Before Jeremy Blachman, then a 3L at Harvard Law School, started his blog AnonymousLawyer.com in 2005, legal was a dry media category. Unless you were a lawyer, considering attending law school, or your company was in trouble, you never bothered with it.
Then Blachman introduced parody to talking about the law. He was a fictional lawyer at one of those large law firms which, at that time, was a black box to the the rest of us. All we knew was that Ivy League graduates went in them, hoped to make partner, then their rest of their life became a long apology when they didn't. The narrator in AnonymousLawyer.com didn't let one detail of working in a law firm go unridiculed. And it was detail which was his focus. That, he found, was the easiest to parody because lawyers, being lawyers, were consumed by detail.
It might be said that Blachman created a new genre in legal media. Not long after came the sardonic Abovethelaw.com, targeted at newbies in legal, ranging from law students to first to third year associates. Even more traditional sites such as The Legal Blog feel it's compulsory to inject humor, irony, and sarcasm.
Like former Wonkette Ana Marie Cox, Blachman did well for himself. Among the goodies have been a six-figure book deal and a shot at screenwriting in Hollywood. Back then, when the web was less crowded, it was easier to be noticed. Heck, HarperCollins even approached me with an invitation to submit a book proposal. Now, most people with a good idea have to go beyond blogging to be discovered. That's why I encourage Abovethelaw.com's head writer Elie Mystal to do something else in addition to his day job to make it really big.
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