Real Lawyers Have Blogs : Law Blogs, Social Media, Twitter

Orin Kerr, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School and leading law blogger, picked up on recent comments by Justice Anthony Kennedy on the importance of law blogs.

On August 19th, Justice Kennedy gave an address that included an interesting passing remark about the role of blogs. Justice Kennedy was talking about how law review case comments generally come out too late to be of use to the Court (especially in the context of deciding whether to grant certiorari in a case). As a result, when Justice Kennedy asks his clerks to look to see what the law reviews have said about a particular case, there isn’t any commentary yet. Justice Kennedy adds: “I’ve found, what my clerks do now, when they have interesting cases — They read blogs.”

Justice Kennedy's comments weren't lost on University of Wisconsin Law Professor and noted blogger, Ann Althouse.

This means that the lawprofs who keep up high-profile blogs have disproportionate influence. You have traditional lawprofs laboring over law review articles, but these articles come out too late to discuss a case that's pending in the Supreme Court. One answer — I'm not the first to say this* — is that law review articles should properly be about something other than the latest pending or just-decided cases, something more timeless and profound. But I think that most law professors would like to be involved in the legal developments of the day. It must be irritating to see that the lawprof bloggers have a special line to the Court.

Althouse goes to ask what I've always wondered, will law professors be required to blog?

This may stir up an old question that I know nags at some law professors: Will I be required to blog? Very soon after I started blogging, I heard the question is it acceptable for lawprofs to blog? and then, right after that, the question will I be required to blog? jumped up. In the minds of some non-blogging lawprofs, it preceded the question is it good for lawprofs to blog? — which seemed like a more appropriate question to me. But I can see why someone with a legal mind would ask will I be required to blog? before is it good for lawprofs to blog? It's the same reason lawyers think what do I want the answer to be? before they try to figure out what the answer is.

Anyway, Justice Kennedy's remark shows why it's good for lawprofs to blog, but it would be ridiculous to require lawprofs to blog. Wouldn't it? Or is it ridiculous to require lawprofs to write law review articles?

UCLA Law Professor and noted blogger in his own right, Stephen Bainbridge took it a step further arguing, 'Why Blawging Ought to be Part of the Law Prof Biz.'

Citing Althouse's comments, Bainbridge made clear that the Judges in Delaware were reading law blogs.

I have good reason to be confident that Delaware jurists also are reading those of us who toil in the corporate law blogosphere. Now the powers that be just have to figure out metrics and rewards for those of us who do so successfully.

There's no question Bainbridge was referring to comments from his friend and LexBlog Network blogger, Francis Pileggi, that the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court is a regular reader of Pileggi's Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog.

The practice of lawyers bringing in associate counsel who have authored treatises, law reviews, and articles to associate with on important cases is widely accepted. The reason being that such lawyers may have greater influence with trial or appellate court judges.

Well today influence is more apt to be measured by whether a lawyer publishes a blogs that's read by judges and their clerks.

Hat tip to the Washington Times' Culture Briefs for turning me on to this discussion.

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I traveled to Atlanta and Emory University this week to speak at the Annual Emory Bankruptcy Development Journal's (EBDJ) Symposium.

Turns out the EBDJ is the only national bankruptcy journal edited and produced entirely by law students. The symposium gave law students, especially those writing for the EBDJ, the opportunity to mingle with bankruptcy lawyers and judges from around the Eastern half of the US. Certainly an inside track for judicial clerkships and positions in large law.

As talented as those law students were, I couldn't help but think two things. One, I hope my kids never end up chasing that kind of life. And two, was the law school by publishing a law journal in the traditional way selling the students short?

My kids part is easy. I hear from too many lawyers that they feel like a cog in a large corporation when practicing in large law. Amazing when you're presented the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds on the some of the largest and more interesting legal matters in the country. But after doing all they could in law school to get the most sought after positions they're not happy. They feel trapped. I want my kids to be happy.

Second, a law student on the EBDJ who picked me up at the airport introducing himself as a '2L' went on to describe his aspirations of getting a particular article published over the next year. He and his advisor even discussed the possibility of getting an op-ed on the subject published in the Wall Street Journal.

