Several months ago, I predicted that Cruise Law News (CLN) would become a top 25 law blog by the end of the year. Well, I was a bit off. CLN is now the top 20th law blog overall per the popular Avvo / Alexa ranking system. And its only October.
Wow . . . Top 20! I feel like I sneaked into the AP / UPI football poll, like Boise State before everyone figured out that they have always had a great football program (even if they are in Idaho where it is cold as hell after Thanksgiving).
To get here, I had to pass some super blogs: Brian Cuba’s great blog The Cuban Revolution which is ranked no. 76 and remains one of my favorites; Eric Turkewitz’s New York Personal Injury Law Blog (no. 45); Carolyn Elefant’s My Shingle (no. 38); George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley’s blog "Res Ipsa Loquitur (no. 28); the SCOTUS blog (no. 25) (what a terrible acronym for the Supreme Court of the United States – "SCOTUS" sounds like something you would touch only with a glove . . . ); and the terrifically talented but terribly shy Tax Girl (no. 24)(its almost impossible to find her name on her own blog).
When I over-took one of my favorite cynics, OverLawyered (no. 21), I knew there was no looking back.
O.K. Enough about the blogs in my rear view mirror. Who’s next to fall? Professor Becker and 7th Circuit Judge Posner’s great Beckner Posner Blog (no. 18) will soon be toast. And I will pass the Canadian cooperative law blog Slaw, at no. 17, shortly.
Does this sound a bit cocky? I hope so. A lack of confidence as a trial lawyer is a sign of weakness, especially in a major metropolitan market like Miami. And whenever I shamlessly promote my blog like this, I know that the most popular blog is not necessarily the most influential or substantial blog. Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog wrote an article about not getting caught up in a popularity contest last year – "Engagement versus Vanity."
My thought is that honking your own horn is just fine, as long as you are engaged and are writing insightful and relevant blogs.
Another gratifying thing to me is that I have been blogging for only one year and the bloggers I passed have been at it for many years. I’m sure that none of them have ever heard of CLN.