most.

SCOTUSblog is judged the Best Law Blog by a Firm.

Harriet Miers’s Blog!!! gets the award for Best Judicial Nominee Blog.

The award for Best Blogging by a Judge goes to Richard Posner for the Becker-Posner Blog, but there could be another contender if this judge ever starts blogging.

The award for the Best Special Interest Blog by a lawyer goes to Professor Bainbridge on Wine.

Scheherazade is recognized for Best Personal Blog by a legally-oriented female blogger for Stay of Execution.

George M. Wallace, gets the award for Best Personal Blog by a legally-oriented male blogger for A Fool in the Forest.

Jen Burke gets the award for Equal Justice for Transcending Gender.

David Giacalone wins the award for Creative Law Blog for f/k/a ….

ProfessorBainbridge.com® takes the much-coveted law blog award, Best Eclectic Blog.

Jeralyn E. Merritt gets an Award of Merit for TalkLeft, a criminal defense attorney’s blog that makes Jennifer Walters green with envy.

Video Game Law Blog is the judge’s choice for Specialty Blawg.

The award for Best Blog By An Out-of-Practice Attorney goes to Anita Campbell, a former General Counsel, for Small Business Trends.

Sabrina I. Pacifici’s beSpacific gets the award for Legal Support Blog.

Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground gets the award for Community and Social Interaction on a law blog, a.k.a. the award for the Most Fun in the Comments on a Blawg.

Denise Howell of Bag and Baggage receives the award for Blawg Diva, a very special honor.

Carolyn Elefant of My Shingle is recognized with a Lifetime In Blog Years Achievement Award for three years of inspiring solo and small firm lawyers with her blawg.

Concurring Opinions is recognized as the Best New Blawg in 2005.

Professor Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy shares the Blawg Review Award for Legal Reasoning with John Hinderaker of Power Line.

Tom Kirkendall picks up the award for Best Blawg With Local Flavor for Houston’s Clear Thinkers.

Ernie Svenson gets the Blawg Review Award for Best Perspective on the news story of the year, Hurricane Katrina, for his excellent writing on Ernie the Attorney.

The award for Breaking Law News is given to Howard J. Bashman for How Appealing.

Lisa Stone at Inside Opinions: Legal Blogs is recognized for Blog Journalism for legal blog watching and support for Blawg Review, not to mention her outstanding work organizing BlogHer and judging the BOBs.

The award for Best Online Law Magazine using blog technology goes to Point of Law.

Law bloggers Robert J. Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams share the award for Best Legal Podcast for their weekly internet radio show, Coast to Coast.

The award for Best Print on Law Blogs goes to Law|Practice Magazine, published by the American Bar Association for the July/August 2005 issue, Behind the Blogs

Glenn Reynolds gets the Grand Panjandrum Award for Instapundit and his eponymous blog, GlennReynolds.com, and for being called the Chair of the Advisory Board of Pajamas Media.

TechnoLawyer gets kudos for the 2005 TechnoLawyer @ Awards, the other most comprehensive set of awards in the legal market.

And, finally, the award for the Best Blog Carnival for Everyone Interested in Law goes to—you guessed it—Blawg Review. That’s all she wrote.

Editor’s Notes: In 2005, there were many excellent presentations of Blawg Review, #1 to #37, each different from the others and all of them very special in their own ways. If you enjoyed reading Colin Samuels’ award-winning Blawg Review #35 based on Dante’s Inferno, this year’s Blawg Review of the Year, you might be encouraged to review all the Past Issues of this our first year. They’re all so very good.

And, as interesting as it is to read Blawg Review every Monday, maybe it’s time to make a New Year’s Resolution to join in the fun with other lawyers, law students and legal scholars who blog, as a regular contributor to our weekly linkfest and, may we suggest, as a host of Blawg Review on your own law blog.

For a few of these Blawg Review Awards there were other deserving blawgs, and I see some excellent law bloggers were overlooked. You know who you are. Sometimes justice seems blind, or simply gets it wrong, but what could I say to a superheroine lawyer who’s such a freakin’ goddess?


