This site began in 1997 to promote the consumer/business bestseller Dancing With Lawyers: How to Take Charge and Get Results a book focused on getting the desired results from lawyers and law firms. I added some legal articles I’d written for newspapers, and fleshed out some emails into online articles and information, linked from the left-side column, including one article about defamation.
The emails started pouring in with questions about slander and libel, so the webmaster bugged me to write a guide on defamation of character. That was published in 2003 as Fighting Slander (since then updated and in fourth edition). It didn’t solve the webmaster’s problem, because the visitors started buying the book and asking for more information. Over the years defamation victims began calling for consultations on practical remedies, and then law firms began contacting me for expert opinion and litigation consulting. Now I've added an expert witness page.
Background: I’m not a lawyer. My legal experience comes through managing lawyers in business (book and software publishing, media, real estate, manufacturing, services, etc.), writing contracts, occasional litigation, law school classes and a lot of reading, and the research I did before writing hundreds of articles and columns for newspapers, syndicates, and magazines. I’ve also appeared on several hundred or perhaps a thousand law-related radio/TV interviews ranging from Smalltown to the BBC, and acted as technical advisor in internet-related lawsuits and an expert witness in defamation cases.
PS. After 20 years of routinely acting as my own lawyer, I don’t have any qualms about writing legal guides. However, because I never took the bar exam, I can’t legally answer emails about specific legal questions. That would be the Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL), and the bar associations would soon be complaining. No, they don’t complain about teenagers giving out legal advice in online forums – but teenagers get a free pass.
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