Starting something from scratch, you don’t know if it’ll be successful. You kind of know or you wouldn’t have tried the darn thing to start with.
The latest is the Library at LexBlog which I started, with a small team this year. Others thought it crazy, but I see it as having the potential to be the most meaningful thing I’ll do and that they’ll get to work on.
Thursday was one of those shout “Yes.”moments.
I’d been emailing legal professionals letting them know their blog was included in the Open Legal Blog Archive, backed by my company, LexBlog. I let them know if there was anything we could ever do for them to just holler.
I got an email back from Robert Connolly, a career antitrust prosecutor who spent thirty-three years with the DOJ’s Antitrust Division and has written the blog, Cartel Capers since leaving.
“Thanks for your message. Unless I get a sudden burst of energy, or the DOJ begs to bring cartel cases again, I have all but shut down Cartel Capers.”
That’s crazy, Bob’s blog changed the law.
Judge Richard Posner quoted Cartel Capers at length in Motorola Mobility v. AU Optronics, 775 F.3d 816, 826-27 (7th Cir. 2015).
I emailed Bob back, “I’d like to archive and preserve your publishing in the Library at LexBlog, which we’re building, with AI, for the preservation and structure for citation of the digital authoritative works of legal professionals.”
Bob responded:
“It’s pretty cool what you’re doing. Thanks.
One of the things I’m most happy about with respect to the blog is the small role it might have had in finally persuading the Antitrust Division to adopt some form of whistleblower rewards program. The first of well more than a dozen blog posts I wrote on the need for a criminal antitrust whistleblower statute was in 2018. … On July 8, 2025, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division finally announced a Whistleblower Rewards Program. … To be sure, I was not the only one encouraging the Division to find a way to have a Whistleblower Program, but I was probably the most persistent.
I don’t fully understand the tech behind my blog, but I believe that when I stop paying GoDaddy to host it, the blog will disappear.”
I emailed back, “I let out a hoot, “Yes,” when I read your last email. Not that your blogging days have necessarily ended, but because I now sense that what I’ve been pouring my heart into this last year is going to work. That is to preserve and structure the authoritative published works of legal professionals like yours for citation. You can leave a legacy and know that your publishing can shape and influence the law and those accessing it.”
AI, and a dream to serve people.