The Lawyers Weekly published an article this week by Mark Herrmann entitled "Is blogging worth it?". Herrmann seeks to answer two questions: Is blogging "worth it"? and Is blogging a worthwhile business development tool? It's a decent article, and touches on most of the plausible answers to those questions.
However.
Here is the blog at which Herrmann writes: Drug and Legal Device Law. Take a look at it. Notice anything? Notice anything pertinent to the audience of The Lawyers Weekly, which is "the first newspaper for the Canadian legal profession ... serv[ing] the national market with bureaus in Ottawa and Toronto and correspondents across the country"? Herrmann is a US citizen, writing a blog about US law. Much love to the good folks at The Lawyers Weekly (who have been gracious enough to publish a couple of things by me in the past), but, seriously, thirty-three million Canadians and we couldn't find one blogging lawyer to write a piece on whether blogs add anything to the practice of Canadian lawyers?
Herrmann notes, "As a result of two years of blogging, I’ve appeared on television shows on CNBC, Bloomberg and C-SPAN. I’ve been interviewed by, and quoted in, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and countless regional papers. I’ve been invited to speak at academic symposia, continuing legal education programs and state Bar conventions. A major academic press has approached me about a book deal." The Canadian blawgosphere is a diverse place, and I can't claim familiarity with everyone who inhabits it and the success they've had blogging, but I can personally guarantee you that setting up a blawg in Canada will produce nothing similar to those results.
Canadian blawggers aren't difficult to find. Stem Legal maintains a whole list of 'em. And I certainly don't mean this to be some kind of chauvinist whine about sourcing a Canadian for the article, because the issue is somewhat more subtle than that: Canadian blogging, and by extension Canadian blawgging, is a quite different beast from American blogging/blawgging. To crib from Clay Shirky, more isn't just bigger, more is different. The sheer size of the American legal community and audience for legal writing means that blawgging in Canada and the US are inevitably going to be endeavours with radically different results. It would have been interesting to see what, f'rinstance, David TS Fraser had to say on the topic, or read the insights of the writers of the Hoyes Michalos bankruptcy blog (timely!). Regrettably, the impression that blogging is blogging is blogging has delivered an informative but perhaps less-than-useful installment.
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