2009 U.S. News Law School Rankings--Peer Reputational Rankings

Yesterday I posted about the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings for law schools. Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog has posted a complete list of schools ranked only by their academic peer reputation. The results--located here--are extremely interesting, since rankings by peer reputation vary (sometimes significantly) from overall rankings. Remember that peer reputation is one of the most heavily weighted factors in the U.S. News rankings, so this particular variable matters a great deal.

In particular, check out the comments to Caron's post. A difference of one-tenth of a point can mean a huge move up or down with respect to ranking within this variable.

Mississippi Secunda and the Lateral Market of Doom

My friend and soon-to-be ex-Mississippian Paul Secunda has written an excellent article on negotiating the vagaries (treacheries?) of the law school lateral hiring market. The article is available on SSRN here. I highly recommend it as general reading for pretty much anyone interested in how law schools work--students, professor wannabees, current profs, and so on.

As Paul points out in the article, there has been a good deal of commentary on the entry-level hiring market for law faculty, but there is a paucity of literature on the lateral hiring market (the market for law profs who move from one school to another). So Paul, who is in the process of moving from the University of Mississippi School of Law to Marquette University Law School, has bravely set out to rectify that.

Personally, I think the article is great for a number of reasons. First, as already stated, it is a great resource. Second, it is an easy and fun read--not a common characteristic of scholarly writing. Third, while the advice is focused specifically on the law school lateral hiring market, some of the advice translates well to any interviewing scenario. Especially helpful, I think, is Paul's point that many of the variables in the hiring process are beyond the interviewee's control. Understand that, accept it, and focus instead on the factors you can control. That likely will increase your chances of success, and it certainly will reduce your stress level a good bit.

And finally, the article is a perfect example of how blogging can directly promote scholarship: parts of the article appeared as a series of blog posts by Paul on Concurring Opinions (see his first of eleven posts here). After all, novels by Dickens first appeared in serialized form, so why not law review articles? Dickens might even have been a blogger were he alive today--although perhaps not a law prof.

Law is Cool

I've added a new student blog to my blog roll. Law is Cool features a whole slew of law students from law schools in Canada, and it has a nice, eclectic blend of posts. Check out the March 8, 2008 post called Virtual Genocide in the U.S. No, it's not a political screed--just funny.

Most interesting to me are the podcasts. Check out Podcast Episode #7. It features Law is Cool bloggers commiserating about their workload, stress, and general level of exhaustion. Which I find very heartening. If these folks were having an easier time of it in Canada, I think U.S. law schools might be in trouble--there might be a mass transfer of U.S. law students to Canadian schools. (Actually, I'll bet many Americans would like the U.S. to export thousands of future lawyers to Canada.) I know that when I was a law student, I would've been tempted by the lure of kinder, gentler law schools in the Great White North. But fortunately--I mean, alas--that is not the case.

Recipe for a Blogroll

I have added a few more student blogs to my blogroll. They are as follows:

Transnational Law Blog (http://transnationallawblog.typepad.com/) This blog features various students, recent grads and others blogging about transnational issues. The blog has a nice look and wonderfully diverse viewpoints.

Mississippi College International Law Society Blog (http://mcsolils.blogspot.com/) Yes, this is a plug for my law school's International Law Society. The ILS was started last year by students at the school, and I love the fact that they are blogging about various transnational matters.

Wish I Would Have Known (http://wishiwouldhaveknown.blogspot.com/) This is a group blog that provides "advice from law students on how they would do things over." If only Al Gore had invented the Internet before I went to law school, I could have benefited from their solid advice.

Butterflyfish
(http://butterflyfish1.blogspot.com/) This blog is by an anonymous 2L/mother. It has a nice tone to it. Fun to read, with a hint of poignancy.

So these are four nice blogs. How, exactly, do I choose students blogs for my blogroll? Not very scientifically--I either like a blog or I don't. These four blogs, I like.

Of course, there are other law student blogs out there, but often they disqualify themselves from consideration. This is Law Career Blog after all, not Bar Crawl Blog (although that certainly would be an interesting blog). Or Crude Humor Blog (although to everything there is a season). No, the student blogs I add to my blogroll have to do at least one of several things.

First, they have to relate information about the law school experience that is meaningful. Insights, suggestions, gripes, whatever.

