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Dear Colleagues, Ours may be the only AALS Section whose members join with a shelf-life By the time most of us rotate into the Section’s leadership positions, we may be many things, but “new” law professor tends not to be one of them Just to take the most immediately accessible example, this is now my seventh year in the academy—I went on the teaching market so long ago that the Boston Red Sox hadn’t won a World Series since 1918! Two BoSox titles later (my Mets are still waiting—and will be for some time), I must confess that it feels more than a little out of place for someone on the far-side of the tenure gauntlet (insert audible sigh of relief) to think that we have any unique words of wisdom to offer to our junior peers and colleagues Continued on page Section Officers Chair: Stephen I Vladeck (American) Chair Elect: Marcia L McCormick (St Louis) Secretary: Christopher Lund (Wayne State) Treasurer: Tiffani Darden (Michigan State) Executive Committee Members Leah Chan Grinvald (St Louis) Linda D Jellum (Mercer) Deborah M Hussey Freeland (USF) Joseph F Morrissey (Stetson) Inside This Issue Message from the Chair (by Stephen I Vladeck) page Opportunities for Finding a Mentor page Designing a Better Course: Teaching with Instructional Technology (by Melissa T Lonegrass) page Colloquium on Guest Blogging page (with Dan Markel, Giovanna Shay, Caleb Mason, Miriam Albert, Michael Helfand, and Brendan Maher) Child Care at the AALS Annual Meeting (by Laura Kessler) page 15 THIS NEWSLETTER IS A FORUM FOR THE EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION AND IDEAS OPINIONS EXPRESSED HERE DO NOT REPRESENT THE POSITION OF THE SECTION OR OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN LAW SCHOOLS AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 A Message from the Chair Con't AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 More than a quirk of timing that results from our typically incremental promotion process, this annual reality underscores a more systematic challenge that our Section has always faced: how we ensure that we’re able to serve as a meaningful resource for the scores of new law professors who join our ranks each year even as our own situation increasingly ceases to resemble theirs? Put another way, is the Section on New Law Professors only a section for new law professors? The (hopefully obvious) answer is no—that we have instead chosen to style our Section as a safe space for advice sharing and for the development of best practices—where those of us who can still remember those terrifying first few years can help our junior colleagues (1) avoid the mistakes we made; (2) have the benefit of the good advice we received (and of learning how to ignore the bad advice we received in even greater volume); and (3) otherwise have a forum where they can raise questions about their teaching, their scholarship, or their service, any of which they might be less willing to raise with their own colleagues Thus, whereas our last few programs at the AALS Annual Meeting have focused on scholarship and service, we return this year to perhaps our most useful theme: pedagogy In particular, our section program this year is titled “Teaching How We Teach: Lessons from the Classroom for New Law Professors,” a panel discussion featuring Professors Rachel Croskery-Roberts from UC-Irvine, Ken Dau-Schmidt from Indiana, Mary Anne Franks from Miami, Cynthia Jones from American, and Gowri Ramachandran from Southwestern Our section program, which is co-sponsored by the AALS Section on Teaching Methods, will take place on Saturday, January 7, from 3:30–5:15 p.m in Delaware Suite B on the lobby level of the Marriott Wardman Park I very much hope to see you there… Separate from our section program, though, I want to encourage anyone and everyone who’s interested in continuing to advance the goals of the Section on New Law Professors to take an active interest in the Section going forward As it turns out, being a new law professor isn’t nearly as important to our section as being willing to help new law professors as they work toward becoming plain-old-ordinary law professors Our ability to serve as a conduit for our junior colleagues depends on a continual infusion of new blood, new ideas, and new approaches to the legal academy— and that begins with you Indeed, as I happily turn over the section’s reins to Marcia McCormick from St Louis University School of Law, that’s the one point I’d like to leave on: Our title notwithstanding, ours is not a section just for “new law professors.” Ours is a section for anyone and everyone who thinks that they have something to contribute—or, as importantly, something to learn At least on the latter point, I very much hope this includes former Section officers, too My very best wishes for a happy, healthy, and, third-most-importantly, productive 2012! Stephen I Vladeck Chair, AALS Section on New Professors Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Scholarship American University Washington College of Law svladeck@wcl.american.edu Law Opportunities for Finding a Mentor AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 From the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education Opportunities for finding a mentor At different stages of their careers, individuals may need different types of mentoring Mentoring needs could be in teaching, in scholarship development, or with work-life issues and experiences Therefore, a "one size fits all needs for all times" approach to mentoring has proven difficult to implement in the past The Section on Women in Legal Education's Mentoring Program takes a different approach to traditional mentoring The Section's program is structured as an "a la carte" program The volunteer mentors and their expertise and experiences are listed on the Mentoring Program web site Individuals who desire