Why do you blog?

As some people have already noted, an article in this month's Student Lawyer magazine has something in common with this blog—your humble ambivalent blogger wrote them both. And since Student Lawyer has yet to get its own blog or enable any sort of feedback feature on its site (other than letters to the editor, of course), I happily offer this forum for your feedback on the article. Comment away! Specifically I wonder: What do you think of the general argument that blogs/blawgs are valuable for law students? More to the point, why do you maintain a blawg? Do you do it for any or all of the reasons the article discusses, or are there other reasons for your habit? Also, what about that whole “blawg” moniker? It's kind of cute, but is it worth anything more than that? Should we talk about law-related blogs as “blawgs,” or is the regular old “blogs” preferable? Are there other negatives to blogging as a law student that the article doesn't mention? Finally, thanks to everyone who responded to my calls for input on this article early last summer. As you can see, I basically just took the great things a lot of you said and wrote transitions between them; I'm just the messenger. Also, I had much more material than the magazine had space for, so if you sent in comments that aren't in the article, it's only because of that lack of space. Related food for thought:

• Non-law bloggers talk about why they blog.
• An article in the December ABA Journal called “To Blog or Not To Blog? Some Associates Who Asked That Question Say Web Logs Advance Careers, Exposure,” p. 33. I can't find the article online, but it features comments from Kevin O'Keefe, one of the few making a living from blawging, Matthew Lerner, the anonymous author of Underneath Their Robes, and Jeffrey Lewis.
• Of Blogs, Bloggers and Blawgs, an April 2003 article from the ABA's Law Practice Today.
• Interview with the Bloggers from the above source, both by Jim Calloway, an Oklahoma attorney.
• This short introduction to blogs by Carolyn Elefant.

UPDATE: “Blog” is apparently the number one word of the year, according to Merriam-Webster (via AmbivaBlog, which shares me ambivalence about this, obviously). And in related law-blogging reading, see also What Weblogs Can Do For You, a brief primer for legal practitioners by Evan Schaeffer.

Posted 03:19 PM | Comments (12) | meta-blogging

You're a conlaw prof

You know you're a professor of Constitutional law when you tell jokes and then have to explaining them and then you still have to tell your listeners you're joking. Today a student commented that criminal defendants have a right to choose to make no case and instead depend for their freedom on the prosecutor failing to make her case. In response, my esteemed ConLaw II professor (who has probably been my favorite professor this semester both because he's so knowledgeable and because he just seems like a likable guy) said that reminded him of an old cartoon where two prisoners are talking and one says, “If my lawyer said 'no questions, your honor' once, he said it a hundred times.” The class was silent. So my good professor proceeded to explain that the cartoon was saying “no questions” meant “no defense” and that that meant the defense attorney wasn't doing his or her job. Still, the class remained silent, so the good professor shouted, “It's a joke!” Everyone laughed. Students are so well-behaved. Or maybe we're just all pretty humorless about now as finals loom.

Posted 02:26 PM | 2L

I Are A Novelist

• Frist draft of 32-pg journal “note”: Check.
• 50k-word NaNoWriMo Novel: Check

The to-do list just got a lot shorter. It feels good to be a novelist, even if the “novel” is incomplete and completely unreadable. By the rules of the NaNoWriMo game, it's a novel. My brain is empty of all cogent or meaningful content, but maybe that's just how these things go.

Although it's a bit old at this point, Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, was on Talk of the Nation last Tuesday. He talks a bit about what seems to be the “normal” trajectory for NaNo novelists, which is that week one is fast and fun and furious and easy, followed by week two where you get tired and hit a wall and wonder why you're doing this, followed by a speeding up in week three and a beer and skittles race to the finish in week four. I guess that sort of fits my experience this time around. Week one was definitely easy and purely fun; words came quickly and easily, and it was exciting to get going. Week two I started dropping the ball, playing catch up, it became harder to motivate or maintain interest in my characters or plot. Week three, though, was really the worst, I think, because the doldrums of week two only got worse. The point is some advice to myself for next year: Days 10-20 or so are the hardest. Make a pact with yourself to keep writing through them, even if its just a couple hundred words a day. If you don't, you won't finish.

