We are having a blizzard in Boston today. It started around 3 in the morning and is expected to continue for much of the day. I thought I would take a break from snowblowing to finally finish my top ten countdown of my blog and LinkedIn posts of 2025. I had originally targeted the end of January as the latest I wanted to finish the countdown, but work commitments and a host of new developments that I wanted to post about interfered with that not too ambitious goal. So I am going to finish the countdown now, while at least it isn’t yet spring.

Some of you will remember that I made two changes to the rules of the top ten countdown this time around. First, I authorized the judges (me) to use subjective factors in the countdown and not just assign rankings based strictly on the numbers of readers of a given post. This rule is why my post on being named a 2025 Super Lawyer, titled “Up In the Sky, It’s Super Lawyer!” with a picture of a Lego Superman, wasn’t included in my Top Ten countdown, even though the number of readers of the post should have put it squarely in the middle of the countdown. The judges (again I note, me) believed the numbers were inflated by the great picture of a Lego Superman and thus they left it off the countdown.

Second, the rules were altered to include both posts on this blog and my writing on LinkedIn, given that I wrote a number of substantive posts and articles on LinkedIn that, in times past, I would have instead posted on my blog. This did result in a couple of articles and posts that I wrote on LinkedIn making it into the Top Ten this year, such as this one comparing private equity investments in 401(k) plans to milkshakes and this one about what a McDonald’s ad can teach us about using AI in claims handling. (It appears, in hindsight, that I had food on my mind a lot last year).

The two new rule changes for this year’s countdown collided when it came to anointing the number one post in the Top Ten countdown. If I am honest, the most important post I wrote all year on any platform, in my opinion (and remember, I am the only judge for purposes of the countdown), is the one that came in second, a cheat sheet and guide for plan sponsors facing pressure from all directions to open up their 401(k) plans to alternative investments, despite the risk that doing so poses for fiduciaries and sponsors of plans.

And I thought briefly about leapfrogging that post into the number one spot in the countdown. But a different post literally went viral, racking up numbers of readers, viewers and comments that make it impossible to put it in any spot in the countdown other than number one. It’s a LinkedIn post on three things I learned from older lawyers when I was starting out that still guide my handling of settlement discussions, and you can find it here. It’s the Number One post on this blog or LinkedIn of 2025.

If you enjoyed the countdown, subscribe to the blog to make sure you don’t miss my next Top Ten Countdown, coming sometime next January!