Second, they have to have good writing and be at least somewhat reflective. I think that if you are going to read something like a law student blog, it should add to and enhance your knowledge of law school in some way. Maybe it's just me, but "Wow, that party was awesome" does not tell me a lot, other than that the party was awesome.

Third, it has to get a PG-13 rating or better. You don't make partner by being enormously crass (well, maybe you do at some firms, but not the imaginary one where I'm Managing Partner). So über-crass student blogs get nixed. And there are a lot of über-crass student blogs. Some of them are very smart, and more than a few are very funny. But one of the most successful partners I ever worked for never, ever uttered a dirty word, not even h___ or d___. Seriously. Never. He was a very busy man, and he never crossed the G rating threshold with his vocabulary. And it was not because he was a prude or sanctimonious. He actually had quite the wicked sense of humor. The impression he gave--the implicit message I got from him, anyway--was that it was far more clever, and funny, and intelligent, to be creative and eloquent with your speech and humor than it was to be gutter-crude. That's not a bad message: crassness can never help you in your career, but it can certainly hurt you. So crass blogs are out, and clever/witty/thoughtful blogs are in.

Finally, I must of course disclaim any responsibility for future content on these blogs. Who knows? One or more of these bloggers might someday curse me to oblivion in a crass, obscenity-laden post. Although based on their blogs' content so far, I kind of doubt it.

Law Career Blog and its Target Audience

Self-promotion is not something that always comes naturally to me, and this post smacks of patting my own back. But it involves something I am very pleased about, so bear with me.

One of the blogs on my blogroll is Adams Drafting, on which Ken Adams blogs about "modern and effective contract drafting." I teach Contracts, and I think his blog is a very good source of practical advice on recent developments in contract law. It also has a strong intellectual edge, and I like that.

On October 7, 2007, Ken wrote a post entitled My, Uh, Nine Favorite Law Blogs. (Kudos to him for resisting the round number of ten.) I'm very happy to say that Law Career Blog made the list. Ken explained that he reads my blog because he is "acutely aware of the difficulties that junior associates face when it comes to contract drafting. Perhaps as a result, I’ll happily read thoughtful discussion of issues facing law students and junior associates generally. And that’s what [Law Career Blog] offers."

I must say that I am quite flattered to be on his list. My target audience for Law Career Blog consists of law students, people thinking about attending law school, junior practitioners and people thinking about law career changes, and anyone generally concerned about any of these groups. So to my way of thinking, my inclusion on this list suggests that Law Career Blog is hitting its target audience, or at least not missing it entirely. And that is a victory worth celebrating.

In other news related to contracts, I have declared a "computer-free week" in my Contracts class--something I have blogged about previously and considered doing. I plan to post tomorrow on that subject.

"Must Sue TV"

Today's post is about the blog That's What She Said, on which blogger and attorney Julie Elgar discusses legal/HR issues raised by episodes of the US TV show The Office. Specifically, Elgar assigns a litigation value to various actions that occur on the show. I blogged about her blog briefly in a previous post.

Tonight (9/27/07) was the season premiere, which means that tomorrow morning (Friday) Elgar will post a blog entry about the episode. It's very interesting to see the show dissected for legal liability purposes. And the truth is that there are a lot of idiot bosses out there, so it's not a hypothetical exercise. One boss I know ordered his employees not to conjugate in the hallways. Seriously. In the same office, an internal office memo from the boss explained that security was being improved at the front door by installing a "security intercom buzzard." Again, no joke. Dilbert bosses are alive and well. So the idea of treating the scenarios on The Office as if they were real is a legitimate exercise. And fun, which is the most important thing.

I have added That's What She Said to my blogroll for those who are interested in checking it out on a regular basis.

A Few Law Student Blogs

The new law school academic year has been in swing for several weeks now, and that means (at least in my own estimation) that it is time to report on law student blogs.

Law student blogs are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are great fun, and can offer wonderful insight into the modern student mind. I just finished writing a law review article that centers on the subject of law professor "fade" or obsolesence, and a large part of that fade is due to disconnects (often generational, but not always) between profs and students. (Watch for a separate post about my article soon.) So student blogs are great, in that they shine light into the gap between students and profs.

