LAW-STUDENTS WEBLOGS GET NO RESPECT -- BUT DO ANY LAW-RELATED WEBLOGS? . . . In an article titled "Legal blawgs gaining popularity," the Jacksonville Financial News and Daily Record was dismissive of law-student contributions to the legal blogosphere--

Most law students write blogs to recount nights spent drinking and carousing with friends, which future employers may find later on.

This observation was attributed to Sander Moody, an assistant professor at Florida Coastal School of Law. The article's author, Liz Daube, goes on to note that there are "notable exceptions" to the general rule, but lists only one, Jeremy Blachman, who isn't even a law student anymore.

Oh, well. As someone who reads lots of law-student weblogs for my roundup posts, I can say with certainty that there's more to law-student weblogs than just drinking and carousing. It's true, however, that there's a notion that some law-related weblogs are more respectable than others, with weblogs by law professors at the top of the heap, followed by those of practicing lawyers, then law students.

Law professors and practitioners shouldn't feel too sanguine about their status, however--despite the occasional glowing article about law-related weblogs, most outsiders remain skeptical. A few weeks ago, I spent a half hour on the phone with a reporter from a large legal newspaper whose angle was that for all the hype, law-related weblogs just don't matter all that much. Some judges might read or even cite them from time to time, but their thinking isn't influenced by them. Political weblogs have those we-got-rid-of-Dan-Rather moments, but that's not true of law-related weblogs. They're mostly just tame placeholders for dry legal knowledge or mere marketing tools for enterprising lawyers. Few law-related weblogs have broken out to a wider general audience, and probably won't: lawyers are just too boring.

That seemed to me to be the reporter's take. I'll link to the story when I see it. Meanwhile, it's been more than a year since I posted my reservations about legal weblogs in my podcast "Law-Related Things That Suck: Lawyers with Weblogs." Not much has changed since then. Despite plenty of good press, many lawyers still don't know what weblogs are, or if they do, consider the practice of making "public Internet posting" unprofessional and demeaning. Don't get me wrong: I'm still happy about this weblog. It's a perfect vehicle for promoting my upcoming book, it generates business, and it allows me to enter into ongoing public debates on a variety of issues. But it comes at a cost: many lawyers just don't understand. When they find out about your weblog, they'll probably consider you something of an alien. After all, can you really be serious about practicing law when you're spending so much time puttering around on the Internets?

Original link from Bag & Baggage. Some of my own drinking and carousing posts can be found here, here, and here.

Comments

[mark]

Most law student blogs simply suck if you seek legal information. The point seems to be more connecting with a small # of fellow students. If that is the goal, great. If the goal is just to write stuff to vent, have at it.

Evan, didn't you have a post about a guy in law school who had a blog that no one read? He was getting frustrated that no one read it, but the stuff was just ... not interesting.

I have yet to see more than 1 or 2 attempts by any law student to create a worth-reading blog. There is just so much crap out there, why bother to find it?

[Mike]

Most law students write blogs to recount nights spent drinking and carousing with friends, which future employers may find later on.

I disagree. Most law student blogs are like journals and cover all sorts of issues. Granted, few law student blogs provide much substantive legal analysis, but that doesn't mean the student-bloggers are out getting drunk. This reporter obviously had an agenda.

[Austin Groothuis]

Hi, I work for CALI (www.cali.org) and just finished up my second semester at Chicago-Kent. I've been trying to keep up a blog aimed at prelaw students written from a current student's perspective.

Not saying the blog I keep up is some amazing piece of legal scholarship, but I'm definitely avoiding the recounting drunken nights thing. I agree there are a few too many of those, but that is not the only type of student blogs out there.

[Mike]

Austin: Let me give you some friendly advice... Please change your blog's URL to something easier to remember. Just take a look at the current URL: http://calis_pre-law_blog.classcaster.org/blog/

WOWZERS. ;^)

I doubt few readers would remember that thing. Let me suggest something like: http://pre-law.cali.org. Not perfect, but much catchier and easier to remember.

[The Law Fairy]

I don't see what the problem would be if law student blogs do primarily focus on drinking (I don't have the stats to know whether or not this is true). Um, hello? It's the internet. There's a lot of crap out there and there's a little bit of worthwhile stuff too. Law students by no means hold a monopoly on crappy blogs.

I'm not sure if I even see the point of all of this. Law students have just as much right to have a blog as anyone else. That it might be marginally more interesting to lawyers doesn't give lawyers any real reason to trash them for not being at the level of, say, a Nimmer treatise.

Why don't we worry about the real problems with law students, like the fact that they're (inexplicably) primarily responsible for the dissemination of legal theory to countless numbers of attorneys who actually know what they're doing? Oh, but heavens, we can't go around questioning law reviews now.

[heyYa]

Actually, law review articles are authored by law profs and lawyers. the junk at the end of each law review edition is usually written by students ... you know, key stuff like ...

How the Mann Act vanished from state statutes.

[The Law Fairy]

true, heyYa, but the student editors have virtually all editorial control. I have actually witnessed in person the sucking up that *ahem* certain professors engage in, presumably so that students are more likely to select their articles for publication. At the top schools, this is *crucially* important and it's an atrocity that it's left in the hands of arrogant self-important know-it-alls with virtually zero real-world practice experience. (In fairness, this does only describe roughly 87.6% of law review staff, although I have it on good authority the percentage is slightly higher for the editorial boards).

[M. Sarabia]

I don't have the requisite experience to wax eloquently on much legal analysis--let alone do so in an interesting and provocative manner. Instead, I pretend to have the requisite life experience to comment in a cynical manner on everything and anything.

How does it relate to my life as a law student? The cynical perspective sure isn't a result of my having studied Shakespeare.

[Joel S.]

Do legal blogs "matter"? I have a hard time even understanding what that question means. I blog to (1) force myself to stay up to date on happenings in my area of law, (2) force myself to exercise my writing skills and (3) get clients. On those terms, my blog is successful. Why would I want to judge to cite to my blog?

[Roonie]

I would never consult a law student blog for legal advice. You kidding me? You can consult Lexis or Westlaw for the law. The human side of the law is what law blogging is all about. Who cares about breaking legal news from a stranger? I wanna hear how law impacts his/her life, one day at a time.

[boyrobot]

Hey! Didn't you guys see the CNN story last summer that warned all bloggers about corporate HR types viewing their blogs, and if (e.g.) you write about geschmokin'-dee-dopenzee, you wouldn't get hired?

My post calling CNN a big yellow corporate kow-tow is here:
http://www.girlrobot.com/blog/2006-06.htm#2006-06-18+16:47:24+1

FYI, I'm a St. Louis-based leagle beagle like Evan. But we don't know each other. I don't practice, I just screw around. Because of all the HR types.

Jonathan