It’s rare that we get a video this good, the prosecutor tells me as he hands me the DVD.  Usually with the metro cameras, he says, they are on the other side of the platform and you can barely make them out.  In this case, the whole thing happened right in front of the camera.

He is not gloating when he says this.  He is simply being matter-of-fact.

It is usually far more damning to the defendant when you can see the actual incident. It is one thing for the witness to get up on the other stand and describe what happened.  It is another when the judge or jury can actually see it for themselves.

But in this case I am not surprised by what I see the suspect – allegedly my client – do.  What surprises me is what other people do.

It is the tail-end of rush hour at a metro stop.  Trains are still coming and leaving the station.  The incident does in fact happen right smack dab in front of the camera although the prosecutor is wrong about how easy it is to make out the suspect’s features.

Lines of people flow from an open train door toward the exit.  Commuters waiting for the train pace back and forth. If you press fast forward, they scurry around in jagged paths that remind you of an old movie with the speed set too fast.

Some glance over at the incident taking place there in front of the escalator – hmmm, what seems to be going in here — and continue on their way.  A man arriving at the station comes within a couple of feet of the altercation and for a moment you think he might intervene.  He decides against it.  He steps around the two figures, now wrestling on the ground, and walks to the other side of the platform.  He doesn’t look back.

A proposal to install indoor surveillance cameras at Fairfax County schools in Virginia has created quite a controversy.  With many parents still upset over harsh disciplinary practices in the schools that have led to a couple of suicides, critics of the proposal have expressed concern over any further encroachment on the civil liberties of students.  They see the proposal as further evidence of our movement toward an Orwellian world in which our every movement is tracked and scrutinized.  According to the Washington Post, the proposal was motivated at least in part by a recent food fight at Robert E. Lee High School in which close to 100 students participated:  “Nearly every guilty student escaped unpunished, protected by chaos that made it impossible for school officials to figure out who did what.”

Looking at this from a practical standpoint, I myself have long been a fan of surveillance cameras, at least in the context of a criminal case.  Because more often than not, the existence of a videotape will help the defense.

Although defendants often claim that the police have no evidence, what they really mean is that police do not have any physical evidence. These people may not fully appreciate that the government does not need to have any tangible evidence in order to secure a conviction; the simple say-so of a complaining witness or police officer taking the stand can have the same legal effect.  Because oral testimony too is evidence.

This is where surveillance cameras come in.

Government witnesses often have remarkable memories for even the smallest of details when it comes time to testify.  And these memories tend to coincide nicely with the prosecution’s theory of the case. In the case of a DWI, for example, we hear how the defendant was drooling on himself and staggering all over the street. It is no wonder that many jurisdictions still do not use cameras mounted on police car dashboards even though these technologies are both widely available and inexpensive.

If the voluntariness of a confession is at issue, we will hear how calm and relaxed the atmosphere was at the time the defendant was informed of his rights and decided to come clean.  And, of course, there is always a clear-cut aggressor in assault cases.

But life itself is never that black-and-white.  The details are more nuanced.  And videotapes tend to reflect that reality far better than the selective recollections of a government witness. And if in the end you don’t like what you see on the videotape, at least you will be better informed going into plea negotiations.

I am dealing with a “hide-the-ball”-type prosecutor in Virginia.

I have gotten spoiled from working with D.C. prosecutors; they are usually pretty upfront about what they have against your client.  There are no ambushes or surprises.  Your client has better information in deciding whether to plea.  Everyone is better off for it.

This is not that kind of prosecutor.  He is convinced that my client is a terrible person – a “pathological liar,” he tells me – and for some strange reason, he feels compelled to make sure I know this.  As if he is going to change my opinion of the client.  As if I might not try as hard.  As if I might push my client into accepting a plea offer that really is no plea offer.

And he is cagey.

The prosecutor has turned over prison tapes – hours upon hours of my client’s telephone conversations from prison with his wife, his children, his friends.  Yes, the prisons do record them.  Yes, the prosecutors do have someone listen to them.  And if the prosecutors have listened to them, so must you.

