I’ve been thinking about my blog for the past couple of weeks, and I think that I’ve come to a crossroads. My intention in starting this blog was for the most part to write about estate planning news and updates for both the practitioner and for the consumer. And I will still do that.
But I think we’ve gotten to a point where there really isn’t that much news developing. Sure, there is the impending expiration of the estate tax in 2010 and its coming back in 2011. And when there’s real developments I’ll be writing about them in detail. But for now, there is just talk. So there’s not much to write about on the Congressional front.
Nor have there been very many interesting cases lately. There have been a couple, but nothing really worth waxing philosophical about.
So I figure that I can go in one of two ways on my blog.
In the first way, I’ll write post after post about whether or not you should have a Will (hint: you should) and whether or not I think online or Do It Yourself wills are a good thing (hint: I don’t). I’ll send emails to every legal blogger (or is that blawgger) that I can find, along to every listserv, telling people that I’ll link to them if they link to me, because that’s the way things are done, and if we link to each other we can trick “the Google” into ranking us higher. It won’t matter that I don’t read the other blogs, or when I did read them I thought they we subpar. I’ll follow every single person I can find on twitter in the hopes that they follow me back. I’ll friend the world on Facebook and then spam my friends incessantly for them to join my firm’s fan page. I’ll put aside my integrity and personally vouch for blogs that have nothing to do with my geographic or substantive area and be “fans” of people I don’t even know. Then I’ll write some treacly posts about puppies and flowers and babies and how much they’ll thank you for doing your estate planning.
Maybe I’ll even sign all of my posts, “Love, David.”
Blech.
I can’t do that.
I actually started writing another post about why you need a will and I titled it “So it has come to this — My Why You Need a Will post.” Look. You, yes you need to have your estate planning done. It can provide for and protect your family after you are gone, save lots of taxes, help charities, and stop global warming. And subject to the Florida Bar’s rules on advertising, I think I can do a pretty darn good job at doing it for you. But I’m not going to convince anyone of that with yet another “why intestacy is bad” post.
Why do I blog? Is it to market my practice? Sure. But I blog because I like to write and I like to write about things that interest me. One thing that interests me is estate planning, and I will certainly write about that here. In fact, I hope that it will be the primary focus of my blog. However, I’ll be expanding the focus too. I’ll be writing about. . . well, whatever I feel like writing about –life as a lawyer, technology, South Florida, and of course estate planning, probate, tax, and the like. I’ll do my best to keep it semi-relevant and occasionally entertaining, but no promises.
I will promise however, to write. I will not let the blog go weeks without a post.
Unless I run out of ideas, of course.