Sunday, December 30, 2007

Late Night Thoughts on How to Use this Blog

My readership - what there is - appears to be solely lay people. I try to write as much for the general public as I can. However, that does not mean I throw away all my training as a lawyer. How you phrase things in your Google searches may not be how they are written here. So here is a grab bag of observations and tips on using this blog:

  1. I do not have specific answers to your questions. I see these very specific Google queries and I wonder if you find anything. I see some missing information because they do not want to look in depth.
  2. Google is not a natural language search engine. Learn the proper way to put in search terms. Sorry, but research is part of my professional life. I cringe when I see it done so badly and when doing it correctly is so easy.
  3. Use the topical/subject archive. It is just down the right hand of your screen. There are also links below every post next to the word "Labels". If for nothing else because I went to a lot of work to do this for you. Less selfishly, I see plenty of you missing articles that would probably have answered your question - if you had looked just a bit more.
  4. From what I see of the searches bringing people to this blog, most people are not looking for information as much as the answer to their specific question. If that is still your attitude after reading 1 - 3, then get yourself to a lawyer. Odds are you will be needing one.
  5. If you want to keep with this blog, then use the e-mail subscription service or the RSS feed service.
  6. Why would you want to keep up with this blog? Because it changes at most daily and at least every other day. You can keep up with the legal information you need.
  7. Use the online search feature - upper left hand corner - just to make sure that you are not missing something.