Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground

THE DEATH OF LAW-STUDENT WEBLOGS? Orin Kerr poses a question about law-student weblogs at The Volokh Conspiracy. Interesting comments, too.

My impression? This commenter might be on to something--

Career Services constantly freaks us out with stories of law students who have been denied jobs or fired because of the stuff they put on the Net.

And this one too--

Blogs are dead. You will find the students in MySpace or Facebook.

On the other hand, both comments are overstated. As another commenter points out, sometimes weblogs aren't a liability: "Will Baude was blogging at Crescat even before YLS. He's now clerking for [Chief Justice Roberts]." And though there are plenty of other web-based platforms like Facebook, many law students are still blogging.

Orin Kerr suggests that as compared to 2002-2004, law-student weblogs may no longer be "an important part of the blogosphere." Kerr measures importance, in part, by shared readership and by cross-links between law professors and law students.

Using that standard, I don't recall there ever being a period of great "importance" for law-student weblogs. But something does seem to have changed. In 2002-2004, blogging was still generally undiscovered by the masses. Operating under the radar screen, webloggers of all varieties seemed to have a great deal in common, even law professors and law students. Bloggers were chummier with each other, there was more cross-linking, blogging was less stiff, formal, mature. And it was easier to know about other weblogs--there weren't nearly so many of them.

Even if law-student webloggers haven't changed that much, it's certainly possible that law-professor webloggers are interacting with them differently, chiefly by paying them less attention. This would certainly explain the decline in cross-linking and shared readership that Kerr notes.

It's an interesting debate . . .

AT MY TRIAL PRACTICE WEBSITE . . . "Fifteen Ways to Ruin a Deposition (Part 1 of 3)."

AT MY TRIAL PRACTICE WEBSITE . . . "The Paperless Office Continues to Fascinate."

THE WEEKLY LAW SCHOOL ROUNDUP . . . The Weekly Law School Roundup alternates between The Legal Underground and Thanks, But No Thanks, where you can find this week's Weekly Law School Roundup #157. The next installment will appear here soon, so be sure to check back.

AT MY TRIAL PRACTICE WEBSITE . . . "New Weblog with Practice Tips: the James Publishing Author's Blog."

AT MY TRIAL PRACTICE WEBSITE . . . "Conform Your Citations to the Bluebook, Automatically."

The Weekly Law School Roundup #156

Here's your weekly list of good posts from the past week by law students, some current or almost current, some recently-graduated--

Foodstuffs What's in your refrigerator? [Virgin In The Volcano]

Rejection How law school is like a lover. [My Legal Fiction]

Gloom Law school, the next semester. [The View From The Middle]

Stoicism The weather in Minneapolis. [No. 634]

Mediocre A breakdown ahead of schedule. [Thanks, But No Thanks]

Happiness A short list. [3Lwannabe]

Education Tunnel at the end of the light. [[Useless Dicta]]

Awkward Dealing with the classmates. [J.D.? ... Maybe]

Brutal Contract lawyers and the new economy. [The Shark]

Full Time Studying on the go. [Law Ingenue]

Outings Law school and the family. [Newlawmom's Weblog]

Quest Advice for 0L's about applying to law school. [The Lovin Spoonful]

Look for next week's roundup at Thanks, But No Thanks then it's back here the week after that. You can find some other recent roundups in the "At the Law Schools 2" category, as well as sixty or so older roundups from 2004-2005 here. Finally, if you want to know how I choose posts to highlight, see "How I Write the Weekly Law School Roundup." (If you have a law-student weblog that I don't seem to know about or that isn't in my blogroll, please send me an email.)

AT MY TRIAL PRACTICE WEBSITE . . . "Trial Practice Tips from the Kentucky Law Review Weblog."

AT MY TRIAL PRACTICE WEBSITE . . . "Epidemiology for Semi-Dummies."

THE WEEKLY LAW SCHOOL ROUNDUP . . . The Weekly Law School Roundup alternates between The Legal Underground and Thanks, But No Thanks, where you can find this week's Weekly Law School Roundup #155. The next installment will appear here soon, so be sure to check back.