Risky Blogness

David Giacalone, aka ethicalEsq?, dismisses the risks cited by the ABA Journal in its article Bemused About Blogging. As Giacalone admits, however, it is easy for him to do so because he is now retired.

During almost 40 years as a corporate public relations man, my father maintained a brisk writing career in a number of publications. He always recognized that writing posed a potential risk to his career, and he had to consider his words carefully. His success in balancing his career and his writing has always struck me as a testament to his good judgment. As Giacalone puts it, "If a lawyer doesn't have the good judgment it takes to have both a personality and an opinion online, while keeping clients happy, he or she should stay away from blogging, and maybe from lawyering." Sometimes bloggers seem to forget that blogs are a public medium, and that their words may come back to them in unexpected ways. I aspire to write in such a way that I will not be embarrassed when they do.