Shortly after the ABA Journal went online, it became one of the primary repositories of blawgs, currently showing 251 in the “criminal justice” category alone.  One of its features that I’ve found particularly interesting is “The Weeks’s Featured Blawg,” selecting a blawg to highlight at the top of its blawg directory page. 

In the past, the ABA has featured some of the well-known blawgs, like Volokh Conspiracy, as well as some of the smaller but most informative around, such as Deliberations and the Legal Satyricon . (I’m informed by the ABA Journal that they have yet to stoop that low) New York Personal Injury Blawg (which they told me has been featured, though it was too ugly to make it into the ABA Blawg 100).   It’s never been clear to me why certain blawgs are featured, but it provides a chance to take a look at some blawgs that have never made it onto the radar.

This week, however, the ABA’s choice for featured blawg has me stymied, though it has certainly shown me a website that I would likely have never seen otherwise.  The featured “blawg” is now a blawg at all.  It’s not even a website provided by or for lawyers.  This week, the featured blawg is FBI: Gotcha!

FBI: Gotcha! is a product of our friendly government law enforcers, touting their successes.  It comes direct from the FBI press room, and consists of a series of archived audio files about specific cases.  As the home page explains:

Gotcha Archive

The Gotcha series highlights a closed case in which the FBI, often working with local and state police and possibly other federal agencies, solves a crime and makes arrests.

I’ve listened to a couple of the audio files, They don’t say much, and inform even less.  While it’s purpose is unclear, it strikes me as PR directed to a public with extremely short attention spans.  As a lawyer, it was utterly devoid of interest.  In all likelihood, this was the FBIs way of getting rid of some of the excess funding it has received from Congress to protect us.

But why would the ABA select FBI:Gotcha! to be its featured blawg of the week?  Since the online journal has been around less than a year, it hasn’t even made its way through the 251 criminal justice blawgs listed in its directory, no less the many other practice areas it lists. And yet, someone made a decision to ignore the vast array of blawgs produced by lawyers for lawyers, and instead elected to highlight an FBI promotional webpage.

If it was a matter of balance, given that there are far more criminal defense blawgs than prosecutor blawgs, there still remains a host of fine prosecutor blawgs to run through before making the decision to ignore blawgs altogether and start promoting government websites.  Why not Ken Lammers’ CrimLaw?  Certainly Ken, who has been a staple of the blawgosphere for far longer than I’ve been around, is worthy of being featured.

When the ABA got into the business of blawg promotion, there was some doubt in my mind that they would have a clue what they were doing.  They came up with the ABA Blawg 100, which neglected the entire personal injury practice area.  They (the ABA, not the ABA Journal, which I’m informed, is under entirely different management) invited certain blawgs, this one included, to apply for the Silver Gavel Award, which came with a hefty application fee attached, as if this were a profit-making venture.  But at least they provided a directory of blawgs for the benefit of lawyers.

So who came up with this brainstorm?  And since when did the ABA start promoting the FBI over lawyers?  This is just plain screwy, and leaves me to wonder whether anyone over at the ABA has a clue what they’re doing.