AACPLL Blog 2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2010. That’s about 5 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 46 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 57 posts. There were 42 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 60mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was October 1st with 50 views. The most popular post that day was New Maryland Cell Phone Law and More — effective October 1, 2010.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were circuitcourt.org, twitter.com, micheladrien.blogspot.com, ow.ly, and aacpll.pbworks.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for new maryland foreclosure law 2010, maryland mandatory cle, new foreclosure laws in maryland 2010, new maryland laws october 2010, and pro bono lawyers in anne arundel county.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

New Maryland Cell Phone Law and More — effective October 1, 2010 September 2010

2

Anne Arundel County Attorneys and the AACPLL Partner to Provide Pro Bono Legal Services at the 3rd Annual Anne Arundel County Homeless Resource Day March 2010
2 comments

3

New Maryland Foreclosure Laws and Rules June 2010

4

Social Media Use by Government and Courts March 2010

5

About the Anne Arundel County Public Law Library September 2009

Social Media and the Courts: CTC2009

Keynote speaker, Ari Shapiro, NPR Justice Correspondent, did a great job making the case for the use of social media like Twitter, blogs and Facebook by the courts.  You can hear for yourself how (Twitter to announce new court opinions) and why (public interest and transparency) courts should make use of these new technologies.  The video replay is already available on the CTC 2009 Blog through the NCSC CTC Conference Video Streams.

The program, The Role of Social Networking Tools for the Courts, continued the social networking topic.  The speakers, both from LexisNexis, Christine O’Clock and Travis Olson, started with the basics by defining and describing three of these new technologies, blogs, Twitter and Facebook.  But first they dealt with the why.  They cited a number of reasons: people trust the more personal word of mouth information, people are already talking about the court, awareness in order to avoid pitfalls, traditional media is being replaced by social media and engagement for the development of better relationships with the legal community and the public.

Blogs can bring new audiences for court information resulting in a better understanding of the courts by the public.  Blogs are not as static as a website and can be updated quickly and frequently and can put a more personal face on the court.  The Las Vegas Clark County blog was presented as good example of a court blog.

Twitter was described a great way to listen to the world around you.  It allows for the broadcast of real time announcements and can be used to drive awareness to other sites and tools.  They liked the way the Superior Court of Fulton County Georgia(@FultonCourtInfo) had announcements and real time information on Twitter that linked to the court blog and website.  A search for CTC tweets brought up the tweets of law librarian richards1000 who was recognized for his contributions in the legal Twitter sphere.

Facebook can present the courts perspective, discuss and listen.  New Jersey courts are on Facebook where they have links to news, photos from court events, announcements and links to Youtube videos.

The program concluded with a discussion of how social technology can be implemented for judges, court administration, PR offices and Clerks of Court.  All should make awareness and self education the first step.  It is a good practice to monitor the technolgies for discussions of court cases or issues.  Judges’ awareness allows the specific mention of the use of social media by jurors and witnesses and to develop media access policies.  In addition, court adminstration can develop internal staff use policies and create a strategic plan for outreach to increase court transparency using social media.  PR departments could add social media to the press release list.  The clerk’s office can post announcements, spotlight frequently asked questions or create a tour of the court’s work flow.

The best way to learn about these new technologies is to jump right in and sign up and see how it all works for yourself.