Why Lawyers Blog

Dearest A,

Andrew Sullivan wrote a very fine essay in The Atlantic the other day -- Why I Blog. It's a paean of sorts to the immediacy of blog-writing: "more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud."

I love this idea. I also wonder if it could possibly apply to lawyers who blog.

Lawyers are diligent and careful creatures, not given to such moments of whim as "writing out loud." To be a very good lawyer, you must read cases over and over to ensure you're interpreting them correctly. You must write over and over to ensure that you're not overstating or misstating or understating concepts. You must think over and over to ensure you've considered every possible consequence of a decision.

This is not easy work. And I wonder if any lawyer can blog effectively without doing all of this reading and writing and thinking. And all this reading and writing and thinking takes time.

So how do we reconcile the nature of lawyers with the nature of blogs?

Much love,
Sammy