Imagine you have just thrown yourself off a bridge. You are plummeting ever nearer and nearer to the ground and then, in a split second, the free falling feeling turns into a stomach churning rebound up into the stratosphere, or so it feels. This is because you have a piece of stretchy cord tightly strapped around your ankles.

Yes, I’m talking about bungee jumping. For some, including myself, the idea sounds exhilarating. The feeling of free falling is undeniably unbeatable, giving you the chance to let go of everything… and fly.

Why would anyone not? Well I have to admit, I remember standing at the top of the ragged gorge and, as I looked down, I began to think of the risks involved. What happens if they didn’t calculate my weight correctly or what if the bungee snaps…? I could end up with a serious headache.

I guess you could look at blogging in a similar way. Why, as a lawyer or barrister, throw yourself headfirst into the ragged gorge that is the internet?

I am aware of the growing attention that has been paid to blogging lawyers and barristers. So, what better than to write a blog on blogging! As social media platforms have seeped into our everyday lives – Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and Twitter for example – it has never been so easy to share opinions and advice with colleagues and the world at large.

Emma Barnett, in a recent article in The Sunday Telegraph, has pointed out that the days of one-way communication are over in corporate life, yet another article in the same paper reports that over 60 of the FTSE 100 companies have not yet taken advantage of social media. No doubt it is a similar situation in the legal world.

According to Hugo Parcell of Relationship Audits and Management, speaking on ‘The Use of Social Networking Sites for Business’, the advantages of legal blogging are:

1. Blogging allows law firms to engage with clients and the public on a personal level.
2. Blogs allow the sharing of valuable content.
3. Bloggers increase the profile of their firms in the marketplace.
4. Bloggers create networking opportunities and make a name for themselves. This gives them an advantage to someone who may rely just on LinkedIn, for instance.

In much the same vein Ben Whewey, writing in Legal Week a while back, asked if blogging can help your legal career, [Blogging - can it help your legal career? Legal Week, 21st Feb 2011] and the conclusion (based on the balance of comments posted) is a qualified yes.

This was borne out when I found myself in the company of a group of young litigation lawyers recently; the general view was that they were thoroughly enjoying the firm’s encouragement and the support provided when it came to blogging. The entire group had given it a go and plan to carry on doing so in the future.

Chris Dale in his blog [Blogging, Friending and Tweeting: what lawyers should and should not do, 1st April, 2011] also expresses support for the idea that law firms should be encouraging juniors and associates to blog.

We should probably give the young ones scope, to some extent, to fly with new ideas; the etiquette of everyday discourse is worth clinging on to; the basic tenets of old journalism and established marketing principles are important, but one must be flexible as new methods of publication come along. A lot of it comes down to common sense.

He cites a debate on Twitter questioning whether a junior or associate could be trusted to blog – the view was that you would not have such junior people flying the firm’s flag at a cocktail party, so why would you let them publish things in the firm’s name?  Chris Dale suggests that you have the wrong associates if you would not trust them at a party…

The debate ended with the sensible question “Why are we applying old rules to a new environment?” My view is that riding the juniors’ interest in new techniques is something which benefits the company or firm as well as the individual – provided that the rules and parameters are clearly defined.

This leads me finally to a very topical question; is blogging a trusted form of communication? And…

1. Who is going to take your blog seriously?
2. Who is going to read your blog?
3. To what extent are “serious clients” going to pay attention what their lawyers blog about?
4. What are the risks?
5. Is the bungee cord strong enough to hold you?

It may be stretching the point but I have reached the conclusion that blogging should be enjoyed and encouraged by the law firms as a positive aspect to a lawyer or barrister’s career and life. It is an up and coming and liberating method of communication.

The bungee cord question is a matter of best practice and proper safeguards. This is a topic which I look forward to discussing in my next blog.

Photo credit: Bungee jumping at night by Bill Morrow under Creative Commons  Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence

Many of us will remember the bravery of Colonel H, awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously in the Falklands War but fewer will know that a second VC was awarded in that conflict for an act of “outstanding selflessness, perseverance and courage” according to the citation in October 1982 when the award of the highest military honour to Sergeant Ian McKay was announced.

