Blogs & RSS Feeds
Updated March 11, 2008.
Prepared by Mary Whisner.
Law-related blogs (a/k/a "blawgs") can be good sources for news and quick analysis. A post could give you an idea for a paper topic or help you think about a topic you already have. Blog posts often cite or link to other useful material (e.g., law review articles, reports). Writing blog posts or commenting on others' posts can involve you in a community discussion.
The feeds you watch can be as diverse as you are. There are thousands of law-related blogs – and when you add in political blogs, news services, sports, and the rest of the world, the possibilities are tremendous.
Directories of Legal Blogs
ABA Journal's Blawg Directory.
Blawg is an extensive directory of legal blogs. It is searchable and can also be browsed by category. Blogs are ranked by popularity. A search feature ("Search the blawgosphere") enables you to search blog posts. Every blog listing has an RSS feed, which makes subscribing convenient.
BlawgSearch is another directory of legal blogs. As the name suggests, it makes searching blog posts easy.
Law X.0’s Taxonomy of Legal Blogs is a selective directory. You can choose by topic, by jurisdiction, by type of author, etc. (This site was developed by a law student as an independent study project.)
A Law Student Blogger Directory, a list of student blogs.
Washington Blogs
Click here for a list of law-related blogs in Washington State.
Reviews and Digests of Legal Blogs
The ABA Journal released its first ABA Journal Blawg 100 in its December 2007 issue. The editors invite you to vote for your favorites here.
Inter Alia - blog that features a Blawg of the Day. The author, Tom Mighell, also has an e-newsletter, the Internet Legal Research Weekly, which includes the Blawgs of the Day and more.
Blawg Republic "provides a digest view of the latest news and commentary from the legal blogging community." Searchable -- so you can find posts from many blawgs.
Robert Ambrogi's LawSites. Includes blogs as well as other sites of interest to lawyers.
Blawg Review. A "blog carnival" -- each week a different editor highlights blawgs and posts, generally on a theme. For example, in August 2006, Ernest Svenson, who blogs as Ernie the Attorney, offered his picks for "writing, learning & teaching law," among other things in Blawg Review #72; George Lenard of George's Employment Blog, wrote Blawg Review #124; Labor Day Special Historical Edition. The anonymous editor of Blawg Review announces awards in a variety of serious and not-so-serious categories each year (see 2005 and 2006).
Dennis Kennedy gives Blawggies to the blawgs he deems best in different categories.
Feed Readers
A feed reader (a/k/a news aggregator, RSS reader) can help you follow blogs and other sources that a regularly updated.
A great video explaining the concept is RSS in Plain English, The Common Craft Show, April 23, 2007.
There are a bunch of readers, including Bloglines, Google Reader, News Gator, and MyYahoo. I haven't tried them all. OK, I haven't tried any but Bloglines and Google Reader. (Why try them others once you find one that works for you?) Bloglines works very well. One feature enables you to share your list of feeds; here's mine.
News Feeds
Feeds with Legal News
Jurist Paper Chase – news stories reported from wire services and other sources by University of Pittsburgh law students.
Law.com feeds – news stories from Legal Times, the Recorder, the New York Law Journal, and more.
Feeds with News
Check almost any newspaper’s website. You can often subscribe to stories from a given section (e.g., front page, sports) or columnist.
| For example, at the bottom of the Washington Post's main page, you'll find this: |
 |
| If you follow that link, you'll get a menu of different feeds you can subscribe to: |
|
| At the bottom of the Seattle Times's main page, you'll find this: |
 |
| And that leads to this menu: |
|
When you choose the feed you want, you can past its URL into your feed reader.
Also, many government agencies have RSS feeds for press releases and other information. For instance, the Washington Attorney General’s Office has feeds for press releases and Attorney General Opinions. Legal Guide for Bloggers
FirstGov has a page listing federal government feeds.
My Blogs
For what it's worth, here are the blogs I contribute to:
Trial Ad (and other) Notes – news and information related to trial practice, with a focus on Washington State.
