Today MinnPost opens a window onto an important segment of our community: the lawyers.

In huge firms and one-person practices, in the state and federal courts, in nonprofits, businesses, legislative bodies and law schools, lawyers and the law have a big impact on public life. The media rarely report on that impact, or how the work gets done, except when the most controversial cases or incidents pop up.

One of the challenges, of course, is finding the right person to uncover and tell the stories. We believe we’ve got a good one for you.

Sam Glover is a lawyer in Minneapolis, specializing in representing consumers in debt cases. 

He created the blog Lawyerist and he has become a nationally prominent blogger about the legal profession — in fact, we discovered him by searching for “Minnesota attorney who blog.” 

Sam also created a consumer law blog — called Caveat Emptor — and he writes a monthly column for Consumerist. He is a frequent speaker on practicing law and he teaches appellate advocacy at the University of Minnesota Law School.

As a group, lawyers do not have the reputation of being great writers, but we were attracted to Sam because he can communicate complicated ideas in plain English.

We’re calling our legal posts Behind the Bar, and we expect to have a fresh post up on the site about once a week.  I hope you’ll read the first piece, join the conversation in the comments, pass along story ideas and spread the word. 

Joel Kramer is CEO and editor of MinnPost.com. He can be reached at jkramer[at]minnpost[dot]com.