---
name: author-attribution
description: 38% of the published blog is credited to a non-lawyer, and no data anywhere records who actually wrote it
metadata:
  type: project
---

# The blog's biggest author is not a lawyer

Published-post attribution, by WordPress user:

| Credited author | Posts | Is a lawyer? |
|---|---:|---|
| **Janice Williams** | **103** | **No** — runs the blog, does not practise |
| Darren Williams | 96 | Yes |
| Georgia Lockhart | 59 | Yes |
| Andrew Broadley | 9 | Yes |
| Matthew Melnyk | 5 | Yes |

**So 103 of 272 published posts — 38% of the blog — are credited to the person
who published them rather than the person who wrote them.** Confirmed with Rian
2026-08-10: Janice is Darren's wife and runs the blog; she is deliberately not
getting a lawyer record.

## Why this matters

The AI Search Optimization add-on's headline promise is authorship tagging that
connects **each lawyer to the articles they wrote**, so twelve years of writing
finally accrues to the people who wrote it. **That promise cannot be delivered
for 38% of the library without deciding who the real author is.** It is the
difference between the add-on working and it quietly crediting the office
administrator for a third of the firm's expertise.

## There is no hidden data to rescue

Checked, so nobody re-checks:

- **Molongui adds no correction.** Its `_molongui_main_author` values match
  `post_author` exactly on every published post — it mirrors WordPress rather
  than overriding it. Nothing is lost when the plugin is removed (except the two
  guest authors, see [[guest-authors]]).
- **No in-content bylines.** Zero of the 103 posts contain a "by <lawyer name>"
  string in the body.

## But re-attribution is cheap, because the topics cluster hard

Janice-credited posts by category:

| Category | Posts |
|---|---:|
| Estate Law | 73 |
| Wills and Estates | 70 |
| Estate Planning | 68 |
| Estate Disputes | 38 |
| Personal Injury (both cats) | 31 |
| everything else | ≤5 each |

(Categories overlap on the same posts.) The content is **overwhelmingly estate
law**. So this does not need a 103-row spreadsheet from the client — it needs a
handful of answers like *"who wrote the estate content between 2014 and 2020?"*,
applied by category and date range, with a spot-check pass afterwards.

## How to handle it

Raise it **when the add-on is confirmed**, not before — it is add-on scope, not
base scope. Frame it to the client as a question about a topic cluster rather
than a list of articles. Anything genuinely unattributable is better credited to
the firm than to a non-practising staff member.

Related: [[guest-authors]].