Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Blogging about Legal Matters

I've been reading lately about ways to be a better lawyer. I had assumed that improvement would be simple for a new attorney; every new day would be an improvement on yesterday's ignorance.

Well, apparently there is more to improving than the passage of time.

Here are some of the suggestions for improving as a solo attorney:
1. Regular contact with clients. Write notes to them, call them often, and invite them over for long games of cribbage (preferably not during the business day, but don't rule out the possibility of billing them at the standard hourly rate).
2. Go Paperless. Scan every document, label files well, have a good back-up system, shred all hard copies, and spend leisurely afternoons at the lake because of all the time I will save not having to sift through endless paper files.
3. Create a blog on which to write about legal matters. Of course, not confidential client information, but non-confidential, non-client legal matters.

It's this third suggestion that has piqued my curiosity. I already blog right here. This blog is about one of my passions. It's relatively easy to write about a passion. But what might I blog about if I start a legal blog?

These "suggestors" for solo attorney improvements were light on explaining what legal topics, outside past stories about crazy clients, that might be interesting enough that people would actually want to read about.

Here's one idea:
I have found myself dealing with several grandparent custody issues. These are tricky. Grandparents usually seek custody of a grandchild when their own child is not parenting well or is unable to parent. Recently, I've been researching MN's presumption that a natural parent should have custody of their child rather than a third party, often a grandparent. It sounds like a great presumption. However, it is not a great presumption if the natural parent is unfit and the grandparents are fit. Getting over the natural parent presumption is not a slam dunk, even if common sense says grandparents should have the child.

So, a blog about legal matters. Technical enough so that other attorneys would read it and not seek my disbarment, yet practical and readable enough so that a non-attorney would benefit and enjoy their time reading it.

I'm open to suggestions. How about a blog title?

3 comments:

The Beginning Farmer's Wife said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Beginning Farmer's Wife said...

Great idea. Not that farming or law have anything in common - especially with the types of beards grown :) - but we sold one of our hogs to someone who stumbled onto Ethan's blog and have others who have inquired about our beef.

Because of his frequent posts and visitors, Ethan's blog is now the top hit when you search beginning farming or beginning farmer. So I would suggest a title that someone might stumble across if they were searching online for a lawyer in your area - maybe something with the phrase St. Croix Lawyer in it?

By the way, Button Running 9th is on the first page when you google St. Croix Law.

Hope all is well!

The Beginning Farmer's Wife said...

Me again.:)

I just noticed that Ethan's blog is 5th in the list for "Iowa grass fed beef", so it looks like it would even pull you up if you just had the searchable phrases in your topics and posts.