Posted 12:29 PM | Comments (9) | NaNoWriMo

Blawg Wisdom Lives & 5 x 5

Holy dormant websites, batman! Blawg Wisdom has been updated, this time with three hot new requests and some better late than never admissions tips. For the good of your fellow students and the future of humanity, please browse on over and offer some helpful advice if you have any. Thanks! Also, your humble blogger recently participated in a Five by Five: Law Student Edition over at the [non]billable hour, along with four highly esteemed colleagues. Since now is the time in law school (finals time) when we all have plenty of complaints about the monster, you might enjoy some of the suggestions over there. It appears a majority of us believe that law school should be either shorter or more focused on practical experience, or both. In fact, possibly the most consistent thread in all the suggestions is that law school should give students a better, more realistic idea of what it means to practice law. Or, as Jeremy Blachman so aptly puts it (in his point 2), “If law schools are trying to train their students to be practicing attorneys, no one has told the people writing the curriculum.” So sadly true. But since law school can't be everything to everyone, why not allow different schools more freedom to do different things? That would be the point of Anthony Rickey's first point, which suggests we eliminate the ABA's accreditation system. You won't hear any complaints from me. In addition to possibly making law school less expensive, would fewer accreditation requirements allow schools to offer different curricula to serve different learning styles? Perhaps you could have more practical schools, more theoretical schools, more firm-oriented schools, more public interest oriented schools. Sure, we have that now, but the differences could be greater, and that could be good. You could also have one, two, or three year programs, and that would be excellent b/c it would allow different students to choose the level of education they could afford. Here's another idea I had reading through all these suggestions and thinking about my own: Law school should last two years. (That's not the idea; lots of people have suggested that.) The first year should be general and broad, much like it is now but even more so, including more history, theory, and providing a better idea of the terrain of law so students will understand as early as possible what their options are. Then, the second year would be more focused. You would have to choose whether you want to do criminal law, tort law, corporate law, tax, etc. You specialize, just like you do as an undergrad, and you take a focused curriculum that gives you excellent skills in your chosen field. Then you go to work. And if you ever decide that you chose wrong, you can go back. For example, if you decide after your first year that you'd really like to be a corporate lawyer, but then you go off to a firm and hate it, then you go back to school for one year and one year only and take a focused and concentrated course in some other specialty. You'd always be free to go three or more years at the beginning to take multiple specialties—if you were rich and could afford the luxury, or if you just couldn't make up your mind what area of law you wanted to specialize in. But the option to save $30k-$40k would be there for the rest of us. This way, you get a more thorough education in your chosen field, and you only have to pay for the classes you really need. Why not?

Posted 07:52 AM | law school meta-blogging

Note to Self: Note Writing Is Fun!

I have been deeply entrenched in writing a “note” for the journal of which I am supposedly a staff member, and you know what? It's kind of fun. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. I mean, I've written more than a dozen 20-30 page academic papers previous to this (none published, all for grad school course requirements), but somehow, in the interval between each one I always seem to forget that both the research and the actual writing can be a real kick. The process of making an extended argument is a process of discovery, and of building something from a bunch of scattered thoughts and sources, making them into a coherent whole and creating something that just wasn't there before. In the process, you're often trying to destroy something as well, some bit of conventional wisdom, or some received way of viewing the world. Once in a while, at some point in the writing process, or at multiple points, you'll find just the right assemblage of quotations and transitions to create what seems at the time to be a very persuasive section. For some reason, when I'm lucky enough to enjoy those moments I can't help thinking, “I love it when a plan comes together.” (Although I never think of the A-Team in connection with that phrase, the show undoubtedly planted the phrase somewhere deep in my subconscious so it could rush to the surface at random moments as long as i live.) Also, as has happened so many times before, I now find myself with no time left to really finish my arguments in a convincing way. Why must I procrastinate something that really can be so enjoyable? So the advice to self: Just do it, you'll like it. The dreading of the paper is the hardest part, so next time, just skip it and get the damned thing done already! p.s.: The next time I mention that I have a paper of some kind due, will someone help me remember that I wrote this?

Posted 11:10 PM | 2L