10 Reasons for a Law Student to Blog

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10. Make money fast!

Hardly. Blogging may pay the bills for some, but law blog­ging is hardly going to pay for the cof­fee you need to get through the semes­ter, much less your books. So stick to free tools like Blogger.com and WordPress.com so you at least don’t lose money. Still, if you want to make a go of bring­ing in some income, sites like ProBlogger.net can help.

9. A chance to express your opin­ion on what you think is important

It can be demor­al­iz­ing to be one amongst 90+ stu­dents in a lec­ture hall. Your voice is only heard when your prof takes the Socratic method to heart and spends 20 min­utes grilling you on the finer points of the Rule Against Perpetuities. At least blog­ging lets you finally get your two cents out there. Submitting to social media like Digg, StumbleUpon, and shar­ing via Twitter and Facebook can help get your voice heard.

8. Future employ­ers will research you on Google

Better insight­ful Web com­men­tary than drunken MySpace pic­tures, no? (You are writ­ing insight­ful com­men­tary, aren’t you?) If you’re not com­fort­able with this, don’t blog. You can try to hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, but it can be dif­fi­cult, and defeats some of the main point of blog­ging. Regardless, be sure you are fine with what you write because your online words tend to stay around longer than you would think.

7. You can par­tic­i­pate in schol­arly discourse

Why wait to pub­lish a note or an arti­cle in a law review? On the Web, you are your own edi­tor. Use that power wisely (see #8) and you may reap the rewards. The back-and-forth of the Web can be a won­der­ful thing, if you choose to par­tic­i­pate directly. But even indi­rect par­tic­i­pa­tion far from the “cen­ter” of the dis­course can be fruit­ful and reward­ing, and the skills you develop will serve you well later (see #6).

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6. The more you write, the bet­ter you’ll get

Practice makes per­fect and all that. Just remem­ber that peo­ple may actu­ally read what you’re writ­ing, if not now, then per­haps just before your key inter­view. So even though it’s easy to dash off some­thing with­out think­ing, try to keep your gram­mar decent and your points on track. But there’s a rea­son why so many pro­fes­sional writ­ers force them­selves to do it every day: it’s one of the best ways to get bet­ter.

5. Legal schol­ar­ship is mov­ing online

Law reviews and legal pub­lish­ing are slow, pon­der­ous efforts. Blogging is quick (in both a good and bad sense). Response and back-and-forth is easy and pub­lic. Margaret Schilt writes in “Is the Future of Legal Scholarship in the Blogosphere?”:

If you are look­ing for the future of legal schol­ar­ship, chances are that you may find it not in a trea­tise or the tra­di­tional law review but in a dif­fer­ent form, pro­foundly influ­enced by the blogosphere.

4. You can get imme­di­ate feedback

Via com­ment sys­tems and reac­tions from other blog­gers, you have the poten­tial to gain quick and use­ful feed­back on flaws in your analy­sis or on points to pur­sue fur­ther. Without blog­ging, you’re lim­ited to the views of those you approach and talk with. Blogging opens your work and your ideas up to the world.

3. It can do won­ders for your rep­u­ta­tion and your per­sonal brand

Image via Wikipedia

(See also #8, above.) If you write well, employ­ers, col­leagues and clients can all see that demon­strated for them­selves. A well-written blog can really build your rep­u­ta­tion and your per­sonal brand. It is an effec­tive sup­ple­ment to your old-school resume and busi­ness cards. (At the same time, a poorly-written blog can kill your reputation.)

Image by Earl — What I Saw 2.0 via Flickr

2. You can cap­ture your own ideas for future use

Need a paper topic? Look back over your blog. Like a search­able jour­nal, a blog gives you an archive to mine for future research, and may well come with the bonus of com­men­tary and cri­tique by others.

1. Lawyers write

Being a lawyer is, at least in part, about writ­ing well. Blogging is a nat­ural exten­sion of this. If you’re a law stu­dent, you need to “think like a lawyer.” Blogging can help. (See #6.)