Happy New Year from the Advocacy Teaching Blog

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year to you from the Advocacy Teaching Blog administrators: Chris Behan, Charlie Rose and Hugh Selby (names presented in alphabetical, but reverse chronological, order). We hope you have the chance to reflect on the successes of the past year and make plans for a fantastic 2011.

Today marks the seventh month of this blog’s existence. As we mentioned when we started the blog, we hope that it will serve as an on-line informational resource for courtroom advocacy teachers and students, wherever you’re from: the world of practice, the judiciary, or academia. We want your comments, stories, teaching tips, questions and answers.

The blog has experienced steady growth in guest authors and readers, far more than we had thought would occur at this stage in the blog’s development. Distinguished judges, practitioners and professors have written guest columns that have been well-received. As of today, we have over 100 regular subscribers who receive automatic e-mail blog updates. In addition, the blog has readers from all over the world: Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey, Israel, India, Dubai, Kenya, Kuwait, and the United States, to name a few.

So, where do we go from here? We have a few suggestions to increase the value of the blog for you and others.

1. Visit the blog often.

2. Take the time to browse the blog. Every article is indexed by subject, in alphabetical order. Most articles have multiple index entries. Click on the links for each subject and see what interests you. If you read a blog posting you like, forward it on to others (there is a little envelope button underneath each entry that permits you to do this).

3. Comment on blog entries. Add your own voice and suggestions to the blog. This includes old articles. Your observations will undoubtedly benefit others. For those of you who receive blog entries via e-mail, there is a link at the bottom of every e-mail that says "Comment on this blog posting by clicking on http://advocacyteaching.blogspot.com/ and using the blog's comment function."

4. Forward to Colleagues and/or Students. If you are teaching and find a blog article that would be helpful to your colleagues or students, forward it to them.

5. Link. Link to the blog on your course and/or organization websites. We can return the favor for you!

6. Write an article! The process is easy. If there’s a subject you’re interested in, just send an e-mail with your article to cwbehan@gmail.com. We’ll take care of the rest. To quote Hugh Selby, “Read us, question us, comment to us, and become us.” Not a bad mantra.

7. Review a Case File. If you’d like to write, but aren’t sure what to write about, review a case file. We’d love to develop an on-line bank of case-file reviews to assist instructors and course managers in selecting teaching case files. A template for reviewing them is on the blog at http://advocacyteaching.blogspot.com/search/label/Case%20files%20reviewed.

8. Subscribe to the blog. There are a couple of ways to do it:

--If you are technically adept, subscribe using the RSS feed buttons located just above the subject-matter index on the blog.

--If you’d like to receive an automatic e-mail of every blog posting, contact us at the Contact Us button on the blog, or send an e-mail to cwbehan@gmail.com.

All the Best,

Chris Behan

Charlie Rose

Hugh Selby

Good luck in the New Year!