I managed to miss an anniversary, a bit like my own birthdays these days. Nearly Legal was two years old on the first of June. Two years! That is positively middle aged in internet years, fittingly making the blog roughly as old as I am.
It has been quite a trip. I can safely say that I didn’t plan what Nearly Legal has turned into at all, nor did I expect what was always going to be a very niche blog to get the range of readers and calibre of commentors that it has. For all who comment and email, my thanks. It is, quite honestly, what keeps the blog going.
It isn’t just this blog that has changed, the surrounding world of UK law blogs is also very different. When I started, all the UK blawgs could comfortably fit on my blogroll link list, without it looking particularly lengthy. That is thankfully no longer so. There have been departures, some lamented, but also a lot of newcomers and, much to my delight, increasing numbers of very good specialist blogs have appeared.
There has also been an increasing amount of fun to be had with page scrapers, RSS and aggregators over the years, which has hopefully made Nearly Legal more of a resource than just a blog.
When I started Nearly Legal, I was a paralegal in search of a traineeship. Thankfully that has changed too. I’ll be qualified in a short while, of which more in a few days.
Like all anniversaries, though, this has brought on a minor bout of navel gazing. Whether Nearly Legal sees another anniversary, or even six months, depends on what will be dramatically changing circumstances, none of which I can safely predict. Where I want to take it, assuming it does keep going, is also not certain at the moment. It has been a lot of fun, but also a lot of effort, over and above my full time work. In the meantime, though, normal service will be maintained as far as possible…