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February 23, 2006

Last Call: Western European Legal Weblogs? Or... It's All Happening at the Zoo.

So far I received--mainly from English, Scottish and Swedish lawyers--about 15 names of English-version western European blawgs in response to my posts over the last week. You can see them in the comments here. Any others? The short-term goal is to compile a list of active high quality (even profane and strident is okay--i.e., Brits value oddity now and then) western European blawgs. Next, we'll put calls out for blawgs in Australia/New Zealand, China, Japan, Eastern Europe, South Africa, Russia, the Middle East, Latin America, etc. A few points on all this:

1. The long-term goal is to expand and deepen our running "conversation"--and help link American legal bloggers to lawyers and resources (both "legal" and non-legal) in other countries, other spheres and other on-line communities. Just as many of us would like to know what non-lawyer American bloggers are thinking and doing about the law, business, marketing and the world in general, some of us would also like to know what "foreign" lawyers are thinking and doing.

2. The Problem. American lawyers who blog--and bloggers everywhere for that matter--limit themselves in geography and audience. We tend to "talk to ourselves". That's ironic. Even though we are all in the ideas business--and even though we have this wonderful ability to reach people everywhere in a matter of seconds--we often limit ourselves to insular conversations in this discipline or that one, engaging primarily people "just like us". Well-educated Americans are guilty of this in and out of blogging.

3. Clients. If you have business clients--and even if you have mom-and-pop clients or solely clients which are individuals--you and your clients are likely very soon to be doing business abroad or for interests abroad if you are not already. It's all happening now--even for American litigators. Contact me and I'll give you examples of German and UK clients in our own practice.

4. Language barriers? This is primarily a North American problem. Foreign professionals--German, French, Spanish, Scandinavian and Latin American--are fluently speaking, writing and doing business in American English and "English" English with great skill. They have been for years. And many, many foreign sites now offer English versions as well. We don't need to master new languages.

Posted by JD Hull at February 23, 2006 03:46 PM

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