Newstex publishers' stories: Dan Harris of Harris Sliwoski

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The basics

Tell us a little about yourself.

Dan Harris of Harris Sliwoski: Sure. I'm an international lawyer, and for the last 20-plus years, I have mostly been helping American and European companies navigate China. 

So you have like a bunch of amazing blogs at Harris Sliwoski, but your baby is the China Law Blog, right?

Dan Harris: Right. We have the China Law Blog, which has been around since 2006. 

What is your favorite book and why?

Dan Harris: Well, I first have to confess that I don't read that many books because I have to have my nose so often in law books. I tend to watch TV shows and movies. But my favorite book is Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory Since 1936 and it's my favorite book in large part because it's actually the last book I read, and I read it while living in Spain, and it taught me a lot about Spanish culture. It is about a country's memory and past influences, and how those things impact a country's present and future. And I often find myself thinking about this book, usually when someone says something that makes me think how we Americans know so little about history and how this lack of knowledge perpetuates, or exacerbates, so many of the problems. The United States is currently facing it. Obviously I'm not the first person to say this, but not knowing the past is not a good thing. And this book really deals with that issue.

What do you consider to be your career highlights?

Dan Harris: Well, that would have to be starting a law firm. I'm terrible with dates, but I think it started maybe in 2000 or 2003, and I'm very proud of the fact that we're still going. We employ about 50 people around the world. We give people jobs, we pay them well. That's a good feeling, and that's definitely my career highlight.

What is the future of Harris Sliwoski?

Dan Harris: We just had a retreat in Austin, Texas and talked about that. The future is to keep growing, keep expanding, keep doing what we're doing. We have a lot of goals. One is to become less Asia-focused and more North American-, Central American-, and South American-focused because we see that as the future.

What do you do when not working?

Dan Harris: I spend a lot of time with my family. I am a recent grandparent to the cutest granddaughter in the world–she turned about a month [old] today. I love watching movies; I'm a huge movie buff. I watch TV series. I constantly read and watch the news. I work out pretty much every day. I walk just about everywhere. It's kind of funny because our house has a Japanese-style four-car garage, two front, two back. But we have only one car, and it's because we walk everywhere. I have all my meetings at a place where I walk to. It's about 2.5 miles away. I went there yesterday, and it was a really hot day. The person I met said, “Can I give you a ride home?” And I said, “No, no, I can't accept that.” So I walked home. I walk a ton. I love doing that with my AirPods on, listening to music, or calling people and just doing that to stay in shape.

I love traveling. I was a French major in college, and I spent a year in school in France as a kid, but I always felt like it wasn't the most practical language, so I'm always trying to work on my Spanish. So I try to go places where that's possible.

How do you feel about your Spanish?

Dan Harris: Well, it's frustrating because I learned French when I was 10 in France. And so I can go to Paris, where they never compliment anyone on their French. And they compliment me on my French because I have an accent that I acquired when I was young. My French vocabulary has declined every year since I was 10 years old, so I can't even speak it that well, but I get complimented on it. But I cannot really nail a really good Spanish accent. So whenever an Uber driver says that I speak Spanish well, I always say, “You're really good at lying.” Oftentimes they'll say, “You may not speak it that well, but I can always understand what you're trying to say.” So that I think is the level that I'm at. I can speak with Uber drivers, but I certainly cannot practice law in Spanish.

Pros and cons of publishing

How would you describe your publication in three words?

Dan Harris: Three words, OK. I'd say international. Five years ago, I would have said China, now it's international because there are a lot of deals with leaving China. I'd say informative, because that's really the goal. I mean, we have a mission statement that I haven't looked at for probably 10 years, but it basically says we're not writing like highfalutin’ lawyers. We're trying to help people understand how to navigate China. 

And starting in around 2017, I would add the word ‘provocative’ because starting in around 2017, we started saying “get out of China, China's over and done with.” Hong Kong's the same thing. And that made a lot of people very angry, but it's turned out to all be true. I did a blog post, I think it was in 2018 or 2019, with a picture of a doughnut with a fork going into it that said, Hong Kong is over, stick a fork in it. It's done as an international business center. And one of the things I said was that lawyers are gonna stop writing Hong Kong as the place to arbitrate their contracts. So many people got mad at me. I even got death threats. I'm not kidding because a lot of people's livelihoods were at stake. People called me stupid, all these things. Just today, a reporter for Nikkei, the leading Japanese newspaper, sent me an article he wrote and said, I think you might be interested in this, and it's an article saying that companies and lawyers are not putting Hong Kong in their contracts anymore. And so I feel like saying, “Hey, all you people who were mean to me, I told you, you were wrong, I was right.” But I'll try to do it in a nice way.