Years ago, as a summer intern with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, my co-interns and I were assigned to listen to the prison tapes in connection with an upcoming trial.  We laughed about how the defendant had completely different personalities depending on the person to whom he was speaking.  With the mother of his children, for example, he was all business: How are they doing at school?  When are you bringing them to visit me?  With one girlfriend, he was the most devout Muslim you had ever heard:  Inshallah this and Inshallah that.  And with a third woman, he was playful and flirtatious.

But it is difficult listening to the prison tapes of my client.  For one thing, there are many hours of the tapes, and I have no intern to assign to the task.  For another, I know this guy.  It feels strange to eavesdrop on his intimate conversations with his wife, his mother, his children and his friends.

Inmates and the people they call are informed at the very beginning of the conversation that calls are monitored and recorded.  So they know this, and they often speak cryptically and in code.  But they also get complacent.  And sometimes they can mess up, saying things that could damage their defense.  That’s why, no matter what personal qualms you may have about participating in this invasion of your client’s privacy, you listen to the tapes anyway.

This whole Internet/social media thing can be a bother.   A while back, I had someone impersonating me on Twitter, posting all sorts of inane things under my name, photograph, and biographical information.  I have recently been experiencing problems with the server for this site, problems which have hopefully now been resolved.  And this morning I find that someone has posted green hyperlinks all over this site, connecting key words such as “attorney” and “meeting” with other websites.  I can make the hyperlink go away by deleting the word.  But the hyperlink comes back if I try to reinsert the word.

I have alerted my always responsive website guy, Tyler Suchman of Dennison+Wolfe.  In the meantime, my apologies for the downtime and unauthorized hyperlinks.

Postscript:  It turns out the green hyperlinks came from a problem with my browser, not the website.

As a former English professor, Jeff Gamso is no stranger to allegory, metaphors and other literary devices. In a nostalgic and almost wistful entry on baseball over at Gamso For The Defense, Gamso writes about a lawyer posting on a listserv about doing some criminal defense work.

On the “precipice of hanging out a shingle,” the lawyer writes that he would like to get some “trial experience” while starting up a practice. He hasn’t done any marketing and he doesn’t even have business cards. Despite three years doing civil work, he has never done criminal defense. He wants to know what the very minimum is in order to get started: “What is absolutely necessary before you start other than office space and malpractice insurance?”

Writes Gamso: “Because, you know, criminal’s easy. The clients are all guilty, so who cares what happens to them.  And besides, it’s not like you have to deal with the Rules of Civil Procedure (gasp) or even learn where the law library is.  (I notice he didn’t wonder about where he’d do legal research.)  There won’t be any of those motions for summary judgment.  Just the trials he’s eager to start doing.”

And later:  “Criminal law is different.  Money matters, but we’re dealing with what, frankly, matters more.  Liberty in absolute terms.  (Money, too, actually.)  Our clients face jail and prison and even death.  And the law (in theory, but it’s a theory we hold dear) insists that our clients are innocent unless the state can manage to prove otherwise.  It is we who stand there, beside them.”

To this, I add:  Thank goodness he doesn’t have any business cards.  Thank goodness he knows about malpractice insurance if he ever does get business cards.

There was some discussion in the blogosphere a while back about listservs, with some people saying that listservs are completely useless and others claiming some benefits to participation. While the focus of that discussion was on what we get out of participation, Gamso’s post brings to mind another benefit to listservs:  education and deterrence.

It’s not that the person who posted the question will necessarily get the point. Most people, when challenged on this, act surprised and a little bit offended.They may write off Gamso as cranky and his reaction as simply protecting his turf.  Yes, yes, they may think to themselves, what you do is VERY, VERY important and I am sorry if I have suggested otherwise.

But there are 4000 other lawyers who participate on the listserv Gamso refers to, many of them lurking, who will have read what Gamso wrote. The message is bound to resonate. It is bound to make some lawyers think twice about taking on criminal defense work without the necessary education, experience, preparation and commitment.

