Prof. B answers Doug Berman's PrawfsBlawg question on how to improve blogs with one word:  Yuck.

Prof. Berman's question assumes that the goal is to improve blogs as an "academic medium," but would it be so bad if blogs were part academic medium, part academic water cooler?  Does the natural evolution of things have to finally come to rest as an academic journal?  Like every student organization that doesn't believe it will be fully-fledged until it edits a specialty journal, are we so programmed to believe that law reviews are the sine qua non of academic existence that we can't contemplate just letting blogs "be"?

I think I agree with Steve on this one.  I also like Steve's comment that being a lawyer is the last resort of a generalist.  (I prefer the term "Renaissance Scholar," but I'll accept "generalist.")  The thing that most people like about practicing law is that one gets to learn about something new with every new case or deal that walks through the door.  (For example, my husband knows an inordinate amount about the metallocene plastics, and I think I could draw a power plant in my sleep.)  Being a law professor takes this phenomenon to a whole new level:  you get to pick each day what new thing you are going to learn about.  And that interest in learning new tidbits here and there is why I like "Renaissance Blogs."  A little serious stuff here, an interesting curiosity there.  A semiannual Conglomerate Junior Scholars Workshop (to begin on August 22, 2005!) here, a gambling post there.

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