Law blogging and poetry

I blogged Saturday how blogging, through observation and expression, can clarify a lawyer’s thinking and advance the law.

So it was fitting today that Euan Semple (@euan) blogged about ‘Blogging and Leadership‘ picking up on the same theme of providing insight on our observations.

Euan, a speaker, writer, and consultant used the analogy of poetry to blogging. Not just reading poetry, per Euan, but writing it.

I have long thought that good blogging is somewhere between poetry and essays. At its best it is an attempt to distill the essence of an insight and convey that insight as concisely as possible to others.

The activity of blogging calls on the writer to develop a heightened awareness of their surroundings and to work out their reactions to those surroundings. If translated into effective writing this then triggers a similar process in others and sends ripples out into the world like lobbing a pebble into a pond.

Developing these skills of acute observation, self awareness, and ability to convey ideas compellingly would appear to be key skills in the toolkit of anyone hoping to achieve influence in any context.

Euan believes this is why blogging has such enormous potential. Blogging helps us sort through our most significant challenges.

Practicing law requires a constant processing of what we read, observe or hear. We do it as part of our work for clients and we do it as part of our professional development.

Many lawyers contribute to the advancement of the law or to making the law accessible to the public. It’s done in the form of an appellate opinion recommended for publication, authoring an article for a legal publication, speaking at a CLE or penning a piece in a business journal or local newspaper.

This is why blogging is so important to the law. As blogging lawyers, we can observe, provide insight and advance the law for the benefit of fellow lawyers and the public.

Rather than look at blogging as marketing alone (business development is a pleasant by-product), look at blogging as working out a reaction to your observations. By writing you trigger a similar reaction by others with similar interests.

Image courtesy of Flickr by UGArdener