Oh come all ye bloggers... some new contributors for Legal Week

For me it started in a waiting room at Kingston Crown Court. Having been called up for jury service just before Christmas last year, I was forced to spend nine days in wintry February shuttling between a room that looked like a small airport departure lounge and a courtroom. I know a lot of people see the idea of jury service as fascinating, but personally I found being lawfully detained at Her Majesty's pleasure as a captive audience for a bunch of lawyers about as welcome as a root canal procedure. The court stuff is fine, but all that hanging around...

Anyway, as the mind-numbing boredom set in, I started whiling away the hours reading legal blogs on a BlackBerry, while also discovering the weird and compulsive world of the Twitterverse. That starting point led to a growing interest in legal bloggers, not to mention an unhealthy obsession with what Charon QC was doing at three in the morning.

Say what you like about bloggers, but to a world-weary journalist, they sound fresh in comparison to the bland diction of traditional media. And, at their best, they show a passion for law that shines through. True, some are madder than a box of frogs, but it's swings and roundabouts really. By October Legal Week had developed this newfound interest into analysis pieces focusing on legal bloggers and social media.

Now we intend to take this process to the next level by collaborating with a group of prominent bloggers. As such, Charon QC, the UK Human Rights Blog, legalbrat (FT general counsel Tim Bratton) and Lawyer Watch (by Cardiff Law School professor Richard Moorhead), have been kind enough to allow us to include some of their blogs on Legal Village, the section of legalweek.com created for external contributors.

Early efforts have proved extremely popular with readers, including legalbrat's take on disillusion and dysfunction at US law firms, Charon QC's look at the legality of WikiLeaks and Richard Moorhead's spiky debunking of the value of commitment among aspiring lawyers. From the superb UK Human Rights Blog we've already drawn a range of pieces, including a review of Ken Clarke's plans for radical criminal justice reforms and a look at the Supreme Court's high-profile ruling on the use of fair comment defences in libel proceedings.

I'd like to extend my thanks to the contributors for allowing us to draw on their blogs. In the meantime, we are looking to expand our ranks of guest bloggers, so suggestions can be emailed to me at alex.novarese@incisivemedia.com or sent to Legal Week via Twitter.

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