mentoring are encouraged to contact directly any volunteer mentor on the list who matches the individual’s particular mentoring need(s) Mentors are available to give assistance and advice concerning teaching, scholarship and work-life issues The URL for the site is: http://law.unl.edu/wile Professor Colleen Medill at the University of Nebraska administers the web site and serves as the chair of the Mentoring Program Her e-mail is cmedill2@unl.edu You may contact Colleen if you want assistance in finding a "match" for the type of mentoring you are seeking The Mentoring Program Committee currently is working to develop the web site, publicize it, and expand the list of mentors The members of the Mentoring Program Committee are: Colleen E Medill, Chair (Nebraska); Marina Angel (Temple); Michelle Simon (Pace); Jennifer Hendricks (Tennessee); Sandra Sperino (Cincinnati); Melissa Marlow (Southern Illinois); Nicole Huberfeld (Kentucky); Kerri Stone (Florida International); and Ruth Jones (Pacific) The Section's Mentoring Program and the web site are a work in progress If you have suggestions for the web site and improving the quality of the program, please contact any member of the Mentoring Program Committee Mentoring Opportunity The Section also is looking for individuals who want to be mentors If you would like to be a mentor, please contact Colleen Medill for a Volunteer Mentor Application Form Colleen can be reached at cmedill2@unl.edu Designing a Better Course: Teaching with Instructional Technology Melissa T Lonegrass Harriet S Daggett-Frances Leggio Landry Associate Professor of Law Louisiana State University Paul M Hebert Law Center For those new to teaching law, class preparation is time-consuming and often overwhelming During the first year especially, “course design” consists of little more than choosing a textbook, copying its table of contents into a syllabus, and hanging on for dear life New law teachers tend to emulate their own professors, most AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 of whom used the Socratic-style case-dialog method as a sole teaching technique And yet, everywhere we turn there seems to be an increased emphasis on structuring courses that depart from this traditional teaching style and incorporate new teaching methods designed to emphasize collaboration, provide summative feedback, and increase skills-building How can a novice law teacher hope to accomplish so much in a new course during those first frantic years? few online activities that the new law teacher may consider incorporating into a course, even a new prep, include the following: In large part, the answer lies in online instructional technology Online activities provide a wealth of opportunity both to encourage students to work together and to provide valuable feedback to students throughout the semester, in advance of the final exam They can also be used to introduce skills-building exercises and professionalism issues that are so often neglected in the classroom Perhaps most importantly, online activities can be conducted entirely outside of class, and thus not “steal” time from an already packed classroom schedule An added bonus: students love practicing their legal skills and relish receiving feedback Plus, the online learning environment is a familiar one to our students, many of whom were exposed to instructional technology as undergraduates Asynchronous Discussions Online discussion boards and forums allow students to engage with material outside of the classroom This allows students to think critically about the material at their own pace and to articulate their thoughts carefully The online environment may also facilitate greater discussion among classmates than is often accomplished in the classroom setting Consider posing discussion questions or exam-style hypotheticals to students and giving them a defined period of time in which to craft a response To ensure individual thinking, structure the forum so that students cannot see their peers’ posts until they have first submitted one of their own Then, allow (and encourage) them to respond to one another Lately, I have become increasingly interested in online instructional technology and have begun searching for ways to incorporate online activities into my own courses As I have explored the merits (and potential pitfalls) of teaching with instructional technology, I have also had the good fortune to collaborate with other likeminded but much more experienced faculty both at my own law school and at other institutions I offer the advice in this article based on my own experiments with online activities and the wisdom that has been shared with me by others Multiple Choice Exercises Many instructional technology programs offer software that can be used to create multiple choice-style quizzes These can be used to provide students with formative or summative feedback as the course progresses Student responses also help law teachers, particularly new law teachers, identify material that students find particularly challenging The multiple choice format is easy to score and manage— in fact, many software programs will score quizzes automatically and provide students and faculty with feedback For greater impact, append an asynchronous discussion group to the quiz requiring students to explain why they chose one answer over the others The first step is, of course, to choose which online activities to adopt Online activities vary widely in their complexity and in the time necessary to manage student activity For new law teachers, basic online activities are most promising, as they can be used to introduce greater depth to a course without overwhelming students or the professor A AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 Group Activities Instructional software programs often allow professors to divide students into groups before requiring groups to draft discussion