4 Great Non-Law Blogs that Help My Appellate Practice

There are some great law blogs out there, and I read many of them daily. But there are also some important blogs that are not intended for lawyers that help to make me a better lawyer. I think that these blogs will help you, too, no matter what your legal specialty is.

Presentation Zen

I have been reading Garr Reynolds’s excellent blog, Presentation Zen, for several years now. Mr. Reynolds is a professional speaker and designer. He’s the author of several books on making excellent presentations and slide design. I am a very different presenter now than I was before I started reading this blog. My slides were once filled with bullet points and, I’m embarrassed to say, virtually paragraphs of text. I have a long way to go, but this blog has helped to make be a better presenter. And many of his principles of design have also helped my writing and the layout of my briefs as well.

Steven Pressfield’s Blog

Appellate lawyers share many of the challenges of other professional writers. While writing it difficult to do, it is often nearly impossible to start writing. Mr. Pressfield’s blog deals with writer’s block and the deeper issues behind it, namely a force he refers to as The Resistance. Mr. Pressfield’s ideas have found their way into the work of other writers, namely Elizabeth Gilbert and Seth Godin. Mr. Pressfield is the author of several novels with military themes as well as the novel that inspired The Legend of Baggar Vance. His blog is very helpful when I find myself doing things other than writing the brief I need to write.

Seth Godin’s Blog

He blogs every day. Like clockwork. And he always has something significant to say. I get his blog via email, and it is the first thing I read in the morning. His books aren’t half bad either.

The Blog of Tim Ferriss

I really like this blog. It’s updated sometimes once or twice a week, seldom everyday. But the posts are meaningful and infinitely practical. Ferriss is all about lifestyle design. And while I have not been able to reduce my workweek to anywhere near four hours, I have learned some good counter-intuitive lessons from his blog over the last few years. He writes about everything form Stoic philosophy to bench pressing.