Lawyers, law blogging, legal scholarship

To blog or not to blog? If that is your question, and you are in law, the one stop shop summarising the debate can be found at the Legal Theory Blog. Interesting timing, since I've been receiving a few media/lawyer/student inquiries just lately about the whys and wherefores of blogging.

I have little to add to Larry Solum's extensive, and thoughtful comments. As a junior(ish) academic, I read his comments as largely quite negative - ie I should probably not be blogging. To distracting; too much danger of garnering negative comments and negative perceptions without knowing about it.

But I wonder whether the issues are slightly different for an academic in a relatively small, and isolated part of the legal academic world (Australia). Blogging does occasionally make me part of a more global conversation - . That's more of a positive, I think, for a person in an out of the way country than it is for, say, a junior academic physically located in the heart of the United States or Europe.

The other issue might be area of law/what is going on in your area of law. For the last couple of years, a key way to be in on the debate has been to blog - because IP, in Australia, has been moving very fast. I don't think I'd be blogging if my area were, say, succession law...

Overall, then, I would say the issue for me is balance. So the New Year's resolution is...