It seems like there's another new blawg by a Texas lawyer for every new one by a lawyer anywhere else in the country. Why is that? Today, I stumbled upon two blogs I'd never seen before, Bad Court Thingy and Not Guilty. The former is by a new lawyer who has inexplicably chosen to post anonymously, while the latter comes from a more experienced lawyer who is skirting the edges of the blawgosphere and self-promotion. Then, there's the eponymous Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, a tad parochial on the parochial side.Greenfield also wishes, as I do, that we saw more posts from Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer, declaring "another MIA blawger is Jamie Spencer, whose posts are always exceptional but increasingly sporadic. Come on Jamie, hunker down and get to work."
The odd thing about the Texas blawgs is that they tend to focus largely on the sovereign Nation of Texas. Some might think they are narrow for that reason. I just think they don't give a hoot about what happens in foreign lands, like the United States of America.
In the comments I suggested several reasons for the large number of Texas Blawgs:
First, it' s not just law bloggers. I saw recently that Austin is the leading city nationwide in terms of blog readership. Also, Texas is huge - 23 million people. Doug Berman did a post about Kansas recently and I realized their entire state prison system is smaller than the Harris County Jail!
Plus we've got a lot of solo practitioners in Texas, and they're just the kind of people who blogging appeals to - folks with big egos, lots of opinions and a yen for self promotion.
Finally, Texas had several early adopters like Houston's Clear Thinkers, Grits and the (now dormant) Texas Law Blog that spread the idea of blogging on state and local legal topics in TX pretty early on, inspiring others to try it.
Some combination of those reasons, plus several, I'm sure, I haven't thought of, probably explain it. Whatever the reason, it's really true though. Texas has more good law blogs that have gone out of business than most states have currently active! Here are a few more blogs with good recent posts that demonstrate the depth of the Texas legal blawgosphere:
Let me know in the comments why a) you think Texas has such a depth of blogging talent on legal issues, and b) any other active Texas legal blogs you enjoy that I'm missing, particularly ones not already named in Grits' sidebar, which I've not been updating as regularly as I should.
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