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LexBlog launches global legal news and commentary platform

lexblog platform legal blogs

Last week we shared the word with our clients and yesterday with bloggers, and other members of the press, that LexBlog has launched a global legal news and commentary network.

Today, it’s time to share the word with you. Especially with those of you blogging, without which this news would not be possible.

The network, running on the LexBlog.com site, is a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive, global news and commentary network, delivering timely and targeted articles from legal bloggers throughout the world. Any legal blogger, worldwide, is invited to add a feed to the network, and any reader is free to access the network, with no subscription or payment required.

You need not be a user/customer of LexBlog’s publishing platform to have you and your blog included for free. LexBlog customers will automatically be included. “Non-customers” just need to go to the “Join” page on LexBlog.

Some 19,000 legal bloggers already participate in the network, which features both curated and real-time posts from lawyers, law professors, law librarians, law students, legal-industry executives, legal marketers, legal consultants, legal technologists and others, providing news, insights and analysis on virtually every legal and practice topic.

Powering the network is LexBlog’s custom-built aggregation and syndication engine that allows the platform to aggregate blog content from any source, regardless of whether the blog is hosted by LexBlog on its own blogging platform or externally on any other blogging platform — as well as syndicate the content, as relevant, to syndication partners.

Big kudos to Jared, Scott, Angelo, Brian and Josh for doing the heavy lifting on the design, development and tech side for something we’ve envisioned for a long time.

As my colleague and LexBlog’s publisher and editor-in-chief, Bob Ambrogi says:

The wealth of original writing and reporting from legal blogs is staggering. For legal professionals, there is immeasurable value in having unlimited access to timely articles targeted to their practices and interests.

Ambrogi’s right. We’re also seeing legal news sites reducing coverage because of reduced revenues and erecting paywalls in an attempt to get subscription money for copy that is less valuable than that coming from legal blogs.

Legal bloggers are the citizen journalists of law and our network is bringing their work to the readers who will most benefit from it – legal professionals, entrepreneurs, executives, small business people and  consumers.

The network includes:

  • Featured articles curated by LexBlog editors throughout the day.
  • Real-time feeds of all articles from member blogs across the world.
  • Real-time feeds of targeted articles arranged by legal channels.
  • RSS and email subscriptions to channel and blog updates.
  • Profiles of each blogger, including the blogs to which they contribute and their recent posts.
  • Profiles of the law firms and institutions that publish blogs, including all the blogs they support, all their blog authors, and the recent posts from across all their blogs.

Content published through the platform receives additional exposure through publication to the Fastcase legal research service and through upcoming bar association publishing portals.

As Ambrogi says, this is just the first phase of the new LexBlog.com. Future plans include greater curation of channel pages, expanded original content and coverage, and special-focus publications. In addition, LexBlog will license and deploy its syndication and aggregation platform to law firms, bar associations, law schools and other organizations to power their own custom publishing.

What started out of a garage with one blogger – me – LexBlog is now the hub that brings together many of the best legal minds on the web.

Want to join our cause or know someone who would want to, I am looking for one ambitious and passionate associate editor, to have the time of their life in helping build this one of kind network. Journalism isn’t struggling at LexBlog, the intersection of blogging, technology and the law is going to make for something special – to serve lawyers and the people we serve.

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