We started this blog with the Oakland Press in March 2009.  Five years and 400 posts later, we realize how lucky we are to have support from our host, the Oakland Press, demonstrating that the First Amendment is alive and well.

Some of the topics we've been luck to follow over the past half-decade has been the rapid progression of the same-sex marriage civil rights litigation.  Another hot topic has been the gradual decriminalization, and even legalization, of marijuana; in some states and for some purposes.

Judges and attorneys are always fair game, as are our legislators and law enforcement.  These groups of professionals intersect at our legal system.

The goal of this blog is to shed some light, however small, on a portion of what goes on in this system.   We shift through local, county, state and national legal news feeds for the material we hope you find relevant, informative; occasionally even entertaining.

This blog is approaching 300k page views.  In our digital era, we get between 15 seconds to one minute of your time; we want to make it count.

Let us know how we're doing; leave a comment.

www.clarkstonlegal.com
info@clarkstonlegal.com

By Timothy P. Flynn

Since March 2009, our law firm has been steadily contributing content to this blog.  Here we are, coming-up on our 5-year anniversary, and we would like to take a moment to thank the Oakland Press, our loyal followers, and readers that have taken a moment to scan a post or to post a comment to this blog.

Our 350 posts have garnered nearly a quarter million page views and thousands of comments.  We are looking forward to the next 5-years. What will blogs look like in 2018?

We here at the Law Blogger have imparted law-related content that we hope our target audience has found informative and interesting.  Keeping up with the law is what we do.

Every so often, one of our attorneys is asked, "how do you know what to post?"  Invariably, we respond that, in the continuous perusal of our legal news feeds, we "know-it-when-we-see-it".

Here is a sample of what we've served-up on tap over the past half-decade:

• Our first blog post in March 2009; 

• First post on California's same-sex marriage case that went all the way to SCOTUS, decided last June.  We saw this issue early on and have been tracking the collection of cases ever since; 

• Michigan's passage of the so-called "Super Drunk" law; 

• Medical Marijuana; since September of 2009, we've been tracking this interesting law here in Michigan and across the country [note: we utilized the funky spelling adopted in the MMA -marihuana- but have since dropped that convention for obvious serarch-related reasons];

• More recently, we picked-up the trail on the NSA's invasion of privacy and the secret federal surveillance courts; and 

• The occasional tip or topic related to divorces and family law; we've even tried to make probate law worth the read.

We sincerely hope that you enjoy this blog and get some useful information from our posts from time to time.  Thanks again for taking a moment to peruse our content.  We would love to hear from you about what you find most interesting.

www.clarkstonlegal.com

info@clarkstonlegal.com

We here at the Law Blogger [the attorneys of Clarkston Legal, also known as Karlstrom Cooney] would like to thank our loyal readers and those that follow this blog.

This is our 300th post.  Three hundred: a perfect game in bowling; an excellent batting average in the bigs; the length of Noah's Arc, in cubits, and one of this blogger's favorite movies.

We started this blog with our first post back on March 30, 2009, on the topic of a lesbian couple litigating their right to adopt a child here in Michigan.

In the four years that we've been up and running with the Oakland Press, there have been almost 160,000 page views and we've received 438 published comments.  Minor league stats in the overall blogosphere, but hopefully relevant to our local readers.

In these years we have attempted to post interesting law-related information that our readers find useful and informative.  Some of the more important topics we've covered in our posts include:

• cell phone use and texting while driving, especially where teenagers are concerned;
• the "Superdrunk" driving law;
• same-sex marriage cases from their initial filings through the recent oral arguments at SCOTUS;
• privacy laws in the Big Data era;
• Second Amendment cases at SCOTUS;
• Obamacare at SCOTUS and now that the new laws are scheduled to take effect in the workplace;
• divorce and family law developments, especially child custody matters;
• the juvenile lifer laws recently decided by SCOTUS;
• significant developments in the criminal law; and
• occasionally, high-profile cases and local personalities that have intersected with the legal system or criminal justice system.

Before we begin work on our next 300 posts, we would like to also thank the Oakland Press and its editorial staff for their support and encouragement over the years.

www.clarkstonlegal.com
info@clarkstonlegal.com

Thanks to our readers, this blog has over 62,000 page views in the nearly two years of its existence.  Since March 2, 2010, we have posted 200 times on legal topics of interest to readers of the Oakland Press' e-paper.