responses or complete other activities Consider dividing your class into three-to-five member “law firms” tasked with completing an exam-style hypothetical, drafting exercise, or problem that raises professionalism issues Once each group has posted a response, append an asynchronous discussion group to the activity to encourage students to critique the work of other groups Introducing a technological component into a traditional, doctrinal course may seem daunting—particularly for the law teacher who was not exposed to instructional technology during her own legal education But, with just a little planning, incorporating technology into the classroom is remarkably easy Even the most timid of technophobes quickly find online exercises not only easy to manage, but also incredibly rewarding The following tips can help the new law teacher embrace online activities without overburdening herself set a goal of incorporating one new exercise each semester that you teach the course After completing the online exercise, ask students to provide feedback in the form of a survey or evaluation, which you can then use to craft your next activity Be sure to plan ahead Conduct the exercise by mid-semester (before the rush toward exams begins) Avoid conducting the exercise during a week that you anticipate having multiple other deadlines, committee responsibilities, or personal obligations Consider requiring students to complete the exercise on a Friday, giving yourself the weekend to review their work and consider whether the exercise was successful Avoid making advance commitments to students regarding how quickly they will receive feedback from you Keep a goal in mind Choosing online activities does not require an exhaustive study of all available online instructional technology software Most law schools support one or more programs, such as Lexis’ Blackboard, Westlaw’s Twen, and Moodle Check with your law library to see what programs are available and, more importantly, which programs your law library staff is most familiar with Law library personnel can offer tutorials and support that significantly streamline the learning curve of navigating new software When designing an online exercise be sure to keep your goal in mind—what is it that you hope to accomplish with the activity? No one activity can accomplish all purposes simultaneously, so you must decide in advance what goal is most important to you For example, group exercises are great for encouraging collaboration, but less effective for providing students with individualized summative feedback Also consider your audience First-semester 1Ls may benefit more from individualized feedback, whereas more experienced upperclassmen might profit most from a group professionalism exercise Work with what you’ve got Start small and plan ahead Online course planning and management takes time, and developing an online forum, quiz, or group activity will require valuable hours of course preparation If you attempt to too much too soon you will quickly become overwhelmed Try incorporating just one online exercise this semester, and AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 Craft efficient activities Well-designed online activities are efficient —that is, they provide a lot of bang for very little buck (and by “buck,” I mean your precious time) Be realistic about the amount of time you have to devote not only to planning the exercise, but monitoring it and providing feedback Remember that even basic discussion forums will require some monitoring by you to ensure that students not end up out in left field To achieve greater efficiency, consider whether an exercise requires individualized feedback or whether global feedback (provided either online or in a live debriefing) will be sufficient If you plan to provide students with individualized feedback, remember that group work reduces the number of responses that you will be required to read Online quizzes can be crafted so that you enter feedback for each correct and incorrect answer when you create the activity This feedback is then given to students automatically by the software rather than individually by you Collaborate for success The process of designing and incorporating online activities into a course is in many ways a process of trial-and-error However, you can gain efficiency by learning from the experiences of others For example, you may find that the personnel in your law library have worked with other faculty at your law school to develop online activities Reach out not only to those law library personnel, but also to other faculty who are embracing technology in their own classrooms You will likely find that faculty are eager to share their experiences with instructional technology (both successful and unsuccessful) At my own law school, casual hallway discussions about instructional technology have blossomed into a Technology Working Group that includes both junior and senior faculty and now meets regularly to discuss teaching and technology The conversation continues outside of individual law schools Generalist academic conferences often include panels devoted entirely to issues of teaching and technology Not only can panels like these provide you with valuable tips for improving your own course design, they can also connect you with faculty at other law schools who may be able to provide you with individualized advice Colloquium on Guest Blogging Dan Markel D'Alemberte Professor of Law Florida State University College of Law Why I Blog (as a Law Professor) I’m not sure why, but my instinct is usually to dodge the question of why I blog Perhaps I’m scared of the answers But for those of you thinking about taking the plunge into the blogging waters, here are some quick thoughts Just for background, a few friends and I started Prawfs.com (aka PrawfsBlawg) back in April 2005, when I was transitioning from legal practice into the legal