Marvelous News—She-Hulk Returns to Practice Marvel Law.

Jennifer Walters always thought being a criminal defense attorney was in her blood…until a gamma-irradiated blood transfusion gave her the ability to change into the world’s sexiest, sassiest, and strongest superheroine — the She-Hulk.

Join Marvel in celebrating 25 years and 100 solo issues of She-Hulk in this hundred page special! Get ready for the most important case in She-Hulk’s life because SHE’S the accused! Charged with crimes against the space-time continuum, the TVA is placing She-Hulk in a Time Trial. If she loses? Her entire personal history– her very existence could be erased right out of the Marvel Universe!

On Sale December 29th, She-Hulk #100 with cover by Greg Horn.

CBA Practice Link Article on Blogging

Dec 20, 2005 Noticias

CBA Practice Link has just posted an article by Janet Ellen Raasch on Canadian Lawyer blogs, titled New Media Marketing, Part I – Blogs: How Lawyers Can Become Thought Leaders in a Niche Market.

The VLLB gets a side-bar mention for the Canadian Law Blogs list, along with the quote: “The Vancouver Law Librarian Blog has graciously published a long-overdue listing of Canadian legal blogs” (Nice!). Congrats to the many Lawyers quoted in the article - another great example of blog technology increasing profile.

The article also tells us to check back soon for Part II on RSS technology (Hint: I did an interview for this with Janet Raasch, so I’ve got my fingers crossed!). And you can keep your eyes peeled by (what else?) subscribing to the CBA Practice Link RSS Feed!

Finally, one funny detail I noticed … check out the pixelated image at the top of the story. Look familiar? I’m just glad they didn’t pixelate it too much! ;-)

Welcome Wendy Reynolds!

Dec 19, 2005 Noticias

Another Canadian law librarian blogger is on the scene! Wendy Reynolds, a long time member of the CALL community, and fellow UWO alumni, will be blogging at: KM Librarian.

Working at the OSC, and recently seconded into a new KM position, Wendy’s blog is intended to “track her evolution from Librarian to Information Manager - the challenges and lessons, to throw out some ideas, vent, and perhaps help someone else find creative and interesting ways to repackage their MLS into something new and exciting”.

Sound familiar? :-) The RSS feed for Wendy’s blog is here. (Subscribed!)

2005 KM Post of the Year

Dec 16, 2005 Noticias

And my winner is…

Dave Pollard’s post titled Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) — an Update.

Why? First of all, I’d love to be able to write like Dave Pollard - he’s insightful, analytical and even-handed, all qualities I look for in a daily read. And given the number of blogrolls he shows up on, I’m not the only one.

The post itself defines a ‘real life’ problem he was up against, where he was asked “to investigate a leveling-off of use of the firm’s award-winning centralized knowledge resources”, and how he chose to go head-to-head conducting interviews with his users.

The interviews he describes are very real, with an eye-roll, smile, ya-I’ve-been-there, kind of feel to them. Perhaps because he’s no longer employed there, he’s able to offer a bit more of that blunt honesty that makes Dave Dave.

He then moves off to an analysis phase that drives home point after point. How KM theory is moving from an aggregation stage to being much more proactive and bottom-up. Any KM post that talks about PKM, bottom-up, or Guerilla KM (ok, that’s my term) is going to be a big hit in my books. As a reader, he’s now got me glued to the post.

The last phase, and where he clinches the KM post of the year honours (IMO), is when he offers practical solutions. Dave knows he hasn’t just described a unique situation, and is now ready to let his readers know the tools available to set things in the right direction.

I know I haven’t re-hashed any of the details [that part's easy - go read it]. Really, what I wanted to blog about was the fantastic structure to this post… define a detailed problem, establish a connection with the reader, analyze, and describe some practical solutions. Dave Pollard probably doesn’t give this much thought, he likely just writes that way…

KM is sometimes a tough topic to write about, flipping back and forth between practice and theory. Both are important ingredients in daily practice, and both are critical elements to a great KM blog post.

