In the age of digital information, the definition of what is “public” has evolved, especially in the legal domain.
Traditionally, public access to legal information meant being able to physically enter a law library and conduct research across a wide array of resources, all centralized in one location. This model allowed for comprehensive legal research without the need to visit each publisher’s individual repository.
The rise of legal blogs has introduced a new dimension to how legal insight is shared and accessed. While legal blogs are inherently public, saying they are public is misguided.
Someone may spend up to thirty minutes just to check if a particular law firm has published the needed insight. For someone attempting to canvass the blogs of the top one hundred law firms, this could amount to over fifty hours of time. Include the next one hundred firms, and the time doubles. Not practical.
Searching Google is just as problematic. Scrolling may be required to see one source. Other sources, and perhaps the better ones, will never be found.
This is where a library of legal blogs steps in. By aggregating credible legal blogs, we not only enhance the visibility of lawyers who contribute insight, but also improve the accessibility of their insight to the public.
This library could be publicly available on its own or, more importantly, to legal research platforms already tapping into various libraries of content, in addition to primary law.
In either case, a legal blog library mimics the traditional law library model by enabling users to conduct comprehensive research across a multitude of legal blogs in one centralized platform.
Gone are the days when treatises and law journals, alone, were the sole repositories of secondary law. Legal blogs have become a crucial medium for sharing legal thought leadership and commentary.
The emergence of a platform that aggregates these blogs signifies a pivotal shift in legal research, making it more aligned with today’s digital information age. Without such aggregation, there is a significant gap in the legal communities and the public’s access to legal knowledge.