Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘on other blogs’

CPSIA Blog Day #1: Past CPSIA bloggers

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Among the bloggers who’ve done excellent posts on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, but who don’t primarily blog on this or nearby topics, are BeliefNet’s Rod Dreher (who was onto the thrift store angle very early), John Schwenkler of Upturned Earth, Mark Thompson @ Publius Endures, economist Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, Advice Goddess columnist Amy Alkon, Iain Murray at CEI “Open Market”, Jeff Nolan at Venture Chronicles, Patrick @ Popehat, Eve Tushnet (scroll a lot to Jan. 15), and leading education blogger Joanne Jacobs.

Do all of them know that today is CPSIA Blog Day, in which hundreds of bloggers will be calling attention to the law’s terrible effects? I hope so, because it would be great to hear their voices again as part of today’s chorus.

P.S. Great response! Posts from Amy Alkon at Advice Goddess, Patrick at Popehat, John Schwenkler, Mark Thompson at the wonderfully named League of Ordinary Gentlemen, and Eve Tushnet at Ladyblog.

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ABA Journal “Blawg 100” — go vote for us

I’m very pleased to announce that this year, as last, the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal has named Overlawyered as one of its “100 best Web sites by lawyers, for lawyers”, and I’m not going to quibble about that wording, even though I’m not a lawyer nor (I believe) are the majority of the site’s readers.

So much for the introductory pleasantries. Now for the main task at hand, which is to win.

Readers may remember that last year Overlawyered lost its run for first place in its category by only a handful of votes, perhaps because we were relatively shy and diffident about urging people to go vote for us. This year the ABA Journal has placed us among ten blogs in the “niche” category, where we face competition from some very high-quality blogs, but, with all due respect, not from any whose readership levels and outside recognition we think exceed ours.

If you go there to vote, you will notice that the popular patent-law blog Patently-O has evidently been whipping its supporters to go cast their votes immediately, and is, for the moment, far in the lead. The ABA Journal says that last time it checked, “Patently-O’s Facebook group had more than 800 members,” which is very nearly the number of votes that blog has received so far. The other possible reason for Patently-O’s huge overnight vote surge, of course, is that they’ve invented some sort of bot to stuff the ballot box by impersonating real voters. But that couldn’t be the right explanation. These are patent lawyers we’re talking about. No way could they invent something.

Anyway, go there and vote for Overlawyered and your favorites in the other categories.

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Microblog 2008-11-14

  • Lawyers and other professionals who blog should read new Kevin LaCroix post “On Blogging” [D&O Diary h/t @SecuritiesD] #
  • Daily H.L. Mencken quotes [courtesy @ahndymac] #
  • Funny, earthy blog by urban emergency room nurse [Crass-Pollination] # @danimari Odd how ERs generate so many of the best medblogs e.g. WhiteCoatRants, ER Stories, Movin’ Meat, SymTym, GruntDoc etc. #
  • Calm down, conservatives, Dems aren’t planning to revive Fairness Doctrine [James Rainey, L.A. Times] # Or are we sure about that? [Ed Morrissey, Patterico]
  • Advice on jury selection: “don’t continue to poke a bee hive with a stick” [Texas Country Trial Lawyer, h/t @HouCrimLaw] #
  • Video humor for font geeks [College Humor, h/t @sekimori] #
  • Do you blog, tweet, send saucy emails or IMs? You may not be well suited for a job in the new admin [Caron, TaxProf] #
  • @rebeccawatson of possible interest regarding litigious diploma mills [this site, Oct. 27, 2003] #
  • Beautiful photos of New York in the 1930s [Flickr h/t @CoolPics] #

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Microblog 2008-11-06

  • Expects to have to fight Obama on policy, wept anyway when he came to podium for victory speech [Jonathan Blanks] #
  • Every self-respecting insider-trading ring should include an exotic dancer and a Croatian underwear seamstress [Bainbridge] #
  • New panel discussion: why are schools so bureaucratized and what can we do about it? [NewTalk] # @sekimori “Bureaucracy is to protect the system from litigation.” Not cynical to think this is one big part of the problem. #
  • @bschuelke: “Why is it so difficult to get clients’ medical records? Should be easy but is often the hardest part of the case.” #
  • Primer on role of Delaware in corporate law [NY Times] #
  • Ways to find good, underrated people [Ben Casnocha h/t Tyler Cowen] #
  • Cluelessness alert: U.K. cabinet minister criticizes blogs for not “allowing new voices” [Massie] #
  • Dems swept races for judge in Houston — unless their names were too unusual [Houston Chronicle] #

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National Journal: bloggers on the White House race

Various well-known bloggers talk about how the blogs did this year in stimulating discussion, challenging errors and omissions in the general press, and so forth. I contribute a quote about how “when you sit out an election without backing a candidate, you become painfully aware of how easy it is for blogs turn themselves into an echo chamber for their side’s talking points. Not attractive.” Some blogs I turned to this fall for politics coverage in part because I couldn’t always guess ahead of time what line they’d take: Steve Chapman, Megan McArdle, Marginal Revolution, Culture11’s Confabulum, Ann Althouse, Virginia Postrel, Mickey Kaus (not an exhaustive list by any means).

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October 6 roundup

All-blog edition:

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