Doug Berman (Ohio State) at our sister Law School Innovation Blog flags this comment from Jack Balkin (Yale) on blogging and legal scholarship:

The most successful blogs tend to be run by younger law professors who aren’t necessarily at the top-ten schools. That’s because if you’re an established professor at a top-ten school, you are already probably getting significant positive reinforcement for what you are doing. But if you’re a law professor who’s trying to establish a name for yourself, you quite understandably feel that not enough people are paying attention to what you’re saying. The blogosphere is a wonderful way for you to put your ideas out there and gain an audience for ideas you think are valuable and worthwhile. Blogging democratizes legal commentary; it publicizes the scholarship and the expertise of a large number of law professors who would not have gotten a voice before.

Doug notes:

Jack’s comment also portends a coming revolution. The label of "younger law professors who aren’t necessarily at the top-ten schools" describes perhaps 70% of current law professors and essentially 100% of wanna-be law professors. If blogging continues to be an especially valuable medium for an especially large percentage of law professors, I predict it is only a matter of time before every law professor is expected to have (or contribute to) a legal blog of one sort or another.

I was delighted to participate with Jack in the Yale Law Journal’s Pocket Part Symposium on The Future of Legal Scholarship (Balkin: Online Legal Scholarship: The Medium and the Message, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 23 (2006); Caron, The Long Tail of Legal Scholarship, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 38 (2006)), and am looking forward to discussing these issues with him next week (February 16) at the New York Law School Symposium on Writing About the Law:  From Bluebook to Blogs and Beyond.  For further thoughts on these issues, the papers from our April 26, 2006 Symposium on Bloggership:  How Blogs Are Transforming Legal Scholarship will be published soon in the Washington University Law Review (My introduction is Are Scholars Better Bloggers? – Bloggership: How Blogs are Transforming Legal Scholarship, 84 Wash. U. L. Rev. ___ (2007)).