Today's New Blawg

Greg Siskind writes the Visalaw Blog [via Rick Klau]:

I reminded Rick that I actually had set up a blog back in May 1998 before there was even a term "blog." In that year, we set up an "online diary" to keep readers apprised of legislative developments surrounding the H-1B cap. The page was extremely popular and in one day alone received more than 50,000 hits. If you're interested in seeing that page, go to the Wayback Machine and see our site as it looked in December 1998. The link is at http://web.archive.org/web/19980612151807/www.visalaw.com/h1b.html. According to Rick, our online diary would make us the very first law firm to use a blog.

We've decided to revive that online diary and this time use Google's Blogger software to get started. We hope that this service is useful and that readers will send us suggestions regularly on what to include on the page.

To the best of my knowledge this swells the ranks of blogs devoted to immigration law to two, with Randy Tunac's Manifest Border also covering related issues.

Courtyard Bazaar At The Ivory Tower

That was a subheading in an article about law blogging I wrote what seems like millenia ago now, and a recurrent theme in today's Weblogs and Law discussion at BloggerCon. Dan Gillmor: "The more you guys demystify what you do, the better." The session was excellent, covering all the key topics: copyright and fair use, first amendment protections, on the record and off the record treatment of oral and written material, how copyright principles may have to adapt to a world where everyone can simultaneously and instantaneously publish, privacy and right of publicity issues, and the role of blogs as communication/marketing tools (order intentional) on the commercial side of the law. The session ended with a discussion right in line with Boalt Hall Interim Dean Bob Berring's talk earlier this week about the future of legal research, and prior writings about technology and The New Blackstone.

Pics of Eugene and Doc are in the Carry-On (and include gratuitous shots of my Dock [via Jason Kottke]).

Mexican-Jumping-Football-Baby

When I mentioned to Hanan Levin that BH apparently has been trampolining off my spleen and pancreas, he of course had just the link:

"Trapped Bear Springs Off Trampoline To Safety"

As of this week the baby has a doctor, so I'm feeling slightly less troubled that having a room still is a ways off. Dr. A. turned out to be a pleasant young South African-Israeli, whose waiting room was packed with a great variety of moms and dads to be, including a couple expecting through a surrogate. I found the whole process of baby doctor selection and designation eye opening. This is how it works (here, and I'm assuming elsewhere): as long as your baby will be born at a hospital in your baby doctor's "jurisdiction," it turns out all you need to know at zero-hour is the doc's name. He or she doesn't need advance notice, or a call from you when labor starts, because the pediatricians patrol the maternity ward regularly looking for the new babies to whom they've been assigned. It's a never ending draft of rookie recruits, with choose-ups happening each morning in the nursery.

Today's New Blawg

Christophe Courchesne is a member of the 3L class and Board of Student Advisors at Harvard Law School. Christophe is attending BloggerCon at the suggestion of his professors John Palfrey and Charles Nesson, and mentions that the Digital Democracy class at Harvard Law will discuss blogging during next week's session, Smart Mobs, Weblogs, Hacktivism: Social and Political Implications of Decentralized Networks, featuring guest Joi Ito.

Christophe has several good comments and observations from BloggerCon, including:

• A comment raised in the education context is that making blogs a fundamental part of education will potentially contribute to dilution of writing's power by eliminating intermediary filters?


• The education forum had a tremendous optimism about the use of blogs in education. As a law review editor and a legal writing teacher, I have tremendous doubt about the editorial quality of work that is published "unedited" (including my own). This presents some tension between the Internet prophecies about the wired democratized future and the values of discipline as to writing skills and "thinking carefully before one speaks."


• Do students who blog develop more finely tuned skills of listening or just a highly developed ability to mouth off within a sophisticated zone of self-publishing?

I don't think these questions can be answered in terms of absolutes. I see weblogs as more of an aid than a threat to edited/quality writing; they make it easier than ever to disseminate. They also can motivate editorial compression in the interest of time (or impulsiveness), and this may may mean an increase in the sum total of unedited or lightly edited writing. My take is the two varieties can peacefully co-exist, both have unique usefulness and value, and good, well considered, well edited writing will continue to distinguish itself from the pack.

BloggerCon Webcasts

BloggerCon is webcasting from two rooms today, including the one where Jeff Jarvis just welcomed attendees to a session on Weblogs and Presidential Politics, joined by panelists Dan Gillmor and Ed Cone. The next session to be webcast from this room will be the Weblogs and Law discussion, led by Eugene Volokh (1:30 - 3:00 Eastern).