Blogs, by their very nature, are a vehicle for information hyper-consumerism. There are tens of thousands of individuals posting regularly, and they in turn have consumed thousands of items from other sources each day. It is as if every plankton is also a baleen whale.

This is particularly pronounced in the blogosphere at large, where the social currency of memes and oddball news items gets whipped into a froth. Post early and post often, as being on the cusp of the latest web trend or meme gives you street credibility.

Lawyering is in some ways similar: you must have the advance sheets to know the law of the land as it stands at this moment. However, you cannot write a compelling brief without drawing upon those monumental cases that have stood the test of time. Additionally, an appellate brief is not a sound byte. It needs to be articulate, persuasive, and thoroughly researched.

It is important to remember that, for the most part, the internet sees all. As a result, slap-dash blog entries on the issue of the day may not just fall short of the mark, but could come back to haunt you (see Dave's article If Bork Had Blogged from earlier this year).

The potential for political suicide may not be immediately apparent. The half-life of the average meme once it has reached its apex is 24 hours: Any surge in site traffic roughly drops by half each day once it has peaked. Occasionally there is an echo, but typically it gets discarded in short order. Thus, a shocking or inflammatory post could make the rounds and then widely fade away.

You may be forgotten, but you will be preserved. Yet, this need not produce a "chilling effect" on lawyer blogging. The actual odds of your opinion jeopardizing your career later on depends largely on your aspirations of becoming a Supreme Court Justice.

Who knows, perhaps your post will become the weblog equivalent of Footnote 4 to the Carolene Products case^[1].

The most important factor to keep in mind is whether your public opinion on various issues and events compromises your client's position. But I will leave that discussion for another post.

United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938)