Courtesy of Professor Bainbridge is a story about a lawyer and a law firm that did not understand blogs or the blogosphere. By sending a letter demanding a retraction in reply to what they thought was a defamatory post or comment about a client, they unintentionally triggered a viral spreading of both the demand letter and the story about the letter among a multitude of bloggers and readers,  with the net result being that the law firm and lawyer looked silly at best–and all sympathy now lies with the original blogger. So too, the allegedly defamatory statement is now known by a much larger audience. Lesson: fail to understand the blogosphere at your own peril.

UPDATE: I am flattered to say that Carolyn Elefant linked to this post in her commentary about this story in her daily blog watch on law.com here on April 12 (in addition to linking to Prof. Bainbridge’s post.)