As the curry stains are being wiped and the dregs of rioja shaken from the bottle, Ruthie reflects on the outcome of first European law blogging conference, and firstly remains astounded that so many people including influential members of the blogging community attended, and secondly that the day passed off seemingly without a hitch.
A big thank you to Charlotte at CPA Global who did so much of the administration and for her assistance throughout the day. Particular thanks to our speakers, the venerable Professor Jeremy Phillips of IPKAT, Justin Patten of Human Law, Charon QC and Headshift consultancy. Wooden spoon to Conflict of Laws who never showed up.
A further thank you to Rupert White at the Law Society Gazette for his sterling efforts in promoting IT within the legal community, and indeed for bringing Ruthie and Geeklawyer together by promoting this blog in the Gazette 18 months ago.
For everyone who made the effort to turn up, and in particular: Head of Legal, Family Lore, Binary Law, IMPACT, Corporate Blawg, Liadnan, Square Mile Law (apologies for any blogs I have missed out).
A further thank you to our sponsors, the Law Society Gazette, Freeth Cartwright (yes Alex I will send you the photos of me in leathers, OK?) and CPA Global. And a big thank you to my boss, Andrew, who not only tolerates my blogging but attended the conference.
Law Blog 2008 is already being mooted and we have also had a suggestion for a Geeklawyer Christmas Party and a Ruthie calendar. 
That phrase...
The wooden spoon for Martin at Conflictoflaws appears to be well deserved since I got no email from him cancelling. However it is a bit rich you dishing out wooden spoons when the biggest and most wooden of the wooden spoons is for you: for failing to wear your pink leathers
I don’t buy all this bollocks about it being heavy …
Bugger, sorry - thought I’d sent the email (in my defence, I have been neither sleeping nor eating in order to mark 250+ exam scripts in 5 days.) Apologies for letting you down.
I’m glad to hear it went well. If and when you have another shindig, I will most definitely be attending. In the meantime, just send the wooden spoon to the School of Law, University of Birmingham…
GL / Ruthie - a genuine well done! Impressively organised and a great pleasure to attend and meet everyone…
I am going to be drinking a bit of Rioja later at The Swan - and will write up a review for my blog!
Glad you had a good time - I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I will write a full report on the conference and put it in a post but also on the conference page. This will be one occasion when I think it right to duplicate a Ruthie post.
Thanks to both of you for organising an excellent conference - it was a lot of fun, and I learned things too. Please do moot, and more than moot, LawBlog 2008.
Many thanks from me as well - most enjoyable and interesting work day I’ve spent out of the office in ages!
Thanks John,
and BTW I liked your review but I was pretty sure that nobody else noticed the sexual chemistry/tension between Ruthie and myself. It appears I was wrong
Yeah, I’m the sexy, you’re the tension.
Congratulations Geeklawyer & Ruthie for organising the event…I enjoyed it - I hope you organise one for the next year.
Indeed, this was the icebreaker, next year should see you delivering something like the Law Firm 2.0 conference, a mix of cases studies (this year’s were IPKat and Geeklawyer by Ruth), infodumps (Charon) and smart vendor/analyst lectures (Headshift).
I should also say out loud, i.e. on here, that it was a pleasure for the Gazette to be involved.
Two things that made me smile more than normal: I didn’t know my writing about legal blogging was the reason for the Ruth/Geek connection, and I was really touched when Family Lore blogger told me he took up the pastime after reading about it in the Gaz.
Such things do occasionally make journalism seem worthwhile after reading the latest pay figures for Clifford Chance…
I didn’t know my writing about legal blogging was the reason for the Ruth/Geek connection..
We are in the middle of a bit of a domestic (trying not let it leak onto the blog for a change) so it might be best not to remind her of your culpability
domestic? You’ve been so rude to me for so long I thought this was normal…
Yea, but rude in a loving and supportive manner.
Life is short and Ruthie knows enough rich people who are bloody miserable to work out that money does not necessarily bring happiness. How wonderful to be able to look back on your life and know that you have made real positive difference to other people’s lives and by promoting IT actually doing something to promote understanding and communication across the profession as a whole. As opposed to working 18 hours a day in a commercial firm making rich companies richer. I note that the more I deal with large sums of money the less overall difference to anything I seem to make…
money does not necessarily bring happiness.
True. But as I have observed before: it brings a comfortable style of misery.
Yeah, but 80K for a couple of years’d really help me buy a flat in London, you know? A good friend of mine was at two different City firms (obviously not at the same time, as I’m sure there’s some kind of law firm bigamy thing) and is now a secondary school teacher. Never been happier. Or poorer. The difference in salaries is something like 70K, or something obscene like that.
At the same time people apparently want to rebuild the Cutty Sark. This will cost around £25m or more. You can buy a country hospital for that. Think about it.
Apologies for not making the actual conference but it was great to meet the select group that went for dinner. Will look out for the DVD if one should be produced!
I’m gutted that I couldn’t make it but at least Alexio got to go. He won’t admit it but he learnt all his IT skills from me (well, mostly).
Do it again next year!
Oddly, I seem to recall him saying, in the pub, he taught you everything you knew about Geekery and IT law.
Honest. Not inventing stuff & stirring at all
Belated but effusive thanks to Geek and Ruthie for pulling off an informative and sociable event. Looking forward to next year.