Social life of a blawger

On Friday I attended New York Law School’s conference “Writing About the Law: From Bluebook to Blogs and Beyond“. Aside from the considerable merits of the program itself (PDF), organized by NYLS’s Cameron Stracher, I met a lot of blawgers, lawprofs and others whose work I’ve been reading for years. At lunch, when Northwestern lawprof Jim Lindgren (Volokh Conspiracy) kindly suggested I join his table, I found myself seated between David Lat (Above the Law) and Ann Althouse; the rest of the table consisted of NYLS professors Jethro Lieberman (The Litigious Society) and Arthur Leonard, and publisher/editor Bernard Hibbitts of Jurist. Earlier in the day, I met Paul Caron (TaxProf), Jack Balkin (Balkinization), and Larry Solum (Legal Theory Blog), as well as catching up with old friend Randy Barnett (Volokh). For more on the program, see Larry Solum’s posts here, here and here, David Lat’s here, here and here and Ann Althouse’s here and (Times Select) here.

On Jan. 28, I attended the pre-launch party in Manhattan for BlawgWorld 2007, a volume produced by the TechnoLawyer people which pulls together a sampling of 2006 posts from 76 law-related blogs, rather like a blog festival in print. Among those I finally met in person was George Lenard of George’s Employment Blawg; I also got to say hello to a number of other blawgers I’d run into previously, including Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. and Arnie Herz of Legal Sanity. I can be spotted in a few of the pictures from the event, such as this one, this one and (seeming to pound my hand against the wall, though I was not in fact frustrated) this one. Clearly I should get out more often.

3 Comments

  • I just read a Randy Barnett book and really liked it. (Restoring the Lost Constitution)

    Question for Walter & Ted:

    I’m considering law schools right now to attend Fall ’08. Assuming getting admitted isn’t an issue, do you have any particular recommendations off the top of your heads?

    My top choices right now are Chicago and Northwestern, in that order.

  • If getting admitted and cost (and the ultimate decision to go to law school at all) isn’t an issue, go to the best law school you get into, with some possible exceptions like you sound like you’d prefer Chicago to NYU.

    If you’re considering not going to the best law school you get into, ask the law school you’re considering most seriously to introduce you to students who made the same choice. It was a lot easier for me to turn down Texas’s offer of a full scholarship when they couldn’t show me a single student in their law school who had turned down Harvard or Yale to go there.

  • Thanks for the input.

    I have decided I prefer Chicago to NYU for geographic reasons, otherwise Chicago is my first choice of the top few schools. That’s mostly because it’s in a good location and one of the best schools, though–I don’t know enough to evaluate the reputations of any professors or tell what places are likely to be sympathetic to my laissez-faire persuasions.

    Hopefully admission won’t be an issue (my relevant numbers, at least, are good); cost probably won’t be if I’m willing to subject myself to loans too big for me to comprehend…