But student blogs are also problematic. First, it's always dangerous to reason from the specific (a student blog) to the general (all students)--although perhaps less dangerous than not seeking any insight into the student mind. Second, blogs are like lawyers: there are too many of them, but never enough good ones. Student blogs are no exception (and neither are law prof blogs, I suppose). Too many student blogs end up being either exercises in venting or posturing, or blogs with no posts.

But there are some gems. I always enjoy reading Shelley's Case, and Shelley has reciprocated with some of the best comments on my blog. CALI's Pre-Law Blog does a good job of providing student-oriented advice. The Frugal Law Student has one of the best schticks on the web, in my opinion--the blog is basically about ways Mr. Frugal Law Student is trying to "mitigate [his] crippling law school debt" by doing things like freezing his credit cards in ice. One post concerns how to save money by not washing your clothes. These days the blog is visually very slick, but I miss the old look: it used to look like a preformatted blog, but with a little graph at the top showing his current negative net worth. The whole idea of a prefab blog design fit pretty well with the idea of a frugal law student. The new format looks like he paid someone (which he says he didn't), or spent time designing his blog that would have been better spent freezing his money. But you can't stop progress, I suppose.

There are a few others worth mentioning, including these:

T Sinister. T Sinister (a left-handed fellow named Trevor) is a student at Harvard Law School, and his posts are usually quite good. He strives for funny, and often gets there, but sometimes he is serious too, perhaps somewhat by accident. A good recent post is "What I Wish I Had Known About Law School At The Start of My 1L Year." It's excellent advice.

Luis Villa's Blog. Not exactly the most original name for a blog, but he gets points for truth in adverstising, I suppose. He has a very good recent post about blogging and how to deal with it when interviewing for law jobs.

The Legal Scoop. There's a bit of everything here, as one might expect from a group blog. But that's a good thing. A good recent post is "Typing Your Way to an 'A,' " which discusses the importance of typing to law school success. I'd add that a long exam answer is no guarantee of a good answer if you do not know what you are doing, but it may help avoid a complete meltdown if you can at least randomly hit important points. If you know what you are doing, however, being able to flesh out your answer in great detail certainly does help.

Some new blogs are bound to crop up as the school year progresses, and I will try to keep an eye out for them.

(In)Civility in the Blogosphere

I have been thinking a good deal lately about the frequent lack of civility in the blogosphere. I am always surprised when I read a blog post or comment that is not so much an attempt at meaningful commentary as it is a smackdown, WWF-style. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me. But it does.

I probably sound like an old fogey saying that, but there it is. I know why it happens, and I know that the Internet is a wonderful means of communication and interaction. And yet I still find myself taken aback by some of the downright nasty things that get said online.

Now, I generally can ignore all of this, and I do not view virtual sniping as some sort of Sign of the Times. I have a higher opinion of human nature than to think that people used to be civil, and then along came the Internet, and now all the youngsters have no taste or class. That kind of inter-generational tension is nothing new.

But when it started happening on this blog, that really gave me pause. It did not happen a lot, but it happened some. And then it happened more. And I have found it harder to ignore or overlook on this blog, because this is a blog about lawyering and law careers. And one of the key characteristics of a good lawyer is . . . civility.

So that's the great irony here: people behaving in an incivil manner on a blog devoted to a profession that should espouse civility. (Yes, I know the profession falls short--but that's all the more reason to champion the ideal, isn't it?) I could act as a traffic cop, of course, stepping in as necessary to remind people to tone it down, and deleting the occasional comment that goes too far. I guess that is what I am doing now. But my real point is that even if and when there is discussion on this blog, anonymous potshots do damage. They threaten to dilute the discussion. And perhaps even worse, they change the tenor of the discussion, and the blog as a whole.

For me, the greatest corrosive effect of negativity and sniping is that any comment that is edgy may be assumed to be a negative one. That's of course not true, but I myself have already fallen into that trap. Recently I read a very intelligent and well-done comment to a recent post on this blog--a comment that added a lot to the discussion in a very substantive way. But I incorrectly concluded that the reader also was taking a jab at me. Not true; read the comments. But at the time that's how I took it. I have to believe that I did so partly because I was primed to think that way.

That little event is a good example of what is happening on a much larger scale in the American legal profession. Lawyers often do not expect civility, so they do not give it. They assume that statements (by clients, by opposing counsel, by colleagues) are meant to be negative, when they might not be. And these assumptions are made because too many lawyers have been conditioned to play smackdown, instead of play nice.

