law.com - Blog's Demise May Chill Other Federal Lawyers' Online Comments

Link: law.com - Blog's Demise May Chill Other Federal Lawyers' Online Comments. In the "I am sometimes glad I am a solo practitioner, and not a Government lawyer" category, here is a follow-up article in the New Jersey Law Journal about David Lat, the Government lawyer forced to take down his site "Underneath their Robes", which blogged about judges in the Federal Judiciary. The reason given was that Federal employees have to get approval before speaking to the media. I guess the moral is, stay anonymous (apparently, Lat outed himself because he wanted credit for his work) , and blog away. As lawyers, we learn early that we need to choose our words carefully, especially when we put them in writing. As the poet Emily Dickinson said: "A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day". Words can live a long time on the Internet, and, unlike wine, they don't necessarily improve with age.