Another blogiversary
This what I wrote when I celebrated the 5th anniversary of this blog:
I've had a good time here. I doubt there'll be a 10th birthday, and, who knows, there may not even be a 6th. We'll take it a year at a time. I've enjoyed this, and thanks for being around to help me do that.
That was five years ago.
Guess I'm still here, huh?
Now I have to figure out why.
I started this blog on May 14, 2006, because I like to write, I like to research, and I like to study the law. So I figured it might be a resource for small firm and solo practitioners. The Med Mal firms can afford to hire people just to tell them what the law is. The little guy can't. And I try to do it in a way that's entertaining and an easy read. My initial post about the Castle Doctrine was one of my favorites in that vein.
But in addition to writing about cases, I'd write about whatever caught my fancy. Sometimes it was war stories, like this one, or this one, about parental discipline as a defense to domestic violence charges. I don't think anything could top my story about defending a transvestite in a drug possession case, though.
Sometimes it was just a roundup of interesting items of legal news, like this one about a counselor in an Indiana prison suing because she was fired for having sex on her desk with the major in charge of custody, and the potential copyright claims of a chimpanzee who took a selfie. Or this one about the Cincinnati Bengals efforts to set up an alcohol-free section in their stadium, elevators that kill, and judges who don't like lawyers.
The ones I enjoyed best, though, were the posts where I'd take on some issue, like drug raids or the miserliness of the assigned counsel system, or this one about a detective who falsely accused two people of a crime to try to get them to give evidence against a third. That was some good writing.
I don't do as much of that any more. I've fallen into the rut of doing posts mostly about how "this court ruled this way in this case." It can be informative, but it's dry, and it's not that much fun.
So I'm going to do things a little differently from here on out. I'm going to stay away from the cases that just repeat the basics. If you don't know by now that a motion in limine doesn't preserve your claim of error in the admission of evidence - you've got to object to it at trial - my telling you about one more case where a lawyer screwed up that way isn't going to help you. I'll tell you about a significant case when it comes down, but I'll also try to put it in context: not only telling you where the law is, but where it's been and where it might be going.
And at least once a week, I'm going to do a post about something that's fun to write about, and hopefully will be fun, interesting, or thought-provoking for you to read.
But I really wouldn't count on this blog making it to its 15th anniversary. Maybe not even to its 11th. We'll just take it a year at a time.
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