I am of course not suggesting that lawyers should not be advocates or play hard ball when necessary. Of course they should. But there is a distinction between advocacy and civility, and it sometimes gets lost. If a lawyer (or lawyer-to-be) is going to go after opposing counsel, or someone in the legal blogosphere, I suggest that it be done with professionalism.

Anonymous Coffeemaker

I've been reading a new blog lately called BabyBarista, which blogger BabyBarista describes as "a fictional account of a pupil barrister undergoing the trials of pupillage at the English Bar." I lived in the UK for a time, and I love it. I heartily recommend it.

BabyBarista's blog is quintessentially British, in a very modern way: eloquently verbose, cutting, witty in the extreme. In the short time it's been online it has garnered significant readership. I see it as a UK counterpart to Jeremy Blachman's US-based Anonymous Lawyer. Like Anonymous Lawyer, BabyBarista's blog is populated by characters with clever nickames such as "Teflon" and "Worrier," so perhaps this similarity is intentional. However, it should be noted that BabyBarista's nicknames are characteristically British in their understatement--in stark contrast to Anonymous Lawyer's wonderfully blunt nicknames like "the Jerk," "the Bombshell," and the ever-classic "Young Guy Badly Hiding Your Impending Baldness." Should we be looking for a novel soon?

US readers should pay particular attention to the fact that BabyBarista's fictional challenges and travails are quite literally the same as those faced by lawyers on this side of the pond: billing by the hour, poor mentoring, working with abnormal people, intolerance and impatience, burnout, lack of idealism, etc. Perhaps it's comforting, since misery loves company. Then again, perhaps not.

Weekly Roundup--Feb. 19, 2007

This is my second installment of noteworthy posts or events of the week. Highly unscientific, but hopefully highly interesting.

More (and More) on Taking Law School Exams. There were some substantive posts in the past week on law school exams and how (and how not) to take them. I posted on this subject recently too (see Reflections on Law School Exams and More Information on Exams).

• In a recent post, Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy discusses in some detail what is (and is not) a good law school exam answer. He usefully illustrates his points with a little hypothetical--materials from a make-believe course, an exam question, and five sample exam answers. Make sure you check out the comments.

• Daniel Solove at Concurring Opinions also offers his take on law school exams.

Note the commonalities in the advice posted by Kerr, Solove, me, and other law profs out there. If a lot of people (grading the exams) tell you the same thing, there's probably something to it . . . .

Blogs in the Classroom. On his blog, Stephen Bainbridge has posted about the use of blogs in teaching. He's using a course-focused blog to great effect--making his slides, handouts, audio of his actual class lectures, and related materials available online for anyone who wants to access them. That is an excellent idea, and Bainbridge can hold his head high if anyone ever accuses him of being an academic because he does not want to work hard. (Which someone does in a comment on another recent post of his, in which Bainbridge compares law practitioner salaries to law prof salaries.) He really could get away with not posting these materials, and yet he does it anyway. Kudos.

So why don't all professors do this? There are probably as many reasons as there are law profs, but I do note that Bainbridge has been teaching for a while, which has given him time to hone his materials.

Most interesting to me is the excerpt Bainbridge quotes from an interview of Professor Jack Balkin (of the blog Balkinization) about blogs opening up possibilities for law students to hear the views of law profs at other schools far more easily than, say, just a few years ago. I see this as very beneficial for students (check out the comments to Bainbridge's post), and also perhaps as raising the bar of accountability for law profs. Both of which are good things.

Big Firm Salaries. At Concurring Opinions, Scott Moss points out in a recent post that despite the media frenzy over recent (and previous) big law firm pay hikes for associates, the average increase over the past decade has been only 6.5% annually. That's better than the national average, but not huge. But the headline "Associates get Modest Pay Raises" won't sell many papers.

As a former soldier in the big firm trenches, I can say that the associates generally earn these raises, too.

Blog of the Week. This honor goes to the HRHero blog That's What She Said, on which blogger and HR attorney Julie Elgar discusses legal issues raised by the US version of the TV show "The Office." Neat concept for a blog.

