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Blawgers' Resolve

This first working day of 2008, I thought I'd wander around the blogosphere to sample the New Year's resolutions of legal bloggers. Sure, there are plenty of bloggers vowing to lose weight and exercise more. As Michael W. Fox observes, resolutions such as those should keep one "occupied till, oh, at least next weekend." Fox takes a realistic approach, avoiding the urge to resolve to blog more regularly and instead promising only, "I may or may not post anything of substance between now and the New Year ... 2009!"

But other bloggers appear to be taking this resolution stuff more seriously -- and not just on the level of food and exercise. In fact, James M. Beck and Mark Herrmann at Drug and Device Law describe their resolutions as not merely avuncular, but pompous. That said, the resolutions they offer are not for themselves, but for their colleagues at the bar who want to market their law firms more successfully in 2008. Their four resolutions boil down to that Nike marketing slogan: "Just do it!"

In that vein, Diane Levin is just doing it, big time. She has marked the New Year by moving out of her comfortable blog home at Online Guide to Mediation and setting up new digs at a new location, MediationChannel.com. She is still settling in there, she writes, but she promises a housewarming, of sorts, by starting a series of posts this week, appropriately named, "New Year (Dispute) Resolutions."

Other bloggers resolving, in one way or another, to just do it include:

• Norm Pattis, who vows to experiment on his blog by publishing a work of fiction in serial form.
• Ernie the Attorney, who, in resolving to search for Enlightenment, ends up with "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jesus."

Resolutions are good things. But perhaps making them a quickly forgotten annual ritual is not. The best advice I found in my search of blawgers' resolutions comes from Chuck Newton, who says change should be a constant in our lives and our careers:

I think the better goal is to shoot for incremental change.  You can always better yourself.  You can always better your best. But, if you are waiting for the New Year, or for a new Congress, for your children to graduate, or for something else to do this, it is not going to work anyway. Change does not start on January 1st. It starts every single day of your life.

Have you resolved to market more effectively, seek enlightenment, write that novel or anything else? Feel free to share your resolutions below.

Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on January 2, 2008 at 02:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)