An article from the San Jose Mercury News entitled "Bucks for Blogs" (here) caught my eye, especially this opening paragraph: "When it comes to blogging, big corporations are turning to twentysomething mavericks for advice. If they can’t lick them, they may have to join them."  How about the 40+ mavericks who are members of Paul Caron’s Empire of Blogs? (ph)

The Law Professor Blogs Network is proud to announce a collaboration with Juris Novus, one of the finest law blog aggregators online. Juris Novus will be featuring a rotating cast of blogs from our Network.

Statement from Juris Novus:

Keeping up with the blogsphere is a daunting task as new blogs come online daily. Juris Novus provides order and centralization, pulling together relevant headlines and presenting them on a single page. Law professors greatly influence the legal blogsphere. Academia demands a clear writing voice and current knowledge of legal ongoings. Successful blogging demands the same, it comes as no surprise that professors have risen to the top of the law blogsphere. In honor of those law professors who have contributed to the rich culture of the legal blogsphere, Juris Novus features a heavier balance of law professor blogs.

Juris Novus is updated three times an hour and stores headlines on a history page when you miss a day. Save time and simplify your day with Juris Novus. Thank you for making the legal blogsphere a better place!

One of the newest members of the Law Professor Blogs network is Professor Paul McGreal’s Corporate Compliance Prof Blog.  Paul is the Director of the Corporate Compliance Center, and is the Harry and Helen Hutchens Research Professor and Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law in Houston, TX.  The blog should be of particular interest to many of the hardy band of readers of this blog because so many white collar cases involve issues related to corporate ethics and compliance.  Paul describes his target audience (here):

In short, this Blog is written for anyone interested in the legal and practical issues raised by designing, implementing, and operating a corporate ethics and compliance program.  This audience has many potential members:

• In-house lawyers whose responsibilities include compliance.
• In-house non-lawyers whose responsibilities include compliance.
• Outside lawyers and compliance professionals.
• Law professors and students teaching and studying subjects related to compliance.

While much of the Blog’s content will deal with legal sources and issues, the Blog will not be written solely for lawyers.  My hope is that non-lawyer compliance professionals will find the content both useful and accessible.

Be sure to check it out, including an outstanding post on the Arthur Andersen prosecution that gives a thorough review of how the case unfolded (with a nice mention of the Houston Astros thrown in). (ph)

While Doug Berman is on top of all sentencing issues, even he missed Sentencing Law & Policy’s first birthday (here), but we’re even later in wishing him (it?) a Happy Birthday!  SL&P is, quite simply, the best, and should not be missed for a day, lest you fall further behind on all that takes place in the world of sentencing.  Rock on! (ph & esp)

Professor Dale Oesterle from Ohio State, one of the leading corporate, M&A, and securities law professors around, has joined the LawProfs Blog network with the Business Law Prof Blog.  His initial post (here) is on the recent indictment of 15 NYSE floor specialists for front-running (trading ahead of their customers to take advantage of prices) with a terrific shot across the regulators’ bow: "This is fifty or so years late but whose counting?"  Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging, and there is certainly no shortage of topics.

Paul Caron’s TaxProf blog — which he boldly proclaims has "spawned" 12 other professor blogs among other achievements — celebrates its first birthday today (post here).  Congratulations from a grateful spawnee, and many happy 1040s! (ph & esp)

We are thrilled to announce that LexisNexis has agreed to sponsor all of the blogs in our Law Professor Blogs Network:

• AntitrustProf Blog (Shubha Ghosh (SUNY Buffalo))
• ContractsProf Blog (Carol Chomsky (Minnesota) & Frank Snyder (Texas-Wesleyan))
• CrimProf Blog (Jack Chin (Arizona) & Mark Godsey (Cincinnati))
• Health Law Prof Blog (Betsy Malloy (Cincinnati) & Tom Mayo (SMU))
• LaborProf Blog (Rafael Gely (Cincinnati))
• Law Librarian Blog (Joe Hodnicki (Cincinnati)) 
• Law School Academic Support Blog (Dennis Tonsing (Roger Williams))
• Media Law Prof Blog (Cristina Corcos (LSU))
• Sentencing Law & Policy Blog (Douglas Berman (Ohio State))
• White Collar Crime Prof Blog (Peter Henning (Wayne State) & Ellen Podgor (Georgia State))
• TaxProf Blog (Paul Caron (Cincinnati))
• Tech Law Prof Blog (Jonathan Ezor (Touro) & Michelle Zakarin (Touro))
• Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog (Gerry Beyer (St. Mary’s))

LexisNexis shares our vision for expanding the network into other areas of law, so please email us if you would be interested in finding out more about starting a blog as part of our network.

West Publishing Company and Foundation Press, sponsors of this blog and our Law Professor Blogs Network, have asked that we help identify our readership through this on-line survey.  They (and we) would like to figure out the mix of professors, judges, lawyers, librarians, students, and others who read this blog.  The survey takes less than a minute to complete.  Thanks in advance for your help.

The co-editor of this blog, Prof. Ellen Podgor, reports the following from a session at the Association of American Law Schools annual meeting in San Francisco about blogging:

At the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) annual Criminal Justice Luncheon, bloggers Jack Chin, Mark Godsey (of the CrimProf Blog), and Doug Berman (Sentencing Law and Policy blog) spoke about blogging. Discussed were the hopes that teaching blogs such as these could provide assistance to professors in staying current on cases, scholarship, and news items. Doug Berman, for example, spoke about how he started blogging as a result of trying to link and assemble items for his students.  The Sentencing Blog gained national recognition when the Blakely case was decided by the Supreme Court. Professor Berman also talked about finding the vision of the blog.  For example, determining how far a blogger should go to define terms and explain matters to the audience.  Finding the "voice" of the blog may be something that each blog will decide on its own.  One of the audience questions focused on the time spent in handling a blog.  Professor Berman, for example, spends about 3-4 hours a day keeping up his blog. (esp)

The blogs are certainly different.  For example, unlike the CrimProf blog, with only a couple exceptions we have not posted any graphics.  For me, that’s because the one time I tried to include a picture, it took me almost ten minutes to make it look right, and even then it was on the wrong side of the text.  Typing is about as cutting edge as I get.  Thanks for looking at the text, and any suggestions on postings or other thoughts are most welcome. (ph)