Calloway Gives Okie Spin to Blawg Review

Jim Calloway of the Oklahoma Bar Association and author of the Law Practice Tips blog took a turn this week hosting the Blawg Review law blog carnival. The carnival includes a couple of dozen or more law-related blogs from around the country. Jim managed to give the round-up a nice Oklahoma spin.

The Blawg Review, of course, is a law blogs carnival, but many of the posts will be of interest to our non-lawyer readers, including articles about:
* the IRS: “Dirty Dozen Top IRS Scams for 2006″
* PCs: “Purchase Your PC With Windows Vista in Mind”
* Marketing: “Ain’t Nothing Worse Than Bad Word of Mouth”
* and New Orleans’ attorney “Ernie the Attorney” blogging about politics in the Big Easy.

You can access the links to the articles above and several others at Blawg Review #49. Good job, Jim.

OKLAHOMA LAW BLOGS

Jim Calloway, King of the Hill

If the word purist has any meaning, then the Oklahoma law blog of choice is that of Jim Calloway, more formally known as Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips. While not exclusively addressing Oklahoma legal issues, or even legal issues, per se, Calloway’s blog is a helpful buffet of technical and procedural law practice guidelines. Non-lawyers, too, can benefit from Calloway’s constant work in progress: application of technology to practical business problems. Indeed, his blog site is like an FAQ for the web, as well as the practice of law and the web, and maybe business and the web.

Calloway knows his stuff. He is director of the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Management Assistance Program, and manages several OBA projects, including the OBA-NET, the bar’s official online community, and the OBA Solo and Small Firm Conference.

Calloway’s recent article, titled in part “Web 2.0″ was not only published in hard copy but was posted on the Oklahoma Bar Association website. Jim suggested it might actually be more valuable on the website than in hard copy, because of the imbedded links, and I agree. Jim’s blogsite also is a sort of aggregator in which Calloway identifies web sources and sites that are of value to lawyers, as well as computer problem solvers.

Jim also serves to a great extent as the eyes and ears of Oklahoma lawyers regarding Internet advances in technology, customs and procedures. While Oklahoma lawyers, and this is not state specific, tend to rely on various types of vendors, as a group we would do better to compare what we are told to Jim’s reviews before we commit.

As a result, Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips blog is the best model I have seen of the value and implementation of micropublishing niche technology and professional practice subject matter. That’s why it is the first blog I’m adding to Terra Extraneus’ Law Blogs blogroll.

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This is one in a series of posts by Rod Heggy, as he surveys Oklahoma-related law blogs. See this other post in the series: “A Blog To Disagree With.”

OKLAHOMA LAW BLOGS

A Blog to Disagree With

Terry Hull has commenced a project to review the 300+ blogs listed on the Blog Oklahoma directory. I have decided to do the same regarding Oklahoma-related law blogs. The first such blog to catch my eye may have to be in the “ones I like to disagree with” category.

Though he graduated from Oklahoma City University Law School in December 2005, and now faces one or more bar examinations, blog author J. M. Branum, Esq., is a senior member of the Oklahoma blogging community, with an archive going back to 2001.

Many Oklahomans would find some of his political views extreme or even offensive. But his taste for Oklahoma writers and other things makes his site worth browsing, and much of that material would not be objectionable to anyone. Also, we would imagine from the quality of his site and the range of subjects he entertains that he would be capable of healthy debate. If that impression is false, a bar examination and a year or so in law practice would instill in him the necessary humility. Too, it will be interesting to see if he can maintain his interest in his micropublishing enterprise through the coming testing and post-law school employment.

Mr. Branum’s views on military service seem extreme. His home page offers links for deserters and those who wish to interrupt by termination their military service. While many people found such positions less extreme in the 1960s and 1970s, when military ranks were filled by the involuntary draft, the Selective Service Act expired in 1973 and has not been resurrected as an involuntary draft. Thus, the people today wishing to vacate their contract to serve in the armed forces are not in the armed services by accident or by coercion, but sought and accepted the duty. They gave their word. Here in Oklahoma, that still means something.

The fact that a soldier might find military service objectionable because of personal political views is laughable. No one would be so lacking in intelligence to not know, prior to volunteering for service, that soldiers are sent and given orders to go, often to fulfill foreign policy obligations of the nation. The opinions of soldiers about the nation’s foreign policy are not relevant to their oaths of service and are not necessary to fulfill their voluntarily assumed duties. Theirs is to obey all but unlawful orders.

Mr. Branum will have to give his word upon successful completion of the bar examination. No one will let him out of that oath. He can resign from it. But, as long as he carries a valid bar card, that oath follows him and everything he will do or say. I wish him much success, but I would caution him never to underestimate the gravity of that oath. Our society cannot continue as a free democracy without people like Mr. Branum, who are willing, once qualified, to take the oath of attorney and keep their word.

Likewise, today, our military operates the same way.

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This is one in a series of posts by Rod Heggy, as he surveys Oklahoma-related law blogs. See this other post in the series: “Jim Calloway: King of the Hill.”