Terra Extraneus

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three

Terra Extraneus happily adds seven more entries to our list of Oklahoma Law Blogs. Six are based in Tulsa, which had been poorly represented on our Oklahoma Law Blogs directory. We now list 19 blogs: 9 in OKC, 8 in Tulsa, and 1 each in Paul’s Valley and Pine Ridge.

The newest additions come thanks to some help from a few friends. Michael Bates at the popular BatesLine blog was the first to join us in sounding the call for Sooner State blawgs. J.M. Branum of JMBzine.com also mentioned our quest. Bates and Branum were also kind enough to point us in the direction of law blogs they knew about. Thanks also to Jim Calloway at the OBA, who mentioned our directory on the OBA.net forum, which brought us a few more responses.

Here are the seven Oklahoma law blogs newly added to our list:

• Reinsurance Law Blog: Jody R. Nathan is a Tulsa attorney at Stauffer, Graves & Nathan. The firm works in insurance-related cases. Nathan has been writing the blog since Feb. 2006.

• Oklahoma Criminal Defense: Tulsa defense attorney Glen R. Graham has also been writing his blog since 2006. Graham is a frequent blogger on a variety of legal topics.

• Tulsa attorney Dan Nunley reports that he is now writing four law blogs. I mentioned Nunley’s Oklahoma Family Law blog in Part Two of this series. Nunley followed up in an email to tell us that he recently started three more blogs to promote his other practice areas: Personal Injury Lawyer Blog, Social Security Disability Blog and Workers’ Compensation Blog.

It will be interesting to see if Nunley can write quality posts for four blogs and keep them all up-to-date. He has been posting once or twice a month with consistency for almost two years. If he follows that pace on all four blogs, he will still be writing less than 10 posts a month, which is certainly doable.

• Jeffrey Taylor is an Oklahoma City University Law School grad who just took his bar exam last week. Taylor plans to enter private practice, and he has gotten a jump on his law marketing by beginning a blog, Legally Easy, at the beginning of this year. Taylor plans to practice in personal injury, business development and protection, and family law.

• Last by hardly least in today’s batch of law blogs is the Bill Kumpe Blog. Bill Kumpe is a Tulsa attorney who has been blogging since July 2006. Kumpe’s blog is by far the most interesting of the bunch. Kumpe passes along his strong opinions about the law, politics and the Christian faith. He brags, “My redneck Okie credentials are impeccable.” I’m not sure, but I think the very use of a four-syllable word like “impeccable” may disqualify you as a redneck, Bill. Kumpe and his blog are interesting enough that I believe I will review it further in a separate post.

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If you know of any Oklahoma law blogs, please tell us about them in the comments section. Our goal is to assemble the most complete list possible of active Okie law blogs.

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Part One
Part Two

Here at Terra Extraneus we are assembling what we hope will become an authoritative listing of Oklahoma law blogs. In two previous posts, we searched the 526 blogs listed on the Blog Oklahoma directory and found 7 blogs which meet the criteria (a table of those blogs is on our Okla Law Blogs page).

Now we expand our search, turning to the website of the Oklahoma Bar Association. Sadly, unlike the American Bar Association, the OBA does not maintain an online directory of Sooner law blogs. However, the OBA does have a blog of its own. Jim Calloway directs the OBA’s Management Assistance Program and writes the Law Practice Tips blog. Calloway lists a half-dozen “Oklahoma Blawggers” on his site, so I checked them out.

First, of course, there is Calloway’s own blog, Law Practice Tips. Calloway’s favorite area is technology, from software to online resources to the latest gadgets. He also occasionally writes reviews of other law blogs. I enjoy Calloway’s blog; it is an interesting blog and worth reading.

Calloway is a big proponent of law blogging. He wrote “Blawg: Marketing Your Practice with a Weblog” in the Aug. 2006 issue of the ABA’s Law Practice Today. He also writes occasional articles on law blogging for the OBA website. Since Calloway is an enthusiastic advocate of law blogging, I am surprised that he only lists six Oklahoma blawgs on his Law Practice Tips blogroll. He lists only one of the seven blogs we have on our list, the excellent Phosita, which I mentioned in Part Two of this series.