academy At the AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 time, I was just finding my scholarly voice, and blogging seemed like a shiny new vehicle in which one could converse with other scholars Prawfs was one of the few group law-professor blogs back then The hope was that we would provide an ecumenical but mostly center-left and somewhat edgy space for commentary about legal, political, and academic developments I initially imagined that we’d evolve into a sort of counterweight to the flourishing Volokh Conspiracy It wasn’t long before we realized that idea was both too difficult to achieve and in some sense not even an attractive goal The contributors to the VC, it turns out, were far more committed to daily blogging about current events than we were Moreover, we ended up growing into an entirely ecumenical space without any intentional gravitational force exerted by the center-left point on the spectrum As a result, Prawfs morphed into a portal for the community of (primarily) American legal scholars, one where discussion about what one should wear to class was just as likely to appear as a discussion of the defective reasoning in the latest Supreme Court opinion To my mind, this shift – where we became a more collectively introspective enterprise – was entirely salutary Indeed, I think I continue to blog because I love the notion that there is a virtual space in which the academic legal community is strengthened and sometimes transformed by the ideas and experiences that we share in the blogosphere Prawfs is, at least every now and then, a catalyst for those changes Blogging does take up time, of course, and one has to be mindful of how to integrate that commitment alongside one’s other obligations to family, community, and work I keep this time-management issue under control by tending to blog about one of two things: topics oriented toward the community of scholars generally (such as the ethical practice of legal scholarship or the future of SSRN) or topics directly related to the scholarship that I love spending much more of my time on Neither area requires lots of additional research for me, nor is there a pressing deadline that I have to bear in mind That said, because I still love long-form scholarship, I sometimes avoid using the blog to elaborate on topics that I care about but that I worry will seem too abstruse I AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 also sometimes avoid the effort of trying to pack my arguments into digestible blog posts, because I don’t wish to get ensnared into a debate in the comments that might prove exasperating or otherwise, um, icky That said, once you start blogging a little bit, you realize there are ways of massaging the language of your blog posts so as to avoid inflaming the worst and most abusive online readers; the key is writing in a conversational way, not too dogmatic or harsh, but not too timorously either Time, imprecision, and frustration are sometimes the costs of trying to make a piece of scholarship accessible to nonspecialists Still, that effort is often worth it, especially at Prawfs, where we have made efforts to ensure a relatively congenial community of commenters After all, one of the best things about blogging as a medium is that it enables you to find new readers and interlocutors for your work and ideas And as writers, you win your readers one by one by one This point about community building seems especially salient in light of the fact that law professors live a largely monastic existence in their offices Blogging helps as an antidote to that vocational loneliness Finally, I think we are obligated to make some efforts to get our ideas out there As scholars, we spend years trying to generate intellectual capital We are paid to so by virtue of the generosity of public legislatures and private tuition and donations Accordingly, I think we owe our benefactors our efforts to disseminate our hard work beyond the typical and sometimes closed channels of distribution that we often rely upon In sum, I blog because, first, I sometimes have ideas and care to share them, and second, and more often, I am curious about an issue facing the legal academy, and I’d like to hear what other people to address that issue Blogging, then, creates a space for me to teach, but more selfishly, it is a space where I can be taught Giovanna Shay Associate Professor of Law Western New England University School of Law Giovanna Shay here, writing something brief about guest blogging “Guest blogging!?” you snort “Shay, aren’t you already terribly over-committed! And weren’t you pre-tenure when you started blogging?” Well, yes, on both counts, but look who’s talking If you’re reading this, you are no doubt over-committed and pretenure as well (Although I’m happy to report that I was recommended for tenure just a couple weeks ago) It’s true that I should be working on that big paper No, not the symposium piece Not the book review The big one But nonetheless, I stand by my position that guest blogging has not been a distraction (a point an AALS panel debated a few years ago) Okay, it hasn’t been only a distraction It’s helped me to become more engaged, to develop some ideas, and to maintain connections with other profs At the gracious invitation of the indefatigable Dan Markel, I have guest-ed at prawfs blawg a few times I’ve also published posts at the ACS blog, and this year, I’m “covering” Gonzalez v Thaler for scotusblog I “guest” because I enjoy blogging, but, with a full teaching and committee load, and four children in my house ten-and-under, I suspect that I could AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 not maintain my own blog I like to “guest” in June, a month when the release of important SCOTUS opinions coincides with reduced teaching responsibilities This year I “guested” at prawfs in October, at the beginning of the SCOTUS term That makes it