Differentiating Attorney Advertising and Blogging – The California Bar Thinks People Are Too Stupid to Use the Internet

DISCLAIMER: CLOVER THE CAT THINKS YOU SHOULD HIRE ME FOR ALL YOUR CAT NEEDS. THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE ATTORNEY ADVERTISING.

I’m an attorney. I have a blog. What do I write about? Whatever I feel like writing about. Sometimes I write about cats. Sometimes I write about cheesesteaks. Sometimes I write about law stuff. I don’t wake up in the morning and say “I should write an article about such and such topic because it will generate more clients.”

Do I get clients from writing this blog? Indirectly. I get very few calls that go like this:

“Hey, I read that post about cheesesteaks on Philly Law Blog.”
“Oh yeah? Did you like it?”
“Yeah, it was great! By the way, my son got sick from a cheesesteak and we need someone to represent us. Clearly, you are a cheesesteak lawyer and an expert in your field. I also hear you like cats. Can you help us?”

Why I Hope You Get Sued For Copyright Infringement – A Response to the EFF on Maximum Statutory Damages

It’s Monday morning. Time to get pumped for the day. I click on my Pandora icon and a song comes on. I love Pandora One. It costs me about $50 a year, but I can stream music all day. At the gym, my living room, anywhere.

This song sounds good… Geometer by Slidecamp. Never heard of these guys before, but I can dig it. Let’s see if they’re on iTunes. Awesome. The entire album is available for exactly $7.92. That’s about two cups of coffee. I’ll bite.

BOOM – now the entire album is now on my iPad, my iPod, and my computer. I can listen to the song I want on repeat. Sweet. Gonna be a good day at the gym today.

For a second, I can’t help but think back to when I was a kid. There were two ways to listen to music – tapes and CDs. CDs sounded better, but you couldn’t take them into the gym because it skips. So you had to use tapes for any type of workout, and then listen to CDs in your house. After awhile, the CDs would get banged up, scratched, and useless. I think I bought Pearl Jam – Ten about ten times. To get a CD, you had to drive to Sam Goody and buy the entire album when all you wanted was one song. My bedroom had CDs spewed all over the place at any given time. And damn, I left my tape player on the bus again. Hopefully Ms. Gomez found it. It’s got my Green Day tape in there.

My how things have changed since then. Now any content I want is available at the click of a finger through Amazon, iTunes, or often directly from the producer’s website. It’s backed up in the cloud. MP3s don’t skip, and all the music goes to all your devices. And it gets better – movies, software, games, you name it, available in one click. No more braving the mall, no more Sam Goody, no more Electronics Boutique. Everything you want is available right here, right now, and for a fraction of what it used to cost. and if I break my computer I just buy a new one and all my music is back.

Welcome to the new millennium.