I always seek out the diaries and comments of Kossacks such as LarsThorwald, WmTrialLawyer, Christy1947 etc. I relate very strongly to the fact-based, dispassionate perspectives they have of illuminating the legal aspects of goings on in the law, courts, and legislation, that a layperson just isn't likely to have at their disposal.
In Lars Thorwald's recent diary explaining his need to take a temporary hiatus from DailyKos, there was an interesting suggestion regarding a new community diary series.
I made a comment to Lars in the comment section:
Lars your upcoming scarcity here will be a real loss to this site. Your insider knowledge, informed analysis, sense of humor, and cool demeanor are just what we need more, not less of...Best to you and yours.
And, in an example of what still really works in this community, aravir had an absolutely stellar suggestion, with which a lot of people agreed:
Lars, if you read this, I have a better idea (174+ / 0-)
....find a "community" within DK that tickles your own fancy. For me, that's Wednesday's "What are you reading?" community. Get involved.
Better yet, be part of the solution. We have BlackKos, and GLBT and Friends at Daily Kos. How about LawKos? A weekly community effort fronted by and rotated among progressive legal Kossacks, which highlights important history and news regarding the law. I'm guessing a summer battle over Steven's replacement would be a great place to start and build community support for such an effort.
...I will look forward to your return.
by aravir on Mon Apr 12, 2010 at 10:05:21 AM CDT
This comment made aravir one of my favorite posters.
Not being a lawyer, I always seek out the comments of our legal minds. I like the rational, fact-based aspect of our lawyer's comments, and even when I don't agree with them, I really appreciate and admire the calm, rational 'lawyerly' tone they usually take. For the most part, they are an appeal to reason rather than passion. That makes for good information, doesn't preach to the choir, and in my opinion, is the best way to 'convince' people who are not in agreement, both withing the Kos community, and among our friends in the greater society.
So Aravir's suggestion of "LawKos" seems like a really worthy endeavour to me.
To get things rolling, I've taken the liberty to contact a few of our legal folks, to see if we can drum up some people who would be willing to be occasional contributors to a community diary series on legal issues. With the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation coming up over the summer, it would be really great to have some 'industry insider' commentary to shepherd us through the process.
Another important aspect of a new LawKos community is streamlined communication. During the election season, I wrote a bunch of diaries and comments to lawyers, asking that they volunteer with Counsel for Change, which organized lawyers to deal with any legal issues that might have arisen at polling places. If there were a LawKos, it would be a place where lawyers could go to get updates on those kinds of efforts as well.
If you're a lawyer (or law student), and you'd like to contribute, please contact me (email in profile), and I'll try to be the communicator to get the series organized. Since I'm not an attorney, I can't contribute directly to stories and diaries, but I'm willing to do whatever is considered necessary by the eventual contributors to smooth the way in either a temporary, or ongoing way.
If the readers of this diary have suggestions of which of our legal minds they'd like to hear from in such a series, please leave suggestions in the comments, and if you have a way to contact them, either email me, or send them a link to this diary. I think we will probably need a core group of 5 (ish) editors, and any number of 'visiting' contributors. I think it would be particularly interesting to get lawyers from other countries to weigh in on the perspective of legal happenings in the US and how they are viewed by the legal community overseas. Something akin to JeromeAParis' viewpoints on economic issues.
Thanks in advance for reading, and for your contribution toward getting the LawKos community started. And thanks, Aravir, for an absolutely outstanding idea.
Update: Thanks for the enthusiasm for the idea. So, can I beg for recommendations so this doesn't scroll off the recent diary list?
If you like the idea, please rec the diary so more of our lawyerly folks get a chance to see it.
h/t to ILJimP for suggesting (duh) creating a LawKos account, which I've done.