In "Do You Blog?," the cover story in this month's Washington Lawyer, reporter Sarah Kellogg provides a comprehensive recap and overview of how the legal blogosphere has evolved since its earliest days.  Not incidentally, she concludes with a rousing call to arms for more lawyers, law students, law professors, and law firms to start blogs:

"Observers say the horizon for law blogs isn’t even in sight yet, leaving an enormous amount of space for new lawyer bloggers to cover, from marketing to networking, from knowledge management to research."

To call this a must-read would be the understatement of the month, and not just because she flatteringly cites "Adam Smith, Esq." (I'll hold her thoughts on that for last).   Among the other incisive observations which are shot through the article:

• The early adopter Ernie Svenson describes his place in the legal blogosphere as sitting down in the front row of the auditorium: “When I got into blogging, I took a seat in the front row and then somebody filled in chairs behind me after that,” says Ernest Svenson. “I didn’t mean to take a front-row seat. There just weren’t any other seats available at the time."
• Denise Howell distills the essence of why lawyers and blogs were made for each other: “Lawyers are trained to write . . . and research. The writing they generate tends to have some credibility behind it. That is the crux of web logging right there.”
• Carolyn Elefant emphasizes the collegial and respectful nature of the legal blogosphere and points out a subtlety which was perhaps lost on me (as a blawg veteran of over a year!): 
  
  “Being inside [the blogosphere], you think it’s the greatest thing that ever happened.... People don’t feel quite the same way on the outside, but once you’re in, you do.”
  
  She started her blog, "My Shingle" (about solo and small firm practice) for altruistic reasons—to try to supply advice to a slice of the law firm market that conventional media seemed largely to ignore:  She sees it as a way for her to give back to the legal community.  “By having that type of resource out there, it helps make solo and small-firm attorneys more ethical and efficient practitioners.”
• Dennis Kennedy makes an indispensable point about credibility and trust, and implicitly distinguishes the blogosphere from MainStream Media ("MSM") by urging readers to make the intellectual effort to engage in critical thinking:

  “Everything today raises the issue of how do people think critically and how do you decide what information is valuable and what information you can rely on,” says Kennedy. “I think that blogs accentuate the process. You really have to do your homework.”

Enough said:  Just read it from beginning to end.  If you're a skeptic, you may have to rethink things; and if you're a believer, you'll learn something you didn't know.

Oh yes, at the end is appended a list of "the best the internet has to offer when it comes to legal blogs" and suggests "you can't go wrong checking out these favorites," followed by just over a dozen seriously superb blawgs, most of whose authors I know personally.  And indeed, "Adam Smith, Esq.," is listed and described as follows:

"Law firm management comes under the microscope at this blog, which takes a serious and studied look at continuing changes in the management structure of today’s firms."

Go read the article while I stop blushing.