So, I thought I’d point to this post from Robin Weideman on Dowell v. Pacesetter, Inc., a case which is more or less unremarkable, except that it is part of a continuing trend from the Court of Appeals: quit trying to make exceptions to B&P 16600.

We saw this earlier this year in TRG v. Galante and FLIR Systems v. Parrish. I noticed that I was hoping in my FLIR post to see the TRG ruling in July, but it came down in August.

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I’m also proud to say that this site was the first one to focus on issues of California’s specific employment law world. In fact, this is one of the earliest legal blogs period. Before I began this site, I did legal blogging back almost 10 years ago when people first started transitioning from directly editing webpages to using software to keep “logs.”

Despite that long history, this site has always been about the issues. I only put up advertisements very briefly, and this has never been primarily about marketing my services. That is something that is even more rare in the blogging world, and I would say it correlates more directly to age. The people who have been doing this the longest seem to be the most likely to be doing it for its own sake instead of trying to keep up with the latest way to market overheard at a CLE conference on seen on TV.

Thanks for reading. I have no plans to change the core mission of this site or to stop doing this any time soon.

However, I do have plans for a companion site in the works. We’ll see.

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He even found a way to work Rashi in, recently. How can I top that?

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http://www.twitter.com/employmentlawCA

UPDATE: Obviously, there have been some cosmetic changes to the site over the weekend. There are also some more mechanical changes. For one, I moved this back to the old hosting company and off of Amazon EC2. Therefore, the responsiveness of the site might not be as good as it was. It just wasn’t worth the price. I don’t monetize this site, so there was no real way to easily offset the cost. For now, while most people just read the RSS feed, I’ll have to make do with a slower server.

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http://oseh.stormsemploymentlaw.com

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It’s a very difficult system to get running for something as simple as a blog, but it’s virtually limitless in potential (I am literally running on the same infrastructure as amazon.com now).

The load times should be higher and the latency should be lower.

I liked 1&1 as a webhost a lot, but for the price, they just weren’t giving me enough cycles.

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Anyone can put up a page, and any webpage can contain content that’s updated. That is not something new with the “blogging” phenomenon.

• Blogging is never a finished product. Blogs are only interesting because they are a rough cut. It’s always ongoing, and a good blog is so current that it is a “rough cut” by necessity.
• It’s you and the blogger having a beer, where much, if not all of the pretense is dropped. Opinions aren’t only allowed, but encouraged. Objective analysis, clean language, and even punctuation are for formal articles. Part of the blog experience is feeling “inside.”
• In that vein, what drives eyeballs to blogs is the value added by the mind of the blogger, not the commodity content of what the blogger is commenting on.
• These last three in connection make the difference between a website that say, just posts a series of case summaries like a 1L’s brief, and a blog that adds a lawyers experience, insight, or reaction to the case.
• Blogging is not, in the end, a vehicle for press releases or marketing. It can be part of a broader marketing system, but readers have little impetus to return to a blog that doesn’t have value-added blog-style rough cut commentary, unless you are the quickest, freest, and most up-to-date site. In other words, unless you’re prepared to be the Wal-Mart of webpages or compete and win against the Wal-Mart of webpages, you have to compete instead as a Whole Foods or find a niche.

This is why blogging is tough for attorneys. We are always cautious with public pronouncements, and certainly wouldn’t want to criticize, say, a judge we have to appear before, and we really can’t talk about quite a few things. If that limits you too much, then chances are what you’ve got is a webpage with case summaries, not a blog. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s just not part of what this medium is.

Some of the best blogs, legal or not, often have quite a few one line entries. I’m far too talkative for that, but it’s something worth noting.

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I may have an announcement in the coming weeks.

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So, I’ve come to the realization that there are other sites out there that are taking apart every appellate opinion faster and in greater detail than I am.  Other sites are getting the “inside scoop” on a number of issues quicker and with better connections that I am.  And every major employment law blog now tracks bills in the legislature.

So, it’s time for me to reinvent this blog and its purpose. Stay tuned.

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It has nothing at all to do with employment law, but the funniest court opinion I think I’ve ever read is Hurwitz v. City of Orange 122 Cal. App. 4th 835 (2004).  Take a gander.

• Last week, we took a look at the Metters case: another arbitration agreement is thrown out by the courts.  A number of BigLaw summaries of this case advised clients to review their arbitration agreements and the procedures related to getting them agreed to.  I disagree.  Even before these recent cases, it was apparent that arbitration agreements were getting rocked by the courts.  What it’s time for is an in depth study of the actual cost savings, forum by forum, versus the risks and the opposing costs (including recurrent legal fees keeping the agreements and procedures up to date).  If someone would publish that, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that, as often as not, it’s of little or no benefit to the employer.

• The Legislature has introduced bills to overturn a couple of last session’s big cases.  AB 2279 would overturn Ragingwire (FEHA does not protect medical marijuana usage).  SB 1192 would reverse Murphy (missed meal and rest period payments are not penalties).  You all are aware of my mixed prognostication record, but I would predict SB 1992 dies in commitee and AB 2279 dies on the Governor’s desk.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter ended up as a ballot initiative.

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You probably didn’t notice that I both upgraded the site to WordPress 2.5 and moved it to a dedicated server (which I had to configure myself).  Some combination of these two invisible changes are contributing, I’m sure, to the broken links.

I’m working on it, but I have no idea what the problem is at this time.

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