Trainee love

More than two months on, Watson Farley & Williams continue to show no remorse, persisting in publishing their so-called Trainee Law Blog, whose failings I have previously summed up. We’re now on episode 23.

On its launch in late September, Legal Week quickly posted a story about it, sans any investigation, describing it as “possibly the most fashionable law firm marketing initiative”.

Roll on Friday actually read it, finding it, like the Andrex puppy, “lovely, if a little one sided”.

Justin Patten was the first to “wonder if this actually is a blog”, commenting that “the law firm has committed an error with the initiative”.

PR Guy viewed it as “a bit like your granddad turning up at club with an open neck shirt and medallion” and more recently Web Fly has referred to it as “a masterclass in how not to launch a blog”.

Charon QC also questioned its blog credentials, seeing it nevertheless as a reasonable idea but “pregnant with the control apparatus”, and launching, in response, his own Muttley Dastardly LLP – a blog for the modern era.

The most detailed critique of this “Blog Fuckwittery” was from web consultant Suw Charman in her Strange Attractor blog on Corante, who saw it as “something truly atrocious” and filed her post under the afore-mentioned category in some august company.

As always, Geeklawyer was not shy to suggest of this “embarrassingly gauche … pseudo blog” that the firm should

yank it and do the job properly. We’ll try and pretend we never saw it. Or at least the other bloggers will; Geeklawyer will rub it in your face forever – but then he’s a sadist, it’s what he has to do.

It’s a bit late now for them to yank it and do it properly and they will forever be tainted with the flack, but I’d shut up if they just changed “Law Blog” to “Love Letters” or some such.