August 6, 2011

"Meanwhile, I have to say that I care less and less about law reviews."

"Increasingly it feels to me like the article is published when it’s posted on SSRN, and the actual publication in a law review later seems kind of anticlimactic. Based on casual conversation, I’d say that a lot of other legal academics feel the same way. I still submit to law reviews, but I wonder if that will be true in five years."

Instapundit says.

7 comments:

rhhardin said...

I don't even know what a law review is.

I assume like a trouble report in software.

Trooper York said...

It's like Women's Wear Daily for ambulance chasers.

Joe said...

A law review is where people who don't actually practice law pontificate on how to utterly pervert it to one advantage or the other.

Peano said...

Increasingly it feels to me like the article is published when it’s posted on SSRN

It IS published when it's posted on SSRN. Geez. You'd think a lawyer would know that.

Anonymous said...

I've wondered if there isn't a correlation between a higher education bubble (economic and social conditions leading to decline of opportunities in the field) and more of a pressure to publish.

I remember as an English major there being a rush for a few spots. A good scholar may take years to develop, and when the positions aren't there, or are being oversold, there's a rush to get them, publishing "scholarship" no matter how bad is but one means...like a cargo cult. Maybe it's a signal.

Perhaps lawyers are seeing a split between the practice and the schools, the sometimes useful...but often navel-gazing, tenure-competing and endlessly theorizing mandarins growing further from the practice. Scholarship is fine if done right, but it often isn't done right.

Some say it's global competition, others say it's a reaction to the new diversity practices and often redistributionist logic....others a correction to the boon the boomers had to leaner times.

Robert said...

I'm commenter number 6 after this has been up nearly a full day?

I guess I can strike Althouse from the list of legal blogs I tell people I read on a regular basis.

Joe said...

Wait; you though Althouse was a law blog? You've been here how long?