Talking more though the 2L though seemed resigned that the op-ed was kind of a pipe dream. He also expressed a little frustration that though the subject of the article he was working on was timely today, it may not be by the time its published. Others could begin writing and talking about the issue while he'd still be working his article through the editorial and publishing process.

Seemed a little comical to me. Though I didn't tell the 2L that.

Here he was one of the more gifted law students at Emory doing perhaps some of the best research in the country on a particular subject being held back by the system from expressing his ideas and collaborating with lawyers across the country. He wasn't doing anything to engage reporters or editors of the Wall Street Journal that could make that op-ed a reality.

What if Emory law promoted blogging to its law review students?

The 2L could get his thoughts out now. Having blogged in a focused and engaging way for the last 7 or 8 months since school started he'd be well know among bankruptcy practitioners, law professors, clerks, and judges across the country. By referencing bankruptcy stories in the Wall Street Journal the Journal's reporters and editors would have seen the 2L. He could have exchanged emails with the reporters and connected with them on LinkedIn - just as he would have with the bankruptcy lawyers, professors, and clerks he would have met though blogging.

Not only would his article, and others, be published in a more timely fashion through blogging, but the law student would be in a better position career wise. He'd be better known. He'd have connections across the country, some of whom may offer him a job. Anyone Googling his name would see citations to him and his blog by bankruptcy practitioners and professors who are blogging. I doubt the law school's placement office is opening doors like that.

Having developed a personal brand through blogging, a graduating law student would control their future much more than other grads. Even those who were on law review, but not blogging. If they wanted to do a clerkship and proceed to large law, that's great. If they wanted to pursue other opportunities, the door would be open. It could even lead to the grad being a little happier as a practicing lawyer.

Don't get me wrong I'm not bashing big law, law reviews, or clerkships. There's wonderful people doing great stuff and getting great experience in all three. Just thinking we as a profession and law schools could be doing more for bright law students than we are.

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With no post-law school job offers, no qualms about his obsession with the Supreme Court and — most serendipitously — no morning classes, Georgetown law student Mike Sacks had the perfect formula for his blog.

The third-year writes First One @ One First, chronicling his attempt to be the first one in line to hear all major arguments before the Supreme Court this term.

That has meant rising at ungodly hours of the night and early morning to wait in line for the coveted #1 placeholder card. As detailed in today's New York Times story, Tailgating at the Supreme Court, Without the Cars, even getting there 26 hours in advance isn't always enough — Mike was beaten to the first spot for the high profile McDonald v. City of Chicago hearing.

Bigger than winning the prime spot in line, of course, is Mike's desire to leverage "stunt journalism" into broader recognition for his writing portfolio on the blog. Alongside the photos snapped on his phone while waiting, he provides analysis of the cases and why they matter, interviews with the other attendees, and links to other relevant articles and blog posts on these cases.

"It's interesting — that's what first sparked it," Mike says. "Any perk I get on top of that would be wonderful."

Some of those perks have come already in the form of news coverage from major media outlets like the New York Times, above, and having his blog syndicated on the ABA Journal's website.

Long-term, he hopes the attention could pay off in a career opportunity. Mike has a background in journalism, with internships at NPR and ABC, and would consider pursuing a career in either the legal or journalistic fields or a combination.

After seeing his Georgetown classmates struggle for employment, he's adopted an admittedly "crazy" strategy to get himself out there.

"The current economic climate forces those — who would otherwise have comfortably found a job they would have been lukewarm about — to really soul search and find, by inspiration or simply stumbling upon, what they really are about and why they even came to the law in the first place," Mike says.

He believes that to become successful in a crowded job market, law students will have no choice but to break out of the box, such as by starting a blog, to make themselves known.

"I do hope that what I’m doing may serve in some way as an inspiration for those feeling listless or hopeless, even in the current law school and economic climate," he says.

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1. Rob La Gatta: How did the idea for Views From The Field first develop?

Doug Berman: I’ve been blogging on my Sentencing Law & Policy Blog for a while, and have been inspired by the number of thoughtful practitioners who will say things in comments and through e-mails that give me really distinctive views on the federal sentencing world. Being involved with the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, I thought we ought to have an online supplement, one that avowedly focused on getting the perspective of thoughtful practitioners (rather than just providing opportunities for law professors to write smaller versions of longer ideas).

