by Lanny_James
ed Adam_Shell
Damien Piper, in his paper, Do Weblogs have a Place in Legal Practice, states,
‘Like all web publishing, there are obvious legal concerns the author must be aware of. Some of these would include readers relying on the information as advice, copyright issues and potential defamation claims. A fact that might be considered more risky for weblogers is that they result in a permanent (while they are still hosted online) collection of your opinions. This might be particularly disconcerting for those applying for or who are in public positions.’1
Piper points out that blogs are out there for anyone to find. Furthermore, depending on the blogging service used, they may be out there for a long time. However, these concerns may very well be secondary to the issue of someone relying on the legal advice posted in the blog. What happens if a person relies, to their detriment, on a Blog for legal advice? Do they have an action against the owner of the Blog? The nature of the lawyer/client relationship is such that actual “legal advice” is one to one and reactive, rather than proactive and general like a blog.2 An argument can be made that a blog should be analogous to any other publication to the world at large. Certaintly textbook writers don’t intend for the users to directly rely their books for legal advice. A general statement of indemnity should be tagged to the blog if concern warrants, to ensure that veiwers do not take the work as specific advice to their case.
So really, webblogs may not be a resource for providing client advice specifically, but can provide information on the beleifs, thoughts and level of expertise of a legal practiitioner in a specific area of law. Much like an advertisement of the practioners knowledge.
For other information one this topic see fired_for_using_blogs_at_work