I know that I am a recent entrant to the subreddit world. But I think I do have the experience and ability to moderate the CaliforniaLaw subreddit. I have some familiarity with California law but am not a lawyer and am not a lobbyist or an elected official.

My first involvement with the body of law in California is when I assisted Debra Bowen in getting AB 1624 passed in the 1996/1997 session of the state legislature. When this bill became law, it tasked the Legislative Analysts' Office with putting all versions of all bills and all votes and all bill analyses onto a public web site. Well, at the time, it was an ftp site. But it quickly became a web site. The LAO said it would cost $2 million per year to run the web site. I demonstrated a version of the web site on portable computer using a CD with the legislature's dumped data.

I believe the main challege with moderating the subreddit will be two-fold. It should probably not be a channel for people to ask for free legal advice for a particular case. Also, the channel should probably not be a site for attorneys to use to put out free advertisements.

I am, though, very willing to accept guidance on how these things should be done. These things will, of course, not always be clear. For example, a lot of information is put up by legal firms and, at times, these pages are just teasers and do not say very much. But they point to an attorney you can hire. I imagine there would have to be rules that are agreed to about how to handle these situations.

Please let me know if anyone has questions for me.

Ray Kiddy
[email protected]
Dec 16, 2019