Web week

The Lawyer's Web Week is a weekly commentary on legal activity on the web. This includes an overview of the best of the week's blogs. If you want to direct us to useful links, email webweek@ thelawyer. com.

•The motorcycle diaries
The law blogging community caters for every niche. Lawyers all around the world can discuss every possible practice you could think of.

The blog of Norman Gregory Fernandez (www.bikerlaw blog.com) is a good example. It is a mix of motorbike law analysis and safety tips, brought together by the tough writing style of Fernandez, who runs his own law firm.

Fernandez is a family law and personal injury specialist, who has managed to combine his hobby and his job.

Here's how he describes himself: "Mr Fernandez is a trial lawyer and a real biker. When you go to biker events in California you will see the so-called motorcycle and biker lawyers working the booths.

"You will not see Mr Fernandez working booths at biker events, because he actually rides to the events. Mr Fernandez currently rides a Harley Davidson Electra Glide Custom, and has owned many other motorcycles in the past."

It can only be a matter of weeks before some bright spark at DLA Piper spots the gap in the market and pitches up to Mipim on a Harley.

•Fast sued
There is a culinary theme going on at irreverent IP site Patently Silly (www.patently silly.com), which is always on the ball when it comes to ridiculous inventions that have been granted patents.

The McDonald's patent for "method and apparatus for making a sandwich" is hard to beat for shear legal overkill. Imagine Jamie Oliver saying: "The food worker removes the sandwich filling 38, which may be cold or unheated, from a refrigerated source, for example, from the flash steamer, and places it on top of sandwich S optionally with cheese 42." Mouthwatering.

Remember, always consult your local IP litigator before making a cheese sandwich at home. The last thing you need is an expensive patent dispute against McDonald's.

•Sound advice
Avid readers may remember a report some weeks ago about the first-ever law blog conference in Europe, organised by Geeklawyer and Ruthie (http://blog.geeklawyer.org/).

By all accounts the conference itself was a big success, pulling together the leading lights of the legal blogging community.

For those that couldn't make it on 18 May, Geeklawyer has uploaded an MP3 of the event. But you might want to splash out on some Bose headphones before you press play. Geeklawyer warns: "The recording is a bit poor: it sounds like the Sermon on the Mount recorded from half a mile away, against the wind and with a huge discontented audience."

•Pissd opportunity
It's always hard to find the right title to sum up a particularly broad blog, particularly when the marketplace is crowded with voices.

Bob Kraft, a lawyer specialising in personal injury and social security disability (PISSD) has that problem. With his blog (www.pissd.com), it's quite obvious that Kraft hasn't given much thought to how the title of his blog might sound outside the US.

He introduces his blog as an opportunity for readers to "Learn Why Bob Kraft's PISSD".

Bob says: "The title of this blog reflects my attitude toward those government agencies and insurance companies that routinely mistreat injured or disabled people."

So, it's nothing about where he plans to spend Friday night.

•Cottage industry
You'd think that a two-year stint as managing director of Fulham FC would put DLA Piper partner Michael Fiddy off football for life.

But he's back in the beautiful game, helping fan website www.myfootballclub.co.uk realise its dream of owning a professional football club.

The site wants 50,000 people to pay £35 each to buy a club, with Fiddy advising on the possible takeover.

So far the site has attracted 29,000 members, building up an acquisition fund of £1.4m.

Top of the wish list is Leeds United, with Fulham just missing out on a place in the top 15 - nothing new there then.1. Clifford Chance PEP rockets 25 per cent to hit £1m2. Linklaters signs multimillion-pound outsourcing deal3.Freshfields matches CC as PEP tops £1m4.Frankie goes to Bristows5.Falconer: tardy litigators will be fired6.Universal Pictures rejigs UK legal department7. Associated Newspapers settles over Knightley anorexia claim8.Lovells, DWS rebuff King's Cross threat9.Sidley raids Dewey for M&A insurance team10.Judges absent from MoJ launch party