Congratulations to Walter Olson, whose popular blog on reforming the American civil justice system, Overlawyered, turns 20 today.
The blog, which Olson notes is “often named the oldest law blog,” published its first post on July 1, 1999. I’m not sure about the “often named” part of his comment, but I do know that I once named Olson first in a post back in 2007, Who Was the First Legal Blogger?
The spur for my 2007 post was a Wall Street Journal article noting the 10th anniversary of the birth of blogging. While conceding that dating the first blog and first blogger are “imperfect exercises,” WSJ writer Tunku Varadarajan credited Jorn Barger, who started the site Robot Wisdom in July 1997 “to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf.” The Oxford English Dictionary identified this as the root of the word “weblog,” which usage later shortened to “blog.”
If Wisdom was the first blogger, I wondered, who was the first legal blogger? I started this blog in November 2002, and I knew there were already a number of legal blogs ahead of me. In fact, I wrote a two-part column in December 2002 and January 2003 rounding up 62 of the “blawgs” then being written.
So I rummaged through the archives of the longest-running blogs that I knew of. Here were the birthdates I found, from youngest to oldest:
SCOTUSblog, Oct. 1, 2002. Inter Alia started on Aug. 18, 2002. Jottings by an Employer’s Lawyer, July 17, 2002. TalkLeft, June 2002. The Trademark Blog, May 18, 2002. The Volokh Conspiracy appears to start on April 10, 2002. The Shout, March 10, 2002. Ernie the Attorney’s first post was March 2, 2002. Bag and Baggage launched on Nov. 28, 2001. Tins by Rick Klau launched on Sept. 11, 2001. Instapundit’s archives start on Aug. 8, 2001. Overlawyered launched on July 1, 1999.
Based
