Its the same effect that results in bloggers revealing corporate secrets who would never consider doing that in a letter.

Reminds me of an instance from years ago when a client was working on a policy to allow employees to work from home. They created a great, long list of all the issues/problems that it could create. My first comment was that they already had most of those risks for the average employee in a cube. I'm not sure whether they were relieved to hear that, or nervous because they now thought of those risks for all employees.

I often encounter people -- and this is surprising to me each time I encounter it -- who either have little to no conception of what the internet is about beyond the home page of CNN, or who react to a lawyer's blogging as if he had an unlicensed side business of working on people's electrical wiring or delivering babies. One justification I have heard about fear of blogging is that it creates a permanent record, and when you put out a statement it's there for all to see. This really misses the point: if you as a lawyer do not understand your words can be used against you whether uttered to your neighbor, spoken at a seminaor or given in a written formal opinion, you are already a walking malpractice case waiting to happen. If you do understand that, blogging is just another aspect of your professional montage.

On one level, I do understand this fear, however: some people's knowledge of blogging may come from political or other sites where commenters and bloggers frequently engage in the worst, most sickening kind of abuse, mean-spiritedness and uncontrolled behavior. If your understanding of blogging reaches only as far the blogger who left the Edwards campaign because of past offensive posts on a variety of topics, you may suppose that is the currency of the trade.

This smacks either of the insurance company a) not understanding what a blog is, and just flat refusing it due to ignorance, or b) working really hard not to cover anything, so that they can start their insurance marketing (with increased premiums?) for the new endeavor. Either way, I predict it will get a little embarrassing for them.

Jerry
www.leads4insurance.com

No prudent lawyer though is going to allow their law firm blog to have, as you describe, 'characteristics of one-on-one consultation' and thus create as a you say 'attorney client like communications-relationships.'

It's just not done. We have about 500 lawyers on our blogs and not one of them is on a blog that allows unmoderated comments. And none of the lawyers that I know of are having anything close to one-on-one consultations on their law firm blog.

Heck, if lawyers wanted to have have 'one-on-one consultations' in a question and answer session following a seminar presentation they could do so. And worse yet, there would be no record that such 'one-on-one consultations' did not take place if someone attending makes such a crazy claim. From that standpoint blogs are a lower risk than seminars.

Chubb is overreacting, naive, adding more exclusions to coverage which was purchased, or trying to pick up a few bucks selling new coverage. My take is it's a combination of all four.