One of the reasons you read this blog is to keep up with developments related to business law and to read commentary on those developments. But how do we, the editors of this blog, keep up with new developments ourselves? What blogs and other sources do we follow?
I realize that, as a law professor, I probably have both more time and perhaps a greater professional obligation to keep up with law-related events and scholarship. And what I read is necessarily idiosyncratic, dependent in part on my particular interests and foibles. For some unknown reason, not everyone is interested in the latest from the SEC's Division of Investment Management. And individual tastes vary; commentators I find interesting and informative, you might find banal, and vice versa.
But, with those disclaimers, here's my list, for what it's worth. I have divided it into four categories: blogs and RSS feeds, subscription services, daily news, and print resources. (Remember print? Those non-electronic things we used to hold in our hands.) I hope you'll find something useful.
Blogs and RSS Feeds
To begin, let me admit that this list is incomplete. I only read blogs that offer RSS feeds. If they won’t deliver it to me, I’m too lazy to seek it out. Second, the order here means nothing; they're in the order in which they appear on my RSS reader. I was too lazy to alphabetize. (Beginning to notice a theme?)
General Law
Wall Street Journal: Law Blog
Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports
Concurring Opinions
Legal Scholarship Blog
Lowering the Bar
Overlawyered
PrawfsBlawg
TaxProf Blog (The non-tax feed only. No tax; I'm not a masochist.)
Volokh Conspiracy
Corporate and Securities Law
SEC Materials (The list of RSS feeds is here.)
Press Releases
Division of Investment Management News
SEC.Gov Updates: Proposed Rules
SEC.gov Updates: What’s New in the Division of Corporation Finance
SEC Actions
FINRA Newsroom
Business Law Prof Blog (Of course! You should read each post 2-3 times a day.)
CLS Blue Sky Law Blog
Conglomerate
Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog
The Conference Board Governance Center Blog
M&A Law Prof Blog
ProfessorBainbridge.com
Securities Law Prof Blog
The D&O Diary
Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog
The Venture Alley
The Race to the Bottom
Truth on the Market
Economics and Accounting
Carpe Diem
Freakonomics
Greg Mankiw’s Blog
Marginal Revolution
The Summa
Business
Business Week.com:
Finance
Small Business
Technology
Top News
Tech Beat
The New Entrepreneur
The Economist (All of its RSS feeds are available here.):
Books and Arts
Business
Finance and Economics
Science and Technology
Special Reports
United States
CNN Money.com: Business and Financial News
Forbes:
Business
Entrepreneurs
Inc.com
Small Business Trends
Harvard Business Review
Robert Salomon’s Blog
Under30CEO
Education
CALI (Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Education) Spotlight
Best Practices for Legal Education
Law School Innovation
Educause Review
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Inside Higher Education:
Blog U
News
Views
General News and Opinions
Just to be complete, here are the other RSS feeds I receive that don't directly relate to what I post on this blog: the Daily Dilbert, Boing Boing, Lifehacker, Slate Magazine, Mental Floss, Reason Magazine, TEDTalks, Wired Top Stories, Dave Barry’s Blog, and NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day. Most of those are guilty pleasures, but all of them except for the NASA picture of the day have at one time or another provided me with something to use professionally. Someday I will find a way to use one of the NASA pictures in class. (I don't think the the Milky Way picture with the "you are here" arrow that I posted on my office door really counts as academic use.) I also subscribe to some local news feeds, but I doubt many of our readers have any interest in Nebraska or Nebraska football, so I’ll leave those out. (Go Huskers!)
Subscriptions
I also have email subscriptions to a number of Bloomberg BNA daily and weekly reports: Broker-Dealer Compliance; Corporate Law & Accountability; Mergers & Acquisitions Law; Securities Law; U.S. Law Week; and White Collar Crime. I also receive two weekly updates provided by Practical Law: Corporate and Securities; and Finance. I also receive a couple of daily reports offered by the Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus and Academe Today. All of these require a paid subscription, unfortunately.
But the best place to keep up with cutting edge legal scholarship is on SSRN, the Social Science Research Network. As I noted in an earlier post, most articles are posted on SSRN long before they are published in print. SSRN offers a number of “e-journals” that include abstracts of, and links to, these articles. I subscribe to the following SSRN e-journals: Corporate and Financial Law: Corporate and Takeover Law: Interdisciplinary Approaches; Corporate Governance; Law and Finance; Law Educator: Courses, Materials & Teaching; Legal Education; Legal History; LLCs, Close Corporations, Partnerships, & Other Private Enterprises; Securities Law.
Just in case I miss something on SSRN, I also subscribe to SmartCILP, a listing of law review publications offered by the law library at the University of Washington. Unfortunately, it's fee-based.
Daily News
Finally, I read the online versions of the Wall Street Journal (subscription required); the New York Times (limited access, but it's easy to get around); and CNN.com, in addition to my local papers, on a daily basis. I also look at Google News from time to time.
Print Resources
Not all of my reading is online. I still read a few print journals that either don’t publish digitally or that our law library doesn’t have digital subscriptions to: the Business Lawyer; the National Law Journal; the American Lawyer; the Securities Regulation Law Journal; and the Review of Commodities and Securities Regulation. But, as I have mentioned earlier, most of my reading is now straight off the computer. Few print resources find their way to my in-box anymore.
What Am I Missing?
That's it. It looks a little overwhelming, but it can't be that bad because I don't work that hard (remember the lazy theme above?) and I keep up with it.
I hate to throw out this question, because I really don't want to add to my list. (Once again, not the parenthetical theme.) But if you regularly read something online that I’m missing, feel free to add it in a comment. And I’m also hoping my co-bloggers will chime in to add to the list.
(Correction: In an earlier version of this post, I implied that SSRN e-journal subscriptions are free. They generally are, for those with an institutional account, but many of them are fee-based if you don't have an institutional account.)