The Joy of Housing Law
Ruthie’s Law dons the mantle of one of the all-too-rare British hostings of a Blawg Review, and a damn fine review it is. More details on Blawg Reviews here.
I believe Geeklawyer is due to be the next British host, so anyone whose business is dependent on cross-atlantic relations would be wise to sell up now.
It is about time for a break - 13 detailed posts in the last two weeks, coupled with a frantic time at work, has left me lacking oomph, as devoid of oomph as an omphless thing on a bad day. So there will be nothing more here until after the holiday weekend.
Meanwhile, James Stark of Garden Court North has put up a briefing note on the rejection of Payne v Cooper in Porter v Shepherds Bush (he is not happy). Hat tip to Tony Fearnley.
And if you are in search of further housing goodness, a new blog has just started up. Housed is by the person who has been commenting here as ‘housinganger’, a CLS housing caseworker at a CAB. Housed is still unpacking the box marked ‘kitchen’ in search of the kettle, but should be good. I am delighted to be able to welcome another housing blog to the UK law blog scene
At this rate of increase, by the end of 2009, the world will be ours (laughs maniacally). Assuming, that is, that William Flack manages to get his blog working again and finds the time to post something…(hint hint).
Hands up how many readers of the British blawgs had read BabyBarista’s blog prior to say four to six weeks ago? No? Me neither. But it has been apparently going since October 06.
In a textbook campaign, BabyBarista made himself known though comments to posts on other blawgs and referral links to other blawgs. Never directly promoting his blog and tailored to the post involved, the comments certainly didn’t look like a promotional sweep, but I noticed a lot of them suddenly appearing across my usual blogroll reading. Then there was a link in to this blog showing in Wordpress admin.
Bloggers are a vain lot, and blawgers (I still hate the term) are no exception. I clicked back to see the source. So, evidently, did many others. And Lo, BabyBarista appears on blogrolls and is mentioned in dispatches all over the place. (But good heavens hasn’t his blogroll expanded dramatically).
The blog certainly repays a click, being a ‘fictional account’ of a Pupil’s progress - Hogarth reference intended. Think a menage a trois of Donna Tartt, Harry Mount and Anonymous Lawyer with looming Tesco’s Law thrown in. Some bits don’t quite ring true, though. Can anyone who has done Tort, let alone enter a Criminal/Common Law Chambers, genuinely be surprised that accidently killing someone is a lot cheaper than injuring them?
As thoroughly enjoyable as the blog is, I think I was more impressed with the stealth publicity campaign, adroitly using the vanity click-back to build up what passes for a publicity storm in the smallish UK blawg world. To which, of course, I have just contributed. It is a very good example of how to work a blog circuit. Of course, it helps if the blog is actually worth reading…
Having come home to find a huge spike in traffic direct to the blog, I was initially startled to find that the Law Society Professional Update newsletter email had linked to a couple of my posts on the ‘What Price Justice?’ campaign.
Whilst I am naturally grateful for the link, I feel duty bound by pedantry to point out that in introducing four links, two of which are mine, thusly:
Several practitioners have launched their own web log to publish their thoughts on the issue, and invite comment.
the Law Society has manage to cram two factual errors into one not very long sentence.
I am not a qualified practioner, just a paralegal (still). I did not launch this weblog to publish my thoughts on the issue. In fact, the only bit of that sentence that is true is that I invite comment. Well done Law Society people, top work.
I’m moderately impressed that someone at the Law Society thought to check blogs (although all they did was a Technorati search on ‘what price justice’ - I’ve checked the logs). I’m less impressed that they didn’t actually read the ‘legal aid’ category of this blog, just went for the posts that showed up in Technorati - which is where the other two posts listed from myspace type sites also feature.
A little more imagination - a search on ‘legal aid’, for instance, would likely have given rather more impressive results, particularly if the Law Society were wanting to illustrate a grassroots campaign. [Correction, I've just tried a search on Legal Aid, as Technorati was down earlier, and it is not a helpful search at all. Sorry. But the principle stands. Try a seach for 'legal aid' on blawgle, for instance]
Still, this is definitely the first time I have featured in the same email as Kofi Annan, the Solicitors Regulatory Authority and Redemption Statements.
The theme of the last few days for me, at least in regard to some small corners of the law blog world, has turned out to be the failure of anonymity.
Item one: Someone has apparently worked out who Pupilblog is.
Item two: I’ve been reading Anonymous Lawyer, the book, in which the difficulty of anonymity is an engine of the plot.
[Disclaimer. I was contacted by Jeremy Blachman of Anonymous Lawyer fame to ask would I like a free copy of the book with a view to its publicity. I said yes, but editorial comment, if any, is mine. I'm a sucker for a freebie.].
To take item two first, Anonymous Lawyer is a blog turned book, an increasing phenomenon. Most people are likely to know the blog, purportedly the outpourings of a hiring partner at a large US corporate firm (now flagged as fictional). Mirabile dictu, the blog’s author was neither anonymous, nor a lawyer, although some people clearly wanted to believe in the fictional author.
