Ch Ch Ch Changes

With EDD Update now more than a year old, Sean Doherty & I are considering how we can continue to improve it, to make it an increasingly valuable resource to you -- our readers. As mentioned below in a prior post, we encourage and invite you to send us your ideas and critiques.

But we've already decided to adopt a significant change: we are going to remove the requirement that EDD Update authors be a member of either the Law.com tech board or the Law Technology News edit board.

Why? For several reasons. Among them -- we strongly believe that this blog can provide a vehicle for new, fresh voices. While we very much value the expertise of established experts -- and want to invite more -- we also want to be sure that we are identifying new leaders, and providing a forum for them as well. Michael Arkfeld has been among those who have worried that there are not enough young voices in litigation support. We want to help.

Also fueling this desire was this fall's dismal reports about the lack of diversity in our legal community -- and embarrassing gender gaps in pay. We are committed to involving more women and minorities in our publications and efforts.

With those forces in mind, Sean and I have decided to open up our roster of authors. While we've always encouraged everyone to comment and join discussions -- but that's not the same as being an author. And hopefully, being an author can help bring attention not only to the great content we are producing, but to the great people who are contributing that content -- and help them thrive in their careers.

We still will restrict authors to non-vendors (with 600+ EDD vendors out there, it would be impossible to choose without inciting bloodshed). But vendors are, of course, encouraged to actively participate via our comments feature.

So -- we invite you to nominate candidates to join our team of authors. And yes, of course, please nominate yourself if you are interested. We're going to limit the blog to 40 authors for now. Send your nominees to either of us: monica.bay@incisivemedia.comorsean.doherty@incisivemedia.com