A second-year student at Boston College Law School is intentionally doing something that most legal bloggers know better not to do: blog about a client. A key difference here is that the student, Anusia Hirsch, is doing this with the full consent and cooperation of the client, who reads and approves each post before it is published, as well as of her supervising attorneys.

Hirsch started the blog, bclabstudent, in August to chronicle her experiences working at the BC Law Legal Assistance Bureau in Waltham, Mass. She wanted the blog to serve as a guide to other law students considering working at LAB. She soon realized that the most important aspect of LAB was her work with clients, so she wanted to blog about that.

That gave rise to a series of conversations with her supervising attorneys at LAB and with the law school’s communications office. Their goal was to find a way for Hirsch to write about her clients without violating ethical prohibitions against reveal client confidences.

They agreed on this plan by which the client consented to the posts and approves them in advance. Names and identifying information are changed to protect identities.

A spokesperson for BC Law says this is the first law student blog that includes sanitized yet open discussions of client experiences in a sanctioned format such as this.

“This is a big deal,” Hirsch says in her video. “We are testing new waters.”

See her full introduction below.

[Full disclosure: I am a BC Law grad.]

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.