As a satire on the meat grinder of corporate firms and their mentality, the blog is often very funny. And the book is… often very funny. By the nature of the novel, though, which apparently requires such things as plot, confrontation, resolution and character development, the satire tends to require a greater weight of significance - Making a Comment on the Way We Live Now or somesuch.
I’m not sure the book quite suceeds in this regard. There are some passages that give the unreliable narrator a real depth of character and also passages of genuine pathos, but, aside from the fact that big corporate firms do very little for the life of the spirit, I’m not sure what the point is. But then again, maybe I’m just trying to read too much into it.
Law or the practice thereof, plays little to no part, leaving the odd sense that this could equally easily be Anonymous Accountant or Anonymous Management Consultant. This may, of course, be entirely intentional.
That said, the book is thoroughly entertaining and certainly kept me reading with enthusiasm. It handles the blog to book transition better than others I have read, integrating the blog’s bon mots into the narrative development smoothly, rather than with an audible copy and paste. And dammit, the whippersnapper is only 28 (which may account for the suggestion that life is effectively over in terms of achievement by one’s mid 30s).
Anonymity and unmasking is a major plot device in Anonymous Lawyer. I sincerely hope that Pupilblog’s personal narrative is not so dramatically affected by being discovered.
Pupilblog wisely doesn’t say what had given the game away, luckily only to a sympathetic individual, but it is a reminder for the anonymous law blogger that each area of law is a pretty small world and that anything about cases, individuals, workplaces etc. must have all non-salient points changed - not just for personal protection but at times from professional duty. Not easy to do in a diary format like Pupilblog’s, but necessary, I think.
Whether Pupilblog continues in its existing form or not, the writer should certainly keep something going. The writing is very engaging and this is a voice it would be a pity to lose.
The kindly Family Lore has tagged me with the latest blogger’s version of a chain letter, a meme tag. I vaguely recall seeing this one spreading amongst web designer blogs a couple of months ago and then it recently hit the law blogs like mutated bird flu.
I am to reveal five things that you didn’t know about me and then spread the infection onwards to another five bloggers.
No disrespect to Family Lore at all, who runs a fine blog, but in this regard Richard Dawkins has a lot to answer for. I say fie to crass evolutionary sociobiology, pish and tush to reductionalist naturalism. This meme may continue elsewhere, I refuse to be a vector.
My hero is Des Essientes, but I can’t afford the decadence.
In any case, the answer to what you probably didn’t know about me is ‘virtually everything’. But as a concession and keeping it legally related, I did once manage to wet myself while being cuddled by the Solicitor General (then Geoffrey Howe).
[edit 12/01/07. I cannot tell a lie. I didn't dampen the Solicitor General. I did dampen a Solicitor General to be, by a year or two. But there had to be a legal link, sorry.]
Navel gazing (or meta blogging) on the future of the law blog seems to be the flavour of the moment in the USA, and on this side of the pond, human law and binary law have weighed in with some thoughtful views on the future of law blogs. With this in mind, together with geeklawyer’s forthcoming carnival of the blawgers, I thought I’d have a muse too. Unfortunately, the musing could only be jotted down in 35 minute sessions on the train, pecking away at a PDA, so any fractured or episodic quality is entirely realistic.
Firstly, it seems to be clear that a critical mass has yet to be reached that would see law blogging become mainstream, both for writers and readers. This is so in the US and more so here, where we are arguably somewhat behind. 2007 as ‘the year of RSS’ has been held out as one precipitatory event, and this may be true, but I’d say it is not so much the technology of aggregation but the mindset of the ’social web’ that is the current stumbling block. This is perhaps particularly the case for lawyers. There are three inter-related questions here: of writing, reading and discussion.
Writing - Nick Holmes at binary law suggests that the law blog of the future will be less personal and more firm or practice orientated. What does a practice or a firm blog look like? I don’t think we currently have much in the way of examples, with the exception of a few IP firms, who are understandably up on this sort of thing. That is not to say that there aren’t a lot of consumately professional blawgs, there are, but each has a distinct voice, focus or viewpoint that gives it an individuality, even if there are a number of people involved. Could this voice be achievable by an official firm or even department level blog? Maybe, but only in a few exceptional cases, I suspect. The danger is that the blog would be simply a list of press releases or news points, not necessarily useless but hardly enticing and far from a social web model. So, will firms be prepared to see a distinct voice on their blog or will it be over-monitored blog by committee? I’ll come back to this.
Reading - or, more accurately, readership. I’ve raised this before in part, but it strikes me as a vital issue. At the moment, most legal blogs seem to be written with an audience of legal professionals in mind. The address and issues are ‘between ourselves’. This is, of course, fine and entirely legitimate. But that isn’t who is reading, or at least, not only who is reading. Let me take this blog as an example. I post about developments in housing law, because it is what I do and it interests me. From my logs and search queries it is apparent that these posts get attention from law firms, yes, but also law students, local authorities, housing associations and many tenants. Who am I writing for? A good question. Initially it was those involved in law. Now, certainly with the housing law posts, I’m beginning to think about a lay audience more and more. To extrapolate from this example, the readership for any law blog will likely include anyone who has a related issue to those discussed.
