Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘about the site’

Help us win the ABA contest (and ruin someone’s day…)

The ABA Journal’s contest for best general legal weblog ends momentarily (Wed., Jan. 2) and as of this writing we’re still lagging a mere 50 or so votes behind the front-runner, not an impossible margin you’d think to overtake in a last-minute surge. Unfortunately, we’ve more or less run out of winning tactics that wouldn’t mire us in an embarrassing degree of groveling, nagging, cheating, conniving, etc.

Quite a few folks associated with the American Bar Association have been open-minded and even friendly toward Overlawyered over the years, but we have reason to believe that some others high up in that organization regard us as the web equivalent of hot buttered death. Who can deny that it would be amusing to tick off that second group by having Overlawyered win the ABA’s own contest? Perhaps readers in comments can suggest vote-winning techniques we haven’t thought of. (Beg Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds to send their readers to cast ballots for us?). Okay, here’s one: recommend that your readers vote for us, and we’ll give you a grateful shout-out (within reason) in this column.

P.S. Thanks to Caleb Brown, who does the Cato Institute’s podcast series, for filling in over the holidays. Check out his site Catallaxy.net. And stay tuned for another guestblogger we expect to be joining us in the not too distant future.

[Bumped Wednesday morning for continued prominence. First we pulled to within a dozen votes of QuizLaw, it seems, and now (around midnight EST) they’re back ahead by 40.]

And: a most grateful thanks for the boost to:

P.P.S. Melancholy sequel (just 19 votes short!) here.

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Wherein we deny all robot-related activity

QuizLaw, down in the ABA Blawg vote, has resorted to negative campaigning, perhaps recognizing that the site proprietors are unlikely to sue for libel:

And here’s the God’s honest: Walter Olsen [sic] and Ted Frank, the purveyors of legal smut over on Overlawyered, are robots. Yes. You heard me right. Built by the IBM Corp. sometime in the late 90s and given fake, prestigious resumes (like a University of Chicago graduate would actually blog! ha!), Walter and Ted were programmed to spit out thoughtful, sometimes amusing legal analysis (and relevant links) about cases that actually matter in the world of law, which as we all know defies every tenet of the blogosphere.

We plead guilty to violating blogospheric tradition by knowing what we’re talking about, but we do deny that we’re robots, much less ones built by IBM. Of course, if we were robots, we’d probably be programmed to deny that we were, so such a denial only gets you so far. But, alas, such QuizLaw’s scurrilous lobbying has pulled them to within one vote in the ABA poll, so reader support is needed.

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A reminder

Some commenters appear not to have seen this, so it is worth recounting in updated fashion:

For readers who haven’t figured this out on their own:

  • When we post on Overlawyered about a real or potential lawsuit, it doesn’t necessarily mean we think the case is without merit. We regularly discuss meritorious cases.

  • Not infrequently lawsuits we discuss are well founded on existing law, but that existing law is ill-conceived and deserves to be reconsidered. Or both law and lawsuit may make perfect sense, but the level of damages demanded may be excessive or implausible. Or the combatants on one side or both may pursue dubious tactics and theories. Or the media coverage of the case may have been credulous or one-sided. You get the idea.

  • Sometimes it’s not clear what if anything either side did wrong in pursuing a dispute, but the case still stands as a monument to the high cost of resolving things through legal process. A recurring example: the family feud over a legacy that ends by consuming the estate in litigation costs.

  • We also discuss a certain number of cases that are just plain interesting: they raise novel or non-obvious legal issues, or they shed light on human nature as it manifests itself in legal disputes. And, yes, it does happen on occasion that I take note of a case without being sure what I myself think of it.

  • Finally, Walter, Ted, and David are three different people and don’t always agree amongst themselves.

Sorry if this introduces complexity where people were expecting to find simplicity.

And another reminder: voting in the neck-and-neck race ends January 2.

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ABA Journal “Blawg 100”

The ABA Journal has named Overlawyered to its inaugural “Blawg 100”, one of thirteen sites labeled “Generally Speaking”, i.e., generalist law sites. In fact, you can vote for us here as best of category if you like. Note also that another of the thirteen is my and Ted’s other site, Point of Law. Howard Bashman’s ever-popular How Appealing at Law.com is currently leading in the balloting, but our sites are at present doing well in the competition, with Point of Law at #4 position and Overlawyered at #2 (cross-posted, in slightly altered form, from Point of Law).

P.S. Ernie the Attorney, as usual unfailingly generous, has some comments about the history of the blawg form, as well as the story of a New Orleans photo not taken.

And now we’re in the lead — even though, as another of our generous brethren states the case, “for every vote that QuizLaw gets, an angel is granted a demurrer”.

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