Corporate Governance

Bloggings, Rankings, and Lateral Movement

By J. Robert Brown

Paul Secunda (of Work Place Prof Blog fame) has written a piece on lateral movement by law professors (Tales of a Law Professor Lateral Nothing), a commonly discussed but rarely implemented concept (he notes that there were 7,618 law professors in 2006-2007 and 125 lateral moves during 2007). It is an interesting discussion that combines general observations and his own personal experience on making a lateral move. Paul went from the University of Mississippi to Marquette. He references in the paper my piece on blogging and the impact on rankings, Of Empires, Independents, and Captives: Law Blogging, Law Scholarship, and Law School Rankings, and agrees that blogging can improve law school rankings. He does, however, note the potential impact on blogging and lateral movement.  As the paper states:

• In addition to these valid points that Professor Brown makes, I think it is important to add another potentially provocative assertion here: good blogging can be an excellent way to not only get noticed on the lateral market, but for getting hired in that market. As Professor Brown argues, some day higher-ranked schools may come to realize the advantage of having a high-profile blogger on their faculty and rather than start their own faculty blogs or encourage their faculty to start blogs, they will instead “purchase” the services of an already well-regarded blogger for their school.
• Now, I don't think law schools have started to hire law professor bloggers in droves yet, but there is a substantial list of full-time bloggers who have moved schools in the last three or so years. And I am not arguing that super-star law professors like Brian Leiter would not have made his way from Texas to Chicago without his multiple blogs. I think this theory works best with someone who is in the lower second tier or in the third and fourth tiers. These individuals have a harder time getting noticed in the law professor community from their current academic platforms and are looking for ways to get their work out and be invited to conferences and symposia. So not only can blogging certainly help with one getting newspaper and media interviews, but it also can pique the interest of law school appointment committees.
• Finally, if Professor Brown is right that good blogging helps increase a school's reputation, then it is in a school's best interest to start hiring bloggers to increase their reputation scores (and yes, I recognize my own self-interest in making this point, but I really believe it helped me during the lateral process that more people already knew who I was through my work on the Workplace Prof Blog). Again, I think this point is more valid for lower-ranked schools where there is more room to grow in reputation ranking. Nevertheless, even elite schools that are bunched closely together in various rankings may do well to get added public relations push that comes with having a well-known blogger on faculty.

Provocative and probably right.  For better or for worse, a significant Internet presence for law faculty will only grow in importance.  As law schools realize this, it will inevitably be a factor in hiring. 

Full post as published by The Race to the Bottom on March 29, 2008 (boomark / email).