Academic blogging in the law : An obvious fit

Lucy Williams (@Lucy_E_Williams), a PhD history candidate at the University of Liverpool, began a blog on her doctoral research last year. Her goal in blogging was to become a better researcher, a better writer, and a more thorough thinker.

Even more importantly, Williams writes in today’s Guardian:

…I hoped it would act as a space where I could share and discuss my research with others, be they fellow students, academics, or those with a more general interest in my topic. After all, in the face of a changing academy, university staff and students alike are acknowledging the necessity of raising awareness of their research, and promoting its merits, outside higher education.

My posts would typically examine a case study of one of the women I research, or explore a particular kind of crime that women were involved in. To my delight, in the year and a half of me posting, my blog did well, sharing my research with far more people than I could have ever hoped to reach in person, and allowing me to discuss and debate my ideas with people around the world.

Williams ran into the problem of someone plagiarizing one of her blog posts. Her emotions ran from disbelief to sadness, resulting in her taking a portion of her blog offline.

Though Williams article is on whether academic blogging is worth the risk, with the odd chance someone may steal your content, she’s eloquent and persuasive as to why academics ought to blog.

Blogging provides a vital method of communication and networking for PhD students and early career researchers. Blogs can raise awareness of a researcher and their work in the early stages of a career, before they have a long list of publications, or grant applications behind them.

Academic blogging, including for law professors, feels like an obvious fit.

• Raises community’s awareness of an academic in the early stages of their career.
• Blogging is a vital for communication and networking.
• Raises awareness of an academic’s work outside higher education.
• Improves research skills by learning through collaboration and networks.
• Improves writing skills
• Raises the quality of ones thinking skills. Blogging by listening to a greater audience, processing your thoughts, sharing your thoughts in a more immediate fashion, and getting feedback via other blogs and social media is a learning experience like no other.

Knowledge and the advancement of ideas in academia has to date ‘flowed’ through print and face to face networking at conferences. The Internet and the advent of blogging has changed that forever.

Knowledge and ideas flow quickly and seamlessly in digital fashion. It’s akin to water or electricity flowing to to the point of least resistance.

Holding blogging back in academia are fear of the unknown and ties to tradition. Not meritorious reasons when the advancement of careers and knowledge are at stake.

Though Williams may be using her blog in more limited ways now because of an isolated event of plagiarism, she’s resolved to blog again, because, as she says, “…the opportunities and benefits blogging offered are just too good to good to pass up permanently.”