Of the remaining five on Calloway’s list, one is actually a Pennsylvania blog: Benefits Blog, written by attorney B. Janell Grenier. Grenier is from Oklahoma, but left our Sooner State for Pennsylvania pastures several years ago.

Another blog on Calloway’s list is Res Ipsa Loquitur (a legal term which means, “the thing speaks for itself”). RIL is written by “Rita.” Rita describes herself as:

A middle-aged slightly right-wing conservative living in the People’s Republic of Fayetteville, Arkansas, with my husband, two dogs, and a cat. I work as a court-appointed children’s attorney for abused/neglected kids over in beautiful downtown Jay, Oklahoma.

Sounds like Rita is using the law to help others, which is a great thing. Unfortunately, Rita does not choose to blog about her practice or about any legal issues. I scanned through the 27 posts she has written in 2008 and not a one is law-related. I’m going to have to turn to our panel of judges for a ruling. No, sorry, a Fayetteville woman writing a blog about her personal and family life does not qualify as an Oklahoma law blog.

Happily, we do pick up three more bonifide Okie blawgs from Calloway’s blogroll to add to our list. Here they are:

• Consumer Law Updates: Written by Elaine Dowling, an OKC attorney. Dowling blogs once a month like clockwork about bankruptcy, debt relief and other consumer law issues.

• OK Blawg: the Oklahoma Law Blog: Apparently named by the department of redundancy department, OK Blawg: the Oklahoma Law Blog is written by James Dee Graves. Graves is or was an assistant district attorney in Garvin County and is also a law professor. Graves hasn’t posted since Nov. 2007, so we’ll see if he keeps OB:OLB active, but we’ll add him to the list for now.

• Direct Appeal: By OKC attorney Russ Wheeler. Wheeler posts 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decisions in criminal cases. No commentary added, just the decisions. Wheeler’s blog is no doubt a valuable asset to attorneys and those who want to stay ahead of the news. Wheeler has been blogging since December 2004, making his blog the oldest one on our list.

A similar blog is Opinions From Oklahoma and the Northern District. OOND is not on Calloway’s blogroll, but was referred to us by Michael Bates of Bateline in his response to this series (thanks again, Michael). The blog is written by Tulsa attorney Spencer Bryan. Bryan posted from June to December 2007, but hasn’t posted since, so his blog is teetering toward inactivity, but we will add him to the list.

So, we have doubled our list of Oklahoma law blogs to 12. Nine of the bloggers are in OKC, 2 in Tulsa and 1in Paul’s Valley. In the next part of this series we will search the American Bar Association directory for more blogs to add to the list. If you know of any Okie law blogs, please tell us about them in the comments section.

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• Part One
• Part Three

It appears that nobody is doing the very important work of maintaining a directory of Oklahoma law blogs. Ever eager to serve the community by meeting a need that no one else even knew existed, we at Terra Extraneus are stepping forward to host and maintain such a list. We have begun that directory on this page: Oklahoma Law Blogs.

What constitutes an Oklahoma law blog? No need to define it too narrowly, but surely at least these three criteria are appropriate:

• The blog addresses issues related to the law and practice of law in a significant portion of its content.

• The blogger is based in Oklahoma or has some obvious connection to our state.

• The blog is active. If it has not been updated in six months, we may arch an eyebrow. If a year has gone by, we may employ the strikethrough tool (or worse).

I have gone out in search of blogs that meet the above description. I am startled at how few active Oklahoma law blogs there are. I detailed my search methodology in Part One of this series. In this post I will list and comment on the six active law blogs I found on the Blog Oklahoma directory.