The use of law blogs as means of reaching potential clients is often extolled, but this needs serious consideration. Who is reading? What will their interest be in what is posted? Will they get what they are looking for? Will they encounter a voice that appears to understand their concerns (not just a lawyer who is being impressively clever about law in their field)? Which brings us back to writing. How to write for significantly different readerships at the same time and engage them? This is one of the skills that will need to be developed, partly through the change of status to skilled provider and user of information from that of oracle and hoarder of information that I mentioned in a earlier post.
Incidentally, given that blogs require a certain reading style, it is worth noting that most people searching for ‘tolerated trespasser’ hit the first post here on the topic they find on the search engine and treat it like a static website, not realising that there are later updatings on the subject, to the extent I have actually added an addendum to the highest rated post with links to that effect. Widespread RSS adoption may change this, but blog reading requires a different approach to the way most people approach the web at present. Most people still don’t get that a blawg is a sedimentary record of a (sometimes evolutionary) process, not a fixed answer per page. I suspect this will take some time to change.
Discussion - which is where writing, reading and a culture change for law firms, if not for some individual lawyers, come together. As Justin Patten at Human Law notes, response and debate comes with the blog form. Not always, of course, but any blog that simply assumes it can deliver from on high, with no response, is likely to be as farcical as the Watson Farley & Williams trainee ‘blog‘ (which also illustrates the point about ‘voice’). But, although lawyers certainly discuss matters, from practice through gossip to points of law, this is rarely done in public or with ’strangers’, let alone in a manner open to clients and anyone else. Responses to a blawg may well include knowledgable critique or requests for information, digression or assistance. How and whether the responses are approached is part of the ‘voice’ of the blawg.
This blog is an individual one, it revolves around what interests me (or rather a part of me, there are boundaries, even if fuzzy ones, about what gets included here, and it generally has to be legally related). I welcome comment, discussion, argument and correction, but how far would this fly at a firm level blawg? Those of us individually engaged in blawgs are familiar with the idea and to some extent the experience of the blog as open forum, and through that with a form of respect being gained through apparent openness and willingness to engage. This strikes me as quite a different form of respect to that currently envisaged by firms or their marketing departments. To return briefly to the likely problem of blog by committee, it is all too likely that firms of a certain size, if at all convinced of the need for a blawg, will hand the ‘project’ to the marketing department, with oversight by partners. Again, Watson Farley & Williams trainee blog stands as an example of the sort of disaster that can result.
My sense is that Nick Holmes is right about a chasm between early adopters and the mainstream that has yet to be leapt. There are necessary changes that will have to take place in ways of writing, reading and discussing, but also firms will have to accept a certain loss of control. Control over information, over the details of public image (instead having to trust those who give the blawg its voice), and control over the forms of public discussion taking place on ‘their’ blog. Lawyers are not noted for their willingness to cede control.
This might all sound a little doom laden. It isn’t meant to be, I am after all a cheerleader for law blogging. I just think that this will be a slower process than some might want or expect. There are some major changes required before lawyers in general will consider law blogs for seeking information or providing information. Given that the youngsters are far more at home with social software and sites, a change will come, but I expect law firms to be behind the wave of a more general public adoption, not ahead of it.
Apologies if you have had problems accessing the site. There is a torrent of comment spam posting going on and it is hitting my server heavily at the moment. None of it gets through, as I use Askimet for Wordpress, but each attempted spam comment means a server hit and they are coming in batches of 100 in a couple of seconds. I can’t stop it by blocking IP addresses as each comes from a different IP, so it is a botnet at work.
Please, people, if you must use Windows, make sure it is as secure as it can be. Otherwise someone is likely using your PC and has paid about 3 pence to do so.
I am playing with solutions, including a Captcha to be completed. This may mean that commenting is intermittently messed up over the next few days. Sorry.
[Update 7 Jan. I think I've found a temporary sticking plaster so that I don't have to use a Captcha yet. Please let me know of any problems.]
Firstly I was down with a cold and then back at work, so you have no doubt already had the new year air of hopeful expectation beaten out of you by the grey actuality of ‘07. But happy new year, nonetheless.
I am putting the year on formal warning that if it doesn’t bring me a gift-wrapped training contract pretty damn pronto, I shall exercise the break clause in my contract and open negotations with 2008 to take over duties early. Given that everybody is in a post Carter fret, jobs seem thin on the ground at the moment.
Some excitement is promised though, as Geeklawyer is organising a UK Legal Blogging Conference. As far as I can tell, UK law blogs have had a bit of a blossoming in 2006, from a slow start, so this seems like a good time. Now, I just need to have a think about the anonymity thing, particularly as drinks are likely.
It is an ongoing process, but I think Law Search has reached Beta status, just, and has thus been promoted to the sidebar.
The custom specialist search, via Google co-op, prioritises results from listed sites, but includes general search results. The listed sites aim to cover freely available resources for statute, case law, commentary, reports, blogs and other resources for UK, particularly English, law. Subscription based and limited access sites are not included.
