Outside Counsel

There was a moment, a few years back, when the lawyer-written blog was The Next Big Thing. Outside Counsel was a little bit ahead of the wave, and has always been more about being a lawyer than about the law per se, but we got caught up in it, and it was kind of exciting. There were a couple of sites that were at the white hot center of it all, it seemed to me then: Ernest Svenson's Ernie the Attorney and Denise Howell's Bag and Baggage. Ms. Howell actually coined the terms "blawg" and "blawger". One of the interesting things about the natural history of weblogs is that in the early stages of a new blog ecosphere's formation a few sites lead the way in creating comprehensive lists of other people who are mining the same vein, and Ernie and Denise both did this. (I'd say Camworld was the site that had the most comprehensive blogroll back when this whole thing was new, or maybe Rebecca's Pocket.) I stopped following the growth and fragmentation of the law blog phenomenon a while back, so I couldn't tell you what the hot sites are these days. Ernie went through a rough patch, and lives in New Orleans, so he wasn't writing very often, and Denise had a baby, and was mostly writing about intellectual Property issues that didn't really touch on what I do day to day, so I stopped following both of their sites as closely as I once did, maybe checking in monthly.

So I was quite surprised when I turned to Bag and Baggage today and read that Denise had been let go by her firm about a week ago, apparently for reasons relating to her producivity working part-time. No doubt there is more to the story, since there always is, but you'd think that a big shop like Reed Smith would find a way to be more accommodating to the needs of such an obviously cutting edge lawyer. Of course, law firms are pretty bad at taking the long view, but even so, this impresses me as a foolish decision. Firms should do backflips to try to keep people like Denise, but they rarely do.

Part of the traditional garb worn by English barristers is a money bag that hangs at their back. The legend is that it is worn at the back so that the barrister's argument is not influenced by knowing the amount of his fee. I think that's one of the reasons I love our glamour profession: it has things like that in its professional DNA. It means that our independence is what makes us valuable-- perhaps uniquely among the professions. My law partner and I wandered off the big firm plantation 13 years ago, and never looked back. I wish Denise the best of luck in her new endeavors.