(1) Phosita: Phosita is the blog of the intellectual property firm of Dunlap Codding & Rogers, OKC. Phosita is the most impressive Oklahoma law blog I’ve come across so far. Phosita is written mostly by Douglas Sorocco, a distinguished lawyer and blogger and a recipient of the Journal Record’s 2008 Leadership in Law award. Phosita is a well-designed and well-written blog that has been around for a while. By the way, PHOSITA stands for “person having ordinary skill in the art.” It’s a patent law thing.

(2) Oklahoma Family Law: Tulsa attorney Dan Nunley writes the OK Family Law blog. Nunley practices in and blogs about divorce and other family legal issues. Nunley is a pretty faithful blogger, posting at least once or twice a month since December 2006.

(3) JMBzine.com: James Matthew Branum (“JMB”) is a 30-something solo practitioner. Branum’s blog is “dedicated to non-violent revolutionary change for peace and justice in Oklahoma and the world.” Peace AND justice — quite a tall order. Branum is a Mennonite and therefore a pacifist. Branum is pretty intense, but he also has a sense of humor. His blog header proclaims: “When Jesus said love your enemies, he probably meant, ‘Don’t kill them.’”

Branum is a prolific blogger. He has blogged about every other day since September 2003! I think it is fair to say that JMBzine is only peripherally a law blog; most of Branum’s posts are about politics and religion.

Rod Heggy reviewed Branum’s blog in 2006. Rod didn’t agree with much, and titled his review: “A Blog to Disagree With.” I also disagree with the doctrine of Branum and his church that Jesus’s teachings preclude the military and military action. However, I have a lot of admiration for Branum, from what I can discern by reading his blog. I admire Branum for deriving his political views from his faith rather than from self-interest, and for trying to be a person who makes a difference, rather than just another person taking up space. And, of course, despite disagreements on secondary doctrines, we are brothers in Christ, and that counts for a lot to me, as I know it does to Mr. Heggy. I’m guessing Branum is a fascinating person to know, and I look forward to meeting him one of these days.

(4) Attorney at Blawg: We can’t forget our old friend Dave Walker, who segued a couple of years ago from teaching in a public school classroom to lawyering in an OKC law office. I reviewed and recommended Dave’s personal blog, DaveTown, in 2006. Dave still writes DaveTown and occasionally posts to Attorney at Blawg, too. Dave practices at Beets McNaughton & Walker.

(5) Satellite Sky: Satellite Sky is written by Fred Roper of OKC, a former bankruptcy attorney who is now in-house. He is also a chess champion. Roper has been blogging since 2006. His blog is a lot less active this year (14 posts during the first seven months of 2008), but he’s still active.

(6) Terra Extraneus: Last, hopefully not least, there is our own little blog, Terra Extraneus, written by OKC attorney Rod Heggy and myself.

Interesting to note that of the six active law blogs found on the Blog Oklahoma directory, five are based in OKC and one in Tulsa. Is there not a single law blogger in Lawton, Stillwater, Enid, Bartlesville or Muskogee? Is there only one in Tulsa? Only five in Oklahoma City? I continue to be amazed.

I will expand my search for Oklahoma law blogs in Part Three of this series.

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Thanks to Michael Bates of BatesLine for linking to this post, and plugging our search for OK law blogs. Michael is one of Oklahoma’s premier bloggers, drawing more than 800 readers a day. I reviewed Michael’s excellent blog a couple of years ago here. His post should be a big help in tracking down more OK law bloggers.

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• Part Two
• Part Three

I decided to survey what’s happening among fellow Oklahoma law bloggers. Back in 2006, when Terra Extraneus was young, Rod Heggy and I surveyed several Oklahoma blogs, including some law blogs. I wanted to see if any new blog stars have emerged in the Sooner State legal community.

In my attempt to identify any Okie law blogs lurking out there, I employed the following strategy:

(1) I began with the Blog Oklahoma directory. Blog Oklahoma lists 526 member blogs. Only 7 of them are tagged “law.” To make sure I didn’t miss any, I also searched on the word “law,” and found a few more that way.

