Hijacked and Hoodwinked

I wanted to thank fellow blogger Cliff Tuttle at Pittsburgh Legal Back Talk and everyone else who wondered what the heck happened to the nutmeglawyer legal blog. I appreciate your concern and am sincerely humbled you noticed I went missing from the blogosphere. (It should be noted, however, that I went AWOL at the end of September and Cliff didn't send a search party until December.  I imagine this is what happened to the Donner party).   

Like many writers, I ran into a little writer's block. As a result, I took a self imposed sabattical to find myself.  Taking a page from Hemingway, I ran with the bulls of Pamplona and then set adrift on the sea in search of swordfish and Cuban cigars.  I hopped freight trains across America, traversed the deep jungles of Africa and climbed the highest Himalayan peaks in search of inner peace with Tibetan monks. 

Ok. Ok.  Truth be told, I rarely made it off the couch.  Frankly, work just got a little too busy.  So busy, in fact, that I apparently allowed my blog's domain name to be snatched right from under my nose.  



It was my own fault.  I had registered my domain name with a third party company.  I had set up automatic renewal with the registration.  In the mean time, my visa card reached its expiration date and I did not update the information.  The third party company never notified me that my domain was about to expire.  On the day my domain expired, it was surreptitiously picked up by a company who makes its living reselling pilfered domain names.  I could purchase my domain back through an auction or purchase it outright for a surprisingly large fee.  I could also hire a domain expert to negotiate a price.  

I considered it.  I spent years building up my legal blog and was proud of the results.  I had posts republished in law journals across the country.  I had been selected as an ABA Law Journal Top 100 legal blog.  As a result of my blog, my law practice grew.  I was invited to speak on panels and was often contacted by local press to discuss various topics of interest.  All of that work down the digital drain as some carpetbagger swooped in on my illustrious success.  Google was littered with links to nutmeglawyer.com. Now, visitors to my former site were met with a search engine for lawyer services.  

So do I pay thousands of dollars to retrieve my small plot of land in the digital landscape?  Absolutely not.  Good luck unloading nutmeglawyer.com  Besides me, who in their right mind would want to purchase it.   (As I write this I imagine there is some Caribbean barrister preparing to expand his law practice which happens to involve representing spice companies)   

I just couldn't bring my self to pay the blackmailer's ransom.  I would rather hire Liam Neeson to find the people who are holding my domain name hostage.  Until then, I'll just add "the" to nutmeglawyer and register a new domain name.  So with that, I welcome you to thenutmeglawyer.com    As always, I appreciate your support and look forward to many more years of ramblings, spelling mistakes, typographical errors, and general grousing about law practice.