My grateful thanks go to Delia Venables for collating resources and most particularly to Nick Holmes of Binary Law and Infolaw for advice and assistance beyond the call of duty.
Nick Holmes has set up specialist custom search engines for particular areas (eg, Blawgs, Legislation, Case law). I would be very interested in any comments people might have on the relative utility of a ‘general’ law custom search and the ‘focused’ custom searches. I use both, but my search needs only cover certain areas, so I cannot be clear about effectiveness. If it turns out that delimited specialist searches are more useful, I’ll give this CSE a rethink.
Unlike Charon QC or even Geeklawyer, I have been away doing the christmas necessaries, and actually very pleasant they were too.
On my return today, I find that to my surprise and delight, I have received a Blawg Review Award for 2006. Hurrah and indeed whoopee. As a newcomer of 6 months or so, this is gratifying. It has also been picked up by the Self Help Law ExPress, which is a blawg I shall be following from now on.
Granted, this is an award for ‘paralegal blawg of 2006′. which is lovely, but feels a little like coming first in a category of, well, several at best.
On the other hand, this is an effectively USAian award and mine and Human Law (as best British Blawg) were, as far as I can see, the only British blawgs, so there is quite some pride in grabbing an international category, however small.
And to Public Defender Stuff, who rightly objected to the absence of a public defender category but cited Nearly Legal as one extreme of the listings, I would say that I might not do criminal work, but this blog is entirely fixated on legal aid public defence work in housing. It is what I do, to paraphrase the Bishop of Southwark. I’m just not USAian.
And to Geeklawyer, who is, as we all know obsessed with awards, may I just say Ppphhtt. Oh and a post of mine is currently a ‘must read’ at techlaw advisor. What can I say? It is not just the Bar that can do shameless self-promotion.
Coming next - Some seriously speculative housing law.
I know I shouldn’t, but working on the litigator’s instinct of putting the boot in, here is a quote from the ‘CEO’ of Netrank, taken from this Guardian article:
John Straw, chief executive of online brand positioning company Netrank, says it advises its clients to deal quickly with customer complaints that have become the source of online discussion.
‘It’s better to spend some money on dealing with one person, than risk a complaint going viral and damaging the value of the brand in the long term,’ he says.
So what happens when it is exactly your ways of trying to steer online discussion that is the issue being raised?
Try a google.uk on ‘netrank blog‘. I tried it out of late night curiousity and frankly I was astonished to see that little post of mine right up there.
But this weekend, I promise some law posts, honest.
I have an email from Ellie Precious. On the plus side, that is a response within 36 hours of my original post. Not bad as a damage limitation reaction time. On the minus side, it was an email, not posted as a response to the post, which shows a continued level of not really getting it. So, in a spirit of helpfulness, here is the email, with my responses. I should make clear that this is not response personally directed at ‘Ellie’. As with the first post, any references to ‘you’ should be assumed to refer to Netrank.
Hi there,
Well hello.
I have spoken to my team about your comments and I wanted to respond personally, as you have specifically mentioned me.
Just to be clear, your first email made no mention of a team, or company, it was sent as an email from ‘Ellie Precious’, personally. It was hard to avoid mentioning the name. What did your team think of the post? Now you’ve discussed it, I’d be interested to know.
I am very sorry that my efforts to contact you have been taken in such a way to make you feel manipulated and disliked.
I didn’t feel manipulated. I was annoyed at a rather poor attempt to manipulate me. I never said I felt disliked, which I didn’t. See below.
I can assure you that by contacting you with the age discrimination news, my sole aim was to introduce you to the research and open a dialogue.
This is disengenuous in the extreme. For a start, in what possible way was this an overture to a dialogue? It was a press release, all the links in which lead to fixed pages at Fox Willams with no comment option. Or are you suggesting that you, personally, were intending to enter into an email or phone discussion on the impact of age discrimination legislation on law firms? Given that your company’s recent enthusiastic introductions have generally concerned kitchen appliances and baby apparatus, I think not.
Now, ’sole aim’? Are you trying to tell me that, out of the goodness of your heart, you were trying to ‘introduce the research’ to people who were interested and that it had nothing to do with raising your client’s profile, search engine rating and search term result, or even just gaining the client publicity for ‘doing age discrimination’? I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you. In fact, do you take me for an idiot?
I also contacted other UK based bloggers that I thought might be interested in the content.
And that worked well. Nick Holmes’ specialist uk law blog search records precisely no results for the research on a search for ‘age discrimination fox williams’. Which brings us neatly back to the point of my post, which concerned Netrank’s methods.
Taking your comments on board, my approach could have been phrased better;
Then you haven’t taken my comments on board. The point is not your ‘phrasing’, but the methods.
however I want to make it really clear that at no point was I hiding who I was or who I worked for. Net-Additions is a small online publishing company within Netrank and I have an email address for both Netrank and Net-Additions.
Disengenuous. You were hiding who you worked for, as the email did not give any company affiliation at all, posing as a personal email. (The original is here, stripped of the press release, but otherwise untouched.) If you consider an email domain to be full disclosure, it is worth noting that Net-additions.com has no website and a google search for ‘net-additions’ gives one hit that might suggest what the ‘company’ does, unless you are also a US shopping site.