New Practitioner and Student Blogs

I've found two new blogs that readers might be interested in checking out. One is The Online Lawyer. Blogger lawyer Nolelaw has described his blog as "somewhat unique in that I cover a number of different legal areas in my posts (from Contracts to Divorce to Lemon Laws to DUI) instead of focusing on one area in particular." Looking at the blog, he does indeed run the gamut, so it's an interesting example of small or solo practitioner outreach via blogging. One of his more popular posts, on the subject of Quitclaim Deeds, is located here.

The other blog is a student blog called loco delictis, which blogger frillgril describes as "a 1L's strange and unusual adventures in law school." Unusual with respect to the rest of society perhaps, but the value of this blog as I see it is that it is in fact representative of the modern law student experience. Which to me makes it not usual, although perhaps still strange. A recent post entitled Licking my Wounds is about grades (what else?)--make sure you read the comments.

On the subject of grades, I still owe readers a post about grades from my own post-exam point of view. I promise it's coming soon.

New Student (to be) Blog

I have found a new student blog--actually, a student-to-be blog. Reasonable Expectations is a blog on "a new mother's thoughts on parenthood, applying to law school and life in general." Which is an interesting, different angle on the law school experience. I'll be reading this one.

The Frugal Law Student

I recently posted a lament about what I saw as a lack of interesting new law student blogs (some of my previous favorites are listed in my blog roll). That post is located here. Yet perhaps my negativity was premature. What I now suspect is that it might take new law students about half a semester to figure out what to put on their blogs and to develop their blog personas. Maybe that is why I found little of worth previously.

In any event, one new law student blog that I enjoy reading right now is The Frugal Law Student. Many law students take on heavy (even crippling) debt, so the theme of the blog is a good one. The tone is fun, and the blog is somewhat in the vein of the Anonymous Lawyer blog (complete with a "Mrs. Frugal Law Student"). And anyone who is married and moves in with his in-laws to save money has my respect (and pity).

My favorite part of the blog? The ticker at the top that lists his current negative net worth.

A Few Things I Have Been Reading (While I Have Not Been Writing)

It's been a busy past few days, so I am a little behind on my posts. One thing I have been doing this fall is searching for additional sites that discuss law career issues, as well as some law students posts that may be worth checking out. The following are a few interesting things I have found recently.

2L student blog Shelley's Case has a nice response to a question I posted on this blog on September 26, 2006--namely, what your thoughts on law school might be. Shell's survival tips for the Socratic Method and comments about the classroom being like a courtroom are very good indeed--the latter especially. Like many things in life, interactions in the law school classroom can be thought of as roleplaying, which not only makes the experience more fun (or less awful at least), but perhaps more meaningful as well.

On a sidenote, the graphic design of that blog has changed. If I remember correctly, last year it was all in pastel colors, but this year it is monochromatic grayscale. A legal blog in shades of gray--somebody must have a sense of humor.

Second year associate blog Lack of Scienter. Visually very nice, and contentwise it is refreshing to hear the views of a junior associate who is not miserable or angry at her law firm. (At least not yet.) Good recent posts include one on the "Working Mothers" List (Sept. 26, 2006) (query: is there such a thing as a "Working Fathers" List?) and another on associate mentoring programs (Sept. 25, 2006), which is a favorite topic of mine. But read this blog's posts soon, since there are no archives, and old posts just get deleted.

The New York Lawyer. This is not a new site, but I only started reading it regularly this fall. It has lots of online articles relevant to newbie lawyers and people considering career changes within the law. Favorite recent article: Large Firm Life: Managing Junior Associates (Oct. 6, 2006). Note: You need to register to have access to this site, but registration is free.

Other Stuff? To be honest, this post was supposed to be about interesting new law student blogs, but frankly I haven't found any good new ones. (Check out the ones I already had listed on my blogroll, though.) Maybe it's because a lot of them say much the same thing: I'm overwhelmed, everyone IMs in class, exams stink, I'm drunk (again), etc. Those that seem more original don't necessarily discuss the kind of behavior I'd like to encourage--like the blog posts I found about how to sleep with half the attorneys and staff at the firm where you are a summer associate and still get a permanent offer (I'm definitely not dignifying that one with a link).

Maybe I am just turning into a cynical, crabby old geezer a decade or two before my allotted time. But I don't see much out there on the student side of things that catches my eye as worth reading. If anyone one sees something I missed, though, please post a comment and tell me about it.

