Why bother blogging?
Barely a day goes by without an entry being posted on one of the blogs I read (see side bar right) about a new blog, the impact of blogging, a controversial blog or something to do with legal blogging. So it’s clearly something that is being done more and more. Just look at all the blogs in this directory.
Back in the old days, just having a blog was good enough to get readers, but that is no longer the case. Anyone can set up a blog and post about random stuff each day. In order to get readers and to keep them coming back you need to offer good content that is well written, covers topical issues or analyses well known ideas in a different way and is kept up to date. Often people will set up a blog with a great idea for their first post and then not have any idea as to what to write from then on. That is a danger and despite what people might think, it is quite difficult to think of fresh and engaging content continually.
Luckily, like quite a few subject areas, the law is a great topic to blog about because there is a lot of content available for inspiration. There are court cases going on all the time and the news is a great source for that. Equally, as a law student I am learning new things each day I have a lecture or seminar and I can have fun analysing that new knowledge in the context of what I knew (or didn’t know) already. I have yet to do that because I have yet to encounter something that is worth commenting on, but I do expect to reach that pretty soon (lectures so far this week have been more introductory and seminars start next week).
For qualified lawyers, blogs can be a good PR tool to promote your services and your law firm. For students like myself they can be a good way to just write up what is going on and see if anyone else has experienced something similar, or just to post a controversial comment in the hope of generating discussion. For me, it is more a case of exploring a different style of writing and subject matter than I have been used to in the past. I’m pleased to see that people are linking to this blog but it is not the primary reason I’m writing.
Yesterday, I listened to a lecture about how law is taught here – that the approach of the law school is quite different from many law schools around the country in that it takes a critical approach to the law. Whilst learning “black letter law” is very important, the teaching here supposedly gives you additional skills which can be applied even if the law you have learnt changes, as it inevitibly will. This will be the focus of the “Critical Introduction to Law” module – providing key skills for analysing law and not just learning the written facts. This is, of course, a very good idea and something I’m surprised is not the focus of all law schools.
Provided within this lecture was a good example about a law in the USA which states that any convicted criminal (or felon, if you’re using that crazy (perhaps even an oxymoron?) language that is American English) loses their right to vote in any presidential election. I was surprised that this law exists as I’m of the opinion that every citizen should have the right to vote, but that aside, it transpired that this rule was key to George Bush winning the election. Many black/hispanic Americans in Florida would have voted for Al Gore but by some co-incidence many of them were also convicted criminals. As a result, votes which could have (and probably would have) meant a victory by Al Gore were not cast and so the actual implications of this law were to provide a victory for Bush. On it’s own, the law is not racist, but when considered within this context, it really is.
So I can conclude by saying that what I knew in a general sense but did not have any specific examples for – the law exists as written fact but is rarely considered without some kind of context; that blogs are an increasingly important aspect of law; and that after reading through “Overview of Contract” in my “Obligations I” booklet, in actual fact, contract law is incredibly complicated!