I work for a search marketing company and undertake online PR as part of my role.
‘Search marketing’ meaning search engine optimiser, I take it.
My work involves looking for blogging sites that I think are particularly clear, informative and above all – human. I and the company I work for do not sneak about when we go about our work.
Then why send an email that posed as a personal email and contained no company affiliation? I can guess. I’ll bet the conversation went something like this:
A - “Blogs are everywhere these days, how can we use blogs as a PR vehicle and attract links and ranking for our client?”
B - “Well, blogs are personal things aren’t they? We should take a personal approach to them, send an email from a person not the company, that sort of thing. You know, the human touch.”
So, I return to my original point. Netrank’s (or net-addition’s) methods don’t work in the blog world. In fact, they are counter-productive.
“Eleanor Precious doesn’t really like me”- I do not dislike you – how can you dislike someone you’ve never met, and I am at a loss as to why you would think this,
Either you are patronizing me or you have missed something. I thought PR people were supposed to get nuance?
If I wanted to say you disliked me, the post would have been titled ‘Eleanor Precious really doesn’t like me’. But it wasn’t. The clue is in the post which was about a faux personal approach, concealing PR flackery. Do you see what I did there?
I am genuinely distraught that my work has caused you offence and to respond with such an attack – I’ve learned a lot from the experience.
It wasn’t an attack, it was a robust comment. Judging by the medium and content of this response, I don’t think Netrank have learnt any relevant thing at all. If you are selling yourselves to your clients as being in any way on top of this blog thing, then Netrank have got a lot of learning to do.
Look at the result of your mail. Response = nada, apart from me and I take it that mine wasn’t what you were looking for. I only responded because I actually have posted about age discrimination in law firms, so for a moment thought this might be a genuine mail, but then you didn’t know that I had posted on the topic, did you?
I’m damned if I’m going to help Netrank get a clue any more. Re-read the first post, assume that any references to feeling betrayed, etc., are a running joke on the theme of a dismally failed attempt at ‘a personal approach’ to PR flackery by Netrank, and have a think about the actual point.
If you want to discuss further, you have my number.
If you want to discuss further, you have this blog. I promise to let your comments through unedited [usual conditions apply].
Best Regards,
Ellie
Netrank Ltd
Fondly, Nearly Legal
By the way, Netrank use one of those completely useless disclaimer footers, in their case in a pale 8 point font. Fortunately, even if the disclaimer wasn’t ineffectual in practice, it states that
This email is without prejudice, confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed
Good. As the individual to whom it is addressed, I’m using it.
Today I got an email from Eleanor (or Ellie) Precious, which enclosed a press release on a survey of law firms’ views on the likely effects of Age Discrimination law on their firms. I’m not going to link to it here, for reasons that will become obvious, but the firm that undertook the survey was F*x W****ams.
Now the press release wasn’t uninteresting, although peppered with links to *ox **lli**s, in fact the only links were to *** *i******. But I don’t know anybody called Ellie Precious, let alone an Ellie who routinely emails to herself with my address as ‘envelope to’. So I was curious.
Maybe, I thought, it was an eager reader, responding to my few posts on age discrimination in law firms. But Ellie didn’t mention those posts. In any case, if that were so, why wouldn’t Ellie comment on the posts?
Digging into the email headers a little, it appears that Ellie posts from a ‘netrank’ email account, part of this domain, netrank.co.uk. Netrank are, and I quote,
a group of innovative companies whose purpose is to make our clients’ websites more attractive to search engines
Oddly, Ellie didn’t tell me that. In fact, given that her email from and reply to was a ‘net-additions.com’ domain, she seems a little ashamed of her employer.
At the risk of being a little cynical, I don’t think Ellie was actually interested in this blog. In fact I suspect that she might have stumbled across this site by a basic google search like “legal professional blog uk”.
I’ve been trying to avoid this, but I can’t help thinking she was trying to get me to link to *** ******** in this blog to, oh I don’t know, maybe help bump their search engine ranking and gain legal linkage. My initial sense of being vaguely flattered at being such an obvious opinion former was rapidly tempered by realising I was being crudely targeted by a google search and a stunningly inept approach to link farming.
I feel rather betrayed by Eleanor, after she showed such interest (and actually looked for my email address on the blog and everything), so much so that I haven’t called her on the phone number she included, 01392 411299, although it was sweet of her to think I would.
Netrank, I’m talking to you now. I assume that you google references and links to yourselves.
You are crap at this. You clearly have no idea how to approach blogs for PR purposes. Post and run doesn’t work and won’t work except perhaps for a short term hit. If you want to build serious interest and linkage for your client, tell your client that they are going to have to engage with blogs, talk to them, add interesting information or responses, even run a blog of their own if there is the admittedly remote chance they might do it well. Get a blogger or two on board to learn how to approach this.
If you must cling to such pathetic methods, here is a clue or two. Don’t hide the source when it is ludicrously easy to unmask. Why pretend a person is the origin of the PR flack? Why use a method that is teetering on the brink of being spam? (Unsolicited email? Certainly. Commercial? Arguably.)