There seem to be four of us on the listserv who take turns making Gamso’s point whenever the inevitable post crops up, although no one does it as eloquently and as passionately as Gamso. The most egregious, I thought, was a message a couple of months ago from someone informing us that she was facing a felony trial in three days, a trial she was convinced the judge would not allow to be continued.  Should she be filing any motions?  What else should she be thinking of to prepare herself?

When someone politely informed her of the stakes involved and suggested she not be taking on such a case (if at all) without the guidance of an experienced defense attorney, she replied somewhat huffily that she had in fact been working with an attorney with 40 years of criminal law experience.

Which of course led to the question:  Why then are you posting inane questions on the listserv?  I’m thinking its primary purpose may have been to get Gamso’s blood pressure to rise.

Scott Greenfield and Matt Brown have both warned recently about the perils of participating on a listserv.  Keith Lee, commenting on Greenfield’s site, was even more emphatic:  “The real issue is . . . who the hell still uses listservs?!?  They’re about the worst forum for exchange of information within a group.”

Greenfield started out the discussion by describing what he calls the “Perpetual Listserv Conundrum,” which, to paraphrase, goes something like this:  Stupid people on listservs tend to ask stupid questions. These stupid questions are answered by other stupid people.  People who might have had a clue get disgusted with the level of the discourse and no longer participate on the listserv. This leaves only stupid people on the listserv. Ergo, if you ask a question on the listserv, you will only get a stupid answer. Ergo, if you pose a question on a listserv knowing that you can only get a stupid response, you must be pretty stupid yourself.

“Yes,” Greenfield writes, “it’s a vicious circle. We each have to make a choice as to whether we want to become embroiled in the mess or just walk away.”  In addition, he writes, the problem is that listservs “tend to enable the lazy and encourage the ignorant.”  Why go to all the trouble of actually looking something up when you can get a quick and easy answer by asking “the crowd”?

Building on Greenfield’s arguments on ease and laziness, Brown writes that, because he would prefer to get his advice from “known, reliable sources,” he himself has never actually participated on a listserv.  “Creating the illusion of quick answers to important questions leads down a dangerous path.” Further:  “The questionable accuracy of the information aside, the problem with listservs really comes down to the ease of asking.  When it’s easy, people tend to revert to the kind of questioning that makes them reliant on others for everything.”

While Greenfield and Brown are absolutely right about the perils of listserv participation, I do think – contrarian that I am – that listservs can have some redeeming qualities.  The challenge is to separate the good from the bad.  And keeping Greenfield’s conundrum in mind, you need to take everything you read with a grain of salt, taking what you can use and ignoring all the rest.

Having tried out a number of different listservs, I now participate on two:  the ABA listserv for solo practitioners Solosez and a listserv for criminal defense lawyers practicing in D.C. Superior Court.

Admittedly, there are limited benefits to Solosez participation, and my level of my participation, like that of most people on the site, has gradually diminished over time.  With over 3000 participants, Solosez is a national listserv covering all practice areas and all jurisdictions, and there is no way of assessing the reliability of information you may receive.

Like Greenfield and Brown, I too have been surprised by the sheer stupidity of some of the questions that are asked there. As Brown writes:  “What would the client think if he or she knew the person taking his or her hard-earned money needed a step-by-step tutorial to do even the most basic tasks?”  Noting the stakes involved in a criminal case, Greenfield puts an even finer point on it: “The thought that keeps coming into my head is, ‘what did we do before one could peck out an email to ask a couple hundred people whose qualifications to answer are unknown, if not dubious,’ and in reliance thereon, put a person’s life at risk?”

At the same time, I have to say that I have in fact benefited from some of the social aspects of Solosez.  There is the networking I described in an earlier entry.  There is the moral support from interacting with other solo practitioners as they deal with the same challenges that you confront.  And there is the sometimes welcome distraction of listening to a diverse group of people discussing the latest issues of the day that have nothing to do with the law. This is the so-called “water cooler” part of Solosez.

