First, a tip of the hat to John Bolch at Family Lore for spotting that the LSC has increased its provision of grants to for ‘legal aid’ traineeships by 100, on top of the current 492 (apparently, but only 71 firms involved?). While the grants might seem like a good thing, and in some ways certainly are, one has to ask why they were necessary in the first place (legal aid firms being skint and uncertain about the future, perhaps?). Plus, given that the traineeship has to be offered before the prospect takes the LPC, how many firms have enough faith in the future to promise a place 1-2 years down the line? Still cheap subsidised labour is not an unattractive prospect for some involved, I suppose.

Above all though, it takes a certain kind of cheek for the LSC to be ‘ensuring the future’ of a sector it is otherwise trashing, and paying to train people whose odds of find a legal aid job frankly ain’t going to be great for that very reason.

Secondly, Nearly Legal’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tip.

Yes, for all those out there desperate to get more traffic to their blawgs, no matter how briefly the visitors stay, you too can see a dramatic and regular uplift in your hits, just by mentioning Sally Field Naked (SFN). Granted, it is difficult to just drop the phrase into a law blog, but since last I last mentioned this phrase, the hits have gone through the roof. 60 today alone, finally toppling ‘tolerated trespasser’ from the top of my search hits. So, have a little creativity and come and join this blog in the top 4 google results. Just a mention of SFN every 30 posts or so will do it and your stats will never be the same.

I’m not sure what this says about the world and I am fairly sure I don’t want to spend too long thinking about it. However, I do know that I am probably annoying a small, specialist sub-section of the world and I take a certain pleasure in that. I’m not sure what this says about me.

[18/09/07 – of course. Ms Field has just won an emmy. Naturally on seeing the news that someone has won an Emmy for playing a mother, one promptly searches for naked pictures of her.]