Declarations and Exclusions

Insurance Weblogs on a Roll Honor Roll

Via the Boston ERISA Law Blog, I learn that the crackerjack marketing team diligent legal researchers at LexisNexis have named their Top 50 Blogs for Insurance for 2008.  Notwithstanding the obstacles in the grueling selection process posed by my having gone more than five months without a new post here, and by my having produced only eight posts on this site since the start of the year, Decs&Excs makes the list.

Although I am pleased at being included, and have promptly installed the "Top 50 blogs" badge in the right hand sidebar, there are aspects of this list that cause me to arch a brow in a Spock-like and quizzical fashion. 

To begin, it appears that the compilers have had to stretch their definitions of "insurance law blog" more than slightly, in order to puff the list up to fifty.  The list includes several examples of weblogs that are excellent in their own right, but that have no real insurance connection. 

• I am as much an admirer of Ernie The Attorney as anyone -- he was one of my inspirations as a legal blogger and has been included in my blogrolls from Day One -- but insurance is simply not his field. 

• Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs?  Also valuable and a longtime resident of my blogroll, but not because Kevin has ever focused on insurance law. 

• And Urban Law Journal, which I'd not seen before, certainly looks interesting but, again, has essentially nothing to do with insurance. 

There's a lesson here of some kind.  Something about meeting quotas for the quotas' own sake, perhaps, or about setting the size of a list sufficiently high that almost no one will be omitted.  ["LexisNexis to Insurance Bloggers: 'All have won, and all must have prizes.'"]  Whether they precisely fit the award category or not, at least the recipients of LexisNexis' favor are all worthwhile sites.  And they actually exist, unlike certain award-winning restaurants in the news recently.

The other intriguing, or disturbing, or perhaps backhandedly comforting, discovery that I have made in sifting through the LexisNexis Top 50-give-or-take Insurance Blogs is this: I am not alone among insurance bloggers in experiencing a major drop-off in posting frequency.  Many of the more established or "senior" risk and insurance weblogs -- sites that I follow and that have been in existence for more than a year or two -- are going longer between new posts than they have in the past. For example:

• Marc Meyerson's Insurance Scrawl has had nothing new since February.

• RiskProf is managing at least one or two posts per month.  Even with three current authors, the site is operating at a slower pace than when Martin Grace was running it on his own. 

• David Rossmiller's heretofore unstoppable Insurance Coverage Blog (which I regard as the current gold standard of insurance blogging) has gone as long as a week or more between posts recently -- almost alarming given the extended run of daily updates with which Mr. R earned his sterling blogging reputation.  (I cannot help noticing that Rossmiller and two out of three RiskProfs were seen dining together in early August.  Significant?  Draw your own conclusions.)

Even weblogs that have not previously been on my own radar, several of which I now intend to add to my RSS feed and/or blogroll, seem to be succumbing to the slowdown.  In California alone, examples of weblogogical deceleration can be seen at Cal Insurance Regulation, the Health Insurance Blog and California Insurance Lawyer Blog.

Of course, it is easy, even accurate, to urge that quality should matter as much as or more than quantity: if a blogger goes days, weeks, months (who knows?) between posts of extraordinary depth and insight, who are we readers to complain?  Not a bad argument, to which the obvious counter is that frequency of updates is generally seen as one of the defining features of a weblog.

"Your point being . . . ?" you ask. 

"Not much of a point," I reply, except as a sort of throat clearing in anticipation of attempting yet again to reaccelerate my own commitment to this weblog. 

In the meantime, while I am overcoming my phlegmatic attitude, those with an interest in insurance and risk issues should consider browsing at random through the LexisNexis 50, where there is ample information, talent and acumen to be discovered.

David Rossmiller Has You Covered

". . . . Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season."
-- T.S. Eliot, "Gerontion" (1920)

In August, this weblog will be five years old. I do not know what the proper formula is for converting Human Years to Blog Years, but I sense that this sort of longevity makes Decs&Excs authentically middle aged, if not yet exactly a grizzled old timer.  And like many another aging hipster, Decs&Excs has been slowing down.  Since hosting the 102nd Edition of Blawg Review here last April, I have generated a mere 21 new posts of my own, barely enough for any weblog worthy of the name.   

Next Monday, March 31, it will be my pleasure for the third time to host an edition of Blawg Review, the 153rd.  (It is never too early, by the way, to submit suggestions for inclusion in that compendious portmanteau of a post via the handy submission form.)  It remains to be seen whether that will inspire a return to a more frequent cycle of posting here.

I will confess that some part of my slowdown may result from my being utterly intimidated by the undisputed Big Dog of the insurance coverage weblogging world, David Rossmiller's Insurance Coverage Blog.  David has pretty much owned the coverage of coverage over the past year or so, particularly the post-hurricane litigation in Louisiana and Mississippi and the spectacular fall from dubious grace of Dickie Scruggs and company.  While maintaining his own weblog at a consistently high level of quantity and quality, he has also found time to guestblog at PointofLaw.com and to serve on the advisory board for the burgeoning Lexis/Nexis Insurance Law Center.  I take it as a given that he somehow manages to render good service to his clients while he's at it.

