Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> Lawbeat

Legal News

: Lawbeat

More on Yale's Law and Media Program

By Mark Obbie

Harold Koh, Yale's law dean, explained in an interview what is new about the Law and Media Program (and I thought more explanation was called for, given that the school's Greenhouse announcement described aspects of the program as longstanding and new). First, by way of disclosure, and maybe nostalgia: I know Koh because he was one of a handful of thinkers who helped make Counsel Connect a special experiment in the Internet's early days. I helped launch and then ran the lawyers-only online service from 1992 to 1999. He and others such as Pam Samuelson, Steve Gillers, and David Post came aboard as hosts of online discussions, not because of me (I was the day-to-day operations guy) but because of a Yale law graduate named David Johnson, a Wilmer Cutler partner and Internet pioneer. Anyway, Koh now has it in his head that I introduced him to e-mail and the 'Net, so whatever. But here's the connection to the Greenhouse announcement: Koh wants to dot-com Yale's longstanding law and media interests. The new Law and Media Program has a broader mandate than what has existed at the school before, as Koh tells it, because it will study and teach about and host conversations about the Internet-bred changes in media that affect the law. Greenhouse is just part of the equation. Others are at Yale, or will be brought onboard, to help the school think about what makes for authoritative legal journalism anymore. It all sounds like fun, and with a Yale spin on legal education (which is to say that it isn't exactly the nuts and bolts of passing the Connecticut bar exam). Greenhouse has chosen a mind-expanding place to land, to be sure.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on March 26, 2008 (boomark / email).