Lawyerist.com - the law practice blog

One of the legal blogs I have been reading with interest in recent months is Lawyerist, a law practice blog, published by Sam Glover andAaron Street, along with a team of other writers.  It provides advice on law firm marketing, practice management, technology, career development, law school success, legal ethics, and how to start a law practice.  Ever wonder if file sync services like Dropbox are secure?  Look here.  Want to minimize WTF moments as a young lawyer?   There's a post for that as well.  

The posts are not only informative and interesting - they are also frequently very entertaining.  My favorite are the highly opinionated posts by Leo Mulvihill, Jr., on, for example, how lawyers should dress (including shoe care for those of you that didn't inherit your daddy's shoe shine supplies) how to iron a shirt, and briefcases (thanks for the tip Leo - you and I now have something in common...).  You don't have to agree with the opinions, obviously, but they provide a useful - and correct - baseline level of advice as to what is clearly safe for new lawyers with no previous experience with business dress.  As the saying goes, you have to know the rules before you can break them.  For comparison purposes, the clothing advice is significantly more conservative than what you'd get from, say, Alan Flusser, but I wholeheartedly agree with the premise.  A lawyer - at least a male lawyer - gains few points for stylish professional dress, but can lose points for not knowing the basics of dressing like a grown up.  Leo's posts will keep young lawyers out of trouble while they learn where they would like to innovate, sartorially speaking.  For that, I'd recommend Flusser's Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion.  You'll never look at gray pants the same again, and you'll obsess over the relative size of patterns.  In fact, after reading Flusser every day becomes an adventure into deciding how many patterns you will mix.  Again, Leo counsels that young lawyers stay away from such decisions, and provides a basic set of rules for firm-acceptable dress.  He even has a post about office casual.  Although his definition is a bit strict, again, it keeps the inexperienced dresser on the safe side of the line.

The blog is probably particularly useful to new lawyers and to those opening or maintaining solo practices, since it goes over the kinds of things that newbie lawyers or newbie law firm managers (these days those jobs are frequently combined) run into with little guidance from their law schools or mentors in the practice.  The associated online community is a bit of information overload for me, as well as being a bit of a technological challenge to participate in, but I find the posts a very good source of information.