Blogs?

By: J. Richard Moore
BleekeDillonCrandall

What is appropriate content for blogging on a law-firm-related website? I will answer that question first by noting that in law school I was instructed that while the Socratic method is a widely-accepted teaching tool, it is generally not good advocacy in legal memoranda or briefs. Nonetheless, lots of legal writers still do it. So, I open this blog entry with a generally poor but popular practice, that of asking a question in preface to answering it.

On, then, to the question itself. To paraphrase the movie version of Dorothy Gale, if I ever go looking for how to blog, I shouldn't go any farther than my own back yard. Accordingly, I review earlier entries by my colleagues here at BDC and note that no clear theme emerges. There are points of interest about substantive law and practice; reports of personal goings-on; musings and updates on sports and holidays; and other, even less definable entries.

If context provides no guidance, then consider what is appropriate against the more general standard of propriety ("appropriate" and "propriety" both emerge from the Middle English term propriete, meaning, generally, the properties or qualities of a person or thing). What is the property or quality generally of a law-firm-related blog (There I go again with the Socratic method)? To instruct on the law? To inform? To entertain? To familiarize the reader with the personalities of the firm lawyers and staff? To be cool? To get business?

I dunno, maybe. Let's come from the other route and consider what is NOT appropriate for a law-firm-related blog. Let's see: Curse words, for starters. Prurient matters, surely---I know it when I see it. What else? I've got one: invective or personal attack on other attorneys. Useless criticism of foe and friend. Whining. Gloating. Poor sportspersonship. General boorish online behavior.

Is anything else off the table? Politics, maybe? Religion? Whether one enjoys the television show Glee, but is put off by its cynical approach to the---ahem---interpersonal relations of depicted teens?

In the absence of a definitive answer, I will retreat into the self-centeredness that seems to be the touchstone of an individual's contemporary "web-presence": I will provide small nuggets of personal information designed to suggest to the reader that my life is accomplished and exciting, possibly more exciting than yours. Here they are:

1. When I was a kid, my favorite thing to eat was tuna salad prepared by my grandmother. She made it with her own sweet pickles that she prepared herself. My grandmother passed away last year after almost 10 years in a skilled nursing facility, and while I can replicate her recipe to an extent, it will never be the same because her process for making the homemade sweet pickles is lost, and was unique.

2. We don't eat tuna salad at my house anyway because something about the tuna, or possibly the mayo, triggers one of my wife's very small number of food allergies.

3. In lieu of tuna salad, I like to marinate tuna steaks in soy sauce, ginger and rice wine vinegar for a couple of hours and then sear it over a skillet for about a minute and a half per side. Tasty with a side of Asian slaw and a nice Cava or Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.

See how exciting that was? From earthy and sweet to urbane and sophisticated in three steps, with just a tiny slice of TMI associated with my bride's esophageal function. Sorry, hon. Not particularly law-related, but safe and appropriate, and consistent with contemporary web usage. I am already looking forward to my next entry!