Blogs are Bad for Scholarship?

While much is made of the importance of blogging for today's lawyers, here is a sobering note in counterpoint.

Brian Leiter, Why Blogs Are Bad for Legal Scholarship, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 53 (2006), http://www.thepocketpart.org/2006/09/20/leiter.html.
 

Excerpt:

"Blogs, like markets, are hostage to the ignorance and irrationality of their most visible proprietors, as well as to that of their readers, and the costs of those cognitive limitations are greatest when blogs purport to critique serious scholarship, a task in which the ability to sort wheat from chaff often turns on intellectual skills that are not widely distributed, even among academics. My guess is that Judge Posner has not, understandably, spent much time actually reading the blogs that are out there. I have seen relatively little evidence of correction and refinement of ideas, facts, and scholarship, much more amplification and repetition of existing prejudices and ignorance, or, occasionally, feeding frenzies on trivial mistakes in the mainstream media. "

Evidence from the Wayback Machine

Tracey Rich writes  for the National Law Journal about using a company's website against them.  Check out: Find Evidence on Your Opponent's Web Site.  Rich reports:

"Browsing a party's Web site will only show the information that the Web site owner currently wants visitors to see. Sometimes, the most valuable information about an opposing party is the information that has been changed or removed. Fortunately, there are ways to see older versions of Web pages. Pages that were changed recently can be viewed through Google's cache feature. Pages that were changed months or years ago may be available through the Internet Archive, also known as the Wayback Machine. Viewing these older versions of Web pages avoids the privacy risks discussed above: The copied pages are not on the company's Web site, so the company has no record of the researcher's activities. "

Read about software that provides "enhanced cookie management."  Its one thing to find the information - but will your opponent know that you know?

Thank you to Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania July 2008 Attorney E-Newsletter for pointing out this useful article. 

Addendum:  If you are interested in digital evidence, check out this ALI-ABA course:  Digital Evidence: Generation, Admissibility and Weight Considerations

Help! I need research.

Winning your estate planning malpractice case depends not only on your skills as a litigator but also on a thorough understanding of the substantive law of the case.  You need to know what is at the "top of mind" of lawyers who practice in the area.  Combine that with the explosion of information available on the Internet and you have a daunting prospect.

Jason Haven's award-winning site has a wealth of information and resources for legal research on estate planning topics.

Check it out:  Jason E. Havens' Legal Research for Estate Planners (LREP)