In-House Counsel

Some data on back references on this blog during nine months of 2008 ? exciting, yes?

By Rees Morrison

Since Feb. 12, 2008, I have published on Law Department Management 580 posts. Of them, 91 (16%) refer to no earlier post. However, the bulk of the posts during that nine-month period ? 519 of them ? point to prior posts and do so a total of 3,036 times. Five of them ? all metaposts, of course ? have 40-some back references, 6 have 30-some references; and 17 have 20-some. At the other end in terms of back referencing, 191 of those 519 posts (just less than 40%) cite only a single earlier post.

What I really want to know is which of my posts I have cited the most. I can?t readily figure that out because I post in clumps, five to nine on a day. So I know the date of a back reference but that information only narrows the choice to one of several on a day, and I have to look at my short descriptions and the headers of that day to confirm the match.

My first post on this blog was February 20, 2005. One post from that inaugural day has shown up twice since then, one about procurement has shown up four times, and one on SEI and cubicles appears in eight back references. On March 5, 2005, my third day of posting, one on altruistic information sharing appears 8 times and a second post, on Google Desktop, appears 7 times.

The day that has generated the most look backs is Sept. 10, 2005, with a total of 114. One on specialist lawyers earned 13 back references, two had nine (matter management systems and governance officers), one on innovation had eight, two had seven (communities of practice and law firm growth) and one had five back references regarding fixed fees.

The number of references back to posts, by year of original posting, shows not surprisingly that older posts have been cited more frequently: 3,207 back references to 2005 posts; 2,937 back references to 2006 posts; 1,857 from last year?s posts; and 731 back references so far to posts in 2008.

Full post as published by Law Department Management on November 16, 2008 (boomark / email).