I appreciate Kaimi’s post about law professor blogging. I think I have to register a partial dissent on the value of it. First, for reasons that I think have already been canvassed somewhere in earlier comments on this blog, it’s not always clear that blogging heightens the value of the blogger in every legal academic’s view, although certainly it makes that blogger’s name more recognizable and may lead to their academic work being read by more people (certainly my SSRN page has seemed to reflect that since I started blogging here). But blogging is not heavy academic work, and I think some legal academics are suspicious of the value of the activity — and not entirely wrongly, in my view.
More importantly, although I think blogging puts one into the good habit of writing regularly, which might ultimately show itself in increased scholarly output, one’s hours spent blogging — or worse, reading other blogs — have to come from somewhere; and since they’re obviously not going to come from one’s time spent watching Lost, writing time may be sacrificed.
For me, a larger issue is one Kaimi touches on. Although I’ve blogged on issues that I also write about, I also see the blog as an outlet for writing on issues you care about — as a scholar or otherwise — but don’t want to expend scholarly time on. The filibuster is such an issue for me; I’ve taught legislation and care about the issue, but my con law work is on other subjects. So blogging allows you to write about the issue, in a more ephemeral, immediate forum and with less work; but it is not a net gain within one’s more narrow field of scholarship. Scholars considering the costs and benefits of blogging might want to consider this. Perhaps the best approach would be to start up a narrow, subject-specific blog, one that often consists more of collating news items that you would be reading anyway than of commenting on them. You would have readers within your field and the time spent would not take you away from you specialty. For dilettantes like me, though, that would count as a loss. What if you do want to write about everything? I mean, blogging about the Solomon Amendment is all very well, but what if you also want to recommend the new Porcupine Tree album?
Posted by Paul Horwitz on May 19, 2005 at 05:22 PM
Comments
Yikes, Lawprof.
Well, I’m already outed as a blogger, so no use trying to hide it now. :S
And hopefully, with more and more top scholars entering blogging, it becomes more widely accepted.
When I was on the market, I would sometimes be in a group and one professor would say “I’ve read your blog, by the way” and other professors would get a quizzical look. And I would try to explain that blogs are a legit website that real scholars maintain — I would say something like “it’s a somewhat informal website for discussing issues. Lots of people have them — Richard Posner, Eugene Volokh, Randy Barnett, Jack Balkin, Brian Leiter . . . ”
(With the name list customized as appropriate for the audience — if I’m getting the quizzical look from a crim person, I’m going to work Jack Chin and Doug Bermann into the list of people who have blogs, for example).
(Also, I didn’t even bother mentioning that Lessig has a blog. Not that he isn’t a smart and prolific scholar, but I think that reference to Lessig would have led to unfortunate stereotyping of blogs as “something that ‘internet people’ do.”)
Posted by: Kaimi | May 20, 2005 4:53:35 PM
But be careful. Where I teach, blogs are frowned upon. Not as a formal matter, of course– but you can see the distaste when anyone mentions a blogging law prof! I think it’s seen as brash and somehow rather tacky… people trying too hard to get noticed. Stupid, but true. I’ve thought about blogging and decided not to risk it…
Posted by: Law prof | May 20, 2005 3:52:33 PM
Nice post. I think your sense of the pros and cons is probably about right.
Posted by: Orin Kerr | May 20, 2005 1:53:40 AM
Jeff makes a great point, though I think the category of people who do not read law reviews is probably closer to 99.99% of the country (and that includes a sizeable number of law professors and surely a huge number of practicing lawyers).
Relatedly, blogging facilitates receiving feedback on ideas (and even draft articles) from folks outside the legal academy — e.g., practicing lawyers, scholars and researchers in other fields.
Posted by: Doug B. | May 20, 2005 1:00:00 AM
Blogging is a good way for law professors to expose their views to people that wouldn’t normally read law reviews. Since that category includes 99% of the country, I think blogging must be valuable…unless law professors really only want to influence other academics.
Posted by: Jeff V. | May 19, 2005 10:53:54 PM