That was the model. I lucked out that there was a very capable student who had just joined the journal, who indicated an interest in getting involved in some new projects. He helped us run with it and put together a lot of the infrastructure. I’ve [also] been lucky - through my work on federal sentencing - to get to know a number of federal judges....I sent out an e-mail to a bunch of district judges and said "Hey, we’d like you to write for this." Fortunately, out of the 10 I wrote to, 4 not only wrote back, but actually wrote...and wrote really interesting stuff that, in a sense, comprised our first issue.

2. Rob La Gatta: Do you believe blogs have played a positive role in how law professors teach/articulate their ideas and get their message across?

Doug Berman: Yes, absolutely...although I would say that blogging is a unique kind of media for expressing law professor ideas. I’ve been very fortunate to work in a field and to have kind of an A.D.D. attitude towards it that makes blogs a particularly useful way for me to get out a lot of smaller ideas. But I think for those who are interested in longer form idea development or other more traditional aspects of the scholarly conversation, blogs can be more challenging than beneficial. That’s where my big support for faculty blogging is based: a vision of the diversity of mediums that are valuable to get ideas out.

3. Rob La Gatta: I saw that for a death penalty course at the end of 2007, you were using a class blog. Was that successful, trying to incorporate a blog into the classroom? Were there any challenges?

Doug Berman: There are definitely challenges, in part because there isn’t the infrastructure for doing it easily. For a while, I was thinking about giving the students the password and having them blog directly, but for a variety of reasons I never quite got around to that; the comments sometimes got distracting; and because I try to maintain a lot of blogs, there were challenges with just keeping up.

But I very much believe in the blog medium as having - particularly at this stage - so many more upsides than downsides, that not only is it something that I’m eager to share with my students, but am eager to get them to experience the pros and cons of [as well].

4. Rob La Gatta: Do you think using a course blog is something you’ll do again in the future?

Doug Berman: I actually have a blog being used in one of the classes I’m teaching now, and I definitely will continue to gravitate towards integrating blogging with the course instruction, course development and project development. Basically, I’m so pro blog that my instinct is, “Hey, you’ve got an idea? Ok, good...why don’t you start a blog to work on that.” I think a lot of people I interact with get bored of hearing me talk about the opportunity that the blogs present.

There was a former prisoner, involved in a white collar offense who has gotten his life back in order, who wrote to me very nicely to say, “I really appreciate the work you’re doing...there are a lot of former offenders out here who are getting back on the straight and narrow, but there’s so much antipathy in various ways expressed to people who commit crimes, and such a misunderstanding of the opportunity for rehabilitation." And he asked, "What can I do to help with this?"

I said, "Well, you should start a rehabilitation blog, and have stories about people who have gotten their lives back together."  I’ve become kind of the hammer to that nail. Part of what has reinforced that is that I’ve heard feedback from many people who I’ve encouraged to go and blog, that they’ve been very happy with the experience. Nobody who I’ve encouraged to go blog who started blogging has come back to me and said, "You know, that was a terrible idea."

Obviously, people get engaged in the blogging enterprise in different ways...but to me, that’s the not only unique, but a uniquely valuable aspect of the medium: you can make it what you want to make it, and there are very few conventions, very few expectations, very few demands other than those that you put on yourself. That’s why I find the blog format so liberating. You get to make your own choices rather than have a set of expectations that you must live up to.

5. Rob La Gatta: How have you seen traditional law reviews adjusting to handle the growth of the blogosphere?

Doug Berman: These online supplements are a very direct acknowledgment of one thing that the blogs have contributed to the law professor universe: sometimes, law professors have things they want to say and can valuably say in 500 words rather than 500,000 words.

As a byproduct of a lot of forces, law reviews had a size creep, where the standard article grew and grew (partially because technology made it easier to print more pages), and it got to the point where the norm of a law review was so massive and time consuming that even very senior and established faculty, who could get traditional scholarship placed in all sorts of ways, saw the virtue of expressing themselves and doing work in a blog setting.