(2) I then checked the Oklahoma Bar Association website. Sadly, the OBA does not maintain a directory of blogs. However, the OBA does have a blog of its own. Jim Calloway directs the OBA’s Management Assistance Program, and writes the Law Practice Tips blog. Calloway lists some “Okahoma Blawggers” on his site, so I checked them out.

(3) I then moved on to the American Bar Association, which does maintain an extensive blog directory (and we are glad for it, because we get occasional visitors to our blog through our ABA listing). I surveyed the blogs ABA has listed under the Oklahoma heading.

(4) Then, I circled back to the law blogs I identified, to see if they linked to other Oklahoma law blogs on their blogrolls. I also did a Google search to see if I could shake any more grains out of the sack.

So I think the resulting list of Oklahoma law blogs is fairly comprehensive. I am surprised at what a short list it is, and that the list sure hasn’t grown much in the last two years. Here they are, presented in a series of posts. Let’s begin with law blogs found at Blog Oklahoma. I found about a dozen self-described law blogs on the Blog Oklahoma list. However, only half of them meet these simple criteria: active, Oklahoma-based, and writing on legal issues.

DEAD LINK
• One of them, Credit Wrench, is a dead link. I Googled Credit Wrench to see if the site had moved to a new URL. It hasn’t, but I learned that Credit Wrench was once written by Bill Bauer, who is apparently some kind of credit repair guru. Bauer got into a full-blown fuss with one debt collector, leading to a federal lawsuit or at least the threat of one. Maybe his website was collateral damage.

UPDATE 07/28/08: Credit Wrench lives! See Bill Bauer’s response in the comment field. Bauer is quick to say he is NOT a credit repair guru. Also, Credit Wrench is alive and well and online. The site is now located here: Credit Wrench. I see that Bauer’s blog goes back to Nov. 2005. Bill, we will be adding you to our Oklahoma Law Blogs roll.

INACTIVE
• New York State of Mind hasn’t posted since Sep 2007. Besides, what kind of name is that for an Oklahoma blog? The blog’s author, a self-described “female attorney,” is:

a Manhattan girl currently trapped in Oklahoma. It is T minus about two years before my reprieve. In the meantime I must vent my frustrations at the lack of Sephora, Tiffany, Brownstones, the subway system, and virtually everything else NYC.

Apparently NYSofM finally managed to escape our dreaded Sooner State. She can probably be found today, riding on a subway, humming a Billy Joel tune.

• Also inactive is Oklahoma Solo. OK Solo was written by Luke Anthony, a 30-something Stillwater attorney. Anthony blogged for 15 months in 2006 and 2007 about “the opening of an Oklahoma solo law firm.” Sure enough, Luke’s last post, on June 3, 2007, is titled: “Off and Running.”

Whew, Just wanted to let everyone know that just over a month ago I launched Anthony Law Firm, PLLC. My first month was fantastic. Dozens of new clients and just as many new legal issues. The small firm life suits me well. I get to meet with my clients and really get to know them. Just last week one of them actually gave me a hug.

Luke accomplished his goal, has left his blog online as a testament and tutorial, and apparently has otherwise abandoned the blogosphere.

ACTIVE
• Another blog, Sidebar: Law and Order, Okie Style, is written by non-lawyer Brian Bates. Bates’ blog is teetering toward inactivity, with no posts since January. Bates is rather famously known as the Video Vigilante, for capturing men on camera in the act of hiring prostitutes. That’s gotta keep a guy busy, which must explain why Brian hasn’t done any blogging lately.

• Still active, and far less flamboyant, is the OCU Law School blog. I scrolled through the blog’s recent posts, and all of them are announcements of law school activities. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s not really a law blog. The posts are unsigned, and I imagine they are written by the school’s PR department.

ANY LEGITIMATE OKLAHOMA BLAWGERS?
So are there any active law bloggers in Oklahoma? There aren’t many, but there are a few. I found six legitimate Oklahoma law blogs on the Blog Oklahoma directory. I will list and describe them in the next post of this series.

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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