Aha, what have we here? Why it is new managing director of Netrank, Lucy Allen, claiming that
Our ethical approach combined with our outstanding research and development teams puts us at the cutting edge of the natural search industry.
That would be ethical in the sense of dissembling as a standard practice and cutting edge in the sense of ‘don’t have a clue about blogs’ then? (At the bottom of that page, it turns out Ellie is not so shy about having a netrank email after all.)
And lastly, to Fox Williams, re-read the above and have a think about the kind of online PR agency slash link farmer you want to use. The survey was interesting to me, (although perhaps not in the way you intended), but the way it reached me was, at best, annoying. I don’t respond well to that. That is one of the perils of dealing with blogs.
Nearly Legal made the blawgreview 86.
I am Becky Sharpe, albeit a Becky with a trumpet of her very own. (I do realise possession of a trumpet with intent to play equates less to social climbing minx and more to nuisance neighbour.)
Still, as someone who has used and abused Dante allegories all too often in the past, may I say ‘Oh well played sir’ to Colin Samuels, although surely both the pride and avarice terraces could have been more thickly populated…
I’ve been toying with the idea for while, since I discovered Google Co-op. Why not a search engine dedicated to legal resources/information/commentary, bringing together the scattered information and comment that is already out there?
So, with a small parp of the trumpets, here is an alpha version. It is also accessible via the ‘Law search’ tab at the top of the page. Note that this search only covers freely accessible sites. Closed commercial sites will not show up.
There are over [edit] 90 sites in the list so far (and much thanks to Delia Venables for the superb work in collating and organising resources). But although I’m adding sites for searching at the moment, I feel that it is a bit weak in criminal and family sources (and perhaps corporate as well - assuming there are any free ones). [I'm in the process of adding in conveyancing and property, mental health, immigration and more family sites. Intellectual property, Public law, trusts, agriculture and shipping will be strengthened soon].
Any and all suggestions for sites (preferably as top level urls) are welcomed as long as they contain useful resources rather than mere publicity.
email contact (a) nearlylegal.co.uk
I hope people find this useful. Please let me know. [Once the thing appears to be reasonably functional, I'm happy for anyone to add the search box to their sites, but it is distinctly pre-beta at the moment].
Nick Holmes has a very interesting post at Binary Law on the future of Law publishing in a world of social software.
I’ve been wondering about similar things recently, both in general and in particular, following an examination of my server logs, and Nick Holmes’ post crystallised a few thoughts.
I’m not going to go into detail on the possible market and access shifting changes that could be involved, as these are set out with great clarity in Nick’s post. Suffice it to say that a move to a primarily open (if not necessarily free), user produced, and distributed (in the sense of cross source/site/contributor) model is envisaged.
Legal material and commentary can be aggregated across wikis, blogs, public sources etc.. As Nick observes, tagging, search, networking and rss become key here. The challenge to conventional legal publishing and information management is clear, and the potential for opening access to legal information immense.
But, I have a few doubts and comments, some born of living through internet utopianism 0.9b. back in what, I am reliably told, is no longer referred to by yoof as ‘the day’ (the day in question being say 1994-6).
The first doubt is how long the ‘free’ and widespread provision of information and commentary will remain such once its prospective monetisation (beyond google ads) becomes clear. The fusion of old media money and the bloggerati is already becoming clear in some fields (blog to newspaper comment column, blog to book) and, as a hierarchy of posters and commentators in law becomes clear, I would expect something of the same to happen - I can see hirings by big firms based on blog reputation being relatively commonplace a few years down the line, for instance (OK, perhaps quite a few years down the line).
Of course, there will always be the newcomers and the holdouts, enought to keep the elite on their toes, but this then plays into the second doubt.
Who is the audience for this legal aggregate? Two options - not necessarily mutually exclusive. First, it is by and for lawyers. Second, it is for and open to the public. This second will be the interesting one. As long as the distributed legal web is part of the open web, then the public at large will be searching, reading and perhaps commenting on it. This much is clear even from the search term log for this ‘umble site. So, do we ignore this and speak lawyer unto lawyer or consider it seriously.
Clearly, for the great swathes of corporate lawyers, this isn’t an issue, but for anyone involved in anything from ’small’ commercial law, through much private client work to the whole range of civil and criminal legal aid work, it should be. The searching audience (and potential respondents) from the public will be there.
Simply treating this as a marketing opportunity (’call me to discuss this’) won’t be a long term approach, although providing clear helpful information and comment could well bring in the punters. Longer term, it will likely mean that relying on professional knowledge alone will not be enough, instead skill and client service will come to the fore.
Naturally, providing up to date and clear information in a manner that is useful to the audience will be essential, and this, I suspect, will be a stumbling block. Partly because lawyers aren’t very good at this and partly because we like the professional mystique and the effect of the measured advice delivered in oracular terms.
Oh, yes, we also like getting paid for it. It is hard to see lawyers en masse engaging with a ‘law 2.0′ world unless there is a prospect of a direct and fairly immediate return. Where this is hard to quantify, and it largely will be (apart from maybe savings on lexis subscriptions), a distributed law model will likely be seen as either naive or a threat.