Legal Scholarship Blog - information about law-related conferences, lectures, colloquia, and calls for papers.
Do You Want to Blog?
To get started, you need some software (most is reasonably easy to learn if you're used to word processing) and a host. Free hosts include Blogger (blogs with URLs ending in blogspot.com) and WordPress. Another provider (not free, but affordable) is TypePad.
You can also use a consultant who will design the blog for you -- for instance, LexBlog (based in Seattle) specializes in designing blogs for lawyers. Whether or not you use LexBlog, the company's own blog (Real Lawyers Have Blogs) is packed with tips about blogging for lawyers.
What should you think about before you get started? See 55 Essential Articles Every Serious Blogger Should Read, a list Matt Huggins put together in June 2007. Here are some good tips from a veteran (the author of Legal Andrew): Starting a New Blog? WAIT! See Andrew's other tips here. I wrote about my experience starting Trial Ad Notes in A Blog's Life (2006).
Blogs and the Academy
Student blogs:
- The good news is that a well-written, intelligent blog (or thoughtful posts on others' blogs) can get you positive attention and maybe even help in your job search.
- The bad news is that you can create a bad impression too. If you plan to use your blog to rag on your classmates, professors, judges, etc., consider blogging anonymously or restricting access to your blog to only an invited few. Remember that the Web is very public and what you write can be read (and forwarded) by all manner of people.
Law professor blogs:
- Symposium at Harvard's Berkman
Center for Internet & Society - Bloggership: How Blogs are Transforming Legal
Scholarship (Note: HeinOnline links are UW-restricted. SSRN offers free
downloads; many of the papers on SSRN are working papers,
pre-publication.)
I. Law Blogs As Legal Scholarship
- Paul L. Caron, Are Scholars Better Bloggers?, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1025 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- Douglas A. Berman, Scholarship in Action: The Power, Possibilities, and Pitfalls for Law Professor Blogs, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1043 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- Kate Litvak, Blog as a Bugged Water Cooler, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1061 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- Lawrence B. Solum, Blogging and the Transformation of Legal Scholarship, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1071 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- Eugene Volokh, Scholarship, Blogging, and Tradeoffs: On Discovering, Disseminating, and Doing, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1089 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- Paul Butler, Blogging at Blackprof, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1101 (2006), available at HeinOnline
- James Lindgren, Is Blogging Scholarship? Why Do You Want to Know?, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1105 (2006), available at HeinOnline
- Ellen S. Podgor, Blogs and the Promotion and Tenure Letter, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1109 (2006), available at HeinOnline
- Gail Heriot, Are Modern Bloggers following in the Footsteps of Publius (and Other Musings on Blogging by Legal Scholars...), 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1113 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- Orin S. Kerr, Blogs and the Legal Academy, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1127 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- D. Gordon Smith, A Case Study in Bloggership, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1135 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- Randy E. Barnett, Caveat Blogger: Blogging and the Flight from Scholarship, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1145 (2006), available at HeinOnline
- A. Michael Froomkin, The Plural of Anecdote Is Blog, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1149 (2006), available at HeinOnline
- Larry E. Ribstein, The Public Face of Scholarship, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1201 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- Ann Althouse, Why a Narrowly Defined Legal Scholarship Blog Is Not What I Want: An Argument in Pseudo-Blog Form, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1221 (2006), available at SSRN and HeinOnline
- Christine Hurt & Tung Yin,
- Howard J. Bashman, The Battle over the Soul of Law Professor Blogs, 84 Wash. U.L. Rev. 1257 (2006), available at HeinOnline
II. The Role of the Law Professor Blogger
III. Law Blogs and the First Amendment
IV. The Many Faces of Law Professor Blogs
What about legal issues?
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Legal Guide for Bloggers
Berkman Center for Internet Law & Society, Citizen Media Law Project's Legal Guide
Knight Citizen News Network, Top
10 Rules for Limiting Legal Risk (includes video segments)