5 Things About Our Blog

We rolled out the welcome mat for this blog one year ago today (I thought about calling it blawg, but didn’t want to be punny). 41 posts later, I thought it would be a good idea to let you know some things about it. So here goes:

1. Yes, it’s me. Occasionally I check out other attorneys’ blogs from around the country to see what other professionals are discussing. Some are really good. Some are not so good. And others remind me of the Pink Floyd classic “Is There Anybody Out There?” That is to say, they are not written by anyone associated with the firm, but instead are ghostwritten content generated by…who knows. The true author is not indicated, but it might say something like “Posted On Behalf Of Such and Such Law Firm.” Also, the content is often not state-specific and excessively dry and formal. Ghostwritten blogs have generated considerable discussion (see here and here and also here). I don’t really see a huge problem with it, though I tend to agree with the linked commentary questioning the purpose of this content. Unless otherwise quoted, everything on this blog was formulated, written and edited by me (so if you don’t like it, yes, you can blame me).

2. You can subscribe. And it’s really easy! Look to the upper right hand side of your monitor/tablet/mobile screen. Yes, right now. There’s a blue square that says ‘Subscribe.’  Enter your e-mail address in that white rectangular field and click on ‘Submit Your Request.’ You should then immediately receive an auto-generated e-mail. Open that up. Within that e-mail, there should be a blue button that says ‘Confirm Follow.’ Click on that — and you’re done! You’ll now receive an e-mail each time a new entry is posted (roughly once a week — hey, I wouldn’t want to receive daily e-mails from my estate planning attorney either). Rest assured we keep your e-mail address private and do not use that for any other purposes. You can easily unsubscribe later at any time if you want (but let’s be honest, you won’t 🙂 ). Feel free to invite others to subscribe by going on our blog and following those same steps. Of course it’s completely free and is for both clients and non-clients alike.

3. Guest bloggers wanted. I have some guest blog posts planned from others who want to write a piece for our audience on this blog. It’s always good to get a fresh perspective occasionally from others with different and special expertise. Ideally, it would be a topic at least tangentially related to some aspect of estate planning or estate administration.  It could come from the world of finance, health, insurance, taxes, valuation, genealogy, real estate, etc. If you might be interested, shoot me an e-mail.

4. Comments and topic suggestions. You can leave a comment at the end of any post.  In fact, I encourage it. I discontinued the commenting function for a period of time because the robo-spammers started to overwhelm my inbox. Fortunately, NextClient’s WordPress upgrade now allows me to automatically filter out specific words and IP addresses, which blocks 99% of the riffraff. Of course, that means if a human actually does want to leave a comment that mentions Louis Vuitton handbags or Cheap NFL Jerseys, I will probably never see it. Feel free to also suggest a topic for me to write on or share interesting topical news stories. If you want to send me an e-mail, my e-mail address is jeff at our domain name.

5. Share and share alike. You can easily share any post with your social network (or at least by Facebook, Twitter and e-mail) using one of the buttons at the end of each post. Please feel free to do so. We also have a Facebook page, although it’s nothing more than another way to click on the blog posts. I’ve never really quite gotten the Twitter thing, so we don’t have a presence there, though we’ve had at least 9 different posts tweeted out (thank you to those people, none of whom I personally know). I saw at least one post was pinned on Pinterest (which I found mildly pinteresting when I clicked through to Pinterest for the first time ever).

We wish everyone a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend!