Blog Review

So me and Aled have been looking up blogs related to Law. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything to do with teaching Law but I did find:

http://ukcriminallawblog.com/   and http://www.theguardian.com/law/guardian-law-blog

They are both very similar in that they are reporting current legal news. As they are both very similar and offer the same type of posts, we thought it would be pointless to both review just one as we would be saying the same thing and thought it would be more interesting to compare and contrast both blogs to see which we preferred, sicne they both serve the same purpose. Therefore, I have decided to review the Criminal Law Blog and Aled is reviewing the Guardian blog.

This blog is pretty self explanatory - it's about criminal law. 

It has a section concentrated solely on current and high profile cases, as well as sections relating to explanations on areas of the criminal law. It has a an easy to navigate layout. The purpose of the blog, as found on their page*:

*Using the Snipping Tool for the first time, and to think that all this time I've been print screening and pasting to Paint...

Anyway, keeping up to date with topical issues and developments is extremely important for teaching law, as a judgment handed down by the Supreme Court today will alter what you will be teaching to your students tomorrow.

Of course, I could just keep track of the news in order to stay up to date with cases. However, the advantages of this blog is that it explains things in much greater detail and corrects a lot of issues that are sometimes poorly reported in the media. Decisions/judgments are rarely 100% clear and there will always be uncertainty so it's essential to read around and find out what others in the profession are saying about it. Aled has said something similar about the Guardian blog, in that he thinks it's important to read a blog with different authors so as to get a varied opinion. The same can be said for this blog that I'm reveiwing.

Also, it aims to invite discussion on the topics - the comment section can actually be more interesting than the post itself... 

I prefer this blog over the Guardian blog just because the Guardian blog isn't updated regularly - as Aled concludes:
"the Guardian's law blog provides a valuable teaching tool not only for up to date legal issues but also for interesting discussion. This is what I would write if it was 2012. At the minute the blog does provide an interesting selection of opinions but with a lack of recent posts its use is very limited. If it were to start again with frequent posts however I may revise my verdict."
  
Whereas this one is far more frequent and has a wealth of posts overall.


I will definitely be using this blog for keeping track of legal developments - especially when students may ask me about a case that I don't fully understand myself!