Then, (particularly younger) law students who are very tech savvy and who didn’t enjoy sitting in a dank library checking footnote #427, felt that they could use the law review stature and resources to become a more active participant in the online dialogue. That has been great, because among the other virtues of the blog and the blogosphere, there is very little true competition…there’s a lot of collaboration. If I see a law review that does a bunch of pieces about federal sentencing, I’m not going to say, “Oh, they’ve taken away from OSCJL Amici.” I’m going to say, "Did they cite us?  Great!" Then we can cite them, and link back. And then, the world just keeps on growing.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Toby Bloomberg, Internet marketing specialist and author of the Diva Marketing Blog [2.6.08]
• Nick Holmes, legal publishing consultant with infolaw and author of Binary Law [2.5.08]
• David Maister, law firm practice consultant [2.4.08]
• Steve Matthews, search engine optimization specialist and founder of Stem Legal [2.1.08]
• Tom Goldstein, partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and founder of SCOTUSblog [1.30.08]

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1. Rob La Gatta: When speaking to other law professors around the country, have you gotten a sense of the general attitude toward blogs held by law profs? Do you think that, as is the case with lawyers, law professors are becoming more and more willing to venture into the blogosphere?

Eric Goldman: I think many law professors are aware of blogs now. Frankly, blogs are almost impossible to avoid in our community, especially blogs that discuss and gossip about the law professor business like Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, PrawfsBlawg, and Concurring Opinion. Given the prominence of these blogs catering to the specific informational needs of law professors, plus the rich content being generated by niche-y substantive legal blogs, I suspect that many professors now read at least one blog regularly.

Several hundred law professors are now affiliated as a co-blogger at one or more blogs, and I anticipate that number will continue to increase over time (but I'd be remiss if I didn't note the speculation that legal blogging has reached a plateau).

Eventually, in the next few years, it wouldn't surprise me if most law professors are affiliated with at least one blog, though many new bloggers will probably join existing blogs rather than start their own. I also expect blogging to follow a typical 80/20 rule, where 20% of the law professor bloggers will be responsible for 80% of the blogging. So many law professors will be bloggers in name only.

2. Rob La Gatta: Ultimately, where do you see blogs taking legal scholarship in the future? In 2008, what do you think will be some of the most significant developments to shape this medium, specifically with regards to legal publishing?

Eric Goldman: The law professor community is actively wrestling with (and perhaps obsessing over) these questions. At the most recent law professor annual conference (AALS in NYC), several panels broached this topic, and the topic arises perennially at that conference. Everyone wants to know the answer to these questions, but there do not appear to be easy and obvious answers.

Personally, I think blogs are an excellent complement to legal scholarship. As I mentioned, they expand our options to disseminate our ideas, and there are many bloggable ideas (what Eugene Volokh has labeled "micro-discoveries") that would not be worth publishing through other options.

I think the issue gets more complicated when discussing whether blogging can substitute for other types of scholarship. I could see blogging count as a partial substitute for some scholarship, but only a bit. In the end, I expect a law professor helping to shape the discourse will want to develop lengthy, complex and heavily sourced expositions for which blogging isn't the best communication choice.

From a technology standpoint, I think we are just at the beginning of exploring how to use online synchronous and asynchronous communications (using blogs or otherwise) to advance the scholarly dialogue. Some interesting early examples include:

• the virtual academic junior scholar workshop run annually by The Conglomerate
  
• mobblogging in response to the Grokster Supreme Court opinion
  
• blogging of academic presentations (both in real-time and after-the-fact), often with commentary added by the blogger. See, for example, Rebecca Tushnet’s blogging of the Trademark Dilution Symposium we had on campus.
  
  • McCarthy keynote
  • Consumer Perceptions, Part 1
  • Consumer Perceptions, Part 2
  • Dilution Regulation, Part 1 (A Look Back)
  • Dilution Regulation, Part 2 (Doctrinal Challenges)
  • Comparative Analyses of Dilution
    

I'm excited to see how else we as academics can engage each other in productive conversations using new technologies.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Tom Kane [1.16.08]
• Shel Israel [1.15.08]
• Cliff Mintz [1.14.08]
  
• Ed Poll [1.11.08]
• Carolyn Elefant [1.10.08]

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1. Rob La Gatta: When did you first start blogging, and what prompted you to do so?

Eric Goldman: I started blogging about 3 years ago, in February 2005. In Fall 2004, two particularly net-savvy students in my Cyberlaw course repeatedly encouraged me to blog, and they promised to regularly read my blog. Thus, I figured I would start with 3 readers — these two students, plus my mom.

