Completely Legal

Yesterday was primary day here in New York, and I hope that everyone who voted in the primary had a good experience with the new voting system. I got so much ink on my hands from the pen that they gave me to fill in the circles on the paper ballot, that it made a smudge on the ballot. Fortunately, it was not enough of a smudge to be mistaken for an errant vote, and I escaped the polling place in under 10 minutes, having done my civic duty successfully.
I bring this up because, in my quest to find out who prevailed in the local primaries, I remembered that LoHud.com, the online version of our local newspaper, The Journal News, has a legal blog. Completely Legal: Go Behind the Bench to Examine the Courts and Cases in the Lower Hudson Valley is where I learned who will be running in the Westchester County and Family Court judicial elections which will be taking place in November. Completely Legal is written by Journal News reporters, and is a good place to go for updates on some of the notable cases taking place in the Lower Hudson Valley. You can subscribe to Completely Legal via RSS feed or email updates.

JOTWELL - Journal of Things We Like (LOTS)

JOTWELL, the Journal of Things We Like (LOTS) is a new blog that aims to collect/post/highlight the "leading academics and practitioners providing short reviews of recent scholarship to the law that the reviewer likes and thinks deserves a wide audience."

Jotwell is a special type of law review housed on a set of inter-linked blogs. As a law review, Jotwell has only mission: to bring to readers' attention great recent scholarship related to the law. As a blog we invite your comments, and hope that some of our reviews will spark a conversation.

Jotwell features information in the following areas of law:

• Administrative law
• Constitutional law
• Corporate law
• Criminal law
• Cyber law
• Intellectual property law
• Legal profession
• Tax law

To access information, a reader can directly visit the Jotwell blog where browse and search features are both available. Jotwell offers RSS feed subscription to the main Jotwell section or to the individual subject sections. Readers can also subscribe via email to receive a message every time a new article is available. Happy Reading!

Can Supreme Court Be Influenced By Blogging?

Social Media Law Student blog has a nice post titled "Can Blogs Influence the Supreme Court?" by Josh Camson. In this post, Josh reviews an article by Stanford Law student, Rachel C. Lee, titled Ex Parte Blogging: The Legal Ethics of Supreme Court Advocacy in the Internet Era.

Lawyers have been arguing their cases before the Supreme Court for over two centuries, while the phenomenon of legal blogs is perhaps a decade old. Yet legal blogs cannot be dismissed as merely a sideshow novelty—they are already capable of having a substantial impact on Supreme Court litigation.

Rachel based her argument on the 2008 decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. __, 129 S.Ct. 1, 171 L.Ed. 2d 932 (2008) and continues on saying that events surrounding this decision ...

[d]emonstrate that blogs can both highlight errors in Court decisions and generate new arguments relevant to ongoing litigation. In addition, legal blogs create the opportunity for Supreme Court advocates to engage in ex parte blogging—posting persuasive material about a pending case in the hopes of directly influencing the Court’s decisions.

Attorneys for parties and amici in cases before the Court already sometimes post arguments online about their cases shortly after oral argument—potentially a crucial time in the Court’s decision-making process—and evidence suggests that the Justices and their clerks may well encounter some of these posts online. Yet no one has analyzed the ethical implications of this practice, or what its effects might be on different groups appearing before the Court. This Note examines the relationship between ex parte blogging and the traditional concepts of prejudicial publicity and ex parte communications.

Any thoughts? Feel free to share!

Legal Blog Watch is Looking for Help

For all of you out there who like to write, blog, or just share your ideas, Legal Blog Watch, an excellent blog that has been around since about 2004, is looking for additional and/or guest bloggers.

John Bringardner writes:

[W]e're putting up a help wanted sign for a few good guest bloggers. Whether you've already got a blog or not; whether you're in BigLaw, solo practice, law school or somewhere in between; if you were blogging here you'd be home by now.

If you think you've got what it takes, or you'd like to nominate someone else who does, drop us a line at legalblogwatch@incisivemedia.com. Take a look at these handy guest-blogging guidelines first for an idea of what you're getting into and what we'll expect from you. We need folks who can turn around a couple of thoughtful posts on the legal news of the day for us every once in a while -- a little like Blawg Review, but more sporadic and without the need for a highbrow theme.

Check out the full announcement!