Associated Blogs Announces New Site
A San Francisco based startup announced the launch of its site Associated Blogs Legal. Associated Blogs is a sort of social media site for the legal profession.
According to the press release, the site allows all blogs, briefs, news, events, or attorney profiles linked from its site to be tagged, commented on, and searched in summary. The site links to legal content across the web.
“Attorneys use Associated Blogs Legal so that potential clients can find what they write. Within 90 days we’ll have every legal blog tagged, linked, and searchable in summary from our site. The power in legal publishing is all about the blogging attorney,” according to the start-up’s CEO and co-founder, Scott Stanley, “We’ve built a place to both find and promote the attorney blogger.”
The AB Legal site features peer-ranking of blogs, briefs, and events. The most actively visited rise to the top of the rankings.
The New Legal Networking
It will be interesting to see how this site develops. I took a poke around, and what I found was essentially a list of recent blog posts from some larger legal news websites. After I attempted to search, however, I couldn’t find any of the more prominent blogs that I am familiar with, so I am assuming that the blog is still in the early phases of development.
In general there isn’t that much content yet, compared with the Leviathan that I know is out there, and the site doesn’t immediately present itself as user friendly or visually appealing. I am assuming that substantial changes will take place before the 90 day period elapses.
Once the site is fully loaded though, it will be interesting to see what collection of sites are compiled. For example, will the site draw primarily from the more “traditional” social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter? Or will it focus primarily on legal sites such as Avvo, Lawyers.com, Rocket Lawyer, etc.
I am also interested to see how the site will be indexed. For example, the American Bar Association has a searchable list of Blawgs, that is listed according to topic, region, author or law school. New blawgs can also apply to be listed in the directory.