My Log of Blogs: Recommendations for the ABA Top Blawg List

For the seventh year, the ABA Journal is compiling a list of the Top 100 Law Blogs, which they call “Blawgs.” Given the glut—probably thousands—of law-related blogs online, landing a spot in this Top 100 is quite an honor, and the resulting list is a great guide (see the 2012 list here). How does the ABA Journal pick these 100 blawgs to highlight? It begins with nominations by readers like you. You can nominate one or more favorite law blogs through this link before the Aug. 9 deadline.

To guard against self-promotion, the ABA Journal discourages self-nominations or nominations from PR types. Since I can’t and wouldn’t nominate this blog, which blogs would I recommend? They are listed below; those with an asterisk indicate the blog made it on the 2012 Top 100 list. Following my list are some IP-oriented recommendations from my colleague here at Cogent, attorney Michael Kelleher.

Morgan’s Blawg Picks

* The Velvet Hammer: Karen Koehler gives voice to the realities of being a hard-driving trial attorney and a stretched-thin working mom. She writes with an off-the-cuff, candid style that is likable and revealing. Her post on the day after a crappy jury verdict went viral because so many attorneys, myself included, can relate.

Court Technology and Trial Presentation: Ted Brooks is a highly experienced legal tech expert and trial hot-seat specialist. What I like most about his blog are his in-depth reviews of new apps and other legal tech products.

* iPhone J.D.: Jeff Richardson’s blog is my go-to source for news on all things related to iPhones, iPads and legal apps.

Real Lawyers Have Blogs: Kevin O’Keefe’s blog is a must-read for understanding, using and staying abreast of social media developments for lawyers and law firms.

The Litigation Consulting Report: Ken Lopez of A2L Consulting and his colleagues produce undeniably useful and insightful posts about litigation graphics, trial prep, jury consulting and more.

* Persuasive Litigator: The prolific Ken Broda-Bahm of the firm Persuasion Strategies always writes thoughtful, thoroughly researched posts about various aspects of trial and jury consulting. I particularly like how he frequently draws on current events and uses political metaphors to share lessons that are helpful for litigators.

CEB Blog: CEB stands for “Continuing Education of the Bar.” Attorney Julie Brooks consistently writes useful, concise “how to” articles on a wide range of law-practice topics, so if you need an answer on how to do something for a client or the best way to go about it, search her blog’s archives to find an answer.

(Note: I also read and recommend several blogs like The Lawyerist and Above the Law, but they are magazine-style sites featuring multiple authors, rather than an individual’s blog. I’d rather highlight smaller individual blogs.)

Mike’s Blawg Pics

And here are three more from Michael Kelleher:

* Patently-O: The daily “must-read” for patent attorneys: legal developments and policy analysis concerning patents. (For non-patent attorneys, the name, Patently O, refers to “patently obvious.”)

Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog: Strong opinions and great IP knowledge make for fun reading from Professor Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University School of Law in the heart of Silicon Valley. For example, a recent post highlighted things that Professor Goldman hates about the initial interest doctrine in trademark litigation:

Here are some things I hate:

• duplicitous litigants, such as plaintiffs who buy competitive keyword advertising yet sue competitors for doing the same thing
• economically irrational and socially wasteful litigation, such as plaintiffs who spend over a million dollars in legal fees on a problem that, at most, is worth tens of thousands of dollars
• pugnacious litigation over incredibly weak trademarks, like so-called trademarks that are simply 1-800 plus a generic noun
• trademark doctrines that have no rigorous definition or scientific support, like the initial interest confusion doctrine
• technologically unsavvy judges that guess about how consumers use the Internet when those assumptions have been proven false in the literature
• appellate courts that eviscerate a legal doctrine without expressly saying the doctrine is dead, leaving the legal doctrine as a zombie to plague the courts for many years

(Why yes, I did wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.)

Groklaw: A great open-source blog of intellectual property breaking news.

What “blawgs” would you nominate? Please feel free to share the name and link in the comments below. And if you feel like nominating our Cogent Legal Blog through this link before the Aug. 9 deadline, we’d certainly appreciate that.

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