sound like I mostly write about the SCOTUS cases I that sometimes, but I also blog about what I’m teaching, how I’m teaching, and what I read in the news Why it? I’ll list some of the benefits I’ve met other guest bloggers who are profs working in my area I’ve reconnected with former teachers, colleagues, and classmates (many of whom are now professors) Journalists whose work I mention have contacted me to thank me, which leaves me pretty starstruck And once I did get a media call based on a post It keeps me writing It forces me to “dig into” cases and articles It helps me to develop ideas that might someday be papers It gives me a chance to reflect on my teaching And I sometimes plug my own articles, or promote others’ work Also, it’s better procrastination than reading Slate and the N.Y Times web sites compulsively Or at least it’s an alternative So that’s why I guest blog Now, back to that big paper! Caleb Mason Associate Professor of Law Southwestern Law School Message from the Editor of the Section's Newsletter-Warning: The following essay includes quotes with racially charged and violent language The quotes are taken verbatim from a major recent First Amendment case before the Ninth Circuit and are essential to the point of the essay, which is why they are included in the piece My best experience guest-blogging? It had to be when Orin Kerr, one of my academic heroes (and whom I’ve never met), wrote a comment on one of my posts I was starstruck (I’m a true fan: in an upcoming article, I call Kerr “my generation’s Wayne LaFave.”) And there was a comment! From him! About something I’d written! It was short—I think it was “I don’t agree.”—but there it was Chris Lund asked me to be funny in this essay, and now, having held up my end of the bargain, I will be serious The last case I prosecuted before coming to academia involved a guy who posted a number of comments about then-candidate Barack Obama on an AOL discussion forum shortly before the election The comments got increasingly violent in tone, and culminated in “Shoot the nig” and “Fk the nig, he’ll have a 50 cal in the head soon.” Another reader called the Secret Service, the Secret Service called me, and we convicted the guy of threatening a major candidate for president (a post-RFK statutory update to the post-McKinley threatening-the-president statute) The question lurking in the case from the outset was the nature of speaker intent when statements are made to an unknown audience by an unknown speaker through the disembodied medium of the internet Under such circumstances, what would you need to show to prove that a speaker intended his statements to be interpreted by AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 the audience as a serious expression of an intent to use violence? Or that a reasonable person would interpret the statements as a serious expression of an intent to use violence? The online audience didn’t know that the guy actually had a 50 caliber rifle, among other guns, in his house, or that on Election Day he sent out an email titled “And so it begins,” with a video showing people shooting a 50 caliber rifle at a car, with the comment, “just shoot the ni a’s car and POOF!” Should those facts matter? If so, how much? The case is just an extreme example of the phenomenon we all encounter when we peruse blog comments Is that ongoing exchange with its increasingly violent metaphors between “RaiderNationRules” and “TBoneinAZ” (I just made those handles up) tongue in cheek? When “RaiderNationRules writes “@TBone: You need a good ass-kicking,” how is a hypothetical reasonable observer supposed to interpret it? The defendant above was convicted of threatening candidate Obama, but just this summer, the Ninth Circuit, per Judges Kozinski and Reinhardt, over Judge Wardlaw’s dissent, reversed the conviction You can read the opinion at 652 F.3d 1113 I’m not persuaded by the reasoning, but I know that Judges Kozinski and Reinhardt have thought an awful lot about speech and the internet, and that there are smart people who think the rule announced by this case—which appears to 10 be pretty much complete immunity for anonymous internet speech not grammatically structured as an explicit firstperson statement of intent to use violence— is the right one for the internet I don’t share that view, and I have a long article explaining why But it’s not an easy question, and my experience at Prawfsblawg is I think in some ways illustrative of why internet threats make for such hard doctrinal problems I worked hard on my Prawfsblawg posts, and I wrote, I think, about some cool topics But I have no real idea whether the payoff in readers was worth the cost in effort One assumes most readers of Prawfsblawg are law professors, and some are law students But the only way I, as a guest blogger, got any sense of who I was talking to was in the comments I got maybe five comments per post Most were people in the business and had thoughtful and insightful things to say But I drew some nutters, too, for example one angry defender of Japanese whaling: “Your analysis is repugnant You are willing to attempt to twist the facts to justify your own political agenda You should not be a professor, judge or arbitrator of any issue Your killing the minds of those you portend to educate.” The topic of that post was the potential jurisdiction of U.S courts over the Antarctic ocean under 18 U.S.C § and the status of Antarctica under Australian law and international treaties It's a pretty good post You can look at it at http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/ 2010/01/whale-wars-and-extraterritorialjurisdiction.html It identifies the relevant statutory and treaty authorities, flags the uncertainties, and examines what courts have said in some analogous settings It's not really clear to me where the pernicious political agenda was But I'm not just whining here; I have a serious