The great power of the Internet is the facility with which information can be shared. As a result, we all learning from one another all over the world. So, who are the best thought leaders in the legal community and how do I find them?

Now that I am officially in the blogging world or “blogosphere” as it is more popularly known, I feel compelled to find out who are the leaders of this universe of knowledge. I started by doing a search on Technorati, which Mark Doerschlag of Mark’s Guide kindly pointed out was one of the key directory for blogs. Technorati tracks the links made when bloggers comment on one another’s website. The more bloggers who link to your site and the more links they use, the higher your blog is ranked. After the first week, The Virtual Lawyer has 3 links from 2 blogs and is currently ranked 1,693,770 out of 69.2 million blogs tracked by Technorati (not bad top 3% in just 8 days!). I guess that means there are at least 67 million lower ranked blogs that I don’t have bother reading.

So, of the roughly 1.7 million active blogs (or more if they are not tracked by Technorati), which ones relate to lawyers and how do I find the really good ones? Having no clue, I started by doing a Google search for “best law blogs” and a search for “best law blawgs” came up with a number of great blog review sites. Here are the ones that I found most useful:

Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites: Votes are in: Your top law blogs
The 2006 Weblog Awards: Best Law Blog
Blawg Review: Blawg Review Awards 2006
Blawg Review: BlawgWorld 2006 Review

After looking through some of these reviews, I concluded that the “best” sites were the ones with the legal subject matter I was most interested in. I found the quality and consistency within a blog column varies a lot and that the subject matter can vary alot. The blogs that appeal to me the most are the ones that reflect the author’s true personality. I also like blogs that are highly focused, but have a blogger who is broad minded and minimizes (if not totally avoids) any selling of his or her services.

I learned two more things: (1) there are a number of national luminaries that are universally recognized and applauded as legal bloggers because their names and posts appear the most frequently, and (2) the best way for me to narrow down the list was to find bloggers with similar interests that post a list of their favorite blogs and then cross-reference those favorites with the ones that are “universally recognized” under item (1) above.

Which law blogs do you like the best and why?