I have also received tips on the practical aspects of running a law practice that you couldn’t get from even the most detailed and update how-to book:  What insurance carrier do you use?  How much should you expect to pay for a website? How do you handle phone coverage?  What experience do you have with different fax or credit card providers?  What kind of marketing strategies do you use?  Working with an experienced practitioner or mentor, however beneficial this might otherwise be, couldn’t give you the same degree of diversity in perspective.

If the Solosez listserv is occasionally helpful, I view participation on the D.C. listserv for criminal defense lawyers as a small but essential part of my practice.  It would in fact be a disservice to my clients if I did NOT participate.

The listserv is limited to a subset (Superior Court versus federal court) of a single practice area (criminal defense).  It is closed and difficult to join; the hosts want to ensure that no prosecutor, judge or law student inadvertently enters the discussion.

As such, it allows for very candid discussion. How does this judge deal with sentencing on a particular offense? Has anyone else had such-and-such experience with a certain prosecutor?  While there is no substitute for sitting in a courtroom to get a feel for the judge and the prosecutor before making your first appearance, you would need to spend weeks in that room to get the kind of up-to-date insights you can get within a matter of minutes from the listserv.

In some cases, failing to participate – at least on a well-run listserv like this one — could even lead to malpractice.  For example:  D.C. is currently in the midst of a major scandal with respect to DWI prosecutions.  The breath test machines are completely messed up, and the two officers who administered many of the DWI investigations are now under investigation for tampering with urine samples.  Although many lawyers have not been able to make the meetings of criminal defense lawyers in which we have talked about and strategized on these issues, the problems have been discussed in some detail on the listserv.

A number of lawyers recently allowed their clients to plead guilty on DWI cases in which these two officers were involved.  While there are any number of ways they could have found out about these officers, they would not have failed their clients had they participated on the listserv.

Moreover, look at it this way:  The prosecutor has a single office with a chain of command and an office-wide communication system. If the chief prosecutor wants to make sure that people are aware of a new policy or development, he can send out an email to every member of his staff.

Criminal defense lawyers are more isolated and disorganized and do not have the benefit of this form of communication.  In this sense, then, by facilitating the exchange of information among criminal defense lawyers, a well-run listserv can help level the playing field.

In the end, obviously, there are good listservs and there are bad listservs.  The D.C. criminal lawyer listserv works because it draws on a narrow group of people with common interests and protects confidentiality.

Whether or not you participate on a listserv also depends on your perspective and approach. My wife doesn’t ask for advice because she doesn’t want to feel compelled to accept the advice once it has been offered.  I take the shotgun approach, seeking as much advice as I can get.  I then consider all the options when deciding for myself what path to take.

Alas, no matter how helpful a listserv may be, there are still no short cuts.  Even a well-run listserv can only be a small part of your efforts to gather information.  In the end, as Greenfield and Brown both point out, you will still need to look up most things for yourself.

A couple of days ago, my friend and colleague Mirriam Seddiq posted a very flattering piece on me on the Not Guilty blog.  Thank you, Mirriam. This is one of the many good things that have come about because of my presence on the Internet.

The same day that Mirriam’s entry came out I also learned that someone has created a Twitter account using my name, my photograph, and my biographical information. This is one of the bad things. My response: You don’t have your own name and your own information you might want to use?  I understand someone trying to impersonate Chad Ocho Cinco or some other famous person.  But me?  Really?

I was alerted to my alter ego on Twitter by someone who had either been offended or annoyed by something this other Jamison Koehler tweeted.  She checked out my website and saw that the two personalities did not seem to match.  So she emailed me.  Thank you.  It had been going on for over a month by the time I found out about it, with the fake Jamison Koehler now having 10 times as many followers as the real Jamison Koehler. Who knows how long it might have gone on had she not alerted me.

