LexBlog, with its aggregation of law blog posts, worldwide, and blogger profiles has been described as a legal blogging community.
The Illinois State Bar Association’s Illinois Lawyer Now, launched this week to publish an aggregation of member blog posts and blogger profiles has been described as a community of Illinois legal bloggers – at least those of whom are members of the Illinois State Bar Association.
But the legal blogging community has always been there – whether LexBlog or Illinois Lawyer Now came about or not.
Law bloggers are just a subset of the legal professional. The best of whom, as measured by their blogging, are the unedited voice of a person reporting and offering their insight and commentary. They engage other bloggers, at least part of the time, by referencing what other law bloggers are writing – usually by particular areas of the law.
Law bloggers know they’re unique creatures by the fact that the vast majority of their peers do not blog – whether they’re lawyers, law professors, law students, law librarians, legal entrepreneurs or law firm professionals.
The unique or crazy ones in our society always seem to find each other and bond over time. Just check out the local running club for the marathoners who are there, week after week, year after year, training to run a PR (personal record) in their next 26.2 mile race.
People who work in niche areas of the law or in niche functions and whom choose to do what is hard cross paths and get to know each other.
For the last twenty years the intersection that has enabled us to get to know each other and communicate with each other is the Internet. It’s no different for law bloggers.
The open Internet meaning places which exist and which facilitate and empower open communication – blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter – as opposed to closed communities expecting people to registration for engagement, often in a way not open to all.
Sure, LexBlog, and Illinois Lawyer Now, facilitate and grow the community. How can’t they? They’re shining a light on lawyers and their blogging. They showcase blogs that may have been missed by legal professionals and the public. Profiles of blogs, bloggers and blogging organizations provide a “phone book” directory for community members.
Such legal community sites also provide even greater meaning to the works of legal bloggers. Blogs will undoubtedly become the leading source of secondary law. These sites will funnel content and accompanying metadata for further research and discovery.
But at the of the day, we’ve always had a community of legal bloggers.
We at LexBlog, the Illinois State Bar and other bars and organizations to come are just working to grease the skids so as to make our community better for legal professionals and the public.