point, which is that if the legal test AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 for the capacity of a reasonable person to discern the intention of a statement online depended on the hermeneutic capacity of random blog commenters like this “Richard,” the 9th Circuit’s caution about inferring intent from violent online speech would be easier to justify But I see no reason why the lines should be drawn any differently for online communications, and that’s why I find the new 9th Circuit rule troubling: Immunizing online discourse is problematic precisely because online discourse escalates/descends so quickly into insults, “yelling,” and tough-guy posturing Talking about shooting someone in the head, coupled with expletives and racial slurs, is a threat—as I think most of us would agree if we encountered someone in a live social setting talking that way Of course, blog relationships don’t have to be like that I have no doubt that over time if you write or comment regularly on blogs you develop a relationship with the core of regular commenters and bloggers Indeed, on Scotusblog the commenting public is known officially as a “community,” and it consists largely of practitioners and professors who know each other Given such a relationship it’s a lot easier to interpret potentially ambiguous utterances, and a lot more likely that people will selfpolice For example, there’s a person who comments on Volokh a lot who goes by the handle “Sarcastro,” and to make it even more obvious, has a funny picture of Castro as his icon All of this person’s comments are sarcastic, but occasionally a new commenter doesn’t get it, and posts some aggrieved response I think calling yourself “Sarcastro” ought to be enough of an interpretive cue, but most contexts aren’t so clear, and neither deadpan nor tongue-incheek really translates well into writing (at least without an additional context, such as that the writing is appearing in the New Yorker under the Shouts and Murmurs heading) 11 The problem is the inconsistency in the way people experience these situations, and it’s felt most acutely by “guests.” On the one hand, people taking part in these “conversations” no doubt feel to some degree as though they’re in a real conversation: after all, everyone’s “in” the same “place,” people are responding to one another, using first names, etc But on the other hand, you’re missing all the normal social cues that you would use to navigate an actual social interaction with actual conversation So That Guy—and you all know him—who can’t quite pick up on the little social cues we normally live by (inflection, posture, micro-expressions, cultural references) can’t what we hope he’d in a real party, namely, take guidance from the reactions of the others in the group Nor does he have to what he would probably actually (just stand over in the corner) because here, online, no one knows that he’s That Guy To be sure, it’s no big insight that the same invisibility and inscrutability of audience that makes blogs an inadequate substitute for real conversations makes internet threats so difficult to conceptualize as crimes I think the best rule for both true threats doctrine and blog etiquette is to hold the “community” to precisely the same standards we’d enforce in face-to-face interaction Obviously that cuts against the natural pull of the medium But it’s a pull worth resisting Miriam R Albert Professor of Law Hofstra School of Law I imagine that most of us can barely remember back to when we didn’t know what a blog was—back to a day when it didn’t seem at all odd to us that perfect strangers would share every thought and feeling with other strangers In those early days of blogging, I remember being both slightly in awe of those who published blogs, wondering how they had so much to say, and with such authority, while at the same time, being slightly disdainful at their temerity in thinking anyone would actually care to read their every thought and feeling And then of course, I did I saw a poster about blogging that said: “Blogging: never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.” While that may be true in general, blogging in the work context has evolved over time, and certainly in our world, AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 academic blogs can and add value We were used to list serves where folks we knew only by name and affiliation discussed topics of mutual interest via email discussion, but blogs moved this idea into a more immediate medium- more like a real discussion through the “threads.” These blogs have the potential to provide a sounding board for ideas, to bring people and ideas together for collaborations in scholarship, teaching and other projects, to prompt ideas for scholarship, to suggest teaching innovations, and to build community between and among faculty members And with the increasing number of blogs in various corners of the academy, guest blogging is an increasingly popular trend for insuring fresh content I read a host of blogs daily or weekly [okay, read may be a bit of an overstatement- I 12 have them bookmarked on my computer and intend to read them much more often than I actually ] and have guest blogged from time to time on several blogs So apparently, this qualifies me to provide you with a list of do’s and don’ts for guest blogging- actually it probably qualifies me to set up my own blog about guest blogging, but let’s save that for another day So, based on my personal blogsperience [when blogging, you are allowed to, and in fact, encouraged to make up new cyberwords], here is my list: While guest blogging sounds much more fancy that it really is, it’s a terrific idea, and if asked, you should absolutely it And if not asked, you should volunteer My nana used to call this a “forced opportunity.” That means you box yourself in and then you will have to make yourself it Worst case scenario- you make some