Readers, as I have for the past two years, I am asking you to nominate Letters Blogatory for the ABA’s Blawg 100, its list of the 100 best legal blogs. Your votes and support put me over the top last year, and I am hoping we can do it again in 2013.

Here’s a short list of reasons why you should support this blog with your nomination.

• Citizen Journalism. Letters Blogatory brings you in-depth coverage of significant cases such as the Lago Agrio case and the Belfast Project case. I’ve gone beyond just covering the courts’ decisions: in my FOIA case, I’ve worked to bring interesting and timely information to light.
• International Reporting. Through the IJA Brigade and through my own work, I try to bring you significant cases from around the world. In the past year I’ve covered decisions from Canada, the UK, the European Court of Justice, Ecuador, Greece, and Germany, in addition to my usual comprehensive coverage of the US cases.
• Other Writing. My work on Letters Blogatory—and your support of the blog—contributes directly to some other writing I’ve done in the past year, including the chapter on service of process for the forthcoming ABA treatise on international aspects of US civil litigation, a paper on comity to be published in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, and a paper still in the works on service by e-mail under the Hague Service Convention.
• Comprehensive US Coverage. I don’t think you’ll find more comprehensive coverage of international judicial assistance in the US courts anywhere, period. In addition to bringing you the case of the day nearly every business day of the year, I’ve taken steps to try to make what is by now a pretty large database of cases even more useful to you by coding the cases so that you can search by court and by statutory or treaty provision, or rule of procedure, construed. The search functionality is still a work in progress, and I haven’t finished the coding, but when it’s done, Letters Blogatory will be even more useful to readers than it is today.
• Advocacy for Private International Law In The United States. American lawyers, by reputation, are not very savvy about international law generally, let alone private international law or the law of international judicial assistance. If Letters Blogatory has a mission, it’s to try to change this by publishing clear explanations of the cases for a legal audience and by refusing to pull punches when a judge or a lawyer gets it wrong. I’m aiming to demystify service of process abroad, gathering evidence across borders, and similar topics for my fellow American lawyers.

So there you have it—my case for your nomination! I’d be grateful for your support. Thank you as always for reading Letters Blogatory, and don’t forget to vote! Nominations close on August 9, 2013 at 11 pm UTC.