Blogs are touted as being on the cutting edge of publishing, but employment lawyer Richard Cohen uses the platform because he’s an old-school lawyer who just wants to write.

Richard Cohen
Richard Cohen

“I’m sort of an old-school guy, and when I came to Fox Rothschild 8 years ago, I thought I could write,” said Cohen. “I wrote some articles, and the firm was getting them publishers. I was writing too many articles for the staff to have time to get other people’s articles published. So they just said, ‘Why don’t you start your own blog?’ The rest is history.”

Cohen admitted that he didn’t know what a blog was before joining Fox Rothschild, but he’s found his perfect niche in the Employment Discrimination Report. With over 35 years of corporate litigation experience, he considers employment discrimination an interest of his and can remember his first case within that niche.

“My first federal jury trial in 1978 and it involved a race discrimination case,” he said. “I’ve tried a lot of those cases, and it’s sort of a subspecialty of mine. I’m fascinated by civil rights generally and discrimination law.”

What sets Cohen’s blog apart from other employment and labor law blogs is that reader comments become posts themselves – like if obesity should be considered a disability and when service dogs can be allowed in the workplace. With his readers mostly being other employment lawyers or those who work in human resources, Cohen draws on their comments for insights, post ideas and even debate.

“[The readers] are very knowledgeable in their field, and it gives me all sides of the debate,” said Cohen. “It’s interesting pitting different views against each other and coming out with something that might be best practices. I think the reader enjoys it too because it’s more entertaining.”

Overall, Cohen appreciates the comments because it gives him more insight on how individual laws and cases impact the workplace. The reader feedback, however, didn’t happen immediately once he started the blog with other Fox Rothschild employment lawyers in 2010.

“When I started writing less stiffly and as a lawyer would, I got comments in and found that the comments themselves really hone the blog and the topic,” he said. “It became in a way this sort of lifeblood of my blog. It kept me on the straight and narrow. If I made any mistakes were quickly corrected.”

He calls what he has with his readers a symbiotic relationship and writes towards their interests. But every once in a while he gets off the topic of just employment discrimination to have some fun. One of his favorite posts was about how an Australian women managed to receive workers compensation after having a chandelier fall on her in an after-hours liaison.

“The case was just too juicy not to write about. I had like 2,000 people read it. It came to mind because the number of readers shot up, and I guess I realized what Rupert Murdoch did – headlines do sell,” said Cohen about his post Sexual Intercourse While Swinging From a Motel Chandelier: Employer Held Liable for Injuries Sustained.

While Cohen wouldn’t advise law bloggers to turn their blogs into a tabloid, he does recommend lawyers have fun with their writing:

“I’d advise them to pick a topic that they really enjoy writing about and really enjoy reading about. Number two, learn from the give and take with the readers and not to write like a lawyer, but write more like a journalist. Make it a little more lively.”