Alison Kilmartin over at Red Lion Reports tipped us off to a discussion going on at Volokh about the changing role of blawgs.

There are some good observations within the massive thread.  In particular, one user theorizes that:

This is simple continuity. Most of the law student blogs I read in the past died when the primary authors graduated and encountered some combination of being too busy to write, and having fewer entertaining things to write about as a junior associate than as a law student.

Many commenters in the above thread discuss their interactions with Career Services and Deans about their blogs.  The reasons are probably some healthy mixture of egoism and altruism.  Career Services wants to make sure that we’re marketable, but they also need to ensure that their office doesn’t lose credibility by pushing a bunch of students saying stupid things on blogs.

Blawgs almost have to be some strange hybrid between a personal blog and a pure analysis blog.  We can’t give legal advice, but less people would be interested in Legal Geekery if we were posting about random law school experiences.

Do law professors generally take law student blawgs seriously?  Probably not.  But I doubt that’s ever been any different.  I should note that there’s a difference between respecting a blawg and taking its legal analysis seriously.  Several professors have told me that they subscribe to LG’s RSS feed.  Does that mean that they’re going to be citing my analysis of contract theory with respect to rewards any time soon?  Let’s hope not.

Another interesting observation is that professors are willing to guest blog on student blogs nowadays.  And why not?  Professors are busy people and usually don’t have time to build up a readership.  Why not post on an established student blog and guarantee thousands of hits?

To completely shift gears for a minute, you may have noticed our “Little Geeks”  section over to the right.  This is actually the feed for our new twitter account.  If you’re on twitter, please add LegalGeekery and we’ll be sure to add you back.

Related posts:

1. The Best Law Student Advice Is No Advice (Advice For 0Ls)
2. LG Seeks One or Two Blawgers
3. A Lot Can Change in a Year (Alternatively: It’s Never Too Late?)
4. Help with Student Loans, Starring Shrinking Gremlins