I am in a familiar territory! Hi! I came here long ago. Does anyone remember me? No one remembers a traitor you’d say. I turned a traitor to LegallyIndia blogs. I take the blame.

However, I thought I should come here; just for the kicks (hard ones at the right place). Here is something reproduced from here.

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Lawctopus is not a blog. I cringe when people call it a blog. It’s a website and mind you we pay for the website hosting! :)

Now I’ll argue, with my left leg on a chair, that you should write a law blog instead of writing for a law journal. Why is the left leg on a chair? Well, I heard that some lawyer has his right leg on the chair and he argues really well. I wish to see how much truth is there in the legs doing the talking!

Here you go with the pointers.

1. Autonomy- Autonomy, according to the three people who are better than me, the likes of Seth Godin, Dan Pink and a few others (that makes more than three, but who cares) is the first pre-requisite to be happy.

A law journal states “12 points, Times New Roman, 1.5 spacing”. What if the writer wants to shout and in 72 points? Hey! That curbs my fundamental right of expression and my autonomy.

A law journal states “3000-10,000 words, inclusive footnotes”. Well, brevity is the soul of wit. Law journals then, are soul-less pages stitched together (in bad glossy, supposedly professional covers). Bad joke.

It states many other things. It puts many conditions. And it makes the writer and the readers unhappy. It is full of rules. It kills autonomy. So if you write art and not for one bullet point in your CV, a law blog is better.

2. Faster, simple publication: You can publish a write-up on a blog while following the minute hand of the clock. People at law journals work while following two sets of calendar.

Everyone likes freshly baked eats; stale smells. And I wonder, in a six month time don’t many of the law journal write-ups become obsolete?

Moreover, you don’t have to boot lick the publishers. You are the master of your fate; you decide the title, the cover and the credits, not the publishers.

3. Dull: Law journals can’t afford pictures and photos and mind maps. It is an uncreative workforce that does the writing, publishing and distribution. And hence most of the law journal articles are dull! If you aren’t dull, you should write a legal blog.

4. More readers: SpicyIP, LAOT and ever LI blogs had dedicated readers. Lots of them. The figures sometimes touched nearly 500 per day. You can never expect it for a law journal article. And there are many reasons for this.

Readers ‘search’ for knowledge, revelation and other such noble things. When they ‘find’ they read your legal blog article. Google is the king of ‘search’ and no law journal can match it. And hence you get more readers.

Note: Oxygen and water and not the point of life, but without them there is no life. Readers are not the point of writing, but without readers there is not point writing. Just see how many print law journals are really read by sane people and you’ll realize that there is no point writing for law journals.

5. More impact and engagement: A blog is an automatic way of getting your article peer reviewed. The comments of a blog take care of the peer review. It can flame up a debate and flower insights. You listen to your readers; answer them, question them. You engage with them. This makes you and your writing grow.

And since a blog is on the world wide web and not in a ‘enclosed in an ugly glossy paper bundle of papers’ it has more readers (I said it before) and thus has more impact. Every writer wants more readers, more impact. Every writer needs readers to clap and slap.

PS- this is a one sided view.

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More later. To recapitulate this post:

1. Autonomy.

2. Faster, simple publication.

3. You won’t be dull.

4. More readers.

5. More impact and engagement.

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Images from here, here, here, here and here.