I had a long overdue face-to-face with Justin of Human Law last week. We bemoaned the state of the legal blogosphere. In fact, there are so few points on the surface of this sphere, that it hardly rates as a sphere at all, even a small one. Should we actively try to expand it or let it grow at its own pace?

I think the web would be a far better and more useful place for lawyers and clients alike if there were more legal bloggers, so I favour a bit of encouragement. We are still very much in the land of the early adopters, so, rather than scattering seed on stony ground, trying to sell the benefits to all and sundry, let’s work on those who are most likely to take it up: those who already have an interest in blogging, a pen on the page or any sort of inclination to hold forth; they are the ones who should be blogging and, with a little encouragement, will do so.

Who falls in this camp? Legal journalists/commentators for one.

For example, I had occasion to visit theLawyer.com a few days ago. I was pointed to the Web Week column for 18/09/06 (following up on a report of rate-your-solicitor.com – but that’s another story). Web Week, which bills itself as “a weekly commentary on legal activity on the web, [including] an overview of the best of the week’s blogs”, strikes me as eminently blog-like stuff. But here it is, hidden away, unattributed, in the Lawyer’s archives where no-one is likely to find it, certainly not as a corpus (for which you need to do this advanced (sic) search of their archives). And when you get there, though it’s a good read, it takes you nowhere: none of the websites referred to is linked! So please Lawyer columnist, come out of the closet; persuade The Lawyer that you should write your column as a blog and that the blog should have its own identity and be prominently linked. And, not to worry, each week they can still publish it in print and file it away in the archives as now.

I’ll work up a list of other contenders and name (and shame?) them in due course. Your suggestions welcome.