More (and Still More) Advice for New Law Students

Professor Paul Caron at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, who runs the excellent blog TaxProf Blog, has provided an admirable compendium of online advice for newbie law students. I am proud to say that one of this blog's entries is on the list. Check out his list of very useful links here.

And for those of you who may have missed some of my recent posts with advice for incoming law students, here are the links: two entries about how to brief a case (here and here); podcast advice for new law students from CALI's Pre-Law Blog (here); and advice regarding law school orientation, including what not to do, based on my own painful experience (here).

Good luck to all incoming students as they transition from the real world into the rarified atmosphere of law school! It's a transformational experience--one that shaped me enormously and that I have never regretted, despite all the hard work and stress of it all.

Following Your Gut Instincts in Changing Jobs

This morning I sat down with a big mug of coffee and a yawn to do my usual online reading and I got some good news. Nemorino, a first year associate in New Jersey who runs the blog Bridge and Tunneled and who reads my blog, has decided to change jobs from his current, good-but-unsatisfying private practice job to one that excites him. Check out his post here. To my enormous satisfaction, he said that in making the change he was following some of my advice from this blog. That is precisely why I write this blog. I was once a student and later a junior associate who could have used some advice, and I am glad he found my blog comments helpful.

So Nemorino is thinking about his career in the right way: he is following his heart and his gut instincts. It is far too easy in practice to stay where you are--to plan your career around the mundane and known present, instead of aiming toward an exciting but unknown future that might not work out. Inertia seems easy and safe; change seems risky and hard. But the payoff can be huge. And the downside of not taking a little risk? Waking up one day with kids and a mortgage, and feeling trapped. Staying in that situation means dying by degrees.

Think of it this way. Making a change means things might not work out. But staying on a career path that is not fulfilling means things certainly won't work out. One of my earlier posts on this subject is located here (look at the bottom of the post in particular).

So Nemorino has chosen action based on his heart over inaction through inertia. Kudos to him. I hope it works out.

Law Career Blog is on the Map

Well, this is cool. In my regular perusing of the blogosphere, I check Concurring Opinions, a very good Law Prof blog by a variety of blogging superstars with the narrowly tailored focus of "the Law, the Universe, and Everything." It always pays to keep your feet on the ground and your tongue in your cheek, I suppose. In a truly herculean post on that site, Professor Daniel Solove at George Washington has provided a census of currently known law prof bloggers, and my blog is on the list. Hurray for the internet! Not that I thought I was invisible, but it is nice to be noticed.

Again, Solove's post is a true monster, in the good sense of being excellent work product and highly interesting to boot. Check it out here.

More on Law Professors and Blogging

Following up on my post yesterday about law professors and blogging, I highly recommend a recent post on the very same subject by my colleague Mike McCann on Sports Law Blog. Mike's take on the matter is extremely cogent. He does a very nice job of explaining how scholarly publications fit into the current law professor incentive structure, and how blogs really do not. Which Mike concludes is a shame--and I agree with him, both for the reasons he gives and the reasons noted in my post yesterday.

Should Law Professors Blog?

There is so much written these days about the pros and cons of blogging that inevitably the debate has turned to law professors who blog. And there are a lot of them.

Law professor blogs are often different animals than ordinary blogs. For one thing, many read like they are written by, well, law professors. And clearly many of them are written for consumption by other law professors. (Of law professors, by law professors, and for law professors?) Yet this very inward focus has opened up a lively debate in the legal academy--namely, whether law prof blogging is a good idea overall.

There is a recent National Law Journal article that tees up the issue nicely, as well as a recent post by Brian Leiter on Leiter's Law Reports. Take a look at them; they're good. As they frame the issue, it is whether law prof blogs promote legal scholarship and the sharing of ideas within the academy, as opposed to the traditional slow-motion law review article route. Answers given range from "yes" blogging is useful to "no" because blogging has "nothing to do with scholarship" and is "not very thoughtful."

But I wonder: is this focus entirely correct? Or to be more precise, is this focus incomplete? Should blogging by law profs always be primarily about scholarship? Might some other focuses also be useful for both the professors and their schools?

