Not that I’m out to get Kevin O’Keefe, but I decided to follow up on my post of last Sunday on the improvements to LexMonitor. Having slammed it pretty hard, and Kevin, being gracious as always, responding that he appreciated the comments and sought to improve his product, it seemed only right to check back and note its progress.  Just so it’s clear, I want to see LexMonitor succeed.

It pains me to say this, but there is no progress in sight. Perhaps I’m missing the point of LexMonitor, which I understood to be a place where the day’s best posts from around the blawgosphere could be found, as selected by “editor” Rob La Gatta, as well as posts in specific content areas (such as criminal law) and tagged posts, such as New York.

It’s old. The posts are old. The news is old. There’s nothing new there. Nothing. Of the four “editor’s choice” posts across the top, they are all from last Friday, and frankly they weren’t cutting edge posts then. Particularly disappointing is that most of the posts come from the obvious characters, like the WSJ Law Blog, or one of the other “usual suspects.”

The title states that this is supposed to be a daily review of the best the blawgosphere has to offer. The concept is bold. I think we would all love to see LexMonitor fulfill its goal. But I’m left with the feeling that, as of now, it’s hype without substance.

I do not believe that anybody is parsing the blawgosphere for great posts. I suspect the posts are arbitrarily picked and then left there until somebody gets around to changing them. The subject areas and tagged posts are utterly worthless; Indeed, the same New York post from last week is still there. Are you telling me that there have been no posts in a week that would be tagged for New York?

The bottom line is that no one needs a stagnant aggregator of old posts. Perhaps Kevin and Rob are busy working in the background trying to get their program tuned up (particularly since it crashed my browser during my visit today), which would be fine if you put up an “under construction” page, but if you’re trying to tell me that LexMonitor is alive and active, then it’s a case of another great idea that failed in its execution.

I don’t plan on returning to check out LexMonitor again until Kevin tells me it’s ready for prime time. And should I get that message from Kevin, I hope he’s got this worked out sufficiently that it not only functions properly, but offers something of real use. It would be great to have LexMonitor fulfill its purpose. As of today, it’s just another great idea in need of execution.