Anonymity III: We'll miss you, O & N!

The law student blogging community is saying a sad farewell to Open and Notorious, which is ceasing (or has ceased) publication. [Link via FalconRed] Apparently, there were people who didn't appreciate o and n's attempt to give a candid (and often humorously scathing) picture of several students' experience of law school. According to "learned foot," one of the site's authors:

we're all about free expression, but we care about our careers more. it's not worth it. let's just leave it at that.

This may have been building for some time; the o and n crew took down their archives some time ago and they don't seem to even offer permalinks to individual posts (which is clever, because the structure of those permalinks would allow people to find additional archives, if any remain online).

As a parting gift, "Learned Foot" offers some excellent advice to law students everywhere:

to the rising 1L's. i hope you took the following message home with you: you can be a mediocre student at a mediocre school and still rock the living shit out of your law school experience. you can get the coveted internship. you can get the "bling bling" job - or the job you want. none of us made law review. none of us were even in the top third. we don't go to harvard, stanford, columbia, or the like. and we're doing just fine. some even fabulously. don't allow yourselves to be shackled by the words of the drone army (e.g. "if you don't make law review, you might as well quit." "if you're not in the top 20% you might as well just kiss your career goodbye.") perhaps i should tell you a story of a friend of a friend who got a 2.6 her first year of law school at a second tier school ranked lower than ours. through clever networking and a lot of persistence, she ended up with a better job than most of the people on law review. how did she do it? her answer: "it only depends on how much rockage you have." don't give up, be personable, follow your leads, go for what you want. it's possible, and you don't need law review to get there. besides, it's the clever and persistent ones who think outside the box who are hungry and won't take "no" for an answer who make it as good lawyers. food for thought.

Yes indeedy, it's all about the rockage. And maybe we can take away one more lesson from Open and Notorious: If you're going to blog law school, decide in advance whether you want to plan to be in it for the long haul, or the short term. If you're in it for the long haul (meaning you hope to be able to maintain your blog through law school and perhaps beyond), you'll have to be more careful about what you say. This doesn't mean you can't tell it like it is, but it does mean you have to be prepared to stand by what you say if anyone—including a professor, an administrator, another student, or a prospective employer or other colleague—decides to ask you about it.

If you're in it for the short term (meaning you don't care too much if you have to abandon your blog at some point in the future), you can say whatever the hell you want. Still, if people learn of your identity, you might, as Ricky Ricardo was so fond of saying to Lucy, have some 'splaining to do.

In some ways Open and Notorious seems to have lived up to it's name perfectly. They were open—about what they thought, if not about who they were. And because of their "openness" they became notorious. Unfortunately, that notoriety has forced them to become permanently closed.

Is it better to burn out than fade away?

Ah, nevermind. Just remember: "it only depends on how much rockage you have."

Posted August 6, 2003 02:03 PM | law school meta-blogging