For lawyers with weblogs, and particularly for lawyers thinking of starting a weblog, there's inspiration to be had in a post Mr. R. contributed to the Insurance Law Center earlier this month with the exclamatory title, "People: Throw Off Your Shackles and Blog!"  After adding his name to the long list of those who have despaired at the sheer gosh-awfulness of so much of the writing produced by lawyers-as-lawyers, he posits blogging as a promising cure:

This is what lawyers all too easily lose sight of when writing – that the goal is not to show how smart they are, or even to win.  The goal is to communicate with the reader.  All other aims must be secondary, because these goals stand the best chance of being realized if the primary goal is first achieved.  The reader’s needs must always come first, before any of the writer’s needs.  The writer must work hard, so the reader does not need to.  Blogging can be a great place for lawyers to discover how to do this, to break free of the iron claw of Latin and dead English, to use creative language, to employ metaphor, simile, allegory, and character development, to discover the storyteller within, to really connect with the reader.  Even judges and other lawyers, so they say, are human.  Given a choice between analysis that plods along like a mastodon on crutches and analysis that is both insightful and entertaining, the market will choose the more attractive product.

I wholeheartedly agree, but would add that there is potentially even more benefit to be derived by lawyers blogging about something other than the law.  The practice of law does not take place in a vacuum, but in a vast and multifarious Real World full of fellow human beings and of social, economic, political, natural, and cultural tidal forces, and the practice can only gain from the attorney's engagement with that larger context.  Also, writing about All That Other Stuff is frequently just more fun than writing about the law.  So, while there is undoubtedly ample room for additional well-written law blogs, there is even more room in this world for well-written, lively non-law blogs from well-rounded, lively lawyers.  Heed the call!

~~~

P.S., Blawg Review #152 is now up at TechnoLawyer Blog, which despite its name is not a blog for lawyers who love Techno.   Say, there's a niche for someone to fill.....

Blawg Review #100: Life is a Carnival

The vicissitudes of the Actual Practice of Law have sent this weblog on an unintended hiatus in recent weeks, but others have been busy as can be during that time, plowing the fertile fields of legal weblogging. 

A good idea of the range and variety of of the legalistic crops under cultivation can be obtained through the auspicious and freshly published Blawg Review #100.  The anonymous Editor of Blawg Review marks the centennapostary with a ramble back through the 99 preceding Editions, and an update on the status of all those earlier hosts, including a link back to this weblog's hosting of Blawg Review #51 last April. 

On behalf of Decs&Excs, I regret having had nothing more exciting and current on offer just now for inclusion in Ed.'s  survey.  Decs&Excs will, however, be hosting Blawg Review #102 a mere two weeks from now, and I promise to do so with gusto.  Regular posting should also resume here in the interim, as conditions permit.

Answer the Door, It's Blawg Review #89

The anonymous editor of Blawg Review has taken the reins of this week's Blawg Review #89 to produce a survey of the legal weblog world that is international in scope and optimistic at heart as we embark on 2007.  This edition boasts the added virtue of a truly inspired theme, that of "the Lone Mummer" traveling through the winter dark to call on these many distant points of legal light.  The accompanying illustrations, from the work of Newfoundland artist David Blackwood, are a pleasure in themselves.

Altogether, a particularly fine Blawg Review and well worth the time involved in reading it and in following through its numerous links.

The intrepid Editor is also granting a boon of sorts to the many law-related weblogs that are included in this edition: the proprietor(s) of each such site will be permitted, with limitations, to pose three yes-or-no questions that may lead to said editor's identity.  Since both of my own sites are linked, I suppose I might assert a right to ask as many as six questions, but I will not presume to do so.  In fact, I am quite content with the editor's air of mystery, and will likely pose no questions at all rather than break the spell.

Blawg Review Awards 2006

The Blawg Review Awards 2006 have been announced by the Review's anonymous Editor.  Congratulations to all of the winners, among whom are Decs&Excs supporters David Giacalone (Best Law Blog in the Public Interest, shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress) and Overlawyered (Best Blawg Theme).

Declarations and Exclusions will again host an edition of Blawg Review on April 2.

Rumblings From the Guesthouse II: More Recent Posts at Overlawyered

Again, links to potentially-of-interest posts from my guest stint at Overlawyered:

• Oh, Snap! The Cold Claws of Justice Close on Fraudulent Work Comp Claimant

• Oklahoma Supreme Court Eliminates "Affidavit of Merit" Requirement in Med Mal Cases

Rumblings in the Guesthouse: Recent Posts at Overlawyered

These items that I posted yesterday as part of my guest stint at Overlawyered may be of interest to readers of this weblog as well:

• Florida Supreme Court: Forum Shoppers Need Not Fly South for the Winter.

• Juicy Legal Fallout from Cancellation of O.J. Simpson's Book Deal

• Injured Saint Sues Titans Over Raccoon Mascot Golf Cart Accident

Ritorno di Muse

Please take note that  E. L. Eversman's AutoMuse -- "call it a blawg, blog, or just downright useful information on automotive consumer and legal issues" -- has returned from a profound six-month silence.  The URL is unchanged, but the RSS feed has shifted along with the site's migration from Moveable Type to Word Press. 

Welcome back. Vrooom!

Louisiana Hot Links, etc.

There are some new additions to the list of weblogging links on the right, and I urge you to read them regularly.

• Through New Orleans-based Ernie The Attorney -- who in general is providing some of the most cold-eyed and sensible commentary I have seen on the situation On The Ground in the Crescent City -- I was led to D.C. attorney Marc Mayerson's Insurance Scrawl weblog.  I don't know how I missed this one previously, especially as it is now a part of the vast Law.com empire.

• Jonathan Stein has at least two things in common with me: he is an attorney in California (in the vicinity of Sacramento in his case) and he has earned the CPCU [Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter] designation.  He is also a remarkably ambitious weblogosopher, managing to maintain no fewer than three (3 - count 'em - 3!) law-and-lawyering-related weblogs.  I have been remiss in taking so long to get them up in the links list, but I have added them now, have subscribed to their respective RSS feeds, and commend them to your attention as well.  They are:

• California Personal Injury and Insurance Blog ["Informative information and insights for consumers regarding personal injury law, insurance, and the tort system"]

• California Small Business Blog ["This blog is designed for small business owners to provide insight into legal aspects, as well as other aspects, of their business"]

and

• The Practice ["Helping law students and lawyers learn everything they wanted to know about law practice management, but did not learn in law school"], an joint project with Virginia attorney Shane Jimison, who is himself proprietor of the Virginia Law Blog.

Katrina [w/ Updates]

New Orleans lawyer Ernest Svenson's weblog, Ernie The Attorney, was one of the pivotal inspirations for my launching my own pair of weblogs.   Ernie attempted to leave the city in advance of Hurricane Katrina, managed to travel less than 15 miles in four hours and turned back to ride out the storm.   He made it, even managing a handful of posts, but as the city continues to fill with water he is making a break for it.  Here's hoping that he, and all those affected throughout the region, will see their way through this no more scathed than they already are.   No doubt it is much easier to be an optimist from thousands of miles away than it is in the thick of the destruction.

Given its speed and success in rallying donations in the wake of the September 11 attacks and last year's Asian Tsunami, I am surprised that Amazon has not yet launched a page for Hurricane Relief donations to the American Red Cross.  The Red Cross' own servers seem a bit slow just now -- perhaps precisely because of an upsurge in Hurricane Relief donations -- but here is a link to their Online Contribution page.

