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The Harvard Law School blog has the main purpose of serving the large number of law school applicants that Harvard Law School has to handle every year. The mission of the site is to make the Harvard Law School admission process more transparent, so applicants can get a better idea of exactly what the application process is about, as well as offer some information and advice to the applicants. Some of the articles that you will find on the Harvard Law School blog include interview samples and application-related information about law school.

The good things about Harvard Law School

The Harvard Law School blog has a great mission. Maintaining transparency in their application process shows Harvard’s commitment to being true and honest in their application procedure and admission selection. Furthermore, it proves to applicants and their parents that Harvard Law School wants to stay true and just to the idea of legal education and law in general. The blog entries on the site are very helpful and highly relevant for anyone thinking of applying to Harvard Law School. It gives applicants an idea of how the interviews go, what the application process is like, and how law school at Harvard is.

Room for improvement

The Harvard Law School blog does leave an open space for improvement. The site is rather simple, with no pictures of any kind. In fact, if the website domain wasn’t law.harvard.edu, I would be inclined to think that this site was just pretending to be associated with Harvard. It would help to use the school insignia, or any other kinds of Harvard-related pictures to give the site a more professional look, which is what you would expect from a prestigious school like Harvard.

Find Law is a blog that covers practically anything and everything about law. The blog is a project of the FindLaw company, which was founded in 1995 and has since been able to expand and grow into one of the leading providers of legal information on the Internet. With monthly traffic figures of over four million visitors, it’s easy to see why this is one of the leading websites for legal information on law cases, legal news, law career help, and more.

The blog mainly targets legal students and professionals, but the information coverage is wide enough so that practically anyone needing legal information will find Find Law helpful. Some of the topics that you can find at FindLaw include the Top 7 Law School Study Aids and Why You Should Do Pro Bono Work.

The good things about Find Law

What makes Find Law such a great blog is that it is linked to a successful company and website. Not only does this help to increase visitors, but it also gives visitors more reasons to come back to the site. The community tools, like the forums and message boards, are great additions that serve as a platform for legal professionals and students to discuss matters, help each other out, and form a global community. The blog also gives relevant, current, and highly-demanded legal information, advice, and news. With a solid design and a good layout that is easy to navigate, Find Law is a great blog.

The bad things about Find Law

There is only one area that I feel Find Law needs improvement on, and that is with pictures. Blogs are a lot more exciting to look at and more fun to read when there are pictures for visitors to look at and browse through.

Fearfully Optimistic is a blog designed to help law students with all of the stresses and hardships of law school. One of the mantras of the Fearfully Optimistic site is that “law school is broken.” Basically, the founder of the site feels that the legal education system is too demanding on students, to the point that students have a painful time not only getting through law school, but also when looking for legal professions. With the mission of “putting the cool back into law school.” The Fearfully Optimistic site has articles like “Why a Social Life is Tricky in Law School” and “The Links Between Unschooling and Law School.”

The optimistic side

Fearfully Optimistic has a good angle, helping students with all of the hardships of law school. The idea that there’s something wrong with the legal education system, which has a negative impact on students, is a great perspective. It falls in line with the thoughts and feelings of the many law school students who are spending grueling hours studying for tests, memorizing laws and statutes, and slowly grinding through the bar exams. The blog also covers topics that students like to know about, such as specific law courses, the legal industry, and some of the pressing matters in legal education.

The pessimistic side

The bad thing about Fearfully Optimistic is that the blog has a rather uninteresting layout. While some students may like the straightforward, no-frills design of the blog, other visitors may want to see some color and some pictures as well. It can get boring scrolling through a blog that is all just black, grey, and blue text, without any pictures to break the monotony. Adding some community tools, such as forums or discussion boards, can also help to increase traffic and entice visitors to return to the site.

PhiLAWdelphia is a blog about the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division. At first glance, I thought it was more of a bulletin board for upcoming events or a place where certain members of that organization could post stories about law practice in Philadelphia, certain cases and how to deal with them, or lawyers giving advice to other lawyers. After thoroughly going through it though, I found out that the blog isn’t that technical at all.

What makes the blog unique

The writer, who goes by the name John E., talks about a wide array of topics, some of which have nothing to do with law in Philadelphia. The common theme I can see in each article is that they all have something to do with Philadelphia, although there was also an article about the American Bar Association conference in Chicago, where the writer compared certain parts of Chicago with Philadelphia. The writer dwells on stories like the newly constructed Trump Hotel and Tower, restaurants that he thought were only exclusively found in his hometown of Philadelphia, the number of tourist going about the streets, and even how the famous Chicago breeze made the summer sun more bearable for him.

Areas for improvement

The range of topics goes for a more technical discussion at times, a good example of whic is an article entitled Payments Return for Court-Appointed Attorneys and Arbitrators. The only problem I noticed is that the writer doesn’t really go into detail on how to do that, or for the least, have any evidence that payments will actually be released. The basis of his story is the idea of the city of Philadelphia securing a loan of 275 million dollars, and somehow the attorneys and arbitrators could get a piece of that.

Although the site looks neat with a very organized menu, blogroll, and archives, some subheadings could at least be set in bold face to make the text more reader-friendly. All in all, the site looks authoritative.

Above the Law is a blog that focuses on legal information. From topics on law news and the legal industry to those on law school and legal careers, the goal of this blog is to help law students and legal professionals get a better view and a better understanding of the legal industry. As such, the website covers topics like “Some Thoughts on the Changing Legal Industry” and “Don?t Major in Criminal Justice If You Want to Go to Law School.”

What puts Above the Law above other blogs

Above the Law is a simple, yet well-designed website that gives it a relatively unique look and feel in comparison to other blogs with the same scope. The simple black-and-white design is brought to life by the pictures in the blog entries. Also, the website makes use of thumbnail pictures to help distinguish the links to other blog entries. This is a helpful feature that makes the website easier to navigate, more pleasing on the eyes, and more appealing in general. The blog has a good concept as a “legal tabloid,” which gives the site some personality and flair — something that many other blogs lack.

Content-wise, a lot of post do offer fresh insights and interesting topics to rouse the curiosity of readers. The layout of the website is also well done, with header tabs that are easy to read and access, and margin links that don’t look one-bit cluttered. The organized look and feel of the site lends to its usability, navigability, and the overall look of simplicity and neatness.

What brings down Above the Law

Above the Law is a great site, and there isn’t much that needs improvement on the blog. If anything, I would just enhance the use of graphics in the heading of the blog. Perhaps the use of pictures or a tabloid-like font would help to bring some of that “legal tabloid” attitude to the blog design.