Monday, July 30, 2007 6:37 AM
Professor J. ROBERT BROWN Jr., at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, has posted his paper Blogs, Law School Rankings, and the Race to the Bottom to the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Professor Brown earlier shared a draft version with me and I found it be an interesting, very well-researched paper that makes some great points and is worth taking the time to read. Below is the Abstract and Citation. You can visit the above-noted link to find more details at SSRN. You can also visit Professor Brown's collaborative faculty-student weblog, The Race to the Bottom, which provides an analysis of the laws and regulatory measures that govern today's corporations.
Abstract:
Blogs are changing legal scholarship. Although not a substitute for the detailed, often intricately researched analysis contained in law reviews and other scholarly publications, they fill an important gap in the scholarly continuum. Blog posts can generate ideas and discussion that can be transformed into more a systematic and thorough paper or scholarly article. At the same time, blogs provide a forum for testing ideas once they are published in more traditional venues.
While over time, a blog presence will likely become de rigueur for top scholars and law reviews, top tier schools as a group have not yet targeted blogs as a necessary component of scholarly activity. In the short term, therefore, blogs provide unique opportunities for faculty and law schools outside the top tier to enhance their reputational rankings. Blogs can enhance reputation by allowing faculty to route around some of the biases in law review placements and SSRN rankings that favor those at the top tier schools. Blogs also represent a cost effective mechanism for advertising scholarly activity.
The paper discusses the evidence that blogs enhance reputation and surveys the way that scholars at law schools outside the top tier are already harnessing blogs to enhance their reputations. The paper also discusses what it takes to create a successful blog, from the search for content to the benefits of advertising. The paper finishes with a brief history of The Race to the Bottom, a corporate governance blog.
Citation:
Brown , J. Robert, "Blogs, Law School Rankings, and the Race to the Bottom" (July 26, 2007). U Denver Legal Studies Research Paper No. 07-33 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1003425