Law Students

Blawg Review

By Dave!

Last week, we lost a member of the “Blawg” community, someone who touched a number of lives and was responsible for making the Law Blog community feel a little more like a community: Ed. of Blawg Review. His son posted from his Twitter Account (@BlawgReview) that Ed had lost his battle with esophageal cancer.

It’s hard to explain to people who weren’t part of the early days of blogging/blawging, or who never had the pleasure of working with or meeting Ed, but I never even knew his real name and I’ll still miss him. I’d met him on several occasions in person and I always called him “Ed” which may or may not have been his real name–he went by the moniker “Ed Post” in his role as Blawg Review editor. But oddly, it didn’t matter. It was never about Ed. He always seemed to be working for the community, not working to promote himself. He was deliberate in taking himself out of the picture, which was ironic, because without Ed’s influence, the picture would have been monotone.

I really enjoyed conversations with Ed about law and life as he stopped by Chicago from his extensive travels. Seriously, talk about a road warrior–he was a walking ExOfficio ad. Ed made me think a lot about the role of attorneys in serving our clients, about how I approached the practice of law, and about communication and community among members of our profession.

Without waxing too nostalgic, the early days of Blawging did feel more like a community than they do today. Perhaps that’s because then, I was a law student, not yet a lawyer, so I had more time to participate without the pressures of work (or a mortgage or children, all of which I’ve acquired since those early days). But it felt like a community because people like Ed, and the Blawg Review Sherpas, worked to make it one. There are still great blawgers out there (many below) working to keep that community, and I think that would make Ed happy.

I had the pleasure of working with Ed. on seven Blawg Review issues:

• Blawg Review #23
• Blawg Review #70
• Blawg Review #122
• Blawg Review #182
• Blawg Review #270
• Blawg Review #291
• Blawg Review #321

Everyone of them was fun and could not have been done without Ed’s guidance and the help of the Sherpas. And over the years, those Sherpas have given me other advice outside the realm of Blawg Review. Exemplary members of our profession, every one.

Blawg Review hadn’t been active in quite some time, but I still looked forward to the next time Ed came to Chicago.

In honor of Ed and his creation, several Bloggers have put together one final Blawg Review, and I can’t think of a better way to honor Ed than to read them.

Colin Samuels kicks things off at the Blawg Review site. Followed by:

• Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice
• Mark Bennett at Defending People
• Antonin Pri­betic at The Trial Warrior
• Brian Tannebaum at My Law License
• Ken White at Popehat
• Eric Turkewitz at the New York Personal Injury Law Blog
• George Wallace at Delcarations and Exclusions
• Gideon at A Public Defender
• Ron Coleman at Likelihood of Confusion
• Charon QC at UK Law Blog
• Colin Samuels at Infamy or Praise

And finally, here’s a pic from Windy Pundit of a blawg meetup in Chicago many years ago. I’m the grinning doofus on the far left, and in typical fashion, Ed is tucked in the back, hiding his face–even though he was the reason most of us were there.

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As Ed required, every week: Blawg Review has information about all the Blawg Review hosts, and instructions on how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

Full post as published by Preaching to the Perverted on November 04, 2013 (boomark / email).