Ironically, I don't think my mom has ever read my blog, and I'm not sure if my two students (who have since graduated and become lawyers) still do. Fortunately, in the interim, I've added some new readers.

2. Rob La Gatta: How do you think you've grown, both professionally and personally, as a result of your experience monitoring, reading and writing blogs?

Eric Goldman: Blogging has changed my life in a number of ways.

First, it has forced me to efficiently organize my data in-flows, which has made me a better researcher and a more informed community member. Not only do I have a carefully selected roster of RSS feeds that I monitor constantly, but I have set up alert systems in various databases that help me identify important new developments. If it wasn't for blogging, I would not have taken these steps.

Second, I like writing, and blogging has given me an outlet for my works. I was always writing before blogging — I wrote op-eds, articles for bar journals, even consumer reviews at Epinions — but I never had a natural home for my written work until I launched my blog. Now, I can write whenever I want and publish my works without having to seek out a publisher.

Third, blogging has definitely elevated my profile, especially among journalists. I remember that when I first became a law professor, I rarely got reporter calls. So when there would be a new development in my area of expertise, I would sit in my office thinking, "Hey reporters, call me, I have brilliant thoughts about this!" But the phone rang only occasionally.

In 2005, when I launched my blog, my media appearances roughly tripled from 2004. In 2007, my media appearances roughly tripled from 2005, meaning I'm now getting about 9x the number of reporter calls I got in 2004. Spending this much time with reporters creates other challenges, but it’s a good problem to have.

Finally, I've made some fantastic friends through blogging. There's an inherent kinship among bloggers, so I immediately became part of a special club just by blogging. Further, I frequently cross paths (both physically and virtually) with like-minded bloggers, which has allowed me to befriend some really interesting and nice people.

3. Rob La Gatta: Do you believe blogs have played a positive role in how law professors teach and articulate their ideas? Can blogging have any serious impact on a law professor's reputation?

Eric Goldman: Blogs are one of many channels that law professors can use to communicate their ideas. This makes blogs a useful new publication option; they allow us to join (or start) a dialogue quickly and informally, and to establish ongoing communications with an audience of non-academic readers. But blogs aren’t our only option for publishing, and we always still have to decide the best dissemination medium for what we want to say.

Blogging definitely can affect law professors' reputations. Typically, it has a significant positive effect, but as with any publication, there is always a downside risk. Fortunately, the blogging community is pretty fault-tolerant; an occasional mistake or misstatement by an otherwise credible blogger will not be fatal to the blogger's reputation. Even so, I always remain keenly aware of the effect that blogging could have on my reputation, especially as a pre-tenure faculty member.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Tom Kane [1.16.08]
• Shel Israel [1.15.08]
• Cliff Mintz [1.14.08]
  
• Ed Poll [1.11.08]
• Carolyn Elefant [1.10.08]

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Ottawa's Michel-Adrien Shepard shares a story from Lawyers Weekly on Canadian law scholars view of legal blogs being scholarly works.

• University of Calgary law school dean Alastair Lucas sees blogs as scholarship. The law school is creating a blog dealing with Alberta courts and tribunals and those contributions 'will require theory development, synthesis, analysis and clear argumentation (...) We also expect that some blog pieces will be expanded into law review articles and the like. Strictly, these are not peer reviewed, in the law journal sense, but they will be reviewed and edited in the faculty under the supervision of senior faculty members.'
• Philip Bryden, dean of law at the University of New Brunswick: Blogs offer 'timely publication and ease of accessibility', but adds, 'During my tenure as dean ... none of my colleagues has brought their blogging activity into the scholarly assessment process at UNB, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.'
• Bruce Archibald, a law professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax: Blogs 'are a source of ideas which would have to be acknowledged in a footnote if quoted. On the other hand, they are not peer reviewed and would not have the added cachet or weight of that status.'

Shepard goes on to reference a series of posts he's written on the subject.

Traditional legal scholars may resist the trend of legal blogs being viewed as legal scholarship, but the train has left the station on this one.

Just because a practicing lawyer or law professor writes to the net as opposed to a word document then published to law review does not by necessity make the piece one lacking value as legal scholarship. And the chilling effect of wide dissemination with immediate critique and comment from peer law professors and practicing lawyers is certainly the equal of a law review article reviewed by law students.