But it is probable that the threat lies in doing nothing, as it is not likely that an online publicity blurb on cases won and services performed will be enough for the public much longer. As legal sources open up, lawyers will have to function less as gatekeepers and more as information workers, deploying skill in using information rather than in controlling it. In that scenario, both making information clearly available and demonstrating skill in its understanding and use will be the prime marketing tools. This will be one hell of a leap for the profession.
And this is where I peter out, apart from making a passing observation on the limited social distribution of access to the technology. I am, I think, with Nick Holmes on the way things could go and that this would be a good thing, but I am not wholly sure that they will go that way. I suspect it will be a bumpy ride in any case.
But I am very impressed that Brian Barder, the ex-SIAC lay member who resigned on principle does. Mr Barder commented on my post via the trackback at his blog. I’ve posted a comment in response, but I’d like to post his comment and my response here, for two reasons.
Firstly, because I still find it astonishing that a blog post from a relatively ill-informed person like me can attract a response from someone who has held a significant position in the matter under discussion/ranted about.
Secondly, because he makes some entirely valid criticisms that I would like to admit or address in the same place as the original post.
Having received an email from Mr Barder alerting me to his comments that was above and beyond the call of duty, I’d also like to say he is a gentleman.
Brian Barder said in response to ‘Kafka’:
The full trackback is worth reading, but its attack uses such scattershot in all directions that its effect is somewhat blunted. It’s rather out of date in some respects and misrepresents what happens in SIAC in others. But its anonymous author is right to be disturbed by the revelation that mutually contradictory closed evidence has been offered by the home office in two recent SIAC cases and that this has been discovered only by accident. The official reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation has asked for more information about this and it may result in procedural changes designed to minimise the risk of it happening again. Incidentally the ‘nearlylegal’ post is wrong to suggest that anyone with high security clearance and experience in dealing with intelligence and security material must be a spook or ex-spook.
I replied:
Thank you for your email and this comment. You are entirely right that my post was scattershot. It was indeed a rant.
I also fully realise that detention without trial was effectively ruled out in the House of Lords overturning of SIAC in X v SS for the Home Department [2004] (although I have direct information on the effect of control orders on some of those released from Belmarsh that makes clear that control orders are not much better, if at all). This was why I said ‘was or is’ at the relevant point. I’d agree this wasn’t clear enough.
I suspect that we might differ on whether SIAC was, in principle, a reasonable approach (or rather ‘least objectionable way’) to address the situation. My sense was that the process was always open to error and/or abuse because the ’secret’ evidence was effectively uncontestable. The House of Lords judgement in Rehman simply made matters worse for me, although I fully understand why it was a tipping point for you.
This fiasco over contradictory evidence confirmed both my fears over error/abuse and the inherent problems of a system where effectively uncontestable evidence is secretly presented. Particularly where all that is to proved is that the Home Secretary had grounds for suspicion that a threat to national security or interests, however indirect, might be involved.
I competely accept that the lay person with security clearance and experience need not be a spook. That was a rhetorical stretch too far there. That it was a ‘defence’ barrister who caught the contradiction does make one question the effectivity of the security expert though, when they are presumably in place to catch issues with the intelligence.
I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve posted your comment and this response on my blog.
I could well continue be out of date or wrong in some respects, I am not engaged in this area, and I am open to correction. But, hey, I’m flattered by the response. T’interweb is a wonderful thing.
[edited 19 Aug]
A disclaimer - Friday evening, wine etc.
One of the odd revenges of old media against the upstarts appears to be the revelation of the real person behind the anonymous or pseudonymous blog. This blog is the latest victim of the dramatic expose. There is, of course, a huge amount of hypocrisy involved in this, given the anonymous diaries, reviewers and fake sheiks littering the inkies.
I’m not going to comment on the fact that it is particularly blogs about an active sexual existence by women that are the prime target for, erm, unveiling, beyond suggesting that apparently witch finding lives on. The very clear feminist point has already been made, not least by “Abby Lee” herself.
I’m also not going to comment on the fact that it is mainly ‘blogs that have been turned into books’ that are targeted, beyond the obvious fingerpoint at the jealousy of any journo for someone, particularly an amateur, with a book contract, when their own effort is either stalled or rejected.
What interests me, and I suppose it is partly self interest, is the fraught conjunction of anonymity, confessional, freedom of expression, privacy, veracity, self-exposure and unwanted exposure involved here. What follows is something of a tiptoe around the issues of blogging, anonymity, authenticity, ethics and privacy.
1. Veracity. In the last couple of centuries or so, we’ve somehow decided that truth is assessed by the actual person speaking it. This person must be identifiable and individual. This is particularly so if what is being described is anecdotal rather than abstract or empirical (nobody is fussed about pseudonymous mathematicians).
This might make a certain sense where the speaker claims access to important inside knowledge (or does so in the form of a Roman a Clef, Joe Klein in respect of Primary Colors, for instance). But in many instances of everyday truth telling, whether because you are an employee, likely to be ridiculed, or your material demands anonymity for yourselves and others, veracity depends on being unidentified. In these cases, surely assessment of truth depends on the quality, texture and detail of the voice telling it?
