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Real Lawyers Have Blogs

Update On Migration of Typepad Hosted Legal Publishing

Preserving and republishing over 150 endangered legal blogs with hundreds of thousands of blog posts before Typepad closes and deletes alll publishing on September 30.
By Kevin O’Keefe

Two weeks after Typepad announced it’s shutting down and deleting all publishing on its platform September 30, here’s an update on LexBlog’s work to remove, archive, and republish all credible and citable legal publishing hosted there. Others are contributing to the cause as well.

  • We have identified more than 150 legal blogs still hosted on Typepad.
  • We are working closely with the Law Professor Blog Network and have already secured exports for 51 of its blogs, representing over 220,000 legal posts.
  • We have engaged directly with dozens of legal publishers—mostly practicing lawyers—about migrating their Typepad blogs to LexBlog and have begun migrating many of those sites.
  • In addition to our support team’s work, our Director of Products, Brian Biddle, has spoken with several publishers, answering questions about timelines, training, and the new publishing experience.
  • We are setting up “pre-live” blogs on LexBlog’s Stoddard theme so publishers can keep posting immediately while their archives migrate in the background.
  • We are helping LexBlog law-firm clients move any remaining Typepad-hosted content onto our platform.
  • We are scraping content from Typepad sites where we do not yet have login access in order to preserve and protect this legal publishing.

I share this not to boast, but to express both pride in serving the legal profession in this way and gratitude for my caring, committed team, who embraced this project as an opportunity to serve, and to underscore for the legal profession the enduring importance of digital legal publishing.

Brian shared with me: “One professor wrote, ‘Thank you for taking refugees!’ Another said they would be moving their blog ‘in sackcloth and ashes for the passing of the LPBN.’ Others simply expressed gratitude and eagerness to continue publishing, noting, ‘I look forward to working with you,’ or asking, ‘Please let me know what I need to do on my end for the transition.’”

As Brian put it, “The response from the legal community has been encouraging—editors are grateful, and leaders across the profession recognize the importance of safeguarding these voices. Together we’re ensuring that legal commentary which might otherwise disappear remains accessible for generations to come.”