Set in Style

Let me begin by applauding a new blog (Carried Interest Taxation) authored by Lynn E. Fowler, a partner at Kilpatrick Stockton.

The Daily Report has this story about what motivated Fowler to start a blog of interest to a very specific audience: private equity fund managers, people very much concerned about congressional action that’s sure to greatly affect their incomes.

What’s so nice about this blog is that it’s so focused. It’s well written and informative; it’s a must-read for private equity fund managers (and their lawyers).

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Note: a number of readers say they don’t like seeing real-world examples used to demonstrate what not to do. As they see it, it’s OK to offer praise, but it’s not polite to criticize. I understand, but — in the instant case — it’s unavoidable. (See this post for a critique that hides the identity of the firm.)

Look . . . this is a blog about law firm publishing, and real-life examples — the good, the bad, and the ugly — are often needed to make the point: like all publishers, law firms need editors.

Now . . . consider the Digestable Law blog about Internet law published by Perkins Coie.

In the past two months, just two posts were added to Digestible Law — one on April 5 and one on May 5. That’s it!

The consequence? Digestible Law is not a good source of information about what’s happening with Internet law. If you’ve seen the blog once, you’re done with it.

Sure . . . the blog could help catch people — like prospective clients and those who influence them — who are looking for information about Internet law, but it doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity. The firm’s logotype appears at the top of the blog, but a reader can’t just click it to learn more about the firm. An editor would fix that problem pronto.

Let’s suppose Perkins Coie’s lawyers are just too busy to spend their time writing blog entries. (If those lawyers are that busy, does the firm really need the blog?) How can the firm keep the blog current so readers have a reason to keep up on it?

It could make good use of an editor. If a good editor tended to this blog, articles about Internet law would be posted on a very regular basis. That would make the blog so much more effective, because — as has been well established — a feature of effective blogs is their currency.

People don’t bother with blogs that aren’t kept current. Why would they?

Frequent updates are essential for a blog to become either the definitive, or an important, source of information. One post a month won’t do.

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Let’s look at another interesting and ineffective aspect of Digestible Law.

If this blog is like all others, you can access all its entries from the blog’s main entry point: www.digestiblelaw.com.

Click that link and (on 7 July 2007) just ten posts appear; there’s no option to see posts made prior to March 2, 2007. The reader has no reason to believe that there are any more posts .

Scroll down to the bottom of the blog and notice the copyright line. Even though all ten posts were made in 2007, the copyright is dated 2006.

Now, click the Legal Disclaimer link to the left of the copyright line. That disclaimer says the copyright is 2007, rather than 2006!

It might seem like a small thing, but what this tells readers is this — Perkins Coie doesn’t use due diligence in its own IP matters. Ouch!

Next, select Copyright from the menu labeled Areas of Law. What appears are 20 posts; the earliest is dated November 10, 2004.

This is fascinating. There are twice as many posts in one area of law than in all areas of law!

Select Case under the menu labeled Topics. Over 200 posts appear; the earliest is dated November 29, 1993.

There are 20 times as many posts under one topic in one area of law than there are in the entire blog! The blog includes entries that are 15 years older than the blog!

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Let’s look at one more peculiar aspect of Digestible Law. Document Validation is a hot topic these days, and the reader might expect to find posts regarding document validation software under that heading.

Select Document Validation from the menu labeled Areas of Law. In response, seven posts appear; the earliest is dated October 22, 1997. Yet, none of the posts has anything to do with Document Validation.

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There’s an old saying: anything worth doing is worth doing right. That old saying applies just as well to blawgs as to briefs.

An excellent post at Poynter offers excellent advice (so long as that advice is followed with prudence).

It goes like this:

An author writes a piece and then edits it. Part of the editing process is to “Murder Your Darlings” — get rid of phrases that struck you as brilliant when they first came to mind, but which don’t work well. Even in the case when a phrase seems just too good to pass up, don’t distort good copy around it to make it work. Better to save it for a rainy day than throw it away.

The phrase is born in Arthur Quiller-Couch’s book On the Art of Writing: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

The technique is for use with stories, and that’s precisely why attorneys should know of it, because so much of what so many of them do includes writing stories; e.g., “Defendant emerged from the conference room and walked briskly toward the elevator, about 50 feet away. Halfway there, Defendant deliberately knocked Plaintiff to his feet, causing his head to strike the metal box and, hence, his death.”

James Patrick Kelly offers this fine essay describing the technique.

Try it. And ask yourself, “which story is more likely to be accepted by judge and jury: the well-written one, or the longer, flowery one?”