Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Social Media, Twitter

'Blogging is like music, you've got to play it the way you feel it, you've got to give your own interpretation to the material.'

That from ultra successful insurance coverage blogger David Rossmiller - blogging away from his own blog at of all places a LexisNexis Blog, who asked him to write a series of posts talking about how to blog.

David continues:

If legal blogging is to be yet another display of lawyer obfuscation and tediousness, another clothesline on which to hang their insufferable, flaccid prose, better that it should not be done at all. But legal blogging does not have to be merely another forum for the boring to drone on to the bored - it can be not merely another format for transmitting the same old information in the same old way, but something radically different, a new means of communication. This is what lawyers all too easily lose sight of when writing - that the goal is not to show how smart they are, or even to win. The goal is to communicate with the reader.

I was talking with an immigration lawyer last evening who contacted me to begin blogging. I was afraid what he was talking about writing to a possible blog was getting too far out there - risking alienation of potential clients. I advised him that when we started working together I wanted to him to hold his cards a little closer to his chest.

And this morning I got an email from him asking 'Why not be who I really am?' What a novel question for a lawyer - 'why not be who I really am?'

Thanks for reminder David. Emailing the lawyer this evening, letting him know he's got to blog the way he feels it.

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Don't know that David Rosmiller asked for it, but just as Geraldo Rivera used to say his MSNBC program was the show of record on the OJ trial, David's Insurance Coverage Law Blog has become the blog of record when it comes to State Farm's handling of the Katrina claims and now, possibly, the high profile Dickie Skruggs trial.

Just today at Overlawyered David was described as being out in front of, as he so often is, new developments in the Skrugg case:

Yes, it seems there were wiretaps. Defendants will be seeing evidence from the prosecution momentarily which might (or might not) be the trigger for further flipping and early plea deals, if such there will be.

There is enormous curiosity (e.g.) about P.L. Blake, to whom Scruggs says he paid $10 million (and tens of millions more in future payments) for vaguely described intelligence services aimed at swaying political influentials during the tobacco caper. Per a 1997 account posted at Y'All Politics, 'Blake pleaded 'no contest' in 1988 to a federal charge that he conspired to bribe officials of the now- defunct Mississippi Bank to secure favorable loan terms.' The same article, citing reporting in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, reports that Blake was in close phone contact between 1994 and 1996 with eventually-disgraced state Auditor Steve Patterson, who after leaving office went into partnership with Timothy Balducci and is one of the five indicted in the current Scruggs affair. Per AP, 'Patterson was a banker at Mississippi Bank before his 1984-1987 tenure as head of the Mississippi Democratic Party.'

David Rossmiller, as so often, is out front with a report filling in background on two other controversies involving Blake. One arose from a venture into the grain storage business which landed him in a Texas dispute in which his attorney was none other than Fred Thompson, later a Tennessee senator and presidential candidate. The other arose from his cordial dealings with a former chief of staff to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Mississippi).

In David's interview with the Wall Street Journal Law Blog last week regarding the Scruggs case, the Journal's Ashby Jones posed a good question: why doesn't David just pack his suitcase and leave Portland behind for a few days to see what's going in Mississippi for himself? David seemed receptive to the idea.

I’d love to. These people in Mississippi have been really good to me, and I feel like a lot of them are family to me; that Mississippi is like a second home. But I have three kids and a day job! I can’t just up and go down there, even though I’d absolutely love to. Now, if someone offered me a book deal . . .

The media should jump all over this opportunity; David has been consistently on his game and seems the natural choice as a knowledgeable go-to guy on the Scruggs case. The only question is, who's going to send him there? We've got some suggestions:

• Greta Van Susteren of Fox News On the Record and whose own blog, GretaWire is hitting the stratosphere. At least have David join the legal panel one night.
• CNN's Anderson Cooper (get Jeffrey Toobin off the case, Anderson...David's got it covered)
• Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic Monthly
• MSNBC's Dan Abrams, host of "Live with Dan Abrams"

Lawyers are becoming some our best reporters. Van Susteren, Toobin, Rivera, and Abrams are all lawyers. No different with blogging. Except the lawyers are reporting on niche subjects on which they're uniquely qualified.

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LexBlog client and insurance lawyer, David Rossmiller, has been getting plenty of attention in the media covering insurance stories. Comes as a result of David's Insurance Law Blog. The last couple days its come from the Wall Street Journal.

Yesterday the WSJ Baw blog named him law blogger of the day. Today David's picked up in the WSJ hard copy in Nathan Koppel's story, 'How Scruggs Case Engulfs Life of an Insurance Blogger.'

One of the more unlikely figures to have emerged as a prominent voice on the saga in Mississippi involving famed plaintiffs lawyer Richard 'Dickie' Scruggs is an insurance lawyer in Portland, Ore., who's never set foot in the state.

Somehow, in between his day job as a law-firm partner and his night job as a husband and father to three young children, David Rossmiller blogs about insurance. These days, he's 95% focused on the Scruggs affair, in which he has no formal role. On the matter, he has been cited in publications including the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Los Angeles Times and the online magazine Slate.

The blog, insurancecoverageblog.com, began in early 2006 as a repository for Mr. Rossmiller's thoughts on the insurance industry. But earlier this year, he says, he delved into the coverage battles involving Hurricane Katrina victims and State Farm Insurance Co., which he found 'absolutely fascinating.' He weighed in on court decisions, focusing largely on clauses in many homeowner policies that, asserted lawyers for policyholders, State Farm was using to justify denials in coverage.

For lawyers sitting on the fence about doing a blog or who may be listening to the blog naysayers, give David a call. Talking to him, which I did yesterday, is inspiring to the last. It leaves you with little question that a well done law blog focused on a niche in which the blogger engages in the online conversation can change one's life dramatically, both professionally and personally.

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