Networking, marketing, information sharing, conversation, and collaboration: no other online tool delivers more for professionals than the blog.

If discovering how to make the most of blogging is at the top of your list of New Year’s resolutions, then I hope you’ll join my colleague Tammy Lenski and me for “Building Buzz with Blogs: Internet Marketing for Dispute Resolution Professionals (Even If You’re Not a Geek!)“, a teleseminar to be held on four consecutive Mondays in January 2007, from 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. ET., beginning Monday, January 8. Click here to register.

(If you register by the end of the day today, December 31, 2006, you’ll receive the early bird discount. Side benefit: you’ll get to cross one item off that lengthy list!)

My friend Stephanie West Allen, who publishes Idealawg, one of my favorite stops on the internet, together with Julie Fleming Brown of Life at the Bar, came up with Lawyers Appreciate…, an inspired way to close out the year by creating the space for a chorus of voices around the legal blogosphere to express their appreciation.

I was tagged by another friend, Bob Ambrogi. Although it’s far too late to tag three successors as protocol requires, I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute my own appreciation.

As I reflect on the past year and contemplate the arrival of the new one in just a few hours, what I appreciate tremendously right now–as lawyer, as mediator, and as human being–is the community that surrounds me. In the real world where I spend so much of my time, friends, colleagues, and neighbors sustain me. And out here in cyberspace, blogging has brought me in touch with remarkable individuals who inspire me, encourage me, enlighten me, and, most wonderfully, can make me smile.

I appreciate you all–fellow bloggers, readers, friends. Happy new year to you all.