The tweets from this other Jamison Koehler aren’t offensive.  They are just inane.  The most recent Tweet, posted 6 hours ago, was: “Really like the Wormhole!  Great coffee and Fritz Pastry donuts and muffins!  I mean . . . c’mon.” Or:  “Hii twitterworld!  i’ve been gone for a way to loooooooooong time!  ;( but.  i’m back!”

I have passed along this news to Twitter with the hope that they will take action to delete the other account.  It strikes me that the imposter must be committing some criminal offense, such as identity theft.  I also think I must have grounds for a civil lawsuit.  In the meantime, I remain puzzled over a person who seems to have no identity of his or her own and who, despite the lack of anything to say, still seems to feel compelled to say it.

Potentially related to this is another piece of news, both good and bad.  Yesterday, in an unusual demonstration of affection and support for a fellow blogger, over 15 bloggers spoke out on behalf of Scott Greenfield by posting an entry with his name in the title.  This was the good news.  The bad news is why.  Since I don’t want to publicize this any more by repeating the reasons here, I’ll defer to Mark Bennett’s entry on the same subject. As Bennett says, “The more the merrier.” It’s also comforting to be in such good company.

If that is the good and that is the bad, what is the ugly?   That’s the easy part.  The ugly has to be Gideon of A Public Defender.  The guy looks like he should be dating the woman from Grant Wood’s American Gothic.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have covered potential legal challenges along every step of an arrest for driving while intoxicated (DWI), driving under the influence (DUI), or operating while impaired (OWI) in Washington, D.C.

Specifically, I have discussed potential challenges to the police officer’s initial stop of the vehicle and the officer’s decision to ask the driver to step out of the car. I have dealt with potential challenges to each of the three tests included in the standardized field sobriety test (SFST) used in D.C.:  the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, the walk-and-turn, and the one-leg stand.  I have also covered the definitions of drinking and driving, the statutory limits for blood alcohol content, potential penalties arising from a first or subsequent conviction, and potential diversion programs for first-time offenders.

Today’s entry focuses on what is normally the last phase of the investigation in Washington, D.C.:  the administration of an Intoxilyzer 5000EN breathalyzer test.  The challenges can be used at either a pre-trial motion to suppress the evidence or at trial.

What is the Breathalyzer Test?

Police use three different chemical tests to measure blood alcohol content: the urine test, the blood test, and the breath test.  Blood tests are the most invasive and also the most accurate.  Both blood and urine tests can also be used to measure the content and amount of drugs in a person’s system.

The test used most frequently in Washington, D.C. is a breathalyzer; specifically, the Intoxilyzer 5000EN.  The subject provides a sample breath into a tube.  The Intoxilyzer then uses infrared spectroscopy to determine the chemical contents of that breath based on the way the molecules of the chemicals absorb light.

Challenges to the Breathalyzer Test

As discussed in greater detail in earlier posts, the first way to prevent breath test results from being admitted into evidence against your client is to challenge the legality of the underlying police conduct leading up to the administration of the test.  The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable seizures.  If the court finds that the police officer did not have reasonable suspicion or probable cause for any step of the process, beginning with the stop itself, the court should rule any evidence gathered subsequent to that illegal conduct inadmissible.

Another area for potential challenge would be the way the test was administered.  The Intoxilyzer 5000EN is a complicated piece of equipment.  Any mistakes in administering the test could severely compromise the test results.

For example, the presence of alcohol in the subject’s mouth is widely recognized as the leading cause of error in breath testing.  Because the test is supposed to measure the level of ethyl alcohol in the subject’s lungs, the presence of alcohol in the subject’s mouth can lead to a misleadingly high result.  Burping or regurgitating prior to the test will introduce ethyl alcohol into the subject’s mouth, thereby skewing the results.  As a result, the person who administers the test is supposed to keep the subject under continuous observation for at least 20 minutes prior to administering the test.   How realistic is to assume that the tester will not use this time to fill out paperwork or perform routine administrative chores?

In addition, most people have been socialized to hide bodily functions such as burping.  It is therefore possible that the subject could burp or regurgitate or otherwise reintroduce ethyl alcohol from the stomach to the mouth without the police officer being aware of it.  Chewing gum, smoke, dentures, liver or other health problems in the subject can also skew the test results.