What motivated you to start creating content?

Dan Harris: We started in 2006, and a good friend of mine had read about blogging. He spent about an hour convincing me that blogging would be the future for law firms like mine. Early on, my motivation was really to spread the name of our law firm and what we were doing with China. Because before we started doing a lot with China, we were doing a lot with Russia. And Russia tanked after 9/11, and I found that everybody was interested in China. I knew if we could get the word out that we were doing this work, work would come in. But what I found when I started the blog was that it was also great for stimulating conversation about what was back then a resurgent and hopeful China. Everybody was optimistic. Americans were optimistic about China. Europeans were optimistic about China. The Chinese people were optimistic about China. They were really heady times.

Where do you do your research for content creation?

Dan Harris: Maybe I shouldn't confess this, but I do virtually no research because nearly all our blog posts come from the news that I read or from what readers send to me. A long time ago, I instituted a rule that any time we heard from three different people that something was happening, we would write about it. During COVID, we were getting 20 people a day sending us information. People would say, “You know what, I live in Qingdao. They say nobody's died in Qingdao in the last two months. At my church alone, 50 people have died. [The authorities] are lying.” We would get all this information and we would push it out there, so that's another way we get our blog posts. 

A lot of times I wake up in the morning and there's an email from one of our lawyers to a client explaining something. And I'll just take that email and turn it into a blog post explaining the same thing. So a lot of it is just the projects that we work on for our own clients turned into blog posts. The interesting thing is probably half our blog posts are based on that. We always change enough so that nobody can possibly be identified. 

What do you like the most about publishing?

Dan Harris: What I like the most about the blog is the interaction with the readers, and I’ve learned a ton from our readers. I've become friends with many of them. Some of the lawyers at my firm who were not at my firm at the time I got to know from the blog. And I know other bloggers. I got to meet a lot of people back when there were all sorts of China or China bloggers. There was somebody who would blog about PR. He would blog about history. I became friends with a lot of these people. It's a great way to make good and long-standing contacts, and I never could have predicted that.

Is there a frustrating part in this process of maintaining a blog?

Dan Harris: Well, I get very frustrated when I'll bang out a post quickly and then I have two or three people who write to me and say something like, “Hey, did you notice you repeated paragraph three two times” or something like that. I get frustrated with a lack of perfection, although now there are so many tools out there that are better for preventing that sort of thing than there were in the past. 

But I guess the thing that actually frustrates me the most is when people say that I've said something or I have a view on something that I never said and never believed. A lot of times, I think it's because people don't really read closely what I've written. Or they just assume that, if I believe A, I must also believe B, and that is not necessarily true. Because I became anti-China, people think I'm a Trump supporter. I have never been and will never be a Trump supporter, and anyone who says that I am or was, it's defamation. I take that one very personally.

We also went with Newstex because we wanted to be seen and heard by more than just our regular readers. We wanted a new audience. And then a small factor was how easy it would be to operate within Newstex once onboarded. And the reality is, it has been so seamless that I don't even think about it. You don't have to worry about anything.

Choosing syndication

What made you trust Newstex to syndicate your content with us?

Dan Harris: We've been with you a long time. We do due diligence on everything, and what I remember is looking at the other publications that syndicate with Newstex  and realizing these are good publications, we'd be happy to be among those publications. You are the company you keep, and if they were disreputable, we'd be tarnished with that. We also went with Newstex because we wanted to be seen and heard by more than just our regular readers. We wanted a new audience. And then a small factor was how easy it would be to operate within Newstex once onboarded. And the reality is, it has been so seamless that I don't even think about it. You don't have to worry about anything. 

Dan Harris is widely recognized as a leading expert on legal issues related to conducting business in emerging markets. He is frequently sought after for his insights by major media outlets such as Forbes, Business Week, and the BBC. Dan is a prolific writer and speaker on international law, particularly known for his focus on safeguarding businesses involved with foreign operations. His expertise has earned him the rare distinction of being named a “Super Lawyer,” highlighting his prominence in the legal field. Dan is also the founder and principal writer of the China Law Blog, celebrated as one of the premier law blogs globally. The American Bar Association (ABA) Journal honored the China Law Blog by including it in its Blawg Hall of Fame, a recognition reserved for the top 20 law blogs of all time.

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