Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Advice On Law Blogs and Social Media

1. Rob La Gatta: The Volokh Conspiracy now has almost 20 authors, making it one of the most heavily staffed legal blogs. Do you maintain some sort of editorial control over the other authors, or do you give them free reign to publish as they see fit?

Eugene Volokh: I give them free rein - it's easier for everyone.

2. Rob La Gatta: For a while now, you've been blogging over at the Huffington Post, which Kevin has described as a prime example of new media legal publishing. Do you believe that legal publishing will continue to evolve following a Huffington-like model, or will it take some other path?

Eugene Volokh: I'm not sure what "a Huffington-like model" is, and what exactly "legal publishing" is supposed to cover. But group blogs are a good model for readers who like a steady stream of interesting comments on a wide range of issues.

3. Rob La Gatta: The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has called you "one of the undisputed kings of the blawgosphere." At what point in your blogging career did you realize you had achieved such a prestigious title, and what do you think was the most important factor in getting you there?

Eugene Volokh: I can't say we merit the title, but I am happy that we've got a lot of readers, and tend to get a good many links. Why? My guess: We've been around for a long time; we have people who are expert on interesting topics; we post a good deal of stuff on those topics; and most of our posts are accessible and interesting to laypeople as well as lawyers.

4. Rob La Gatta: On top of all the other stuff you've got going on in your life, how do you find time to blog? Do you set aside a certain amount of time per week, or is it just whenever you've got a free minute?

Eugene Volokh: I blog whenever I have time plus the inclination. If I have enough of an inclination, I make time. I see blogging as part of my mission as a professor, much like other professors might see writing op-eds or newspaper columns as part of their mission. It's just that blogging is more flexible, more fun, and less scutwork than op-eds or columns.

5. Rob La Gatta: If you were to offer one important bit of blogging advice to a lawyer just starting his or her first blog, what would you tell them and why?

Eugene Volokh: Find something on which you are really expert, and which no-one else is covering. Then post frequently about it - enlist cobloggers if you need to - and when you write a post that you think some of the high-traffic bloggers (e.g., InstaPundit) might find interesting, e-mail them messages containing both the permalink to the post and the full text of the post, so they can quickly skim it and see whether it's worth linking to.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

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• Cliff Mintz [1.14.08]
  

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Hard to believe I could be learning about the future of legal publsihing from the Zsa Zsa like character I saw on TV in the California Gubnetorial debates. But Arianna Huffington has launched a heck of a media force with her Huffington Post.

Ariana before and after is aptly described by Richard Siklos in Fortune Magazine this week.

Before the launch of the Huffington Post in 2005, she was an easily caricatured Greek-born pundit and author who seemed to know everyone and have an opinion about everything. Nowadays, thanks in large measure to the growing chatter about the Huffington Post, she is gaining not just media cred but the kind that comes with being one of those few people who supposedly 'gets' the web.

How did she get to the point where at a recent cocktail party she had Rupert Murdoch nodding with approval when told of Huffington Post's 3 million visitors per month? Blogs.

Unlike a conventional newspaper that devotes the majority of its resources to basic newsgathering, the Huffington Post instead devoted its scant editorial budget to hiring a few key editors, staff bloggers, and political reporters who post links to the day's stories and imbue the site with a dishy and slightly indignant sensibility, while giving the endless parade of invited bloggers co-star status on the Arianna Show. To date, some 1,600 bloggers have accepted Huffington's invitation to write. They are given a password to log into the site's publishing system and blog at will.

It's an ever-changing stew. On a given day John Cusack, Deepak Chopra, Nora Ephron, Bill Moyers, Al Franken, Bill Maher, Governor Bill Richardson, John Kerry, and scores of other politicos, actors, activists, and academics take to the digital pages of the Post with their views, causes, and beefs.

And like traditional legal publsihers who have dismissed blogs, or at least continue to pour most of their money into publishing periodicals, journals, and reviews, Huffington was easily dismissed by mainstream media. Siklos reports they gave scant chance to a collection of blogs by Huffington and her Hollywood pals. They "held blogging in roughly the same esteem that Oscar-winning thespians have for dinner theater on cruise ships."

I am not suggesting that lawyers blog in the likelness of Huffington bloggers. However, the concept of an aggregated blog featuring hyperlinks to various third news sources and columnists may signal the new age of legal publishing. We at least need to look at such models to expand our horizons as to what legal publishing could become.

Niche legal publsihers with far more expertise in partcular areas of the law than traditional reporters, editors, and publishers offer tremendous value to other lawyers and the public at large. They always have. But until blogs and the ability to curate such law content, we didn't have a medium for the publishing and consumption of such content.

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