I’ve been a fan of the Guardian Law site since it started out.  It is energetic, thoughtful and interesting. But, as any unbiased and entirely objective observer would be bound to conclude, the site had an obvious and gaping hole in its coverage. Where was the housing law?

I’m delighted to say that Nearly Legal is here to save the Guardian from this otherwise fatal flaw in its law coverage. We’ve been invited to join the Guardian Legal Network, joining heavyweight law blogs like the UKSC blog, UKHR blog, LAG and others. The Guardian Legal Network presents some of the best comment and analysis from UK law blogs and beyond and we’re pleased to be asked to join.

I think that in practice, this means a certain amount of content sharing, should either we or the Guardian chose to do so.

Lord Neuberger, in his recent and very fine speech on open justice, pointed to the value of substantive legal blogging:

we should foster the already developing community of active informed court reporting on the internet through blogs, and tweeting; we should support the responsible legal journalists; we should initiate, support, encourage and assist public legal education. The great strength of our society is that it is built on the competing voices of free speech. Justice to be truly open must join its voice to the chorus; and must ensure that inaccurate or misleading reporting cannot gain traction.

Obviously Nearly Legal would agree, and I think it is very much to the Grauniad’s credit that it acknowledges and encourages active, informed legal comment and analysis, and presents it to a broader public. Hopefully we will indeed be content partners. [Awful, I know. Sorry.]