new contacts, you force yourself to come up with something to say and maybe get some new ideas for teaching or writing, and have something new to stick on your CV somewhere Like the boy scouts, be prepared Knowing you have a guest blog gig requiring two or three entries a week in the near future should inspire you to start gathering ideas in advance, so you don’t panic during your stint Ideally, you can prepare some entries in advance, or at least flesh out some broad concepts that are timeless so you’ll have them to intersperse AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 with the more topical ideas that need to be thought up and written during the stint This will ease the pressure The actual writing is easy on blogs It’s regular old writing- no fancy polysyllabic words- say what you mean and mean what you say You get to share your opinion and you don’t need support for it! You not need a citation, in proper blue book form That said, be only as controversial as you feel comfortable with There is no need to start a cyber-rumble, unless of course you want to Choose your words carefully, and think about how they will be interpreted by the reader, who could be anyone – see #6 Unlike a conversation, with tone and nuance, your words stand alone, so choose them wisely Be mindful of your full audience- your students, your colleagues, your reappointment committee- once something is on the internet, it’s there forever When I guest blog on a favorite site of mine, PrawfsBlawg, I need to remember that despite the blog name, the blog is not just for law profs Students read it and comment on the posts- sometimes my students! So happy guest blogging Go forth into cyberspace and blog You’ll be glad you did 13 Michael A Helfand Associate Professor of Law Associate Director of the Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute for Jewish Studies Pepperdine University School of Law I have guest blogged twice since starting as a law professor in the Fall of 2010 – both times on one of my favorite law blogs, Prawfsblawg Given my personality, the fact that I’ve guest-blogged kind of surprises me Like some of you – or maybe many of you – I’m always terribly nervous about putting anything in print I obsess over articles, papers and even the occasional (read: every) email And the fact that I’m only in my second year teaching does nothing to make me feel more confident about casting some of my random thoughts out into the easily-searchable blogosphere But this is all why I push myself to guest blog I see it as an opportunity to engage others in conversation on topics that interest me While sometimes my deliberative and cautious (overly-cautious?) nature gets the better of me, guest-blogging gets me to open up a little more about my thoughts, ideas and projects Put differently, guest-blogging is how I get the academic in me to overcome the lawyer in me Picking up on that theme, here are my top additional reasons for guest-blogging: 1) Introduce an Idea: My favorite thing to while guest blogging is float an idea When I guest blogged last November on Prawfsblawg, I put up a post titled “Religious Arbitration and the New Multiculturalism.” It was the working title for an article I was editing and I simply was not sure how my thoughts on a “new multiculturalism” would be received by a wider audience And so, I floated the concept just to see how the idea would hit people; was it plausible or did it strike people as not quite accurately describing the legal landscape? The response I got was AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 both exciting (many people really liked the idea) and also helpful (some people recommended additions or tweaks to the idea) It gave me a good sense that the idea had solid traction and pushed me along in the writing process Of course, I should note that idea-floating is also the most angst-ridden type of post you can author Sometimes people will remind you why nobody has floated the idea before Or maybe worse – you can get no reaction at all, making you wonder if your idea is completely pedestrian But guest-blogging is all about letting your inner-academic win out over your inner-lawyer And nothing says academic more than proposing an idea 2) Collect Information: The first time I guest blogged, I was working on an article about regulating religious commercial conduct Among the issues I was looking at was how courts interpret and apply contracts that promote religious practices Searching for “religious contracts” is not particularly easy; it is pretty hard to come up with search terms to find new cases As it turned out, a great way to supplement my research was posting about “religious contracts,” asking if anyone had thoughts on what types of contracts I should look into In response, I got comments on the blog, emails from readers and some people even sent me some articles To put it succinctly, guest blogging can be like using the poll-the-audience lifeline And if you are guest blogging somewhere that has an active readership, you will likely get some very helpful information 3) Promote Your Work and Your Institution: Lastly, guest-blogging is a great opportunity to present the work you are doing and the 14 work others are doing at your institution To be sure, you not want to go overboard here; the point of a blog is to be engaging and not self-congratulatory But I think it is mistake to avoid tasteful self-promotion In fact, I think it is an important opportunity to provide a service to your home institution So posting SSRN links from your colleagues, highlighting events at your home institution or introducing some of your recently completed work all seem like part of the guest-blogging environment Brendan Maher Assistant Professor of Law Oklahoma City University School of Law I entered academia in 2009; since then I’ve guest-blogged four times, in month-long stints I like writing, and, to be honest, that’s