Blogs in the Spotlight

The National Law Journal's supplement, Law Schools--A Special Report, highlights five "pioneers in law blogging," who are some of the best-known bloggers in legal academic--Professors Douglas Berman (Sentencing Law and Policy); Paul Caron (TaxProf Blog); Christine Hurt (The Conglomerate); Brian Leiter (Brian Leiter's Law School Reports); and Eugene Volokh (The Volokh Conspiracy). The brief profiles of the bloggers contain some interesting nuggets about why they started blogging and how they juggle their time commitments. Professor Hurt revealed that it is difficult to start blogging, at least for some people. Academics are accustomed to sharing their work with colleagues and to reworking their ideas many, many times before publication. "The thought of throwing something up on the computer scene [sic] for the whole world to read in five minutes doesn't resonate with a lot of people." Professor Berman began blogging in 2004, and has "learned to rein in his impulse to post fast-and-furious reactions to news and events. ... Over time, [he's] gotten more sensitive to being more mature, to resist the significant urge to go for the quick, sexy, clever comment." All of the professors interviewed say that blogging is a tremendous incentive for keeping up to date in their area of expertise and makes them more effective classroom teachers.

SSRN Question

My school is contemplating subscribing to SSRN's Research Paper Series (RPS). We already have a significant number of articles by faculty members on SSRN, but an RPS would allow us to "brand" our scholarship and create our own working papers series as well as take advantage of other features we can't use now. This enhancement would not be cheap, but the cost would be worth it if, as SSRN states, it leads to an "increase in readership" for our faculty scholarship.

I see that many law schools do have an RPS. Do those of you whose schools have one find that the readership of your faculty's scholarship has increased since it was established? Was the investment worth it? Is it the academic equivalent of a vanity license plate, or does the RPS promote downloading of faculty scholarship?

I look forward to comments on this issue from OOTJ readers.