They get it wrong. Deadlines are short, most legal reporters are not lawyers, and, let's face it, reading lengthy legal opinions is boring, whereas copying snappy press releases is fun!
If you want to be informed about legal developments, including breaking appellate decisions, go to the legal blogs. Except. . . on reflection, I realize that you can't. The leading appellate blogger simply links to stories in MSM. What a shame. Maybe one day we'll have a legal blogger who independently reads and analyzes breaking appellate decisions. Then the reporters can check with him (or her), rather than a press release, before they write their stories.
About five paragraphs down in this post, Glenn Reynolds (distinguished ConLaw Prof. at Tenn.) observes parenthetically that lawyers make for good bloggers because they are accustomed to the "low trust" environment of the Internet because that is "a lot like the world they live in." Reynolds is insightful, as always, about the Internet, but I don't think "low trust" is exactly accurate for the legal world. Rather, I would suggest the more cumbersome "high expectation" environment. Lawyers expect a high level of evidentiary support and sourcing accuracy from both their adversaries and colleagues. The legal profession is able to operate precisely because lawyers expect other lawyers to research, cite, support and carry on according to commonly understood procedural rules and some basic understanding of professional obligations. Thus the process of adjudicating a dispute is formalized and accelerated because the basic trust groundwork is already done. But on the Internet, there is no such common understanding. The 'trust' groundwork is laid by reputation - a high reputation blogger is immediately more trustworthy than someone you never heard of - and every new blogger must painstakingly establish their bona fides. In the legal profession much of that basic trust groundwork is created by virtue of each participant having his or her law license (and the risk of losing it) and acceding to the rules of procedure.
Posted by david on September 15, 2004 06:02 AMWe all know that there are a great many lawyers who blog (just look at our righthand nav!). But now it has become increasingly clear that the 'current events and politics' type bloggers - i.e. the ones who actually get the huge hit and pageview numbers - are as often as not lawyers. Beldar points it out, through the lens of the CBS document forgery scandal, in this post. These are the bloggers who, although lawyers, do not write about either the practice of law or their own specialties. So there is clearly a distinction between "legal bloggers" and "bloggers (many of whom happen to be lawyers)". The "legal bloggers" - the ones we are concerned with in this blog - distinguish themselves by being the experts, online, in their often very specific practice specialties, or through their insights into the art of running a law firm (management, marketing, technology, et cetera). Accordingly, I think the term "legal blogger" makes more sense now than ever, as a means to define this particular and specialized corner of the blogosphere.
Posted by david on September 13, 2004 04:52 AMBy now everyone who reads blogs has been intently following the CBS document forgery story. I'm not going to link to any of the many dozens of excellent posts because, frankly, this blog is not about politics or current events. But in this one instance, I have to note that Glenn "Blogfather" Reynolds just quoted from James Lileks:
Blogs haven't toppled old media. The foundations of Old Media were rotten already. The new media came along at the right time. Put it this way: you've see films of old buildings detonated by precision demolitionists. First you see the puffs of smoke - then the building just hangs there for a second, even though every column that held it up has been severed. We've been living in that second for years, waiting for the next frame. Well, here it is. Roll tape. Down she goes. And when the dust settles we will be right back where we were 100 years ago, with dozens of fiercely competitive media outlets throwing elbows to earn your pennies.
I think there's something to that - especially that last sentence - and even the overdramatic style has a 19th century ring to it.
Although I would guess that most lawyers are still not fully aware of it yet, the media landscape (to use a tired, old media cliche) has changed permanently. And, naturally, many of the bloggers leading the way are themselves lawyers, law professors, or others similarly situated. Viva la blog revolution!
UPDATE: Belmont Club has an analysis of the whole situation, and Powerline, which appears to have started it all, makes a prediction.
Posted by david on September 10, 2004 06:29 AMNo good, says the Third Circuit.
I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you.
Okay, yeah, at first blush my sense of propriety and form is offended by the practice of stamping off on "proposed opinions."
Then again. . . I've seen federal judicial clerks take whole chunks of one side's memorandum of law in a summary judgement motion, tweak it a bit, and turn it into an opinion - So Ordered. Is there really that much of a difference?
How do we know that Judge Schwab's clerks did not provide him with thorough research and a recommendation, and the judge, honestly, believed that the "proposed opinion" was absolutely correct and perfect? If the real world result of this opinion is that the judge simply has his clerks rewrite the proposed opinion in the 'judge's own voice' - whatever that might be - then it will just be a waste of time and resources without any meaningful increase in fairness or justice.
Let's face it folks: ghostwriting is everywhere. PR flacks send copy to journalists who change a word or two and then hand it off to their editors as if it was their own real and true bylined work. Corporate executives routinely hire folks (such as yours truly) to write articles and whitepapers for them. And we all know that when you read a piece in the New York Law Journal by Mr. famous lawyer X, and in the tiny print at the bottom it says "Joe Shmuck, law clerk, assisted with the preparation of this article" it really means Joe Shmuck researched and wrote the piece.
I'm not defending Schwab. It appears, at least from the 3rd Circuit's view, that he signed off on an opinion he didn't even read very carefully, and in one instance apparently rules on arguments never made in the underlying motion. But we can all predict the final result of this: a new opinion, cosmetically different from the proposed opinion, but in substance identical.
Posted by david on September 7, 2004 06:35 AM