“Judges have discovered the Internet’s 600 legal blogs,” begins a story in last week’s National Law Journal. That number stopped me cold. Of this I am sure: there are far more than 600 legal blogs. Problem is, no one knows precisely how many.

Way back in February 2005, a publishing executive sent me an e-mail asking if I could tell him the number of legal blogs. At that time, I looked at the blogs listed on Blawg.org, which then had 747 links (today up to 1,397), at the blogs listed by Denise Howell at Bag and Baggage, which numbered around 600, and at the blogs listed on Blawg Ring, which had 597 blogs (today up to 699). Estimating that all of these were underinclusive, I guesstimated the number of legal blogs as of February 2005 at being at least 1,000.

Over a particularly rainy weekend in May 2005, I decided to pursue this more methodically. I created a spreadsheet and began to build a list of every legal blog. I hit 1,000 before the sun came out and I decided there were better ways to spend my time.

So, if in May 2005, there were at least 1,000 legal blogs that I documented, and knowing that I did not hit all of them even then, and this being more than a year later, and it having been a year in which every day continued to bring new legal blogs, I have to believe the number is upwards of 2,000.

Thoughts? Headcounts?

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.