There are literally millions of blogs now on the Internet.  Of these, hundreds of thousands are devoted to legal topics.  The competition for 15-seconds of a reader's attention is keen these days.

We will continue to scour the web, fine-tuning our news feeds for interesting and useful legal information for your regular consumption.

When walking the halls of the various courts in Southeast Michigan, colleagues and judges occasionally mention one of our posts.  Grateful to claim a professional readership component among our followers, we will do our best to post relevant legal content on an ever more consistent basis.

Our view is that as the 21st Century begins to take full root, information, especially legal information, will flow at an ever faster pace.  Legal information is available to the people; it is how that information is managed that counts.

Thank you readers; check back soon.

www.clarkstonlegal.com

info@clarkstonlegal.com

Since March 2009, we here at the LawBlogger have had the distinct privilege of posting law-related content via the Oakland Press in Pontiac, MI.  It has been a great relationship.

Over the past two and a half years, we have posted 150 times to this blog, attracting over 40,000 page views.  Very small by national standards, but we're proud of our readership.

On a daily basis, we know that many of our readers scan and absorb fresh content by:

• checking their email(s);
• perusing their news feeds;
• browsing several on-line newspapers and trade publications;
• surfing their social media feeds; 
• actually reading a home-delivered newspaper (old school); and
• occasionally watching news on television or the Internet.

We also know that our readers only have a brief moment to read our posts, so we try to make that moment count.

Going over some of our first posts was painful; the posts were soooo long, laden with detailed links.  When we first started blogging, I think we tried to publish a law review article in each post.

As a result, no one read past the first 3 paragraphs and we were only able to produce one or two posts a month.  That is no way to develop a readership.

When blogging, less is more.  Get to the point; stick to the point.

Thanks to our readers that have hung in there over the years.  We appreciate your feedback and comments.  Please keep them coming.  For our part, we will continue to deliver frequent relevant law-related content for your perusal.

info@clarkstonlegal.com
www.clarkstonlegal.com

We here at the Law Blogger would like to thank the Oakland Press, and our readers for the opportunity to disseminate our posts on the developing legal issues of our day, as they occur.

On average, this blogs receives 75 daily page views.  Sometimes, readers are motivated to comment.  The comments tendered often provide a fresh look at the subject from a completely different point of view.  They also provide insight into how we've treated a subject.

We value your comments.  Please keep them coming.

Interestingly, in our two-year history of 100-posts, the one about Cooley Law School's sponsorship of the former Oldsmobile Stadium received the most comment from readers.  Although posted back in February, we still receive the occasional comment on that post.

This blog first posted on March 30, 2009.  The topic was a Michigan Court of Appeals decision to address a parenting dispute between a lesbian couple.  Since then, the blog has featured many posts on the same-sex marriage issue.  Other recurring themes have included the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, decisions of import (in our opinion) from the Michigan Supreme Court and SCOTUS, the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment's search and seizure case law over the past two years, family law issues, and many other topics we hope that you find useful, or at least interesting.

In the posts, which we try to keep relatively brief but of a varying length, we link to original documentation whenever possible.  Also, we make every effort to get out at least two posts each week; three posts if possible.  Some of your comments have expressed approval of this model.

There are a sea of blogs out there on every topic imaginable; particularly legal topics.  We hope that the fleeting time you have to spend checking your various news feeds throughout the day is worthwhile when you alight upon our blog.

With the lighting-fast pace of developments on the Internet, -newsfeeds, social media, aggregated search tools, mirco-blogs- some of the pundits now wonder if blogs have been relegated to the "old school".  Not so, says one of the premire law bloggers, Kevin O'Keefe.  His recent post emphasizes the importance and value of a good law blog.

Most law students and legal professionals now keep current with developments via subscriptions to various law blogs.

As always, if you have any suggestions or comments, we welcome you to post your ideas to this blog, or by contacting us electronically.

Above all, thanks again for taking a moment to read our posts.  Without you, the reader, this blog is nothing.

For our part, we aim to keep the fresh, relevant legal content posted to this blog.

info@clarkstonlegal.com

www.clarkstonlegal.com