Philosophy
Who are you, anyway?
I have a brief bio on this site. I am an attorney in Polk County, Florida. I do employment law (primarily defense), real estate litigation, general commercial/business litigation, and some contested probate/guardianship cases.
Employment Law? Real Estate Litigation? But this blog isn’t about those things…
Nope. A lot of lawyers use blogs to promote their practice areas. I thought it would be fun to focus on things that have nothing to do with my practice areas. Law school is a pretty eclectic educational experience, and I’m a pretty eclectic guy. By necessity, a lawyer must focus his practice to be financially successful and on top of his game, but that doesn’t mean the other parts of the brain get turned off. It’s stimulating to think and write about other legal topics than the ones I focus on all day at work.
Also, one of my goals here is to be as objective as I possibly can. If I blogged within my practice areas, it would be extremely difficult for me to be objective. I would find myself taking positions adverse to my clients, which is an ethical no-no, or compromising my objectivity for my clients’ benefit, something I want to avoid in this particular forum. Thus, it’s less problematic to stick to matters that my clients aren’t involved in.
From time to time, I may post about things within my practice areas, in which case I will endeavor to make my potential biases clear.
So what do you focus on here?
There are two loose rules for topics: each post is about (1) a legal issue that, (2) involves Polk County in some way.
The purpose of Rule 1 is to limit myself to topics about which I have more education or insight than the general public. Rule 2 keeps me focused on my community and fellow citizens. Local criminal cases generally fit pretty nicely. Civil or political matters are more likely to involve a client of me or my firm, but they are fair game if they don’t.
What’s the point? What makes your voice different from other media sources?
Unlike the local print media and other local blogs, I do not have to rely on what other lawyers say in my stories. Reporters, in contrast, don’t have the background to do legal analysis. They have to find attorneys willing to comment and then quote them. Often, those attorneys are involved in the cases and inherently biased. Just as often, they are academics from out of town. Even when the academics are correct in their analysis, there is not enough space in the paper or reporter expertise to explain why.
Here, we (in the sense of you, the reader, and I) can look at the issues ourselves, go all the way back to the legal sources involved, and do the legal analysis ourselves. When possible, I try to post or link to actual legal papers, statutes, rules, regulations, and cases. One of my goals is to help connect the dots between the law and public so that the public doesn’t have to take the legal community’s word for it. I differ from the print media and other local bloggers because I have the expertise to do that type of analysis and the luxury of no deadlines or word limits.
But how do we know that you know what you are doing?
You don’t. I spend a lot of time on each post and I try to make them absolutely correct. But I do not spend the same amount of time or energy that I would spend if I were working for a client or working within my particular areas of expertise. The point is not to lay out an end-all be-all analysis, but to take an intelligent look at things, point to the original sources for further study, and then open it up for comments if others have a different point of view.
Do you have any style guidelines?
Yes. I try to write in a conversational tone. I unapologetically use contractions, incomplete sentences, the pronoun “I,” and the like. I want to make this an easy, fun way to learn and think about local legal issues. I’m sure other lawyers, like me, often get questions from friends and family about the “real story” behind legal issues. I often format my posts with questions and answers as if I am having such a conversation.