Why I Blog

This is my second blog.  I first blogged when my wife and I took a sabbatical to travel throughout Asia from the Fall of 2006 to the Spring of 2007.  I really enjoyed my blog, even when we were in China and I had to figure out workarounds to enable me to publish posts despite government internet censorship, or while in more remote parts of India where just getting on the net was a challenge. I tried to post everyday and it allowed me to keep in fairly immediate touch with friends and family.  I even remember rather vividly pounding out a post from an internet cafe in Nepal and glancing out the door to watch a painted elephant stroll by.

More satisfying than the ability to immediately communicate our amazing experiences, though, I found the blog to be a really great creative outlet during those months.  Like many lawyers, I always dreamed of being a novelist.  When I hadn’t found my voice by the end of college, I figured I better find a more . . . er, reliable way of making a living.  (This was obviously a different era, when becoming a lawyer still seemed like a reliable way to earn a living.)  But I’ve never let go of that longing to write, though I won’t be quitting my day job anytime soon.  Thankfully, blogging–even if only to a small audience–provides a great creative outlet.

Maybe I was destined from a young age to enjoy blogging.  When I was around 8 or 9, I used to hunt-and-peck on the typewriter to create a small newspaper, covering such gripping topics as our cat’s health.  Using carbon paper, I’d make several copies, which I then delivered on foot or by bicycle to many of our neighbors within roughly a 2 mile radius of our house.  (I also went door-to-door offering to shine shoes, so it’s not clear that I was really any more destined to write a blog than to shine shoes or sell vacuum cleaners.)

After the Spring of 2007 and the purpose for my first blog evaporated, I flirted for a couple of years with starting a new blog, but didn’t do it.  I couldn’t think of anything that interested me sufficiently to write about it several times a week (and it’s just lame to start a blog, publish a couple of posts, then let the thing wither and die).   Then, one night I had dinner with one of my wildly successful college buddies and he suggested I start a blog as a business development tool.  At that point, I knew about a few interesting law blawgs, but I didn’t follow any religiously. I also had my doubts about whether blogging is a good business development tool.  Still, I enjoy writing, and I respected my college buddy and decided to give it a try.

I struggled for months with what kind of blog to write.  Since I really focus on employment issues in my law practice, should my blog simply track employment law developments or best practices? There are tons of these already out there, and not every new or changed law is interesting enough to write (or read) about. I also wanted some flexibility.  There are some really excellent blogs with a really narrow focus, but my interests, even within the profession, tend to drift.  After trying on a few different hats, I settled on the blog you’re reading now.  It marries my appreciation for litigation that is practiced ethically and practiced well, with my interest in the business side of the profession.

Now, re-reading the last two paragraphs, I see that I need to clarify something.  While it was a suggestion from a friend (who writes an enormously popular blog) that got me to revive my then-dormant desire to start a blog, I don’t write this blog for business development purposes, or even consider blogging a particularly good client development tool (perhaps a subject for a different post).  In truth, I use business development as an excuse to maintain a blog, which is itself just an excuse to write.