And, not altogether surprisingly, there has been only one occasion when siblings have been awarded the Victoria Cross and the George Cross. The Reverend Charles Seagrim had five sons and two of whom won the VC and the GC during the course of the Second World War. Derek was the elder of the two and earned his VC in North Africa and his younger brother Hugh was awarded a posthumous GC for his activities in Burma fighting the Japanese with the Karen people. Their achievements are described in Stephen Stratford’s website British 20th Century Military & Criminal History. They are of particular interest to me as their father was Rector of Whissonsett in Norfolk and the family lived in what is now my house, the former rectory in the village.

Bravery comes in a variety of guises. Just to give three examples, how brave were those Iranians who demonstrated against the fraudulent election of Ahminadjad by telling the outside world via Twitter what had really happened! Or the activities of the demonstrators in Tunis last week which resulted in the downfall of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years in power? Or the Polish Solidarity movement?

Now I have to be careful not to become a grumpy old man! There is a great temptation to rant when blogging. After all, it is a platform where views of all kinds can be expressed, largely without fear of retribution and some bloggers really go to town.

The Mayor of London has been getting in on the act recently. Now I am not suggesting that what Boris writes in a daily newspaper takes the same level of danger or courage as the winners of VCs or GCs, nor indeed those who risk their lives by making known their opposition to totalitarian regimes. But there he is writing about the coarseness of internet debate and the “seething irascibility” of the blogosphere [Getting beaten up in cyberspace does no one much harm, The Telegraph, 17th Jan, 2011].

To be fair, the Mayor was not saying he was against bloggers. Indeed quite the contrary. Boris had a point to make. He wanted to express the view that we should be wary of those who would like to sanitise what is written in blogs or on Twitter. He points out quite reasonably that while there is no obvious link between website rantings and the Tucson shootings, despite what some would have you believe, it is actually a good thing that people can express their views, even if other people do not agree with them. His example is the politicians who have had to endure the disclosures about the cavalier way in which they have treated public money (our money) and suggests that journalists are also now being held to account by their readers because of the ability of the reader to respond to what is written. In Boris’s case he invites comment at telegraph.co.uk/personalview

He concludes:

…it cannot be long, the internet being what it is, before the wind of popular scrutiny blows through all the bourgeois professions. What are we going to do about the lawyers?

“I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” is often attributed, possibly wrongly, to Voltaire but encapsulates the point being made by Boris. I am unsure if “courage mon brave” really comes from Voltaire’s Candide but Voltaire, if it were he, has a point. The message is have courage to face uncertainty and be bold about expressing a point of view.

If Boris is worried about what we should do about the lawyers, they could do worse than say that they are prepared to confront the uncertainty of litigation on behalf of their clients and they will be bold in arguing for what they believe is in the best interests of those clients.

Today, when I speak to lawyers about litigation and about the collection and processing, analysis and review of data, I find an audience much more willing to listen than in the past.

It sometimes pays to listen to what others are saying not least because you may gain an insight into what others think but also because you might just learn something.

Winston Churchill once remarked that, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

That is all I can reasonably expect of lawyers in relation to e-discovery!

As a relative newcomer to the art of blogging, I woke up today to a salutary reminder that bloggers are not above or beyond the law when it comes to ‘ordinary’ standards of defamation and libel.  According to an aticle in the Times  ‘Vogue model Liskula Cohen wins right to unmask offensive blogger‘ an anonymous blogger in the US has posted less than flattering comments about a Vogue model called Liskula Cohen, to which Ms Cohen took grave exception. She applied to the court for an order that Google, the blog host in this case, disclose to her the identity of the blogger so that she could sue him/her for damages for defamation.

She won!

Judge Joan Madden, a Manhattan Supreme Court Justice ruled that Google should hand over the evidence of identity to her and rejected the blogger’s argument that blogs “serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting, and should not be treated as factual assertions”.

As it happens, contributors to the Smart e-Discovery blog are not anonymous, though it does remind us that moderating comments before they are published is a sensible precaution!