Five Questions: Cathy Kirkman of the Silicon Valley Media Law Blog

Today, after a nearly six month hiatus, California intellectual property lawyer Cathy Kirkman has returned to the LexBlogosphere. In her first update to the Silicon Valley Media Law Blog since March 25, Cathy announces a technology/IP panel she is participating in at Harvard University next week.

To coincide with Cathy’s return to blogging, we have chosen her as our latest guest in LexBlog’s ongoing Five Questions feature. Read on to find out what she’s been up to for the past six months, what advice she has for new bloggers and more.

1. Rob La Gatta: Before your post this morning, you hadn’t updated your blog in some time. What was it that made you stop blogging in the first place?

Cathy Kirkman: A couple of factors came together that made me hit the pause button on the blog – along with the fact that the nice weather was keeping me outdoors with my kids in my free time. For me, blogging reflects my personal participation in the online community, so I’ve always felt the freedom to do it on my own terms, not as a fixed routine.

First, the apparent positive reception of the blog over the past few years has led indirectly to its own set of high-quality problems. I’ve become involved in so many interesting conversations that I had to stop for awhile and try to re-prioritize what I’m doing on a proactive basis, rather than reacting and trying to absorb what’s been a veritable flood of wonderful new opportunities.

Second, I took the conversation about blogs that occurred at the Yale Law conference to heart, which was the subject of my last post. Katherine McDaniel, a brilliant recent Yale law grad and also a well-known blogger, drew some interesting distinctions between blogs of the newsletter type and blogs of the online-conversation type. While I didn’t agree with this as a strict dichotomy necessarily, and her thesis was more nuanced than that anyway, I did benefit greatly from her perspective, and wanted to rethink what I was doing with my blog within the confines of being a practicing lawyer, and how it is perceived, and how relevant it is.

2. Rob La Gatta: What have you been doing with your time since your last post in late March?

Cathy Kirkman: Well a lot of really exciting things have been happening with my law practice. Even with the blog inactive, it has continued to be quite effective and efficient in communicating my perspective on media law. Also, I am working with some amazing clients on cutting edge matters, and have also been working to expand our firm’s media practice, which we are very proud of, with some key hires and related initiatives that are on our firm’s web site.

But to be completely candid about the blog hiatus, it went on a little longer than I expected. I think the summer weather kept me outdoors with my children – we spent a month at our summer house in Port Townsend, including a week at the Centrum Writer’s Conference, along with a week at Stanford Sierra Camp, just before the Angora Ridge fire started at Tahoe. We returned to Palo Alto to enjoy the rest of August before school started for my two boys. And the break gave me more time to be thoughtful about how and why I wanted to jump back in with blogging.

3. Rob La Gatta: With your most recent update you have re-entered the blogosphere. Are you planning on doing anything differently this time around? If so, what?

Cathy Kirkman: Yes. I thought it was timely to jump back in with a simple update on what I’m up to – a speaking engagement at Harvard Law School. I admire bloggers who have the personal touch, so I’m hoping to continue to discuss media law issues while inviting and engaging in real connections with other birds of a feather. Also, because my law firm is involved in so many of the big cases, I thought that I might want to refocus a bit more along the lines that Katherine had laid out at Yale, by trying to engage more actively in the community discussion, rather than trying to track all of the recent developments, many of which I can’t participate in anyway.

4. Rob La Gatta: Are there any blogs you read that have influenced your writing style?

Cathy Kirkman: My favorite blogs continue to be these amazing IP-related blogs – [from bloggers] like Denise Howell, Mary Hodder, Bill Patry, John Palfry, Dennis Crouch, Marty Schwimmer, [and] Eric Goldman. And thought-leaders like Larry Lessig of course, and Silicon Valley types like Michael Arrington. I am just a law geek at heart, so I hope to continue to be part of a thoughtful discussion about IP law online, while at the same time looking to expand my voice a bit to find new ways to connect with others and participate in the dialog.

5. Rob La Gatta: If you could offer one piece of advice to a lawyer just starting his or her first blog, what would it be?

Cathy Kirkman: I would say to reach out to others for advice, as I have found the blogging community to be very open and welcoming. I thought about it for a long time before starting my blog, but at some point you just have to decide to jump in. Also, I reached out to Kevin O’Keefe early on, because I wanted a team that could keep my blog on the cutting edge in terms of technology and presentation. Having Kevin as a resource has been a great investment even though obviously there are many do-it-yourself options out there, but I wanted professionalism and I don’t have the time to be my own staff.

Welcome back Cathy, and best of luck at the Harvard panel next Tuesday.