Tricky for me to believe that it, but Saturday was the 20th anniversary of this web site, which I founded on Nov. 19, 2002, with this introductory article.
I actually started off producing about this things even before, in 1995, when my fascination with the possible of the world-wide-web for legal professionals prompted me to start a syndicated column, Legal professionals.on the net, starting up with this inaugural installment, The Internet: A Revolution in Law Practice. That led to publication for numerous many years of the 1st newsletter for attorneys about the web, Lawful.online, and then to quite a few publications about the world-wide-web for legal professionals, and finally to this blog site, which appeared the only viable way to maintain up with the fast modifications in the web and lawful tech.
As I mark two a long time of writing this web site (and close in on three decades of creating about tech), I truly feel immensely privileged to have experienced a ringside seat to the at any time-accelerating improvement and adoption of technological innovation within just the authorized profession and to the improvements in lawful solutions that tech has assisted propel.
For encouraging and enabling and supporting me in getting that ringside seat, I am endlessly grateful to so several. Let me to title some of those who have been most significant:
- You. Without having readers, this web site is practically nothing. I have hardly ever been obsessed with site visitors quantities, but I do care about achieving an viewers for whom I can make some form of big difference. The most gratifying reward of crafting this website is the suggestions I have gained in excess of the a long time from readers who have told me that I have designed a variation for them and that they depend on this website to retain them educated. I have had providers tell me this website accelerated their success and other people blame me for putting them out of enterprise. I have audience from throughout all facets of the legal job, from outside the house the job, and from in the course of the globe. You are the gas that retains this heading.
- Justia. Twelve decades in the past, I practically shut down this site until eventually I was presented a new home by the founders of Justia (and unique founders of FindLaw), Stacy Stern and Tim Stanley. Justia has been this blog’s household for 10 of its 20 yrs, and, as if that was not ample, Stacy, Tim, and the Justia workforce — most importantly Vasu Kappettu, COO and CTO — have this 12 months been our associates and supporters in establishing and launching the LawNext Lawful Know-how Directory. Phrases are insufficient to categorical my gratitude to them for all they have performed.
- LexBlog. For 3 yrs, from 2018 to 2021, I moved my site to LexBlog, coinciding with a time period in which I labored with the enterprise as publisher and editor-in-main, and LexBlog continues to host my Legaltech Watch internet site. Prior to I at any time labored with LexBlog and continuing since, absolutely everyone there has been immensely supportive of my work, for which I am thankful. But I owe a certain personal debt of gratitude to LexBlog’s founder and CEO Kevin O’Keefe. Not only has he been professionally supportive of me and this blog, but he has also been a true mate for so quite a few a long time. A lot of authorized industry experts have instructed me that Kevin was the inspiration for them to start off blogging and the drive to hold at it.
- Earlier mentioned the Regulation. In 2016, I was thrilled to be invited to turn into a columnist for Above the Legislation. In the decades considering the fact that, ATL and my blog site have loved what I hope has been a symbiotic partnership, but which no doubt has benefitted me much far more than them. Many thanks to former editor David Lat for recruiting me into the fold John Lerner, CEO of ATL’s mother or father enterprise Breaking Media, for his continuing assist and to all the ATL editors I’ve had the fantastic fortune to get the job done with (with a specific shout out to Joe Patrice for currently being a frequent on our weekly Legaltech Week podcast).
- Ben Ambrogi. A rather current — and enormously rewarding — reward of this web site that I could hardly ever have predicted 20 a long time ago has been the possibility to work with my son. At first, he served me launch my LawNext podcast in 2018 when I spun off from the Lawful Discuss Network, then he started encouraging me superior monetize this blog, and ultimately that collaboration led us before this year to cofound the LawNext Lawful Know-how Directory.
- Sponsors. I can not thank more than enough the providers whose advertising and sponsorships have supported this weblog and my LawNext podcast around the decades. They are as well many to mention in this article, but allow me give a specific thanks to two loyal and very long-time sponsors. The initially is Paradigm, the firm that is residence to the apply management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, MerusCase and LollyLaw the e-payments platform Headnote and the legal accounting software TrustBooks. Paradigm has been a regular lover in supporting my weblog and my podcast for more than two decades, and is now also a sponsor of the LawNext directory. The other is the practice management business MyCase, which was the original sponsor of my podcast, aiding us get it off the ground, and which has remained a supporter of our operate in many methods.
This is in all probability the level where by I am supposed to announce that I am hanging up my cleats. But I am not ready to do that. The truth of the matter is, the cause I continue to keep performing this is that I have fun at it, and I program to retain possessing that pleasurable — and my ringside seat — for a couple additional years to arrive.
Highlighted image by Matthew Ball on Unsplash.