Thank you for expressing an interest in blogging for us, by signing up on the sheet at the BPP Student Association Freshers’ Fair at BPP Law School, Stamford Street, last Wednesday afternoon. This invitation is being extended to anyone with an interest in law, and not only students of BPP.

The ‘LegalAware’ blog is the official blog of the BPP Legal Awareness Society. This Society, run by students for all BPP students across their sites nationally, operates to further awareness of the importance of law to business, and of business to commercial and corporate lawyers.

Our blog is http://www.legal-aware.org, and is updated daily. The copy includes topical news stories about national and international legal news and law firms.

The blog is held in relatively high esteem by people related to legal blogging, including fellow legal bloggers and tweeters, journalists, GDL and LPC lecturers, recruitment managers of City law firms, and law students, to name, but a few.

For example, ‘LegalAware’ has been mentioned in a recent post on legal blogging by @vicmfoffatt entitled ‘UK Blawg Roundup #8 – Change!’ in a review of recent developments in UK legal blogging:

http://www.vicmoffatt.com/2011/09/uk-blawg-roundup-8-change.html

‘LegalAware’ has alo been on the RADAR recently of @AlexAldridgeUK, a very senior law journalist for ‘The Guardian’, with a specific mention here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/sep/01/disabled-lawyers-still-face-discrimination

It is therefore very important that we uphold standards in this blog. Probably the most senior legal blogger in the UK, @charonqc (whose blog is http://charonqc.wordpress.com), advised me, ‘it’s a good idea to let young tweeps have a go, as long as their stuff is readable’.

All three of the above follow me on Twitter (our thread is: https://twitter.com/#!/legalaware) with 1868 followers. You’ll get a feel for the people who follow from the conversations I have there daily on Twitter, for example with @LegalTrainee [https://twitter.com/#!/legaltrainee]. This is an unique, highly successful, initiative, with their Twitter profile described thus, “Engage directly w/ Trainees across our international offices. Direct conversation w/ @eversheds, online events & competitions to get your foot in the door!”  They can offer unique insight, in that the participants are not ‘official’ members of Grad. Rec. I particularly like their thread as I’m a big believer in understanding the corporate culture of a firm before you apply there.  Also, have a look out for their competition  (described here): “Follow @LegalTrainee on Twitter, BraveNewTalent and Facebook to find out how to be in with a chance to win coffee with a Partner @Eversheds or lunch with a Trainee!”

If you were to blog for us, it’s a very informal arrangement, and posts are only edited in as much the grammar and spelling are corrected if necessary. Hopefully, this will not be necessary at this stage of your training. We are happy for you to state that you occasionally blog for us, if that is indeed true, but bear in mind that the blog is now well known and thought of, and ‘blogging for us’ does mean more than one short post in the course of the whole academic year.

If you are interested in giving legal blogging a go, please do contact me on  blog@legal-recruit.org – no prior experience of blogging is fun, and I hope you find it fun. You will be immediately supplied with your own username and password for the admin site, so you can upload your own posts as or when you decide to do them. The posts are on the whole range of practice seats in commercial law, but you are strongly encouraged to write on other topics if this interests you (such as legal education or law applications, pro bono experience, your thoughts about the GDL or LPC, etc.)  I’ll personally send this username or password by email, and it’ll be useful for me to have a rough idea as to what you may blog on.

A really good introduction to the WordPress ‘dashboard’ is:

http://wordpress.tv/2009/01/05/the-wordpresscom-dashboard-introduction/

See also,

Actually, you’ll probably find the use of the dashboard self-explanatory anyway.

It could be that you’re about to start the GDL or LLB(Hons) at BPP Law School. This blog is a great way of demonstrating you have extra-curricular activities/interests (albeit in law), and is definitely useful if you should wish to evidence communication skills, teamwork or commercial awareness as key competences in training contract applications. I hope that you will consider blogging, even if you have a training contract. (Please note that barristers and barristers-in-training have blogged on my site before, particularly in the area of human rights).

Thank you. I look forward to hearing from you, if you are interested. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.