Listserves, revisited

Brooks Schuelke

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Earlier, there was an exchange among blogs, including Des Moines Injuryboard member Steve Lombardi, about the value of listserves for attorneys. Instead of rehashing each sides' views, I refer you to my earlier post about our trial lawyer listserves.

Steve had another post on the subject recently. And after reading it, I can't say that I disagree with anything he had to say. If I understand him correctly, one of his concerns is that his list serve is shared by defense attorneys. He is certainly justified about being concerned in that situation. In my case, each listserve I am involved with closely monitors its members to make sure that they are plaintiffs' lawyers and that they abide by the rules not to share listserve posts with non-members of the listserve. But even then, I am mindful that any specific facts about cases or judges might get leaked.

But even given that caveat, the listserve is a valuable resource. Most of my reasons are in my prior post, but in my opinion, the two biggest advantages of the listserve are: (1) it lets the best minds in the state cooperate to come up with the best strategies on issues important to plaintiffs' lawyers, and then to disseminate those strategies out to lawyers so that we can avoid bad precedent; and (2) it provides a great starting point for numerous legal research and drafting assignments.

After re-reading Steve's prior posts and my posts, although we have different points of view, I think we probably agree on this more than we disagree.