I wrote a post yesterday about the amusing naked, slimebag mud-wrestling between Neil Squillante’s TechnoLawyer and Aaron Street’s Lawyerist. The fight, as described by Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle, was over Squillante’s take-down notice for the Lawyerist using the words “Small Law” in a post.
Perhaps Technolawyer has a trademark on the term SmallLaw – but the phrase “small law” is purely descriptive. I have used it many times myself at my blog, MyShingle, long, long before your newsletter ever began covering these issues. My blog also has enormous visibility on all matters related to solo and small law, and frankly, the takedown letter has a chilling effect on anything that I might ever write at my blog. Will I too be subject to a take-down notice if I use the term “small law” in a header?
I changed my mind about posting almost immediately. Both the Lawyerist and TechnoLawyer are turds in my book, and unworthy of my attention. After all, this was the same Squillante involved in the ABA Blawg 100 vote buying fiasco. and Street’s “lawyering survival guide,” premised on the HuffPo concept of offering space to any idiot willing to write for free, no matter how vapid and worthless the post, is a mile wide and a millimeter deep.
But then Neil raised the stakes in his effort to rationalize his absurd claim to own Small Law. Squillante told the ABA Journal :
After more than two years of using the mark and building our reputation in SMALLLAW, we find it surprising that a fellow online legal publication founded by lawyers would act so lawlessly. Lawyerist’s publicity stunt attempts to conflate a narrow trademark issue about the name of an online publication with some sort of faux cause célèbre on behalf of small firms.
We believe Lawyerist’s actions reflect on good versus bad Internet citizenship, not just trademark law. For example, we have linked to 292 Lawyerist articles in our BlawgWorld publication since January 2009, including two links in yesterday’s issue. By contrast, Lawyerist has never linked to TechnoLawyer. Not even in yesterday’s article, which was about TechnoLawyer.
So Lawyerist is a “bad internet citizen” because they don’t give TechnoLawyer any link love? That’s what this is really about. Just like Squillante’s cash sweepstakes for those who vote for TechnoLawyer, good and evil online are determined by what helps Squillante’s business?
While my gut reaction to this nonsense was a pox on both your houses, Neil’s latest effort to make this a war between good and bad internet citizenship lowers the bar (with apologies to Kevin Underhill and some gratuitous link love). As much as the Lawyerist may appeal to young lawyers who are dumber than bricks, TechnoLawyer makes it look thoughtful and worthwhile. It makes me wretch.
The internet wasn’t invented (whether by Al Gore or otherwise) in order to put money in Neil Squillante’s pocket. Internet citizenship, whatever that means, isn’t dependent on supporting Neil Squillante’s financial interests. And as big as the internet might be, there’s no room in it for Neil Squillante to lecture anyone on virtue.
There is a definite good and bad, right and wrong, in my blawgosphere. It entails the promotion of excellent lawyering, client service and adherence to our ethical obligations. It’s got nothing to do with Squillante making money or getting links. It’s got nothing to do with Squillante winning any prizes, no matter how much cash he offers in his sweepstakes. It’s got nothing to do with paybacks and one hand washing the other, the sort of conduct that makes people despise lawyers. And my good/bad, right/wrong blawgosphere has nothing to do with Neil Squillante. If I want to use Small Law, or SmallLaw, or SMALLLAW, or smalllaw, send me a letter and we’ll find out who’s a good internet citizen.
I gave you a link, Neil. Are you happy?
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Scott,
The “nofollow” tag. Learn it. Use it. As a good internet citizen, it behooves you not to give an implicit Google endorsement to bad internet citizens.
Note: I have trademarked the “internetcitizen.” Cease and desist using “internet citizen.”
My first impulse was to go the “no follow” route, since it seemed absurd to help promote these mutts. But then I decided it was bad form, as I said unflattering things about them, to not give them fair notice. Of course, should anyone check out their incoming links, they might find my post, which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
They’ll get notice of it just the same — it’ll show up in their logs exactly the same as a normal referral link. It will also show up if they use Google’s “link:” command or some other program to check their backlinks. The sole function of nofollow is to instruct search engines not to consider the link as an implicit endorsement of the site’s content and thus not to allow your site to “pass rank” onto their site.
It is obnoxious and appalling to me that we we have to think about and react to these sorts of issues, but I have come to realize the world is not built to avoid what Max finds obnoxious or appalling. Right now, a Googlebot has reviewed your site and found that you think just as highly of TechnoLawyer as you do Injustice Everywhere.
We’re not going to end lawyering-by-SEO, but I think we should make a conscious effort to stop contributing to the problem.
You are right. I should have gone nofollow. My bad.
Meh. You linked to them with the text “TechnoLawyer”. And if someone is searching for “TechnoLawyer”, the TechnoLawyer site is probably the one they want, and it’s already at the top of the Google search result. Even though you’re bigger than they are–as far as Google PageRank is concerned–I don’t think you’ve helped them much. Don’t beat yourself up about it. (I know how fragile your self-esteem is.)
In fact, I’m guessing that by linking to all those other pages that also talk about TechnoLawyer (using fun link text like “vote buying fiasco”), you’ve hinted to Google that people might want to see those pages as well. Google’s helpful that way.
I was going to suggest that if you really want to hurt them, you should googlebomb them, say by getting a lot of other blawgers to link to them with the phrase “social media douchebag.” However, it turns out that searching for “social media douchebag” already leads to lots of amusing stuff.
yeah. nofollow would have been better. Imagine a “war” where no one came.