Re: Encouraging Discretion in Blogging Is Better Than Restricting It

Carolyn Elefant of the Law.com blog recently published an interesting post, here, entitled "Encouraging Discretion in Blogging Is Better Than Restricting It." Elefant's post was itself a response to Connecticut Employment Law blogger Daniel Schwartz' "The Blog Post I Didn't Publish," here, and here is my two cents:

I am a relatively new blogger, but there are definitely some difficult choices in deciding what to post. First, blogging is habit forming, and as a junior associate I don't want it to detract from my work. Second, there is a danger of damaging a pending case. In fact, a week or so ago I read a post that discussed an appeal where I had written the bulk of the winning brief, and I was tremendously tempted to post a comment that drew from an an off-the record discussion with the opposing attorney about his theory of the case. The comment likely would have been harmless, and was well intended, but with the possibility of the matter being re-filed I thought it tread into some questionable territory.

If my firm were to create guidelines, however, I would hope they would be along the lines of the ethical canons, as opposed to strict directives. The nice part of blogging is the freedom of it. Most of what I write is heavily constrained by seriousness and a desire to maintain a certain level of decorum, but in a blog post you can -- in theory -- write whatever you want and be as stylistically creative as you want.