~~~

UPDATE [083105]: Ernie has made it out of New Orleans and is now able to post again on his own behalf.  He has even found the mental and emotional wherewithal to take an initial run at waxing philosophical over the long-term implications of the past few days' events.  He suggests that "[t]his catastrophe will change America and we don't yet grasp how that will happen."  He is almost certainly right.

Despite the helicopters and other high-end contemporary equipment being brought to bear in the initial phases of rescue and recovery, this disaster feels like something out of another era -- pre-industrial, almost medieval in some sense.  Evan Schaeffer reports on crossing paths with a New Orleans solo lawyer whose escape path led him to St. Louis:

He said that his office had been demolished but even if it had survived, it wouldn't have mattered very much: his practice wouldn't survive in any case.  He said he doubted that some portions of New Orleans would even be rebuilt.  He talked about the refugee camps that would have to be established in other parts of the state.  He criticized the local government for not planning well enough for the disaster and not ordering an evacuation soon enough.  Very angry about what had happened, he mulled over possible causes of action as we talked, more out of frustration than anything else.

While we have taken in any number of displaced persons from abroad over the course of our history, internal refugees is not something we're used to in this country, at least not since the era of the Dust Bowl.  One has to suspect that these events are enough of a blunt force to set our societal tectonic plates to shifting, and that the process is probably already at work, if only imperceptibly.  Where and how those plates will reach a point of rest is beyond my own meager predictive skills.

Don't forget to click through the Red Cross link above before you go.

~~~

FURTHER UPDATE - Relief Links [090105]: Amazon -- a bit slower than expected, but better late than never -- now has a direct page for Donating To The American Red Cross.  The extreme slowness of the Red Cross servers over the past few days has been relieved by a new donation site -- linked on the Red Cross home page -- provided by Yahoo.

A growing list of other routes for aid is also accumulating in this post at Instapundit.