Around the Blawgosphere: Law Bloggers' Faves from our Annual List; Is Siri the New Google?
What the Legal Bloggers Click On
While we always note which blawgs in the Blawg 100 generated the most votes from readers, we’re also certainly interested in which ones are favored by legal bloggers (when they tout blawgs other than their own). And three different Blawg 100 authors made a point of telling their readers that they like Popehat, which calls itself “a group complaint about law, liberty and leisure.”
“We have two ABA 100 trophies already,” Marc Randazza wrote at the Legal Satyricon. “Would we like a third? Sure. But, we’d rather see Popehat get its due. And a win in this category is its due. They might have beat us at least one of the years that we won—had they been nominated. They certainly deserve it.”
Alison Rowe’s Equine Law Blog also listed Popehat as a fave. Lucy Reed also stumped for Popehat at Pink Tape.
In non-Popehat picks, Jim Dedman from Abnormal Use and Cari Rincker from Food and Agriculture Law Blog posted lists of favorites. Both Dedman and Rincker had praise for iPhone J.D. “This blog isn’t just for lawyers—it contains very useful information to anyone running a business from an iPhone,” Rincker wrote.
Not Just Another Gimmick
North Carolina family lawyer Lee Rosen thinks that lawyers obsessed with what kind of play they get on Google need to start focusing on making sure that Siri, the female-voiced virtual assistant in the iPhone 4S, is familiar with their law firms. Someone looking for a divorce lawyer can indeed tell Siri that they need a divorce lawyer and instantly receive a list of nearby lawyers, their locations on a map, and consumer reviews, Rosen wrote at Divorce Discourse.
For those who think that Siri is just a passing fancy? “I’ve got two responses for you,” Rosen wrote. “First, you don’t know what you’re talking about until you’ve used Siri. It’s incredible, and it works like a charm. I find myself using it constantly. ‘When I get home, remind me to fix the toilet,’ I tell it and, boom, I pull up at home and it reminds me. ‘Wake me up at seven,’ and I’m good to go at seven. ‘Text my wife that I’m on the way,’ and off goes the text. The thing is amazing; it can even tell me the flight number of the airplane flying over my head. I’ve become very dependent because it totally works, and it gets better every day.”
Diploma Can’t Be Arbitrary Requirement
At Employment Law Matters, Ogletree Deakins partner Maria Danaher took note of an “informational discussion letter” (PDF) that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission posted on its website. In it, the EEOC states that any employer that states a high school diploma as a requirement for a job, but can’t demonstrate that a worker can’t do the job without a diploma, could be in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Danaher says this is worth taking note of even though it’s an “informal” letter rather than a law or a regulation. “While an employer is not required to ‘prefer’ a learning disabled applicant over other applicants with more extensive qualifications, it is clear that the EEOC is informing employers that disabled individuals cannot be excluded from consideration for employment based upon artificial barriers in the form of inflexible qualification standards.”
No Comment
News and gossip blog Above the Law announced Wednesday that going forward, each post’s author will decide whether commenting is allowed on his or her post. This will “insulate stories, especially posts about sensitive subjects, from inappropriate or counterproductive commentary.” The blog notes that this is currently the comment policy at the Volokh Conspiracy, and that the “overall comment quality at the Volokh Conspiracy is very high.” The blog says that at present, Above the Law writers often exercise “self-censorship” and choose not to do certain posts because they’re concerned about what kind of comments they’ll get on them. So readers can expect a wider range of content as a result of this policy, the blog says.
