I’m always quick to encourage blogging to those lawyers who love to write; I strongly believe it makes you a better lawyer – and one who is more professionally fulfilled to boot. It may even help generate business, but that is a long game.
But it’s not without risk to the unwary. Your blog may be overly promotional. It may reveal client confidences – even if you try to conceal them.
Or you may, as Illinois attorney Joanne Denison did, go on a rip against the local judiciary, and have sanctions recommended for abusing the judges a bit too harshly.
It’s true that attorneys have fairly wide latitude under the First Amendment to criticize judges (see my “Criticism of Judges” page for more details). But when that criticism totters over the line into defamation, the attorney making the criticism is fair game for bar action.
The facts in the Denison case are complicated, and it’s difficult to tell whether the attorney’s complaints about judicial corruption really meet the test for “public figure” defamation (meaning they must be made maliciously or with reckless disregard for the truth). But the takeaway here, as with most cases of judicial criticism, is that care and diligence are in order when taking judges to task.
Also, because I am regularly railing on attorney regulators for disregarding the free speech rights of attorneys, I must note this: the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission did an exemplary job of parsing the First Amendment issues in rendering their decision. I can’t say for sure that the facts support their conclusion, but at least the IARDC fully considered the constitutional dimensions.
h/t Kevin O’Keefe