Do you know of a better 2005 Knowledge Management blog post? Make a case for it, and let me know.

Previewing Blawg Review #37

Dec 15, 2005 Noticias

Our host for Blawg Review #37, The Wired GC, is a lawyer who blogs anonymously to express himself candidly without having to temper his thoughts out of concern for his employment as the General Counsel for a company located somewhere in the Midwest.

We sat down recently and had an email interview with this anonymous host to provide our readers with a bit more insight into The Wired GC.

What prompted you to start blogging in the first place?

I started “The Wired GC” more because I wanted to learn about the nascent weblog technology than because I thought I had something to say. But I knew I had a few ideas about the practice of law in an in-house setting, and about working with the outside counsel that are a key part of a providing legal services to business.

Now that you’ve been blogging for a while, how would you describe your law blog to someone who had never read it?

The Wired GC is an exploration about how the practice of law will possibly be changing over the next 3, 5, or even 10 years. Law has largely remained immune from some of the economic and competitive forces that have roiled industrial America in the last 10-20 years. From my vantage point in the Midwest, I have seen the toll this has taken on large segments of society. For those who haven’t yet experienced true global competition, fasten your seatbelts, you are in for quite a ride.

What do you say to people who ask who you really are, why you remain anonymous, and whether you are a General Counsel in real life?

John, because, and yes. The middle response is no real mystery: when you are an active GC, for some reason outside counsel and vendors think you have the need–immediately–for all sorts of legal and technical services. I don’t write about what I’m doing, and I don’t want calls or emails at the office about what I choose to do on my own time.

Well, John, nice to meet you. I’m Ed. Seriously, what’s the best thing about writing The Wired GC blog anonymously?

The people I have “met” virtually through blogging. I am constantly amazed at the depth and breadth of many of the active legal webloggers. I sometimes feel like I will be discovered as a mere pretender among the true digerati. I would like to meet them sometime and share a beer or three while discussing the legal issues of the day. I will wear a bag over my head. I feel I have a face for radio and a voice for the printed word.

You really seem to have found your voice on The Wired GC, especially now that you’re podcasting The Wired GC Unplugged. What’s next for The Wired GC?

The day after this edition of the Blawg Review goes live, I will have been posting random thoughts on my blog for one year. I hope to make it two years. But who knows?

You mean to say that in less than a year blogging anonymously you’ve managed to join the ranks of some of the “most influential” bloggers in the Law.com Blog Network? You know, John, if people look closely at our bio pics, some might wonder if you’re the Editor of Blawg Review.

I really don’t think so, Ed.

Jingle Bells

Dec 14, 2005 Noticias

Exciting things are happening around Google Talk today. First, Jabber has published the experimental draft Jingle specs, which extend XMPP for use in voice over IP (VoIP), video, and other peer-to-peer multimedia sessions. You can read more about that from Jabber or go straight to the specs:

JEP-0166: Jingle Signalling
JEP-0167: Jingle Audio

Second, we’ve released an open-source library we’re calling ‘Libjingle’ on SourceForge. Libjingle is a set of components provided by Google that let your programs interoperate with Google Talk’s peer-to-peer and voice calling capabilities. The package includes source code for Google’s implementation of Jingle and Jingle-Audio. Check out the Libjingle site for more information about that and for details on how to download and implement the code.

We’re also proud to have given a donation to the Jabber Software Foundation as a show of our support. They’ve been doing some great work and we are happy to have the opportunity to support them.

Google Releases Homepage API

Dec 12, 2005 Noticias

Congrats to our friends who created the personalized homepage — today they released an API that lets you create modules that people can add to their Google homepage. It allows for pretty interesting modules by letting you wrap your existing web content, apps, or mashups, and the development team will be reviewing all the modules submitted.

For more information, check out the Google Homepage API page and be sure to join the Google-Homepage-API Google Group. You can also take a look at the module directory that includes some modules the team created to help get the ball rolling.