Law school faculty encouraged to blog

Professor Eric Adams, who’s not joining the University of Alberta Law School until January 2008 is already blogging at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog. And as a new faculty member he’s been encouraged to blog.

I think I see its merits. Blogs instantly publish the thoughts their authors and make them available to anyone with a computer. Apart from the instant gratification involved, blogs provide the means to easily and quickly communicate with a vast array of persons known and unknown, near and far.

Although I do not regularly read them, nor have I ever contributed to one, I know that blogs matter.  Increasingly people write a blog or read those of others. A friend of a friend has a blog followed by thousands. Another friend admitted to a blogging addiction. In the latest issue of the University of Toronto Law Journal, Brenda Cossman and David Schneiderman suggest that being a blogger is among the identities that can constitute the ‘complex self.’ A few years ago, I had never heard the word; today, I encounter blogs everywhere I turn (wikipedia tells me there are 71 million of them).

Eric does wonder with blogging if we’re talking more and saying less. “Busily blogging, are we still reflecting on our ideas and listening to one another? Maybe I’ve just got the first-time blogger jitters.”

Right of you to have the jitters Eric, but I think you’ll find in time the best law blogging comes from those who listen first and then reflect. It’s an ongoing discussion that’s going to advance the law.

Technorati Tags: law school blogs, law professor blogs