Sure, there are blogs published by lawyers that don't rise to the level of legal scholarship, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water on this one.

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Gosh, I would hope not but that's the jist of a couple posts I just read.

Carolyn Elefant picked up on University of Texas Law Professor Brian Leiter's post that blogs may hinder a law professor's professional prospects. Leiter writes:

Because blogs are easily accessible and thus easier to read in a spare moment than, say, a scholarly article or scholarly book, blogs that purport to treat scholarly topics are far more likely to solidify an impression of a professor's mind and overwhelm the merits of his or her actual publications (assuming the two have different merits).� This is why, it seems to me, it is particularly risky for either students or junior faculty to blog much:� the first, and perhaps dominant, impression of this person's work is likely to be defined by the blog, whether fairly or not.� If you're going to blog on scholarly topics, it had better be good!

Shocking as it sounded that we should insulate law professors and practicing lawyers from each further, I read more of Leiter's post to find that Law Professors were telling other scholars to go slow on blogs. Daniel Drezner, an associate professor of law at Tufts University and blogger himself, had some alarming things to say about blogs.

When I was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, a senior colleague once told me his secret to academic success: One bad article equals five great ones. His point was that the worst thing a scholar can do is to publish too much, as opposed to too little. Any substandard publication creates a black mark that is difficult to erase......

Blogs and prestigious university appointments do not mix terribly well. That is because top departments are profoundly risk-averse when it comes to senior hires. In some ways, that caution is sensible � hiring a senior professor is the equivalent of signing a baseball player to a lifetime contract without any ability to release or trade him. In such a situation, even small doubts about an individual become magnified.

The trouble with blogs is that they seem designed to provoke easy doubts. Blogs are an outlet for unexpurgated, unreviewed, and occasionally unprofessional musings. What makes them worth reading can also make them prone to error. Any honest scholar-blogger � myself included � could acknowledge a post or two that they would like to have back. At a place like Yale, one bad blog post can erase a lot of good will very quickly.

.....Today's senior faculty members look at blogs the way a previous generation of academics looked at television � as a guilty, tawdry pleasure that should not be talked about in respectable circles. (Leitner pointed out that fellow professors did read his blog though).....

But Leiter's conclusion, where he first says in a perfect world law blogs would be ignored in the hiring process, gives me hope.

...[P]erhaps university committees should consciously factor in the positives � quality blogs allow scholars to link grand theory to real-world events, cultivate new ideas, and spark public debates � that come from scholar blogging.

Based on the panel discussion at Stanford Law School last week, we're closer to law faculty looking at the positives than Leiter thinks. Santa Clara Law Professor Eric Goldman and University of Illinois Law Professor Lawrence Solum found tremndous reputation enhancement through publishing a law blog. Solum found the benefits of publishing a blog far outweighed the benefits of publishing law review articles. There was little doubt in Solum's mind that law blogs were disintermeditating law reviews.

In addition to reputation enhancement for law professors, blogs open up the lines of communication between the practicing bar and academia in a way never before possible. Wisconsin lawyer Anne Reed, cited by Elefant, posts:

...[A]s far as I can tell [...] blogging has changed the way lawyers and professors talk to each other. Practitioners hear from professors daily, not when the quarterly review comes out. Professors hear from practitioners, instead of just each other. And whenever either side posts, the other side chimes in with comments. It's a discussion.

So much to be gained by law professors blogging. Let's hope the small minded folks don't prevail on this one.

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Is your blog worthy of a $10,000 Scholarship? Do you maintain a blog and attend college? Would you like $10,000 to help pay for books, tuition, or other living costs? If so, read this.

Picked that up from the Editor at Blawg Review ('Ed'), who rightfully asked 'should scholarships be offered for writing law blogs?'

Ed spotted an opportunity to answer with the discussion surrounding the single best idea you'd offer newly appointed Dean Erwin Chemerinsky for reforming legal education as he builds the law school at UC-Irvine.

[I]f anyone had asked this writer, I'd have recommended that the Donald Bren School of Law be the first law school to offer a scholarship for exemplary legal blogging.

If not Dean Chemerinsky, which law school dean is going to have the foresight and clout to pull it off. When every law school offers law blogging scholarships, some law school is going to be able to say we were first. Why not your law school?

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