To my mind, the answer to the last question is "yes." Blogging is the perfect vehicle for outreach to the masses by a traditionally stuffy profession. It is painfully obvious to me, and many others in law, that the legal profession has undergone a period of unprecedented hyper-specialization in recent decades, and that the trend generally continues. The same trend is apparent in law teaching. Specialists in this and that. That does not trouble me so much, but what does bother me is that with such specialization, the gap between the legal academy and its students--and society--is looming ever wider.

What do I mean? Clearly, some of the incentives for law professors are not directly linked to the daily concerns of students. Law review articles are an example of that. Now, I firmly believe that scholarship clearly informs teaching (and vice versa), and I have experienced that sort of synergy first-hand. I love it. (You can link to my articles here). But what about students and members of the public who don't understand what we do? Who think we are nothing but a bunch of naval gazers who sit around and theorize instead of effecting real change in society? How do we convince them otherwise and gain their support for our institutions? By writing law review articles? I think not. In the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (see my recent post), George F. Will wrote that "The institutional vanity and intellectual slovenliness of America's campus-based intelligentsia have made academia more peripheral to civic life than at any time since the 19th century." In other words, there is a huge disconnect.

So how to re-engage the legal academy with a society that often sees us as overly liberal and self-important ivory-tower dwellers? One way is through blogs. Take this blog for example. It was never aimed at being solely a theoretically- or technically-inclined legal blog. Rather, it is intended as an outlet for the pent-up frustrations and passionately held beliefs of a one-time practitioner turned professor. A superb example of a strong and engaging law blog is Sports Law Blog. It bridges the gap between accessible and intellectual exceedingly well.

Quixotic though it may be, I believe that law schools and society at large would be better off if we engaged the "real world" a bit more often and if non-scholars (including our students) understood better what we do and why. I suspect there are many in the legal academy who would agree with me on this, so I am not trying to take a self-righteous stance. I am simply suggesting that the debate thusfar has been somewhat incomplete. There will be a conference at Harvard on law blogging in April of this year, and perhaps this can be discussed there. (If not, perhaps I should write a law review article about the problem!)

On Having a Quarterlife Crisis

There’s an excellent post today at Bridge and Tunneled, a blog describing itself as “A twenty-something’s take on the ‘Quarterlife Crisis’ from somewhere in the swamps of New Jersey.” The tone is spot-on for the current generation of new law school grads. And the blog author, Nemorino, clearly has good taste, since he links to this blog. Although he also cites Zoolander as one of his favorite movies (check out his blogger profile), so maybe not.

Anyway, today’s post on Bridge and Tunneled is about being a recent law school grad and not being quite sure what to do with your life. The thought is that a lot of people in their 20s feel like they are just marking time. Nemorino writes that for people currently in their 20s, "There's no clearly defined endpoint anymore, no fixed date where our lives as we know them will end abruptly and we'll be forced, like it or not, out into the real world." That's profound and wistful thinking.

Interestingly, though, being in my late 30s I actually do have the answer--or at least an answer. I know where the endpoint is. The endpoint is age 34.

At 30 you're still young. "Cool, now I'm in my thirties!" is a typical reaction. No one seems fazed by 30 anymore. And 31, 32, and 33 are still early 30s, so they’re generally fine too.

But 34? Now that's a whole different story. At 34 you only have one more year to round down your age and qualify as "early 30s." At 35 you are undeniably in your mid-30s, and at 36 you are one foot into your late 30s. 40 is closing fast. This realization hits like a load of bricks, and you soil yourself. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Here’s how it works: one minute you're 28 and have loads of time to figure your life out; the next minute you’re 6 years older and your financial planner (if you have one--which you probably don't because you’re still too young for that stuff, aren’t you?) is telling you you’ve missed several key years of investment compounding.

So Nemorino is right: it is absolutely critical to have a plan for your life when you are in your 20s, even if the plan constantly changes. Because if you do not, you soon will be 34 years old and in crisis. Happy birthday! But if you plan, you can keep your options open. Then, once you figure out what your professional calling is, you will have improved your odds of successfully landing a position in that field.

For me, my chief options were law partnership and law teaching, and I planned for both, even when I was not sure which one I would pick. As a result, I got to make my own choice, instead of having it made for me. I don't offer that anecdote so that everyone can feel really good for me. I offer it because I'm living proof that Nemorino's advice works when you follow it.