Another area for potential challenge would focus on the functioning of the equipment itself.  Again, the Intoxilyzer 5000EN is an expensive and complicated piece of equipment requiring careful calibration and maintenance.  Any failure by the police department to maintain the equipment in proper working order would compromise any test results.  Defense counsel should request maintenance records prior to trial.  Any failure to perform the semi-annual calibration of the equipment, to perform the weekly simulator test and/or to repair the equipment when anomalous results with the simulator are obtained would be grounds for challenge.

Even assuming the equipment was properly calibrated and administered, defense counsel can still challenge the test results themselves.  For example, while a blood test directly measures blood alcohol content, the breathalyzer serves as a surrogate measure.  The test measures the concentration of ethyl alcohol and ethanol in a person’s breath.  The system then seeks to extrapolate back to what the person’s blood alcohol concentration must be based on that breath sample.

As Peter Gerstenzang of Gerstenzang, O’Hern, Hickey & Gerstenzang has explained it, all breath test equipment assumes that the concentration of alcohol present in the person’s blood equals the concentration of alcohol in 2100 millimeters of air.  As a result, because the limited breath sample needs to be multipled many times in order to approximate alcohol content in the blood, any potential errors in the sampling will be magnified many times in the result.

The Intoxilyzer 5000EN also assumes that the subject has a body temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.  However, a person’s body temperature can fluctuate by several degrees over the course of a normal day.  A person’s body temperature can also be affected by other factors, such as fever from an illness.  Any fluctuation could significantly skew the breathalyzer results to show a misleadingly high blood alcohol content.  For example, a rise in temperature of only 2 degrees Fahrenheit could result in a 10% increase in apparent blood alcohol content.

Test results can also be skewed by the subject’s breathing patterns just prior to the sample.  Three deep breaths before the sample breath can reduce test results by 4%.  Holding one’s breath for 15 seconds before exhalation can increase the result by 12% for a minimum exhalation and 6% for a maximum exhalation.

Finally, as with any witness, the credibility of the arresting officer’s testimony can always be challenged.  Some officers have a tendency to exaggerate in their observations of the subject’s conduct.  Observations of staggering and extremely slurred speech, for example, can be juxtaposed with the finding of a relatively low blood alcohol concentration in the subject.  Conversely, tests results suggesting a very high blood alcohol concentration can be compared with observations of a fairly sober-acting defendant.

Ever since I set up this website a couple of months ago, I have had many offers – for a fee, of course – to improve the site’s ranking on Google.  I have always been a neophyte when it comes to matters involving the Internet.  I also have to admit that, prior to launching the website, I had never even heard of the term “search engine optimization.”

I was initially intrigued by the offers.  While there are many things I don’t understand about the Internet, I do know that the higher your site ranks on Google, the more hits you will receive.  More hits should lead to more contacts.  And more contacts should lead to more clients.

What could these Internet people do for me at a minimum of $140 per month? All of them mentioned revamping the website with the right phrases and so forth to make it more Google friendly, but I was uncomfortable with that.  My website guy, Tyler Suchman of Dennison+Wolfe, had already done a great job of setting up the site.  I didn’t want anyone tinkering with what Tyler had done.

Apparently there are also some other things that these companies can do to improve your website’s Google ranking.

A couple of weeks ago, I found a comment on one of my blog posts discussing DUI and DWI.  The commenter didn’t leave a name, but he/she did link back to the website of another D.C. attorney. I don’t know the lawyer personally but I know of him.  He is a very highly respected criminal and DUI defense attorney in D.C.

The comment wasn’t particularly helpful but, out of professional courtesy, I went ahead and approved it.  Comments are, after all, a good thing.  They show that people are actually reading and thinking about your site. Or so I thought.