We’re not used to this, we want to know who is speaking - particularly when it comes to politics, money and sex (Will the real Belle de Jour please stand up etc.?). Politics and money, I can understand. The sex one puzzles me only to the extent that the routine backlash misogyny against women being more or less in charge of sex while being quite bright puzzles me.
This vaguely leads on to:
2. Responsibility or ethics. I’d suggest that if one claims anonymity oneself, then a certain duty is owed to others who might be possibly be identifiable in what is written. This includes partners, friends, co-workers, employers, employees and anyone else who might be identified in the blog. Most employee bloggers who have got into trouble have somehow made their employer identifiable (not all, of course), and I would have to say that unless there was a specific whistleblowing issue, this might not be unreasonable, (although of course it could be), and quite possibly in breach of contract.
I have taken care over anonymity, I must admit. All stories in this blog are true, but details are changed and combined, and time shifting has happened. I have to protect myself in regard to my job/future jobs, yes, but also I must consider my clients, colleagues and employer and I do not think that any bystanders or walk-ons who feature in what I write should be personally identifiable. This also means that many of the most interesting stories have to go by the wayside, alas.
Anonymity won’t protect against committing libel, of course.
3. Public interest? Now, where an anonymous blogger has taken care and been responsible, and where who they are as an individual is irrelevant for the value or truth of what they have written, what possible interest is there in exposing them? Obviously, I’m discounting the usual purient or vindictive motives.
Surely, there can be no public interest in revealing the author unless what is written addresses matters of genuine public concern, and then we are talking whistleblowing or insight into the lies of power.
A woman’s honest, considered and thoughtful account of her sexual life, a magistrate’s account of his (I think) experience on the bench, a police officer’s blog, even my own humble effort, in each case anonymity is necessary for the truths to be told or opinions to be put forward.
If there is no libel involved, if there is nothing that would identify others or employers, no overriding interest, wherefore lies the public interest that the inkies claim in exposing the identity of anonymous bloggers?
4. Privacy. It might seem odd to talk about privacy in relation to a form, the blog, that is often publicly confessional. But privacy is about the control over the disclosure of information about oneself and the manner of disclosure. Outing an anonymous/pseudonymous blogger runs roughshod over that control of disclosure.
Something of this seems to be involved in Douglas v Hello! 2003, where Lindsay J. held that the intention to publish information does not preclude a right to privacy. (I’m not sure that the fusion of breach of confidence, equity and Art 8 in Douglas v Hello will suffice though.)
When News International can attempt a (thankfully failed) argument against publication of images/details of the ‘fake sheik’ on the grounds of privacy and then a few weeks later glory in revealing the identity of someone who is a sexually active woman (oooh) blogger, I’d suggest that anonymity and privacy in the context of publishing information or opinion needs to be seriously addressed. The issue is only going to get larger and larger as many more people take to publishing on t’interweb.
Things seem to be rather different in the States. McIntyre -v- Ohio Elections Commission 1995 apparently found a right to anonymous free speech in the First Amendment. Has anyone followed the developments of this?
Oh dear, oh dear. All it takes is for me to go away for few days (very pleasant, thank you for asking) and a corrupt mysql table makes the impressive edifice that is Nearly Legal collapse into a non-functional mess.
It has taken a little while to restore it. No, I didn’t have backups, so that is a lesson learnt, painfully. Retreiving past posts was a difficult labour, involving much swearing, but they are there now.
I’m just off to backup the database and reinstall some of the twiddly bits, but apparently it lives again.
Nick Holmes at Binary Law has blogged me. Blimey.
“Looks like it could be a good one “. No pressure then.
I’m surprised, but then again, I suppose that there aren’t so many UK legal blogs to enable a new one to be overlooked.
I’m going to save more considered comments on lawyer’s blogs for another time. However, IT in general seems to be lawyer’s weak point. In my admittedly limited experience, solicitors use IT and the interweb thingy, but don’t really understand it (with obvious exceptions). As a newcomer to the profession, I am astonished that digital documents, trial bundles etc. have not been taken up, although apparently there is slow progress at the high value end of things.
Personally, I’d be happy to head to Court with a few CDROMs or, better, the encrypted key to a secure site on a few flash drives. As it stands, I take the file(s) and/or trial bundle in an wheelie bag and everyone, from the Judge to paralegal, will have to flick through searching for the page.
Incidentally, where did this ‘blawg’ title come from? I’m from an arts background and frankly it makes my inner aesthete shudder. But what is more, every time I read ‘blawg’ I expect a cartoon muskrat to appear and comment on my shortcomings.
[Edit. According to this the source was
"Denise Howell, who coined the term “blawg” as shorthand for “law blog,” is considered one of blogging’s pioneers. She says the nascent days of legal-oriented blogs were marked by a frontier spirit that was equal parts anticipation and exhilaration."
I guess that wild west moment is why I hear Deputy Dawg.]
Thank you, Mr Holmes, for a very pleasant surprise.
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