The Great "Vitality of the Legal Blogosphere" Debate
Bob Ambrogi posted a law.com column recently in which he declared "blogging alive, well and thriving within the legal profession" ("Legal Blogs Are Dead!"). In his post, Bob offered up a list of newly launched law blogs. Not surprisingly, the critical response to Bob's column came from Scott Greenfield, and others. Scott's post: "The Blawgosphere is Alive (If You're Not Too Picky)."
I think both perspectives are useful, and whenever I meet with a young lawyer I always bring up the possibility of blogging, with the caveat that it's not for everyone. That said, I agree with people like Scott Greenfield and Mark Herrmann, the former author of Drug and Device Law (who moved in-house). (Herrmann's "Memoirs of a Blogger" [pdf] is a must read article on law blogging.) I think their perspective is also incredibly useful. Blogging takes a lot of time and while the benefits are plenty, you mostly do it to satisfy some sort of inner need. (I should say that I do it for this reason.) Scott's perspective - that blogging is not the path to riches - is a valuable thing for would-be bloggers to hear. There is no one size fits all approach, but I'm convinced that from a pure dollars and cents perspective, I could spend my time more usefully in ways other than blogging, or at least I could scale my (already sporadic) blogging back a bit. At the end of the day, sustained blogging takes a significant commitment of time. Time to keep track of the subject matter, time to respond to commenters and other bloggers, and time to write the blog posts themselves. I would say if you are not planning on spending at least three hours per week (150 hours a year), don't bother. I do it because I am interested in the subject matter, and I like to weigh in on the issues.
Anyway, back to Bob's list. I happened to see a blogger whose name I recognized, and when I clicked on his blog, I saw that it had last been updated in March of this year - that's over six months ago! I'm not sure what metric Bob is using to measure the vitality of blogs and for including active or newly launched blogs on his list, but six months is a bit more than a brief hiatus. (For what it's worth I used to read the Digital Media Lawyer Blog, and I'd read his blog if he started blogging again.) I didn't click on the rest of Bob's list and I'm not sure what the inclusion of this blog on the list says about Bob's overall point, but that's neither here nor there.
On a loosely related note, Carolyn Elefant mentioned something in a comment to a post here a couple of weeks ago:
I think both perspectives are useful, and whenever I meet with a young lawyer I always bring up the possibility of blogging, with the caveat that it's not for everyone. That said, I agree with people like Scott Greenfield and Mark Herrmann, the former author of Drug and Device Law (who moved in-house). (Herrmann's "Memoirs of a Blogger" [pdf] is a must read article on law blogging.) I think their perspective is also incredibly useful. Blogging takes a lot of time and while the benefits are plenty, you mostly do it to satisfy some sort of inner need. (I should say that I do it for this reason.) Scott's perspective - that blogging is not the path to riches - is a valuable thing for would-be bloggers to hear. There is no one size fits all approach, but I'm convinced that from a pure dollars and cents perspective, I could spend my time more usefully in ways other than blogging, or at least I could scale my (already sporadic) blogging back a bit. At the end of the day, sustained blogging takes a significant commitment of time. Time to keep track of the subject matter, time to respond to commenters and other bloggers, and time to write the blog posts themselves. I would say if you are not planning on spending at least three hours per week (150 hours a year), don't bother. I do it because I am interested in the subject matter, and I like to weigh in on the issues.
Anyway, back to Bob's list. I happened to see a blogger whose name I recognized, and when I clicked on his blog, I saw that it had last been updated in March of this year - that's over six months ago! I'm not sure what metric Bob is using to measure the vitality of blogs and for including active or newly launched blogs on his list, but six months is a bit more than a brief hiatus. (For what it's worth I used to read the Digital Media Lawyer Blog, and I'd read his blog if he started blogging again.) I didn't click on the rest of Bob's list and I'm not sure what the inclusion of this blog on the list says about Bob's overall point, but that's neither here nor there.
On a loosely related note, Carolyn Elefant mentioned something in a comment to a post here a couple of weeks ago:
Carolyn's point is an interesting one as well.I think that Twitter has had a positive effect on blogging. Used to be that weak bloggers would toss up a couple of links in a blog post without commentary or thought. Now they just tweet or RT them, which diminishes some of the white noise in the blogosphere.
"I would say if you are not planning on spending at least three hours per week (150 hours a year), don't bother"
Three hours a week seems to be way on the low end from my experience so far. To put up 4-5 good articles a week, follow what's going on in the blawgosphere, and comment/reply on posts takes more like 8-10 hours a week.
regular blogging is a commitment, people need to have passion for it or it's going to fall flat.
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No disagreement from me on that comment. I picked three hours as an arbitrary minimum.
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