I know it is tempting to use the bully pulpit provided by the website to campaign for your preferred candidate, but frankly, Overlawyered has been the only legal blog website I've seen that was willing to concentrate on its avowed mission, and not clutter its pages with partisan chatter. We get enough of that from the N.Y. Times and Fox News.
As an attorney with almost 20 years in practice, I have been dismayed by the direction the profession has taken... it is not a turn for the better. Overlawyered performs a valuable service. Please don't continue to undermine the credibility of your website. -- anonymous reader
[In response to this and the previous letter, a few observations:
* Just as some readers think the site pays too much attention to U.S. politics, so other readers' patience is tried when we cover, say, toxic-tort or cerebral palsy litigation in detail. Think of it as like reading a magazine, and scroll or click past the bits that aren't your favorites. As it happens, several other readers have written in to accuse us of wasting pixels by including so many stories from Canada, the U.K. and Australia; the site should maintain a tight U.S. focus, they think. The same advice applies to them.
* There's reason to believe our politics coverage this year has been popular, however, because our commentaries on John Edwards and on the presidential race have gotten higher visitor traffic, and been more linked to, than almost any other posts in the site's five-year-plus history. Some of the new visitors have bookmarked the site and become regular readers, and traffic is up on "ordinary" days as well.
* Like it or not, this is a personal as distinct from an institutional site, and you're going to get my (and, when he ventures it, Ted's) opinions on various matters of public moment I think important, as well as oddments such as links to some of the non-law-related things I write. (Some readers complain that I don't include enough personal stuff.)
* While it would probably be rather dull to "campaign for [my] preferred" candidate at any length, it would be equally dull to pretend never to have any preferences whatever. In the case of this year's presidential race, the point of my Oct. 26 post was precisely to disabuse readers of the idea that I had a "preferred candidate" to promote, since neither major party candidate seemed to me worthy of endorsement. -- W.O.]
Posted by Walter Olson at November 9, 2004 09:55 PM