what initially got me interested in guest-blogging My calculus was pretty simple: I frequently think about topics that are either (1) not susceptible to more formal scholarly expression or (2) could find their way into more traditional scholarship but are, for a variety of reasons, extremely unlikely to so by my hand Guestblogging seemed to be (and was and is) an enjoyable way to share those thoughts with others, who may (or may not) be moved to respond I assume, incidentally, that all blog posts of mine that attracted no comments were so thorough in their genius that no comment was necessary My wife takes a different view I admit my biases: I’m pro-blogging in part because I like writing for writing’s sake, and am thus inclined to seize upon any evidence or argument that promotes blogging as a productive social, professional, or academic exercise Just the same, apart from the fact that I like it, guest-blogging, to paraphrase Martha Stewart, is a good thing First, it can birth articles—because some posts actually grow into articles—as well as improve works in progress (via useful comments, online or off, from blog-colleagues) Second, it can expose you to people it might AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 take years for you to otherwise meet, and that’s desirable because it increases the likelihood that (1) those folks might read your more traditional work and (2) that you might read theirs Time is limited, and we subtly prioritize reading the work of people we’ve heard of before I can’t help but to have sought out and read the work of several people I “know” only through bloggage, and the result, for me, was scholarly growth Third, I’m of the view that it’s best to keep the writing muscles fit, and blogging is a low-pressure means of doing so Fourth, guest-blogging is an opportunity to assist others in their scholarship; a post exploring a particular issue or idea may have a productive or catalytic effect on others thinking through the issue in a more formal way Your blog post, in other words, might be the apple smacking an unknown colleague’s head I’ve listed a few benefits There are costs, but I think they’re avoidable Excessive blogging could interfere with the production of formal scholarship, but that’s not the general pattern I’ve observed Using traditional metrics, bloggers appear to be a productive lot I can’t refute the notion that bloggers would be more productive if they didn’t blog, but that claim does not resonate with my intuitions about how thinking and 15 writing work Blogging is particularly anxiety-producing for perfectionists, who cannot bear the thought that a blog post might be imperfect or inaccurate I think that concern is overblown—it’s a blog post It’s not fully baked, nor intended to be Conversations in pursuit of truth not start with perfection; they don’t even end with it But it’s better for all of us if those conversations start Blog away I’ll be reading Child Care at the AALS Annual Meeting Laura Kessler Professor of Law S.J Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah Chair, Work-Life Committee AALS Section on Women in Legal Education The Women’s Section scored a significant victory last spring when it successfully petitioned the AALS to reinstate AALSsponsored group child care at the AALS Annual Meeting The AALS sponsored child care at the Annual Meeting from 2002 to 2009, but discontinued the service for the 2010 meeting due to low usage In response, the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education formed a Work-Life Committee, which spent several months investigating the cancellation The Work-Life Committee and the Women’s Section board then submitted a letter to the AALS requesting that the cancellation of childcare services at the annual meeting be reversed See http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1588115/Letter %20to%20Prager%20FINAL%20rev.pdf The Section’s position was that failure to offer childcare services makes it difficult for those with young children to attend the conference, and the cancellation is disproportionately likely to disadvantage junior women faculty In response to the request, the AALS Executive Committee has agreed to offer an AALS Annual Meeting child care center for 2012 and 2013, subject to sunsetting after AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 that period If it is underutilized in those two years, it will not be continued If you will have children with you at the conference and would like to your part to make sure that childcare is offered in the future, please consider using this service during the 2012 Annual Meeting in D.C Information, including fees, hours, registration procedures, etc is detailed on the registration form (PDF), available at http://www.aals.org/am2012/childcarereg.pd f The deadline for advance registration is December 16, 2011 Please register as early as possible; space is limited This campaign was an impressive group effort by the Women in Legal Education Section’s Executive Committee and newlyformed Work-Life Committee In addition, special credit is due to Danne Johnson (Oklahoma City), Joan Krause (UNC), Nancy Levit (UMKC), Lisa Pruitt (U.C Davis), and Nareissa Smith (Florida Coastal) for help with research and drafting; Joan Williams (Hastings) and Deborah Rhode (Stanford) for endorsing our request; and Bridget Crawford (Pace) for her blog posts on the issue 16 * * * * * We hope you have enjoyed this edition of our annual newsletter We would like to thank all of our contributors If you have suggestions or ideas for future newsletters, please feel free to e-mail the incoming secretary, Tiffani Darden at dardent@law.msu.edu Christopher C Lund, Section Secretary Assistant Professor of Law Wayne State University School of Law lund@wayne.edu AALS New Law Professors Section Annual Newsletter, December 2011 17
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