Jim Beck and Mark Herrmann have a blog called Drug and Device Law.  I note this because many readers here won’t be familiar with it, since their interests are more attuned to criminal law issues, although those who appreciate a fine curmudgeon will know the Herrmann name from his excellent book, The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law. 

As it happens, they’re also Biglaw guys, and bring the Biglaw perspective to the blawgosphere whereas I can only add my snarky and somewhat worthless outside observations about what Biglaw has in mind.  On the other hand, if I was in Chicago, and if they would let me anywhere near the Jones Day offices, I would make Herrmann buy me a beer.  Probably one of those expensive foreign beers with the odd names too.  He can afford it.  He’s Biglaw.

Every once in a while Beck/Herrmann (they are actually connected at the hip, which is why they sign every post Beck/Herrmann, and which makes it very hard for them to work at competing firms), take a foray into the wild world of blawgospheric dynamics, and it brings out a whole ‘nuther side that the rest of us neither see nor know.  Darn that Herrmann did it again, and it’s a reminder of just how far apart the solo thought process is from that of Biglaw, and how similar we really are as well.

Oh, brother.  Been there.  Nothing lights the fire of bloggers like something provocative about their love-child.

That’s strange.  No one from AmLawDaily ever calls me.  I wonder why that is?   I’m American.  I’m a lawyer.  I’m old. I’m busy.  I play golf.  I am almost exactly the same as Jonathon Schiller.  Except I don’t run the most profitable firm in the country.  Not that I’m complaining.

So Beck/Herrmann challenged Schiller’s little dis of the blawgosphere,  Is it that blawging is just beneath the dignity of someone as important and consequential as Schiller?  Obviously, he doesn’t view blawging as intrinsically worthwhile, given that it falls somewhere between golf and  flossing as a good way to spend his time.  But even if he doesn’t feel the urge to write and/or opine, does he not need to concern himself with business development?  Would Schiller also turn down a chance to give the keynote speech to the General Counsels of America?

Oddly, I know the answer to this question, since his partner, David Boies, did exactly that at SuperConference in Chicago last may.  I was there.  I saw it.  Boies was as calm as any lawyer I’ve ever seen when he addressed the room of GCs from across the country.  I don’t know whether it’s Zen or Zoloft, but there is a tranquility about him that was amazing.

Clearly, David Boies has nothing against business development.  So that means that they don’t consider blawgs a worthy weapon in the “hypercompetitive” Biglaw market.  Beck/Herrmann therefore developed a test to determine whether blogging, assuming your purpose is raking in the dough, is the right vehicle for business development for you.

And that, ladies and germs, is the difference between Biglaw and us little solo guys.  Lest you think that Beck/Herrmann are just two uppity Biglaw guys who look down their collective nose at honest lawyers who work for a living, they don’t blawg for cash.

As for us, we continue to think that blogging yields many benefits — personal satisfaction, a raised professional profile, participating in the public debate, becoming a central clearinghouse for information, and the like — but its value as a business development tool for lawyers at large firms remains unproven.

The two of us blog for love, not for money.

See.  They really aren’t all that different from the rest of us.  They have their personal valets help them to put on their custom made $2,000 trousers one leg at a time, just like us.

And if Boies Schiller ever finds the time to start a blawg, chances are that I’m not going to rush to add them to my blawgroll.  Unless they start referring their throwaways to me, in which case I’ll give it serious consideration.