Legal Writing

Fixing Errors after Publication

I just learned my name is attached to something flawed. 

My goal is to change that.

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Here’s the story:

Six months ago, I sent this article to Law Practice Magazine, a popular ABA periodical about law practice management. The article was set to run in the January issue, which focused on marketing tactics for attorneys.

That issue was advertised like so:

PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT SPECIAL ISSUE:
BRANDING YOURSELF ONLINE

For some reason, the article didn’t appear when it was supposed to.

Via Twitter, I recently learned that the article (actually, a draft version of it) was published at a sister ABA publication, Law Practice Today. 

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Now, one bit of advice I offer clients is this ? whenever your article is published, review it again. Make sure it doesn’t suffer some production error.

Following my own advice, I read the article. Right away, I thought there must be something wrong. It sounded like a draft of what I submitted for publication, rather than the final.

Indeed, it must be a draft, because there’s an editor’s note in it identifying a chunk of copy to be set as a side bar. But there is no side bar; just a note to someone in production.

This needs to be fixed!

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Let’s see what happens. I called the production house (around 9:30 am) and left a voice mail. After I post this, I’ll send an email. And I’ll get this error resolved as soon as I can . . .

. . . because that’s my name at the top of it. 

Let’s see how long it takes to set things right.

Update #1

I haven’t heard anything from the production house, but I just (9:45 am) sent an email to the the publisher, the ABA (lpm@abanet.org).

Update #2

Good news. I just received the following message from the ABA:

Good afternoon, Mr. Thorne:

Please contact me at your earliest convenience so that I may correct any problems with your article.

Thank you,
Aaron

Looks like we should have things resolved after a round or two of phone tag.

Full post as published by Set in Style on May 19, 2009 (boomark / email).