A day later, also posted in the early morning hours, there was another comment from the same law office.  I was flattered that this lawyer — or at least someone in his office — was apparently following my website.  I approved the comment but, again, it didn’t really offer anything new or original.  For example, my post was directed at the billboards recently put up by a colleague to advertise his new divorce practice in Texas.  The comment suggested, in effect, that you should put the billboards where people can see them.

I asked Tyler about it – we had gotten together for beers while he was in town – and he just laughed.  You have to understand:  Tyler is very relaxed.  He is also very patient with my ignorance.  He explained to me the concept of “Google juice.”  Each site has some Google juice – or authority — depending on a number of factors.  Google likes juice. If you go onto another site and link a comment back to your own site, that site has leaked a little Google juice – conferred authority, so to speak– to your site.

Was this bad?  Is it a zero-sum game?  No big deal, Tyler said.  But if you’re concerned about it, you can leave the comment.  Just delete the URL address that links the comment back to the other site.

A day or two later, the same person commented again on yet another DUI/DWI entry.  Like the other comments, it was posted at 2:30 in the morning.  Unlike the other comments, however, this comment seemed to miss the point I was making in the original entry.  Instead of adding to my entry, it seemed to be correcting me.  It also misstated the law.

Now I was annoyed.  What lawyer likes to be challenged on an area of the law in which the lawyer considers him/herself to be knowledgeable?

The post also confirmed what I had already suspected:  It was not the D.C. lawyer who was making these comments. This particular lawyer has been practicing criminal law in D.C. for close to 20 years, and he would be far too knowledgeable to make this mistake.  Nor would the D.C. lawyer make general statements about “many states.”  The D.C. lawyer would talk about D.C law.

Instead, someone was clearly posting the comments on his behalf.  Maybe it was an associate or a law student working for his office.  More probably, it was one of those Internet companies that had contacted me, working to improve my colleague’s Google rankings by postings comments linked back to this site all over the Internet.

I guess I will not be using the services of any of these Google-ranking companies.  As always, comments are welcome.

The home office where the world's 2117th-ranked legal blog is written.

I read a New Yorker article a couple of years ago in which the author was tracking sales of his new book on Amazon.com.  While I can’t recall the author’s name or the title of the book, I remember that the book was ranked at well over 1 million on the list of Amazon.com’s best-selling books.  The author became obsessed with improving his book’s ranking.  He found that he could raise his ranking by at least a couple of thousand places every time he ordered a new copy of the book from Amazon.

A week ago, following the advice of a colleague, I listed this blog on the directory for Justia.com, a legal reference and referral service. Like the author of the New Yorker article, I have been obsessively tracking my blog’s ranking on that site ever since.

The directory lists well over 5,000 different legal blogs, categorized both by practice area and by state.  Criminal defense accounts for 368 of those blogs, second only to injury and accident law at 442. While Justia does not reveal the criteria it uses to rank the blogs, I would imagine it uses some combination of longevity (how long the site has been up), depth of content (how many and how detailed the postings are), and popularity (how much traffic the blog receives).

Number 2 on the criminal law list (#3 overall) is a blog called “Sex Offender Issues” that has had almost 700,000 visitors since February 2007.  Number 3 on the list (#6 overall), the “Mortgage Fraud Blog,”  has been posting since October 1999.  Both blogs have added multiple entries within the last couple of days, often several entries in a single day.

The view from the home office where the world's 2117th- ranked legal blog is written.

So where is the Koehler Law blog on this list?  When I first checked four or five days ago, the blog was ranked 171 of the criminal law blogs and 1801 overall.   I posted an entry or two and waited a couple of days.  Two days ago, we had dropped to 189 on the criminal list and 1915 overall.   I made another entry yesterday and found that the free-fall was continuing today.  We are now ranked 212 out of the 368 criminal law blogs and 2117 out of over 5,000 of the blogs overall.

In other words, I have found that the more I post, the lower my rankings go.  This leads me to conclude that the Justia people must be actually reading the blogs to determine the rankings.  It would also explain why the “Best Defense” blog, which has been defunct since January, is ranked at 24 of the criminal law blogs and 163 overall.